Onward (2020)

There was a time, not long ago, that we had analog clocks.  You had to look at a round surface and do math based on two pointy things to figure out what time it was.  Now, we have digital clocks.  You just read the numbers and know what time it is.  It’s much easier.  There are those among us that would prefer not to do away with the analog clocks, though.  (I believe the technical term is Luddite.  Here’s your sundial.  Now go away.)

Ian and Barley Lightfoot are elves who live in a world once ruled by magic.  Magic was difficult to use and was limited to a select few.  When easier alternatives came along, magic slowly faded away.  Candles were easier and more accessible than lighting spells, for instance.  So, why pay someone else to try something that’s less reliable?

On Ian’s 16^th birthday, he gets a gift from his deceased father.  Wilden Lightfoot left a magical staff and gem for his sons when they got old enough.  Wilden knew that he was dying, so he wrote a spell so that he might see how his sons turned out.

Barley tries to cast the spell with no luck whatsoever.  When Ian tries, the magic happens.  In all the excitement, something happens and the spell only works halfway.  The brothers get their father from the waist down.  This leads to the brothers sharing an epic adventure in the hopes of finding a replacement gem.

Some of the movie comes across as cliché.  The brothers are polar opposites, with Barley being outgoing and boisterous and Ian being more quiet and reserved.  (Barley wants to play his historically accurate RPG while Ian just wants to eat his breakfast in peace.)

Their overprotective mother has a new boyfriend that neither one really likes.  Oh, and he’s a centaur police officer named Colt Bronco.  So, yeah.  It does go for a few corny jokes.

It’s enjoyable, even if it is somewhat formulaic.  It’s the kind of thing you could watch with your family now that everyone has to quarantine themselves, except that this was just released in theaters.  (There’s talk of making movies immediately available for streaming or download, but you might have to pay a premium for it.)

Speaking of COVID-19, this is probably going to be the last movie I see in theaters for a while.  It’s not the worst title to use a sendoff, but I had a few that I was looking forward to seeing.  AMC has shut down theaters, but it looks like they’ll pause A-List for the time being.  It looks like I may be reviewing a lot of Star Trek and B movies for a while.

IMDb page

 

Coco (2017)

Life’s not easy for Miguel.  He desperately wants to play music, but happens to be born into a family that despises the profession.  It all goes back to Miguel’s great-great-grandmother, Imelda.  She was abandoned by her husband, who wanted to go out into the world and entertain people.  She turned to making shoes to raise her daughter, Coco.  It was a profession passed down through the generations, meaning that Miguel does have a career waiting for him.  It’s just not the one that he would have chosen for himself.

The Day of the Dead is coming up, meaning that his family is preparing an ofrenda with pictures of deceased relatives.  At the very top sit’s a photo of Imelda, Coco and the great-great-grandfather.  (Being that the great-great-grandfather is persona non grata, his face is missing.)  When Miguel breaks the frame, he comes to realize that the man in the photo is dressed like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz.  He’s even holding Ernesto’s iconic guitar, which Miguel plans on stealing so that he might play in a talent contest.

The catch is that Miguel becomes invisible once he has the guitar.  He is seen by the dead, who have come over from the Land of the Dead.  Miguel is escorted over to the Land of the Dead, where he meets his deceased relatives, including Imelda.  The only way he can get back is with the blessing of a family member, which they are happy to give him, provided that he never play music again.  This sets off an adventure for the 12-year-old boy, who is set on meeting Ernesto, believing him to be the only family member that would give an unconditional blessing., as the rest of his family is kept in line by Imelda.

For those familiar with Pixar movies, I don’t know that there are going to be a lot of surprises.  Ernesto is a hero to Miguel and to a lot of other people.  It soon becomes clear that Ernesto has a past that he wants to keep hidden.  (Sometimes, heroes make the best villains.)  Then, there’s Héctor.  He offers to help Miguel if Miguel can take a picture back to the Land of the Living.  Héctor has only a daughter to remember him.  In the Land of the Dead, beign forgotten leads to a second, possibly real death.  Héctor would seem to have more to offer than would meet the eye.

There’s also the time limit set by having to return by sunrise.  If Miguel can’t do this, he’s stuck in the Land of the Dead.  It’s somewhat cliché to have it run down to the buzzer, yes.  But I’m not sure it would have been as much fun if Miguel had made it back with time to spare.

You might think that death and the afterlife wouldn’t be good for children.  The dead are portrayed as dressed skeletons, with the most obvious skeletal feature usually being the skull.  There are scenes with the skeletons coming apart and reforming, so this may be a judgment call for parents of younger children.  However, I don’t think it was meant to be scary.  Most of it comes off as being silly.

I hate to say that a studio’s output is safe, but I do think audiences can expect a certain level of quality from Pixar.  The movie is rated PG, but I would imagine a lot of this deals with the depictions of the afterlife.  (The only really gruesome death is when Ernesto is killed by a falling bell.)  I would think that children and adults alike could enjoy the movie.  The story of a boy trapped by familial expectation is one everyone can understand.

IMDb page

Timestalkers (1987)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

WARNING:  I’m going to be picking apart this movie.  This includes giving away major details, including the ending.  If you’re not into that sort of stuff, you may want to watch the movie before reading the review.

I tend to remember the movies of my childhood as being better.  I seem to recall the graphics and style as being somewhat decent compared to what I’ve seen as of late.  Yes, some movies do get remastered.  Yes, we do tend to be selective about things we like.  Yes, there were a lot of crappy movies made in any era.  When I saw Timestalkers, I knew it had a certain made-for-TV feel to it.  I later found out that it was actually a made-for-TV movie.  This explains why the film quality and script weren’t particularly that good.

Don’t get me wrong.  We do have some talent here.  The movie stars William Devane as Scott McKenzie.  He’s a father that loses his wife and children early in the movie.  This leads him to stay at home mostly when he’s not at work.  This leads his friend, General Joe Brodsky, to take him to an auction of Old West items.  (The General is played by John Ratzenberger.)  The two of them bid on a single lot, each taking a chest of items.  Joe finds some spurs he like, but Scott gets an interesting photo.  In it, a man is seen with a .357 Magnum, which hadn’t been introduced when the picture was taken.  (He has the picture tested, of course, and it really is that old.)

What does Scott do?  He writes a paper that looks like it came from the 80s, all right, asking his class how such a modern gun could have wound up in a photo that old.  The class is saved by the bell, which allows Georga Crawford to introduce herself.  (Georgia Crawford is played by Lauren Hutton.)  She’s very interested in the photo.  In fact, she’s the only person, other than Scott, to have more than a passing interest in it.

The two of them manage to find the spot where the picture was taken.  (Apparently, it’s not that far from where Scott lives.)  Well, as it happens, Georgia is from the future and she has a little diamond thingy that lets her go back to about when the picture was taken.  There, she finds out that this evil-looking guy is in town and he was asking questions.  Georgia is able to find him.  He sees her and chases her back to town, where she returns to the present.  He’s able to track her and follow her back to just after when she returns.  Georgia and Scott drive off just in time to not even notice that he’s shooting a gun at her.

To make a long story short, Georgia tells Scott that she’s from the future.  The evil-looking guy is Dr. Joseph Cole.  He worked with her father to create a time-travel device.  The two get into an argument.  Georgia and Scott figure out that Cole is in the past to kill Georgia’s great-great-(x23)-great-great-grandfather means no Georgia’s father to stand in his way.

Several things bother me about the ending, and yes, I am going to give away more details about the ending.  First, why go back so far to kill someone’s ancestor?  I suppose you might say that if you can travel in time effortlessly, going back a few generations is as easy as going back a few centuries, but it does present a few problems.  First, how do you know that this really is the right great-great-(x23)-great-great-grandfather?  For all you know, someone was adopted along the way.  Heck.  Several people could have been adopted along the way.

Also, how do you know that the ancestor in question isn’t also the ancestor or someone else?  You could share a common distant great-great-grandparent somewhere.  For all you know, you’d also be eliminating yourself.  Going that far back would probably influence a good deal of the population.  I’ve noticed that a lot of movies, non-sci-fi included, tend to have lineages that don’t branch.  Someone has one child, who goes on to have one child, who goes on to have one child and so on down the generations.  The truth is that someone along the line is bound to have several children and not necessarily boys.  Someone that far back in Georgia’s family tree is actually much more likely to have a different last name, which brings me back to my original point:  Going that far back in her family tree makes it harder to trace with any degree of certainty.

Another thing I noticed was that at the end, one of the time-travel diamonds was thrown to the ground.  Several horses walked over it until it was buried, which gave me the impression that it was supposed to be lost to the ages.  You’d think that Georgia would be certain to pick it up so as not to risk someone from the past altering history.  Scott seemed somewhat motivated to go to the future with her, so she knows that at least one person would want it and know where to look for it.  (It was never stated one way or the other, so it’s entirely possible that she did pick it up.)

This is what I had to put up with as a child.  Granted, it is on the low-budget end, but I do remember seeing things like this. I could see liking this when it first came out, but wondering why as I got older.  The graphics aren’t particularly good, which you might expect from a made-for-TV movie.  When someone is holding the diamond, you can tell that a static image was laid over the footage,  (There are one or two scenes where it’s obvious.  Also notice that you never see a close-up of someone operating the device.)

This is one of those movies that I’m glad I didn’t buy.  I was able to get it streaming on Netflix.  If you can get it streaming, I’d say give it a shot.  It’s only 100 minutes.  If you see it in the remainder bin at a Wal-Mart, you might want to think twice about buying it unless it’s part of some 50-movie set or something.  At the end of the movie, I was left wondering. Was it all a dream?  Will Scott ever see Georgia again?  Why did I sit through the entire thing, anyway? 

IMDb page

A Bug's Life (1998)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

When A Bug’s Life was first released, I wanted to see it, but simply never got around to it.  When I received it from NetFlix, I had all but forgotten about it.  I was debating sending it back, but decided to watch it since I already had it in the house.

The movie is about an ant colony.  They’re collecting food as protection money against a group of grasshoppers led by Hopper.  Flik is one of the ants helping to collect food using one of his new inventions.  He’s not particularly well liked among his fellow ants, mostly because he’s a bit clumsy.  In his clumsiness, he knocks over the offering causing all of the collected food to be lost.

When the grasshoppers arrive, they notice the conspicuous absence of food and demand that the ants work overtime to gather twice the normal offering.  Flik comes up with the idea of fighting back instead and offers to go out in search of some bigger, badder bugs to fight off the grasshoppers. When he presents his idea to the colony’s princess, she realizes that this is the perfect opportunity to not have him around while they collect more food.

Flik finds an odd assortment of bugs that have recently been fired from a circus.  Flik invites them back and the group is eager to follow.  What results is mostly a comedy of misunderstandings.  Everyone involved figures stuff out with varying speed.  (The performers are the first to realize that they’re not there for a performance.)  They do come up with a plan to chase off the grasshoppers, but there are a few setbacks.  It’s up to Flik and the performers to save the day.

Yes, the movie is computer-generated animation.  Yes, the movie is rated G.  Some would think that the movie is meant for children.  Yes, it’s safe for children, but not at the exclusion of adults.  This was Pixar’s second feature film, so it wasn’t as complex as some of their other movies.  I don’t think that there’s too much that would go over the heads of children.  It’s not childish, though.

I was able to watch it and not feel like my intelligence was being insulted.  There’s a ladybug that’s actually male and has issues with this at first.  There’s a stick-bug that often gets typecast with anything that requires a straight-line object like a stick.  Yes, some of it is predictable and a little cliché, but it is fun to watch.  You have a main character that you can identify with and root for.  Not many of the other characters get much development, but all play their parts well.

The movie was released in 1998.  CGI has come a long way since there.  (Compare A Bug’s Life to the more-recently released WALL-E.)  It does seem a little dated.  All of the ants are bluish.  There are also some issues with the number of arms/legs that the other insects have.  Basically, there was never a point where I forgot that it’s CGI.

I’d recommend renting it if you’re looking for something a little different.  I’ve been watching a lot of horror and science-fiction movies, so I needed something a little lighter and this definitely fit the bill. 

Disney Page

IMDb page