Tag Archives: Avatar

December’s Failures

Posted on by
2

Welcome to my monthly “Failures” column, where I look back at some of the films I could, would, maybe even should have watched last month… but failed to.

I guess the big theatrical release of the month was the third entry in James Cameron’s sci-fi opus, Avatar: Fire and Ash, though I don’t feel like I heard much hype for it. That said, I’m kinda out of the loop on that nowadays, so who knows? The second one was unexpectedly huge at the box office, so I wouldn’t bet against this one doing big numbers also. I’ve still not seen the second one, Avatar: The Way of Water, which I think also counts as a December failure because the release of a followup should have been the perfect motivation to finally bung the disc in (yes, I own it. Of course I do).

The film that almost actually tempted me out of the house and into the multiplex this month was the long (long) awaited release of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. It’s only taken us 22 years to get here! My local only had one screening and the time didn’t work for me, so that ended up being a no-go. Really hoping it gets a disc release. I also would have liked to have seen the BFI’s release of Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases, a bundle of examples from their project to restore the Stoll Picture / Eille Norwood series of silent-era Sherlock Holmes films. I couldn’t find a screening reasonably near me though. Another one I’ve hoped would come to disc for a long time (since before they announced the restoration project, but with renewed hope since they did).

Most blockbusters run in fear of a new Avatar, but the remake (or whatever — I saw Jack Black promoting it somewhere and it sounded more ‘meta’ than that) of Anaconda was the first to brave following in its wake, and I guess it was some kind of counter-programming to release a ping pong biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme. Also out was youth-aimed video game horror sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2; James L. Brooks’s first directorial effort for a decade-and-a-half, Ella McCay; Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Eleanor the Great; and a bunch of other stuff even less worthy of a mention (or I’ve forgotten why it’s on my short list and probably should have Googled it, you choose). Oh, and a pre-Netflix theatrical debut for Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June, which also then came to Netflix within the month.

Speaking of Netflix (yeah, I did a link), the biggest streaming debut of the month was undoubtedly the new Knives Out Benoit Blanc mystery, Wake Up Dead Man, but I actually saw that, so, um, moving on… Honestly, though, there’s not much else worth mentioning. I mean, Prime Video’s dog-based romcom Merv goes on my watchlist because I like dogs, Charlie Cox, and Zooey Deschanel, but it’s hardly a high-profile must-see, right? Though I feel like it’s a better bet than the film they did push, Michelle Pfeiffer-starring Christmas comedy Oh. What. Fun. I’m certainly not going to catch up with that in January.

There was more noteworthy stuff making its post-theatrical streaming debut, as a few big(ish) guns were wheeled out for the holiday season. I suppose chief among them was A Minecraft Movie on Sky Cinema / NOW, what with it being one of the biggest hits of the year. Joining it there was franchise-amalgamating legacy sequel Karate Kid: Legends (I feel like I need to finish Cobra Kai before that, even though I don’t think it directly follows on), Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme (I’m three or four behind on new Anderson films now), Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (which I already own on disc), and, um, Tinsel Town, a probably-should-be-a-TV-special festive romp with Kiefer Sutherland slumming it (although, where’s his career at these days, so maybe not) alongside Danny Dyer, Rebel Wilson, Jason Manford, and Derek Jacobi. Feels kinda random, but there you go.

Elsewhere, Apple TV+ dropped F1: The Movie, the nearest I’ve come to watching a movie on my phone (the trailer with haptic feedback was cool. Don’t know if they’ve done a version of the whole movie with that… and even if they did, I wouldn’t actually watch a movie on my phone); and Disney+ made a bid for middle-brow British audiences with Olivia Colman- and Benedict Cumberbatch-starring remake The Roses. Looping back round to Amazon, we also find David Mackenzie’s thriller Relay and a couple of those “it’s now in the public domain so we can make it into a horror movie” films, Bambi: The Reckoning and Popeye the Slayer Man. I guess we’re going to be seeing those pop up for years to come. Their existence amuses me, but I have no desire to watch any of them. Talking of rubbish, they also offered the new Red Sonja, which I rented for actual money (albeit discounted) and watched just last month. If I’d known it was coming as part of my Prime subscription, I wouldn’t have bothered… which I guess is why they don’t warn you.

Things that caught my attention among the back catalogue shifts included Netflix simultaneously adding both 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and 2018’s The Grinch, which stood out because I’ve never read or seen any version of that story, which caused me to get a question wrong in a work Christmas quiz (his dog is called Max, FYI). More significantly, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is now on iPlayer (I wonder if they considered holding off on it ’til Wimbledon season), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is now on Prime — not truly a ‘significant’ film, but I did enjoy the first one. There are just so many superhero movies around nowadays, I never really know where to start with catching up… or, more accurately, don’t feel enough desire to dive into them. Maybe I should just give in and watch the key ones? But I digress.

As for my usual roundup of “stuff I own on disc but haven’t watched that is now also on streaming to remind me of my self-control problems”… well, the king of this category is Prime Video, and there I spy David Cronenberg’s The Brood, the 2021 Candyman, poliziotteschi Rulers of the City, and Voodoo Macbeth, plus a tonne of stuff I’ve meant to rewatch, a sampling of which includes Annihilation, Black Hawk Down, Collateral, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, The Limey, Man on Fire, The Prestige, Saving Private Ryan, David Cronenberg’s Scanners… and that’s not even all of them. iPlayer gave them a run for their money this month, though, with Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Get Carter (the original, obv), How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (they always show those at Christmas, for some reason), Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and both Puss in Boots and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. But they also dove into the rewatch category, with the likes of Double Indemnity, The Godfather trilogy (including the Coda version of Part III, which I’ve never seen), Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (which I feel like pops on one service or another every month), The Third Man, and Unforgiven. It’s not news but, yeah, I should buy less stuff.

And I… am still buying stuff, of course, but I feel like this list isn’t as long as it used to be. Nearly everything is in 4K this month too, which is nice. The only exceptions are Masters of Cinema’s box set of 1960s Fantômas films, Fantomas Returns!, and the BFI’s recent release Battleship Potemkin with a score by the Pet Shop Boys. Elsewise, there’s a surprising amount of horror: giallo The House with Laughing Windows (an import of Arrow’s US release rather than settling for the UK equivalent); H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Re-Animator; Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil (which is also bundled with another Lovecraft adaptation, Color Out of Space); and a pair of Hammer horrors released by StudioCanal, The Horror of Frankenstein and Scars of Dracula; plus a non-horror title from Hammer themselves, crime drama Whispering Smith Hits London. Further on the non-horror front, Dust Devil was an import from Umbrella in Australia, which I accompanied with their releases of Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg and the second film from Cube director Vincenzo Natali, Cypher.

We finish the month with a third David Cronenberg: Criterion’s release of A History of Violence, which I don’t think I’ve watched since I saw it at the cinema back in 2005, despite owning it on DVD for most of that time. Well, a 4K release is the perfect excuse for a rewatch, isn’t it? Right after I get to the hundreds of other things I’ve said that about…

December’s Failures

Posted on by
1

13 years ago, I went to see Avatar on opening day, because it was the only chance I’d get over the Christmas period. This year, with long-delayed sequel Avatar: The Way of Water releasing at the same time, I… didn’t do the same thing. But it’s been a massive hit (even without my one ticket purchase? Shocking!), which means it’s still regularly playing, so I might catch it this week.

It’s fair to say there’s been nothing else quite so notable on the theatrical release slate, partly because everything cleared out of Avatar‘s way. The parting shot from the rest of cinema at the start of the month was Santa-based actioner Violent Night, which sounds fun in concept but I heard was disappointing in execution. I guess I’ll try to remember to catch it on streaming next December. Otherwise, it was mostly small independent-type titles or limited-release Netflix flicks. Either way, not much of that plays around me (as ever, by “around me” I mean “not at the cinema that’s a five-minutes drive away”. If I were prepared to travel 30–60 minutes (not that far, in the grand scheme of things), I could choose to see more of this stuff. But as getting off my arse to go to that five-minutes-away cinema is hard enough, I’m hardly likely to trek further afield.

Of course, nowadays there’s less need to, with stuff making it to streaming quicker than ever. Or even to TV, with latest Bond flick No Time to Die receiving its UK TV premiere yesterday, just 15 months after its theatrical release. Remember when we had to wait three to five years for that kind of thing? And it’s not just shorter windows, what with streamers producing their own high-profile content. There were more big titles premiering on Netflix this month than at cinemas. Chief among them, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (to give it its full, unwieldy, unnecessary title). I’m very much looking forward to it — so much so that I didn’t watch it, because I had a rotten cold over Christmas and knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it properly. Another one to slot in this week, then.

While that ended up dominating the conversation (and Netflix’s viewing chart), in December they also brought us Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, a racy (read: sex-filled) new adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Scandi monster movie Troll, computer-animated festive musical Scrooge: A Christmas Carol with a starry British voice cast (Luke Evans, Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Jonathan Pryce), and The Big 4, a new one from the director of Headshot and The Night Comes for Us, Timo Tjahjanto, which I hear has suitably extravagant action scenes. As if that wasn’t enough, I also spotted 7 Women and a Murder, an Italian comedy mystery about seven women trapped in a mansion solving a murder, making its international debut as a “Netflix Original” a year after being released in its native Italy. I guess they bought it in as something to offer people who’d just watched Glass Onion. Also of note, apparently, was Medieval — I’ve not heard anyone mention it, so I’ve no idea quite how this happened, but it was Netflix’s 3rd most-watched movie at one point over Christmas. Apparently it’s the story of a Czech commander who never lost a battle, and it stars Ben Foster, Michael Caine, Til Schweiger, and Matthew Goode. I guess “historical war movie with a few recognisable faces” appealed to people browsing Netflix for something new to bung on.

Other streamers focused on the Christmas period for their original titles, ticking the usual rom-com boxes, with the likes of Your Christmas or Mine? on Amazon Prime and Sky Cinema offering perhaps the most generically-titled movie ever, This is Christmas. Apparently it’s actually rather good (according to the one review I happened to read). Sky also premiered animated Terry Pratchett adaptation The Amazing Maurice, along with streaming debuts for the likes of Dreamworks animation The Bad Guys, “grey pound” target The Duke, Stephen King remake Firestarter, plus blockbusters (that I own on disc and really should’ve watched by now) The Batman and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Also The Nan Movie, but the less said about that the better. Amazon, meanwhile, had the streaming debut of Alex Garland’s Men, and gave a big push to Wonder Woman 1984 — bit odd, considering how long it’s been around. That said, I’ve still not seen it, so…

Over on Disney+, it was the usual deal of stuff rushed fresh from cinemas: their latest canon animation, Strange World, a riff on pulp sci-fi-/fantasy adventure flicks that I guess should be up my street, but doesn’t scream “Disney”; plus adult-focused fare, both acclaimed (Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin) and, um, less so (David O. Russell’s Amsterdam). Debuts elsewhere included Park Chan-wook’s latest, Decision to Leave, on MUBI, and Will Smith slavery action flick / wannabe-awards-contender Emancipation on Apple TV+.

As for the free TV-tied streamers, I’m sure they offered replays of their Christmas-schedule premieres, but I’d seen most of those already (except for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, which I actually own on 3D Blu-ray. I presume I heard the 3D was good or something, because the fact I still haven’t watched it indicates my broad level of interest). Anyway, catching my attention on iPlayer were the likes of A Bunch of Amateurs (about the amateur filmmakers of the long-running Bradford Film Club) and older flicks I really should’ve seen by now, like The Others and Out of Sight; plus obscure spy thriller When Eight Bells Toll, which I missed earlier in the year so appreciate getting another go at. As for All 4, they cycled in a bunch of stuff they’ve shown before and I’ve not got round to but, hey, you never know, maybe this time. We’re talking Black Rain, Monos, Wild Rose, Saint Maud, Rosemary’s Baby, The Red Turtle, several others… Someday.

Finally, as always, stuff I forked out for (or, as it’s Christmas, was given) on good ol’ shiny disc. This was set to be a pretty huge list (when isn’t it?), but the UK’s postal issues have delayed a couple of large overseas packages. I just hope they’re not lost… Anyway, there were plentiful additions to my 4K Ultra HD collection last month. Films I’d never seen included Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and David Lynch’s Lost Highway (I imported Criterion’s release from the US via Amazon, and it took three goes to actually deliver me a copy that wasn’t damaged). On the rewatch pile, there were lavish editions of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (the PQ doesn’t seem that much better than the old Blu-ray, to be frank, but there was more in the box, and I wanted to support Masters of Cinema going 4K) and Casablanca (although I also decided to keep my equally-lavish old Blu-ray edition, so I probably should’ve just bought the cheaper regular 4K release. Oh well). In more standard packaging, but welcome nonetheless, were Mike Hodges’ Croupier, Walter Hill’s The Driver, and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. I’ve owned the latter so many times, I was loathe to buy it again; but then I saw the picture comparisons…

On regular ol’ Blu-ray, Sight & Sound’s new list inspired some prep for next year’s Blindspot (ooh, preview!) by picking up Criterion’s editions of Beau Travail and Close-Up (another import that Evri tried to destroy: a neighbour found my parcel halfway down the road in a hedge, soaked through from the stormy weather. I shit you not. Luckily, although the package was a mess, the contents were fine). Brand-new releases were limited to Phil Tippett’s stop-motion nightmare Mad God, but catalogue titles making their UK disc debut included a couple from Eureka — “girls with guns” classic Yes, Madam! and Bob Hope-starring comedy/horror double-bill The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers — plus a Kickstarter edition of 1926 horror The Magician.

Finally-finally, I actually bought a DVD — wonders will never cease (although it’s one of a couple I’ve picked up this year, so maybe not that exceptional). Spied in Network’s pre-Christmas sale, it’s The Edgar Wallace Anthology, a collection of noir-esque British B-movies from the 1960s. The set contains just a couple of films to get through — 54, to be exact. That should keep me busy for a while…

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)

Posted on by
2
2018 #99
Bill Kroyer | 73 mins | streaming (HD) | 1.85:1 | USA & Australia / English | U / G

FernGully: The Last Rainforest

I remember ignoring FernGully when it came out (probably when it hit rental video rather than at the cinema) because it looked a bit rubbish. I mean, it was an animated movie but it wasn’t made by Disney — “could such things even exist?”, wondered little me (probably). As the years went by, I kinda assumed everyone else had ignored or forgotten it, leaving it as some curio I vaguely remembered from video shop walls. But fastforward to 2009 and suddenly everyone was talking about it, because it had been remade as a big-budget 3D sci-fi epic by James Cameron. Okay, Avatar wasn’t actually a FernGully remake, but the disparaging comparison came up a lot. Fastforward another decade to now (a time when Cameron’s four–film remake of FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue (yes FernGully got a sequel) is still over two years away (provided they don’t push it back again)), and on a whim I finally watched FernGully to see this supposed likeness for myself.

So, what’s FernGully actually about? Well, not blue creatures on an alien moon, although it’s equally as fantastical. It’s set in the Australian rainforest, where fairies live in isolation, believing humans to have gone extinct… that is until loggers turn up to destroy their home. Fairy Crysta (Samantha Mathis) shrinks human Zak (Jonathan Ward) down to her size to save him from a falling tree, at which point he learns about their way of life — oh, right, Avatar here we are. Anyway, many years ago an evil entity called Hexxus (Tim Curry) was trapped inside a tree, which the loggers cut down, and suddenly everyone’s at threat.

If it’s not obvious already, FernGully is pretty heavy on the environmental messaging (it’s even dedicated to “our children and our children’s children”, and there’s a note at the end of the credits about donating proceeds to the Smithsonian for environmental work). I seem to remember this was all viewed as being kinda-loony eco stuff back when the film came out. Now, of course, acceptance of those views is much wider, and what the film has to say seems a little obvious. Though we’re still destroying the planet, so I guess we’ve not learned that much in the three decades since.

Batty, indeed

Even more of-its-time are the musical numbers. They’re very 1992, and not in a good way. That said, although it’s a terrible song, If I’m Gonna Eat Somebody (It Might As Well Be You) is one of the best titles ever.

One of the people lumbered with an awful tune is Robin Williams, playing a mentally-deranged rapping bat. Nonetheless, he’s definitely one of the best things in the film — not as much as his Genie was in Aladdin, but he does occasionally bring a similar irreverence. It’s needed when the rest of the film is being a bit po-faced about the magic of nature. The other vocal standout is Tim Curry, who always gives good villain. He’s supported by nice design and animation, with Hexxus visualised as a dripping oil-creature, plus a couple of other forms as the film goes on, all of which look pretty effective. Like the rest of the movie, his characterisation and motivation are very underdeveloped, and Curry’s given little to do after his initial birth/song sequence, but the character looks good.

All in, FernGully is a decent little animated adventure — a tad earnest perhaps, but not too bad — but it’s held back by weak music and a thin plot.

3 out of 5

Do You Wanna Date James Cameron’s Avatar?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s always fun to mush news stories together for potentially comedic effect.*

So when I heard, on the same day, of the expected success of the trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar (or, as I’ve taken to calling it, Phantom Menace 2: This Time Everyone’s Jar Jar) and the surprising success of The Guild’s music video for (Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar… well, I couldn’t help seeing what would happen were the two to collide…


* I’ll leave it to you to decide if this example is successful.