Movie Review Meet the Robinsons

Meet the Robinsons (2007) 

Directed by Stephen Anderson 

Written by Jon Bernstein, Don Hall, Nathan Greno, Aurian Redson, Joe Mateo 

Starring Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry, Wesley Singerman, Angela Bassett, Tom Selleck

Release Date March 30th, 2007

Published March March 29th, 2007 

Walt Disney was a visionary of great imagination and boundless enthusiasm. While many biographers have pointed out his flaws, some very dark flaws that some quite fairly point out. But the wonder of his creations is still undeniable and is recreated with loving care with the release of the new CG cartoon Meet The Robinsons.

This high tech time travel cartoon is so good hearted and sweet, in the great tradition of Pinocchio et al that it's darn near sickening. Thankfully some smart scripting by John Bernstein adapting William Joyce, and strong direction by Stephen J. Anderson, who hasn't worked in animation in nearly a decade, keep Meet The Robinsons pointedly away from treacle.

The story of an orphan taken into the future to chase down a bowler hat wearing villain who intends to change the past to change the future, Meet The Robinsons tells the story of Lewis whose wild imagination and crazy inventions have kept many couples from adopting him. Lewis's inventions tend to blow up as he demonstrates them for potential parents.

Lewis's latest invention is one that he hopes will help him find the mother that gave him up when he was just a baby. It’s a memory retrieval device and eventually; we learn, it’s this invention that will change the world in the future. But first, Lewis has to stop the bowler hat guy and meet the Robinsons, a wacky inventor clan and the owners and inventors of time travel.

The story is actually quite complicated, in the tradition of the space time continuum and the mind bending space and time anomalies at home in classic sci fi prose from Ray Bradbury to Star Trek The Next Generation. The story twists and turns back on itself, teasing what happens in the past and how it plays in the future. However, the story is not so hard to follow that the small children will be confused by it.

Meet The Robinsons is colorful and imaginative with a big heart and a few big laughs, more than enough to keep kids in rapt attention, enjoying every candy coated minute. Meanwhile, mom and dad can marvel at a story that is at once awash in childlike wonder and smart enough to grasp the concept and inherent tragedies of classic sci fi.

Based on the imaginative writing of children's author William Joyce, Meet The Robinsons crafts a wondrous fantasy of the future that is grounded in this loving eccentric family where grandpa wears his clothes backwards, Aunt Billie has a life sized train set, and mom trains frogs to sing like Frank Sinatra. A future where time travel has been conquered but is not prevalent.

It's a utopian future where family is the true utopia. Being loved and accepted for your failures and what they teach is the most valuable currency. A future filled with lessons that hopefully will resonate with young audiences. It's okay to be wrong sometimes, failure teaches.

The movie is dedicated to Walt Disney whose imagination and life force is why movies like Meet The Robinsons exist today. Put aside the various stories of Disney's personal life that may have some dark edge to them and look at his legacy in animation and this dedication rings wonderfully true. The Walt Disney of his prime would have loved Meet The Robinsons; the rare non-Pixar Disney project to deliver on his legacy of wondrous imagination and a big heart.

Movie Review Meet Bill

Meet Bill (2008) 

Directed by Bernie Goldman, Melisa Wallack 

Written by Melisa Wallack 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Timothy Olyphant, Logan Lerman, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth Banks

Release Date April 4th, 2008

Published July 10th, 2008 

The male midlife crisis has inspired many Hollywood writers. The twist in the new to DVD movie Meet Bill starring Aaron Eckhart is that it was written by a woman. Melisa Wallack wrote the script and was co-director of Meet Bill with veteran producer Bernie Goldmann and her gender doesn't really matter. Like most male midlife crisis movies Meet Bill has little to add in terms of any new insights from men, women or anyone else.

Living off of the wealth and generosity of his wife's family, Bill (Aaron Eckhart) has come to hate his life. With the stomach paunch that seemed to come out of nowhere and his lazy, floppy haircut; Bill looks as sloppy as he feels. At work he is a lackey and a joke as the guy whose job is to be the boss's son. At home, his wife Jess (Elizabeth Banks) is cheating on him with a local news talking head (Timothy Olyphant).

Bill's life changes for good when he is teamed with a teenager (Logan Lerman) who does what he wants when he wants. The kid, as Bill calls him, adopts Bill whether he likes it or not and soon Bill is living life the way he always wanted. As he decides what to do about his wife, the Kid introduces him to a lingerie shop clerk, Lucy (Jessica Alba), who becomes his friend and offers to help him with his marital issues.

The Jessica Alba subplot doesn't go where you think it will. In fact, like a couple of subplots in Meet Bill, it doesn't really go anywhere. Meet Bill is a movie filled with characters and actors who seem like they should be more important than they end up being. Alba is moved about the plot like nice looking furniture. Character actor extraordinaire Todd Louiso plays Bill's brother in law and despite a couple of awkward scenes he barely registers.

Craig Bierko plays Bill's brother and though he is given something of a back story, some kind local sports star or war hero or something, he is shown and shuffled off the mains stage with little notice. I like that the character is gay and that it doesn't seem to be any kind of issue, but it is yet another strand of plot that is left dangling in the end.

There is a certain charm to the fact that the movie Meet Bill is nearly as much of a shambles as Bill himself, but by the end, the film is an even bigger mess than Bill ever was. I had hoped the story would pull together the same way Bill the character seems to pull himself together but it never happens. Writer and co-director Melisa Wallick just doesn't know what to do with all of these characters she introduces and by the end she even loses her grip on Bill.

Even the history of the making and release of Meet Bill is a mess. A Canadian production, Meet Bill was briefly released in theaters and dumped. It made it onto the internet and now it arrives on DVD with little fanfare. Especially little fanfare considering a cast that includes Jessica Alba, Hitman star Timothy Olyphant, 40 Year Old Virgin star Banks and Eckhart who has been a well known presence in a number of movies and will soon be seen in the next Batman.

With a cast this big and talented the only way Meet Bill could fail this miserably is to stink up the joint. It did, so it failed.

Movie Review Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) 

Directed by Quentin Tarentino 

Written by Quentin Tarentino 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbe, Al Pacino, Margaret Qualley 

Release Date July 26th, 2019 

Published July 25th, 2019 

Quentin Tarentino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a masterpiece of mood, tone and directorial command. The film is at once a classically Quentin Tarentino style fetish film, a film that explores and lives within the things that Tarentino has long shown an obsession for and a much looser, more relaxed movie than what Tarentino has made before. Yes, the characters are still whip smart and the dialogue comes in bursts of wordy pop aphorisms, but the mood is much more subdued than we are used to with QT and it works really well for this story. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton. Rick is a former television star, the star of the NBC series “Bounty Law” on which he played famed bounty hunter Jake Cahill. However, since the series went off the air several years before the story we are being told here, Rick has struggled to get parts, settling most often to play bad guys to a new generation of Jake Cahill’s eager to get a shine off of punching Jake Cahill in the face. 

This new reality for Rick is brought home in a conversation with an agent played by Al Pacino who does not mince words. The agent is trying to seduce Rick into using what is left of his star power to make several Italian spaghetti westerns, a move that would force Rick to move to Rome for six months. Rick doesn’t like the Italian westerns, he feels they are beneath him. The offer is an indication to Rick that his career has truly hit the skids. 

Keeping Rick from a full on meltdown is his best friend and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Cliff is a pragmatist who points out that spending six months in Rome making westerns is better than sitting at home doing nothing, something that he’s been forced to do more often of late since his stunt career hit the skids. There is a rumor about Cliff that has made the rounds in Hollywood and his work as Rick’s stunt double has come to halt. 

Now, Cliff works as Rick’s driver and Man Friday, someone who handles tasks that Rick has no time for. Being that Cliff doesn’t have much to do, and because he genuinely does like Rick, Cliff actually appears content to live on this way, running errands for his friend, driving him around and generally just hanging out at his modest trailer with his dog, drinking beer and watching Mannix. It’s not much of a life but it is Cliff’s life. 

Running parallel to the stories of Rick and Cliff is the story of Sharon Tate. History tells the tragic tale that Sharon Tate, the bright, young rising starlet, married to the hottest director on the planet, Roman Polanski, is best remembered for having been murdered. Sharon was one of the victims of The Manson Family, another thread moving through the background of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Margot Robbe plays Tate at her most breathtaking and youthful. Her beauty and effervescence underlines the tragedy of what is to come. 

The Manson Family provides one of the most unique and fascinating sequences of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a brief mini-movie within the movie. Cliff becomes enamored of a young Hollywood hippie hitchhiker named Pussycat (Margaret Qualley). After offering Pussycat a ride, Cliff finds himself at Spahn Ranch where he and Rick had filmed many episodes of Bounty Law some 8 years earlier.

Arriving at the ranch, Cliff is surprised to see the former film lot is now the home of a large group of hippies. The place is a full on commune but with a palpable sense of cultishness. Cliff was once familiar with the much older owner of Spahn Ranch, George Spahn (Bruce Dern) and is curious to find out if the old man has truly allowed this mob of young people to live on his ranch. You will need to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to see how this plays out but the tension and the tight, well held mood of this sequence is riveting. Brad Pitt’s movie star charisma carries the scene and I could not take my eyes off of him. 

The Spahn Ranch sequence is part of the remarkable second act of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which separates our three leads into their own mini-stories. For Sharon Tate, she is in downtown Hollywood and decides to go see herself on the big screen in her first major role, opposite Dean Martin in one of his Matt Helm adventures. Here Tarentino crafts a breathtaking sequence where his Sharon Tate is watching the real Sharon Tate on the big screen and it is magical. There is something so innocent and beautiful in the way Robbe’s Sharon delights in the antics and acting of the real life Sharon. 

As for DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, he’s on the set of yet another younger star’s television series. Timothy Olyphant plays James Stacy, a long time fan of Bounty Law who is excited for the chance to best Jake Cahill on his show, Lancer. Rick is anxious and struggling with deep angst about his place in Hollywood when he encounters Trudi (Julia Butters), an 8 year old who practices in Method Acting, insisting on being called by her character’s name, Marjabelle. 

Through his emotional encounter with Trudi, Rick will have a breakdown and breakthrough moment that is an absolute must see. DiCaprio is incredible in this sequence in ways that must be seen to be believed. DiCaprio has always been a terrific actor and movie star but here, in this series of scenes, we are watching some of the best work of DiCaprio’s career. DiCaprio has presented Rick as a star beset by anxiety and vainly concerned about his star status and DiCaprio makes him vulnerable and even likable in these moments even as he is also an arrogant, self-obsessed, over-privileged actor. 

I won’t talk about anything regarding the third act of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood other than to say it left me floored. It’s Tarentino in all the best ways and you need to see it for yourself. Mind you, it’s not for the squeamish, but it is incredible in the most unexpected and exciting ways. It must be experienced to be believed. The last act of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood brings the fairy tale of 60’s Hollywood to a close in remarkable fashion. 

I completely adore Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film is deeply compelling, remarkably cool and filled to the brim with those classically Tarentino moments. If you have loved Tarentino’s previous films, as I have, you are going to adore this one just as much. It’s a success of brilliant pace and unusual moments of ingenuity. The mini-story structure is perfect, each little story within the larger, overarching story works brilliantly into a whole movie that could not be more compelling or entertaining. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is one of the best movies of 2019. 

Movie Review Once

Once (2007) 

Directed by John Carney 

Written by John Carney 

Starring Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova 

Release Date May 22nd 2007 

Published May 25th, 2007 

There is a moment in the movie Once so touching and so simple it aches with true beauty. The main characters, a street musician and an immigrant girl, having bonded over his music, sit in a piano shop and he teaches her a song he is working on. She is a surprisingly good piano player who learns the song quickly and soon they are in a magical duet that lilts and twists with deep meaning. It's one of a dozen or so stunningly small moments of beauty, insight and joy in director John Carney's magnificent, Once. 

Once, from writer-director John Carney is a revelation. A musical so subtle that you may not realize it's a musical. The characters are musicians who fall in love with their very own soundtrack as the girl pushes the boy to get it together and record his music. As they move from strangers to friends to two people clearly meant for one another the soundtrack acts, not so much as a Greek chorus but as a catalyst for their feelings. His songs are heartbreaking paeans to a lost love. Her contributions are the cries of a woman confused about love, she is married and has a child with a man she isn't sure she loves anymore.

As they perform together their mutual heartache bonds them further. My description however, does not do justice to the simple, eloquent beauty of Once. The subtlety and elegance of this combination of romance and music makes the heart leap and your breath catch. The music comes from the film's star Glen Hansard, lead singer of the band The Frames, and Marketa Irglova is the girl, a fellow musician from the Czech Republic.

John Carney created Once as a romance with well known stars in the lead. It began life as a studio project and evolved from there. At one point 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy was seen as the lead with Hansard on board to write the music. When Murphy fell out, Carney pushed for and got his old friend Hansard the job as his singer, composer, and lead actor. Soon after, the two found Irglova and the film was set.

Using a DV camera Carney creates a low budget documentary feel for Once that adds to the real chemistry of the two leads. We are kept at such unique angles and distances that at once we are voyeurs on this relationship and also treated as old friends invited to hang out as they create wonderful music together. It is the astonishing simplicity of it all that makes Once so ingenious as not just a showcase for great music, but a great movie.

The best soundtrack of 2007 combines with a pair of lead actors with exquisite chemistry to make a movie of near perfection. I cannot say enough good things about Once.

Movie Review On_Line

On_Line (2002) 

Directed by Jed Weintrob 

Written by Andrew Osborne, Jed Weintrob  

Starring Josh Hamilton, Harold Perrineau, Vanessa Ferlito 

Release Date June 27th, 2002 

Published August 15th, 2002 

While I have never been one for the chat rooms or webcams, I am an online animal of a different stripe, I still feel that I can relate to the lonely, late-nite web surfers of Jed Weintrob's On_Line. Waiting for Homer Simpson to announce a new email has arrived in my box is a nightly waiting game that I devote maybe a little too much time to. My list of email friends is longer than my list of actual friends. However I have never and will never do the online dating or sex things that are the subject of most of On_Line, a witty and unique comedy.

Josh Hamilton stars as John, the proprietor of two very different websites. One is a personal webcam where he unloads his feelings at regular intervals. The other website is Intercon X, a sex site where people pay to have cybersex via webcam. John runs Intercon with his roommate Moe (Harold Perrineau), who implores his recently dumped roomie to step away from his webcam and meet people in real life.

Moe himself has no trouble meeting real live girls, rolling an assortment out of his bedroom nightly. His latest tryst might be a little more serious than usual; a coffee shop waitress named Moira (Isabel Gillies). She too has a life lived online where she spends her time visiting a website dedicated to suicide webcams. People log in to see people kill themselves or in Moira’s slightly more healthy way, try to talk others out of doing it. She has made good friends with a suicidal gay college student Ed (Eric Milligan). Ed also happens to be a frequent visitor to Intercon where he is in a torrid affair with an older man played very well by character actor John Fleck.

Moe finally does get John away from the computer for a date with Jordan (Vanessa Ferlito) who happens to run a webcam through Intercon where she has cybersex with strangers for money. She and John have an intense encounter online but in person, they have nothing in common and their date is an absolute disaster. They do have one thing in common, though they don't know it, they both obsess over the same oddball webcam chick named Angel.

The film was written and directed by a terrific up and comer Jed Weintrob. Weintrob has a superb visual eye using both the webcam aesthete and the flash cutting of a handheld digital camera between the two as characters chat via the webcams. The cuts are quick and timed to the beats of the conversations taking place. The script has a good sense of our ever-fracturing relationships with real people. As this technology evolves, it plays well into Generation X's numerous neuroses that make meeting people in person a form of torture. The technology allows people to hide behind a persona that, if punctured, can merely be deleted.

There are some troubles in the script however, such as a scene early in the film that tips the story's hand in regard to Moe and Moira’s relationship. Also, the relationship between Ed and Al unfolds in a way that some might find touching but that parents of gay teens might find disturbing.  Those problems aside, I liked On_Line a lot. The film is smart, sexy and humorous. It's very modern and well acted, especially Josh Hamilton who doesn't get enough attention. The guy consistently does good work but hardly anyone ever sees it. Director Jed Weintrob has a bright future and I can't wait to see what he does next.

Movie Review Soldier's Girl

Soldier's Girl (2003) 

Directed by Frank Pierson 

Written by Ron Nyswaner 

Starring Troy Garity, Lee Pace, Shawn Hatosy 

Release Date May 31st, 2003 

Published January 21st to coincide with Sundance Film Festival debut

"Based On A True Story" does not induce the confidence in the moviegoer that it used to. More often in modern Hollywood the "true story" is merely a skeleton from which to hang melodrama and conjecture. Some, not as many as in the past, are honest attempts to retell history and the Showtime television original picture Soldier’s Girl seems to fall into that category. It's not a perfect retelling of the tragic relationship between a closeted Army Private and a transgender club performer but it is effective in communicating some of the emotion of the tragedy.

In 1999, PFC. Barry Winchell was asleep in the hallway of his army barracks when a fellow soldier, a troubled seventeen-year-old kid on a drinking binge, took a bat and beat Winchell to death. Another soldier who spread rumors that Barry was gay put up the kid to it. Troy Garity (Barbershop) stars in the retelling of the events that lead to the death of Barry Winchell, including his doomed affair with Calpernia Addams (Lee Pace).

Calpernia used to be a young male marine before she began taking hormones to become a woman. A very attractive woman. So attractive that when she first met Barry Winchell, the young Private wasn't sure if she was really a man or a woman. They met when Barry accompanied some friends to a drag club just a few miles from their base, Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Why a group of army guys would go to a drag club is anyone's guess and the movie provides no motivations. This begins a tentative, sweet and unusual relationship, also a dangerous one as history tells us.

Garity and Pace have a terrific romantic chemistry. In a pair of difficult roles, these two very talented actors shine with two complex and fascinating performances. It's tempting to call them brave but we should be beyond the time when portraying relationships such as this is considered brave. Then again, we probably aren't that far along. The performances are magnetic despite the rather mundane surroundings. Director Frank Pierson and writer Ron Niswaner, both veterans of TV movies, can't seem to escape the melodramatic trappings of TV movie conventions. The romantic situations are rather tepid as written. Thankfully, Garity and Pace give them life.

For your information, Lee Pace is a man. The actor underwent four hours a day of makeup work to develop his breasts and feminize his facial features. It's an amazing transformation that will have men who aren't comfortable with their sexuality squirming in their seats. It's impossible to deny Pace makes a very attractive woman. The makeup artists deserve some accolades for their terrific work.

Shawn Hatosy has the film’s third lead performance as PFC Justin Fischer, the friend whose rumors lead to Barry Winchell's death. It was Fischer who gave the alcohol to seventeen year old Private Calvin Glover (Phillip Eddols). It was Fischer who gave Glover the bat that was used in the attack and Fischer who challenged Glover to take back his manhood. Fischer can't be entirely blamed for what happened, he had no idea that Glover would go through with it. Fischer essentially loaded the gun and Glover went off.

Soldier’s Girl is quite reminiscent of Boys Don't Cry, the "true story" of Brandon Teena that won an Academy Award for Hillary Swank. This film isn't nearly as accomplished, it's too wrapped in conventional TV-movie storytelling to reach the same level of compelling drama. Soldier’s Girl is however almost as heartbreaking because Garity and Pace are so good. The relationship is so well played by these two terrific actors that you can forgive the film’s repetitions, stops, starts and lack of style. The actors make you feel the weight of the tragic end of the film.

Movie Review Tears of the Sun

Tears of the Sun (2003) 

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Written by Alex Lasker, Patrick Cirillo 

Starring Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Tom Skerritt

Release Date March 7th, 2003 

Published March 6th, 2003 

In researching Tears of The Sun I came across the strange revelation that the film was initially founded as a vehicle for Bruce Willis' Die Hard series. It began its life as Die Hard 4:Tears of the Sun. You think I'm making that up, and I wish I were but no. Thankfully, someone figured there was no plausible reason for John McClain to be in Africa during a tribal civil war so the storyline was changed to have Willis play a different fictional tough guy. The film still has the action flourish of a Die Hard movie but the character’s name is different.

In Tears Of The Sun, Willis is LT Waters, a special forces leader assigned to drop into the middle of a country in the midst of a civil war to rescue a missionary and her staff. Of course if it were that simple there wouldn't be much of a movie. The missionary is Dr. Lena Hendricks (Monica Bellucci), the wife of a murdered American doctor. When Waters and his crew arrive in her camp to rescue her the doctor refuses to leave without her people, forcing Waters to accept a compromise. Anyone who can walk can come with her. The doctor’s staff of two nurses and a priest decide to stay behind and care for the remaining patients.

Despite his promise, Waters has no plans to break from his mission and when they arrive at their exit point the doctor’s patients are left behind while the doctor is forced onto a helicopter to be taken to an awaiting aircraft carrier. Intent on simply accomplishing his mission Waters’s conscience is tested when the helicopter passes back over the hospital and finds it in flames with the bodies of its remaining patients strewn over the ground. Knowing that the same fate awaits the patients he left behind, Waters turns the helicopter around, determined to help the remaining patients to the border of a friendly ally.

Director Antoine Fuqua packs the film with action flourishes and a cast of recognizable supporting players including Cole Hauser, Isaiah Washington and Tom Skerrit as Willis' commanding officer. The casting is excellent and the recognizable character actors earn our sympathy simply through familiarity. This however is Willis' show and the action star hasn't been this good since The Sixth Sense. Stoic and studied, Willis has not only the look of a tough guy marine but the fighting spirit that one would hope to find in all of our soldiers.

That's not to say Tears of The Sun doesn't have its troubles. Where the action scenes are exciting and well staged, the surrounding scenes are a little thin. When bullets aren't flying the film stalls, and when a twist is thrown in about half way through, it does little to change that. Nevertheless, with Fuqua's sure handed direction and Willis' fine performance, Tears of The Sun has just enough action to hold the audience's attention from beginning to end.