Dragonslayer
Here’s a movie with the texture of the old fables. It finds the adventure in a stricken world. A true delight.
Adventure
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
If Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a tour of fantasy-land (who else thought their feelings seemed stuffed with baubles like gift-bags from a theme park?), The Chamber of Secrets is like accidentally wandering into the maintenance closet. Something is disenchanted by it, and I can think of no harsher criticism, to call something squinty that once was wide-eyed.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
If Raiders was a backyard adventure where we put on our explorer’s hat and went bucket-and-shoveling out into the woods for buried treasure, The Last Crusade is like watching a home movie of it. It’s still got the same gee-whizz endearment but in a “boy, don’t we look silly” kind of way.
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo has a brilliant way of keeping this theme in the shallows of its action, always present but rarely addressed directly in the ecosystem of all its wonderful ocean stuff.
Paddington 2
A totally sparkling view of living with manners and believing in beauty. Everyone was opening the doors for each other on the way out of the theater.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
No one said Pirates movies were cinematically healthy, but up till now there have been defenders of each film at least regarding tastiness. Dead Men Tell No Tales is like Davy Jones in previous films: chained to the job he was hired to do despite having no heart.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Here’s a tribute to the old “road to …” pictures. It might be the best of them, and no better than them.
The African Queen
Movies of this kind had a habit of staging an adventure but keeping emotions safe and detached, with characters that went through the bother of dressing in jungle wear but without the bother of acting beyond their British parlors. But here Huston aims at unprecedented realism in confecting a gritty jungle for his two stars to get entangled in, particularly in the unsightly pairing of the two leads themselves, who at first seem no more compatible than they really would be.
The Incredibles
The film blasts an affectionate symphony of action spy movie set pieces, which Bird composes with such a self-believing style that he reminds me less of a director than of a virtuoso performer. And even they become a back-drop to what is essentially a mid-life crisis film, about a man who misses himself so much that he doesn’t even notice he has a family. Bird offers a genre fattened on mythic pretension a trimming alternative of joyous energy and dazzling characters.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
A nauseating movie. I’d say it was hedonistic but that requires it to be pleasurable at some point.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The title card of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, blazoned in its pulpy font across the opening dance act of shimmering waists at club Obi Wan, was the moment a great movie became a brand. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, Indy’s adventures were born as serials, each entry a new exotic locale, another damsel, another sidekick, a new hellish fortress to conquer with a whip-cracking grin.
Ghostbusters (2016): The Problem with Fake Feminism
Merely a below-average comedy that becomes a slog by whoring out its cast for an ill-conceived marketing angle.
Godzilla (2014): Methodical Monsters
Edwards treats Godzilla like he’s looking at a cultural monolith. If it’s not worthy of your enjoyment, at least give it your respect.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Unearthing Childhood
Spielberg sends us back to our childhood and hopes we still find it romantic. We do.
Suicide Squad
Suicide Squad is a petty crime. It is a work of stupid badness, clumsy as a graffiti scrawl, and less motivated on a world stage where it hopes to earn $800 million than actual scrawls I’ve seen, on the bottoms of bridges where they expect to earn nothing but contempt.
Kubo and the Two Strings
By remaining outside after dark, Kubo invokes the inevitable quest for three sacred pieces of armor so that he may defeat the Moon King. Kubo weaves its story with the mythologist Joseph Campbell’s pattern, which he called the “monomyth,” by telling a story about a boy and his Mother as though it represented all boys and all Mothers.