![]() Guillermo del Toro is currently on the Oscar circuit in support of his beautiful stop-motion animation wonder “Pinocchio.” But let’s flash back to the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony, where del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” won four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. This is a hidden gem, ready for rediscovery – Drew Taylor “The Brothers Bloom” (It made $93 million on a budget of more than $120 million.) But the resulting film is a stunning pop art vision, genuinely unlike anything you’ve ever seen with bright colors, inventive visual effects (that border on the impressionistic), all wrapped up in a surprising earnestness that never feels cloying or forced. And the filmmakers’ approach to the material, by making it a live-action anime (each element of the film was shot separately in focus and then composited together to make a “flat” image resembling a cartoon) full of rococo visual flourishes and a typically insane plot involving evil corporate entities and racing as the ultimate form of self-expression, didn’t do much to endear it to audiences. Go, Speed Racer, go! The Wachowskis followed up their lucrative (if somewhat divisive) “Matrix” trilogy with a project that had been in development limbo for over a decade – a live-action version of popular Japanese animated series “Speed Racer.” It was a big gamble. It might not totally add up, but it’s also a nice reminder that these types of movies (contained, claustrophobic thrillers) used to be full of movie stars and were shown in theaters, instead of being dumped on some streaming service in the dead of night. Taking place mostly over one night in the middle of a hurricane, it’s got great energy, a terrific supporting cast (that also includes Tim Daly, Connie Nielsen, Giovanni Rabisi and Taye Diggs) and the kind of visual pyrotechnics that made McTiernan one of the most important action filmmakers in the history of cinema. Jackson) during a training exercise, with the story unfolding in the style of a twisty, “Rashomon”-like whodunnit. And that movie was “Basic.” And you know what? “Basic” is pretty good! A mid-budget thriller, based on one of the hottest spec scripts in Hollywood, “Basic” stars John Travolta as a DEA Agent who is pulled into a murder mystery involving the death of a Master Sergeant (Samuel L. ![]() It’s been 20 years (!) since John McTiernan, the filmmaking behind such immortal classics as “Die Hard,” “Predator” and “The Hunt for Red October,” last made a movie. ![]() Now someone please bankroll his space cats movie. ![]() There’s a chase sequence involving characters riding bats, runaway buggies and dynamite, all set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” that will make your eyes pop out of your head. And the kinetic, complicated action set pieces that Verbinski conjures so beautifully in live-action (we’re looking at you, train-chase-in-“The Lone Ranger”) are even more intricate and ornate in animation. You’ve really never seen anything like “Rango.” The animation was handled by Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects arm of Lucasfilm (now owned by Disney), and the characters have a gritty idiosyncratic style thanks to an art department led by the great illustrator Mark “Crash” McCreery. Johnny Depp stars as Rango, a chameleon who wants to be an actor, who winds up in a dusty western town called Dirt and uncovers a “Chinatown”-style conspiracy and must face off against assorted dastardly villains. You know, that old chestnut.) The news of a canceled Verbinski animated feature is only amplified if you revisit “Rango,” his Oscar-winning film from 2011. One of the great tragedies of last year was that Netflix pulled the plug on a new animated feature from Gore Verbinski, the filmmaker behind the first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and offbeat cultish fare like “The Weather Man” and “A Cure for Wellness.” (It was supposedly about singing cats in outer space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |