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  • Tilting at windmills – ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’
    Tilting at windmills – ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’

    Making a movie – any movie – is a monumental task to undertake. No matter whether you’re talking about an indie feature or a summer blockbuster, there are plenty of obstacles to overcome. But sometimes a particular film, for whatever reason, is just that much harder to make than most.

    Terry Gilliam’s passion project “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” is one such film, a mishap-riddled odyssey 25 years in the making. Directed by Gilliam from a script he co-wrote with Tony Grisoni, it’s the end result of a quarter-century of false starts and natural disasters, of casting and recasting and shooting and reshooting. The production dealt with so many issues of varying types that one would be forgiven for believing the entire project to be somehow cursed.

    After many years, the film was finally completed in 2018. And yet, the difficulties weren’t done even then; some messy legal issues between Gilliam and a former producer on the film resulted in a wonky, uneven release schedule; the movie didn’t reach American screens (non-festival edition) until now, with a limited theatrical run quickly followed by a VOD drop.

    One would expect a film that had been through so many iterations to be haphazard and scattered, jagged and rough-edged. And frankly, those terms describe “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” in a lot of ways. But those viewers who are able to look beyond the surface jankiness will see Gilliam’s unique vision at work; there’s enough here – particularly for Gilliam’s fans (among whom I include myself) – to illustrate the clear, fierce passion that the director has for this story.

    It’s an uneven and unflinchingly weird movie, which surprises no one; it bears the marks of both his love and his desperation and wears them proudly – and really, how else could it have gone?

  • Chill out with ‘Disneynature: Penguins’
    Chill out with ‘Disneynature: Penguins’

    There are a lot of different ways that movies can captivate us.

    This is an important notion to keep in mind as the shadow of Summer Blockbuster Season begins to loom over 2019. For the next few months, bigger might not be better, but it will definitely be ubiquitous.

    It’s also a reason to pay attention to a movie like “Disneynature: Penguins.” We’re about to be overwhelmed by a sea of cartoons and CGI explosions for weeks on end – why not sit down and enjoy a quiet, well-made nature film that just happens to be stunningly beautiful and surprisingly funny.

    Producer-director Alistair Fothergill has played a huge part in the Disneynature process, having served in one or both of those roles for something like half of the 13 films Disney’s indie nature doc arm has produced over the past decade or so. He’s as visually gifted as any nature documentarian out there, with a willingness to invest the time and effort necessary to create films that tell compelling stories; “Penguins” is another feather in his cap.

  • ‘Hellboy’ is a hell of a mess
    ‘Hellboy’ is a hell of a mess

    One of the things that people sometimes forget about comic books is that they can (and do) get a lot weirder than your standard superhero business – and that that can be a good thing.

    Take Mike Mignola’s Dark Horse Comics creation Hellboy. That’s some weird, over-the-top supernatural stuff – eldritch strangeness that is barely adjacent to the usual superhero fare. And yet, that character preceded the MCU to the silver screen, with movies in 2004 and 2008. And thanks largely to director Guillermo del Toro and star Rob Perlman, they worked.

    Unfortunately, with the new “Hellboy,” neither of those gentlemen are involved. Instead, we get Neil Marshall and David Harbour, respectively – talented folks, yes, but for whatever reason, they fail to dig into the character in the same narratively engaging manner. Instead, we get a big, loud, gory mess, a jumbled-up and chaotic slog of a movie that can’t be salvaged despite the game effort put forth by Harbour, whose delightfully slovenly dad-charisma is undermined by prosthetics and CGI.

  • Too ‘Little,’ too late
    Too ‘Little,’ too late

    It’s always fun when a filmmaker gives you a different take on a standard cinematic trope. There’s a reason that certain types of stories continually pop up on the big screen – they work.

    That being said, I wasn’t necessarily expecting two different riffs on the classic Tom Hanks vehicle “Big” to come into wide release in back-to-back weeks, but here we are. We got the “‘Big’ but with superheroes” take with “Shazam!” last week, and this week, we get the “‘Big’ but in reverse” take with “Little.”

    Yeah – “Little” takes a grown person and turns her into a 13-year-old again. That’s pretty much it. And it ALMOST lands. There are stretches where the film really cooks, but there are others where things don’t click the way they need to. It has some funny moments, but it gets bogged down by the multiple messages it seems to want to convey. It’s a pleasant enough time at the movies, but it just misses being something much better.

  • Grave consequences – ‘Pet Sematary’
    Grave consequences – ‘Pet Sematary’

    Considering Hollywood’s concurrent current trends toward embracing reboots and Stephen King properties, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that a number of the Master of Horror’s past filmic adaptations are ripe for revisitation. Particularly when you take into account the runaway critical and commercial success of 2017’s remake of “It” and the notorious unevenness of previous screen adaptations.

    This brings us to the latest King remake “Pet Sematary.” This new film – based on King’s 1983 novel of the same name – follows the 1989 version helmed by Mary Lambert. It tells the story of the Creed family and their move to rural Maine, where in the woods behind their new home, they stumble upon a dark place – a place where death is no longer an end, but rather the beginning of a much more horrifying tale.

    However, while the assembled cast is stellar and co-directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer are not without skill, the end result doesn’t quite clear the bar set by either the novel or the original film. That isn’t to say that this version is without merit, but those with a deep-seated affection for those previous works will likely find themselves a little disappointed.

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