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He’s back. And you either find him groovy, or you don’t. If you don’t, there’s not much point in checking out *Austin Powers in Goldmember,* because it’s all the same old stuff. But you dig his schtick, then yeah, baby!
The second outing with E.B. White’s beloved mouse pulls off the rare feat of surpassing its excellent predecessor in all aspects, though once again the story is simple enough for small children to grasp yet so delightful that adults can’t help but cheer, too. This time out, the CGI-animated Stuart (the voice of Michael J. … more…
The dusty Western town. The mysterious deaths. The creepy caves filled with unbreatheable air. The horny teenagers. The know-it-all science geek. The goofball sheriff’s deputy. The phone lines that go down. And the giant spider responsible for it all. Well, except for the teenagers, who are horny on their own. Oh, and, um, the geek and the goofball. They’ve got no one to blame, either.
There’s not a thing that isn’t hauntingly, quietly electrifying about this, the first truly grown-up comic book movie. Fans of the medium have known for years that the form had no trouble being Important, but the film industry (though perhaps not all filmmakers themselves) has stubbornly insisted on treating comic adaptations as juvenile.
What ‘Reign of Fire’ is, it turns out, is what happens when you throw Hollywood money at a 1950s English-style end-of-the-world science-fiction movie.
This is a movie conceived in a delirum by a madman. Probably by a madman who had never seen an actual movie, and yet still, upon receiving an explanation of the concept, thought he might have a go at it. And this is the real kicker: This madman succeeded, if only on his own lithium-addled terms. This isn’t a good movie; this isn’t a bad movie. This is a movie that dispenses with the whole good/bad paradigm and exists on its own plane of reality.
If there’s anything special about The Powerpuff Girls, those pint-sized superheroes in dresses, it’s that there’s nothing all that exaggerated about them. Sure, they fly and have superstrength, but the little-girl rage they tap into is real, even though most adults wouldn’t like to admit it. I’m not talking about the “mean girls” being denigrated by authors looking for hooks to sell their books — I’m talking about acknowledging girls as human, with the same range of emotions little boys are allowed.
Sequels are hard. Science fiction sequels are a bitch. Every once in a rare while, we get an ‘Empire Strikes Back’ or an ‘Aliens,’ a sequel that expands and deepens the original, a sequel better than the original. Usually, alas, we get ‘Highlander II.’ ‘Men in Black II’ is, thankfully, no ‘Highlander II.’ But it ain’t no ‘Aliens,’ neither.
Oh yeah, it’s that good, in that shivery, transporting way that makes you wonder how flickering images viewed in the dark can be so damn powerful. In that way that, when it’s over, you’re dying to rehash every moment with your movie buddies, only you’re all too stunned to do anything but drop your jaws in amazement.
Just when I thought that Disney had passed the torch of traditional animation over to DreamWorks, along comes ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ in which they grab it back with a vengeance. This is an astonishingly lovely, tremendously moving, outrageously funny film, with a beauty that arises from a meeting of the past and the future, combining diverse elements in a way that should feel cheap and gimmicky but doesn’t. It’s just about glorious, actually, in its wonderful originality, widely emotionally engulfing like no Disney film has been since ‘The Lion King.’
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