My Week In Movies - I Like Horse Movies More Than Actual Horses

Secretariat (2010) Let's face it - there are only so many stories you can tell involving a horse and if the horse doesn't talk that just cuts your storytelling possibilities in half. There's just about nothing new on display here in this Disney biopic about the Triple Crown winning horse and his owner. Every scene and plot device has been seen before in one horsey movie or another. It's a well made film and it gets by on it's charm, thanks mostly to John Malkovich as an eccentric horse trainer, but in the end it offers nothing new. They could have tightened the film up a bit by chopping off 20 - 30 minutes too. As Disney films go, this sits in that weird position of being too fluffy for most adults yet too sophisticated for most children. Rated PG for some mild language.

George of the Jungle (1997) As far as cartoon-to-live action movie translations go, George of the Jungle is at the top of the heap. The original source material is treated with respect and faithfully reproduced with real people in the real world...that's the most you should ask from a movie based on a cartoon show. I remember seeing this in the theatre when it came out and thinking it was absolutely wonderful and hilarious. Perhaps it's another sign of getting older and grumpier but watching it for the first time in at least 10 years it wasn't as funny as I remember it. It's still a good movie, I just don't know if I would consider it the comedy masterpiece I did when I was 24. Relatively inoffensive, this is however a good choice for a family movie night. My kids enjoyed it. Rated PG for poop jokes and elephant urination.

The Giant Claw (1957) Thanks to the same neighborhood kid who got my son hooked on Godzilla, we had to watch this camp classic sci-fi film about a giant bird that terrorizes the planet. The first half of the film is spent watching the characters try to figure out what some mysterious UFO is. Since going into this picture, the audience already knows it's a giant bird there's not much tension built up. When they do discover that it's a giant bird, it's hard to take any of it seriously when the creature is constantly referred to as "The Big Bird." What's worse, Sesame Street's Big Bird is a more realistic bird than the creature in this movie. The wires on the flying creature are clearly visible in almost every shot and the thing flops around on screen like a marionette operated by a drunk guy. My youngest son fell asleep about 15 minutes in while the older one lapped up every second of it. Not rated, typical 50's sci-fi with little to scare the most timid of viewers.

Spring Break (1983) Four guys spend a week in Ft. Lauderdale looking for girls in this T&A comedy classic. The bad news: at 104 minutes, this teenage sex comedy is way too long. These sort of affairs should never exceed 85 minutes. The good news: along with the usual spring break hi jinks on display there is also a super silly subplot involving corrupt politicians. I love it when these type of movies fell they need to have a "real story." Also, somebody gets a pie in the face - that's always good for a laugh. However, the verdict is still out on the wet t-shirt contest scene that literally eats up 20 minutes of this film's run time. Guess what? It's rated R for language and nudity.

Blondie Has Servant Trouble (1940) Let's talk about the Blondie films for just a second. This is the 6th of 28 movies based on Chic Young's very popular comic strip about the Bumstead family; Blondie (played by Penny Singleton who later went on to play the voice of Jane Jetson,) her ditsy husband Dagwood, their son Baby Dumpling and family dog Daisy. Yes, I said there were 28 movies in this franchise - all produced between 1938 and 1950. How awesome is that!? As much as Hollywood loves sequels, we hardly ever go above a part 4 nowadays. The Blondie movies are silly slapstick with simple situations, light laughs and good hearted fun. In this 6th instalment, Blondie and Dagwood end up spending a weekend in a haunted house - for reasons I didn't quite pick up. At the mansion there are met by two servants who turn out to be no-so-good guys. This is classic haunted house stuff here with eyes peeking through pictures on the wall, hidden doorways and people covered with bedsheets mistaken as ghosts. The Bumsteads also meet Horatio Jones, a black character who reminds you just how different racial attitudes were in the 1940's. Although not meant to be offensive, Horatio runs around the haunted house bug eyed, screaming for help speaking in an exaggerated style closely resembling a caricature of a slave. He's even referred to as "the colored guy" several times - not out of hate, which is just the oddest thing in the world to see. Keeping in context that the culture was completely different back then, this is a fun little movie.

Blondie Plays Cupid (1940) One of the more famous/popular of the Blondie films because it features legendary actor Glenn Ford in one of his earliest performances. In Blondie #7, the Bumsteads decide to vacation in the country for the 4th of July weekend because Blondie doesn't want Dagwood and Baby Dumpling to blow their heads off with firecrackers. After Dagwood gets his hand stuck to a freshly painted chair the family hop aboard a train for the country. It's one crazy mishap after another until Baby Dumpling is at the wheel of a runaway car. Can you imagine the hilarity?! Another fun instalment in this vintage series.

My Week In Movies - Ducks, Turtles, Giant Birds and a Sexy Robot

DuckTales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990)[G] My, how I love this movie. This was the one and only film to come from Disney's MovieToons department, which was basically a unit set up to release animated films from Disney's television animation studio and not have them be lumped in with Disney's treasured classic cartoons. (This was at a time when Disney still announced every animated release with "Walt Disney's 28th Animated Masterpiece" or whatever number it was.) DuckTales was to be followed the next summer with a Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers movie but sadly that never happened. What we did get from Disney MovieToons is this great kid-friendly action/adventure pic modeled loosely on the Indiana Jones films. Uncle Scrooge and the rest of the cast from the afternoon cartoon show travel the globe looking for lost treasures. As the title implies, somewhere along their adventures they find a lamp and we all know what happens in movies when lost lamps are found and then rubbed. The Gennie, who just happens to be another duck, is voiced by comedy legend Rip Taylor. That's worth the price of admission alone! I've always loved this movie. It's bright and cheerful and has a fairly tight story and not once does anybody...or any duck...break into a song. The most amazing thing about watching this movie in this technological age is that it's all done by hand. There is no computer animation anywhere within the film's brief 72 minute running time. It will be a cold day in Duckburg before we ever see a truly 100% traditional animated film roll down the pike ever again! This gem is rated G because it was made in 1990 before it was a federal law that every kids movie had to have a fart joke in it.

The Living Desert (1953)[G] We had a rare double feature screening at the WWoB headquarters this week, and followed up the DuckTales movie with a visit to the desert via this 69 minute film which was the first picture to win the Best Documentary Oscar. The Living Desert is the first of several True-Life Adventure nature documentary films that Walt Disney produced. Back before 24 hour Animal Planet and Discovery Channel, or even PBS, this was people's first filmed glimpse at the world around them. If you've never seen one of the True-Life Adventures you are missing out on a great series of films. Each movies captures great footage of the plant and animal kingdoms and presents them in a humorous and informative way. In this particular instalment, you'll see giant turtles fight it out, tarantulas attacking their prey, snakes being snakey and all kinds of other cool creatures from the desert. My kids really enjoyed the footage and laughed and thrilled along to most of the segments. The narration is a bit over the heads of today's kids, with alot of phrases and sayings that you just don't hear anymore but with a bit of personal narration from Mom and/or Dad any kid should really enjoy this movie. It's also rated G, as all good old Disney films are. The grimmer parts of nature are left to the imagination. In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Rodan (1956)[NR] This Japanese thriller about a giant bird/dragon thing that terrorizes the planet is from the same people that brought us the original Godzilla film and 50 other similar tales of enormous creatures stepping on model sized buildings. Rodan actually starts off pretty intense when a group of miners discover dead bodies in their underground workspace and then discovery a giant caterpillar that tries to kill them. I wasn't expecting a killer caterpillar so when he made his first appearance I had an actual, genuine scare. The Japanese army kills the caterpillar in the first half of the movie and we somehow end up discovering another oversized creature, this time Rodan. Rodan terrorizes the globe much in the same fashion that Godzilla did a few years earlier. With a brief running time of 72 minutes, Rodan manages to stay fairly focused for one of these kaiju films. It's not rated but it was a bit more graphic and intense than other movies of it's kind. Still, in today's movie market it would probably rank a PG rating. If your kids wanted to watch it, they can probably handle it.

Galaxina (1980) [R] I realize that admiting on the internet that I watched DuckTales The Movie and Galaxina in the same week probably puts my name on some sort of FBI watch list, but I'm keepin' it real folks! Galaxina stars legendary Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorthy Stratten as a robot servant on a space cruiser police ship. It's an attempt at a space-age sex farce mixed with a lampoon on Star Wars and Star Trek. This film is fairly legendary among lovers of bad films. Perhaps if I had seen it when I was younger it would have a special place in my heart. The film tries hard to be silly and wacky but it's just so boring that it's bad. The first seven minutes alone consist of nothing more than scenes of spaceships flying and docking. Let's not forget that I didn't even crack a smile once during this deep space pile of do-do. Sure, Dorthy Stratten is hauntingly beautiful but that can't carry a film. Not even (one of my favorite) character actors, Avery Schreiber, could get me into this groove on this camp classic. The R rating is for innuendo galore however there is very little nudity.