A Story Out of Time and Place and the Escape Hatch of Fantasy: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) -- Retro Nostalgia

With the monumental success of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (dir. Chris Columbus; 2001), Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring (dir. Peter Jackson; 2001), and their immediate sequels, Hollywood perhaps hoped to capitalize on the epic fantasy feel of Tolkien's narrative and the young adult/children's audience that so fervently devoured the Harry Potter books.  Naturally, they turned to The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

If I'm honest, I'm quite a fan of the Narnia films even as I'm critical of their structure.  There's something deliciously joyous about portal fantasies wherein children are whisked away to save the world, hanging out with talking beavers and every fantasy creature under the sun.  Narnia was wish fulfillment for me in so many ways.  Adventure?  Check.  Epic scale?  Check.  Kids becoming greater than themselves?  Check.  It is a deeply hopeful series of films (and novels -- though I suppose The Last Battle might be perceived as rather "doomsday-ish" today).  Sometimes, one needs a little optimistic, no?  The first of these films, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (dir. Andrew Adamson; 2005), is perhaps the strongest as a narrative, but it also has its problems.  Granted, these are problems which make more sense in a certain perspective, even if they don't quite work in film.

Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine (dir. Steve Pink; 2010)(A SFF Film Odyssey)

The first time I saw Hot Tub Time Machine (dir. Steve Pink; 2010), I wasn't sure how to take it.  So much of the film made me uncomfortable because the characters seemed, for the most part, painfully unlikable.  That fact became clearer as I began comparing HTTM to other films of its type, leaving me to wonder:  why would I root for anyone in this movie when I'd rather each of them got hit by a bus instead of the one-armed Phil (Crispin Glover)?  Here lies a film that I'm sure even a teenage version of myself would find impossible to stomach -- bereft of redeemable characters, excessive for shock value, and overall a perfect storm of the worst raunchy comedy tropes.  It's a film best avoided so you can spare your brain the scrubbing.

Movie Review Rant: The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010; dir Jon Turtletaub) -- A SFF Film Odyssey Review

Though not the first live-action remake of a Disney cartoon, 2010's The Sorcerer's Apprentice is part of what might be called Disney's 1st Phase of Live Action Remakes, sitting right between the last of the Pirates of the Caribbean (At World's End; 2007) trilogy films and the much more interesting Maleficent (2014).  If this is a phase of live action remakes, then it is a loose one, with an unclear path -- a test bed, if you will, since the previous remakes have mostly taken the form of almost faithful adaptations of existing stories (101 Dalmations in 1996 and Alice in Wonderland in 2010, for example) or adaptations of existing characters or rides:  The Country Bears (2002), Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, 2006, and 2007), and The Haunted Mansion (2003).  The Sorcerer's Apprentice, along with Alice in Wonderland, appear to be "cusp" films, resting on the precipice of a second phase of live action remakes. Now, Disney has or plans to release a torrent of remakes or adaptations in what seems to be its second phase:  Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Alice in Wonderland:  Through the Looking Glass (2016; the sequel to Burton's previous adaptation), Pete's Dragon (2016), and Pirates of the Caribbean:  Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017).

So how does The Sorcerer's Apprentice measure up in this new "renaissance" of live action remakes or adaptations?  Unfortunately, about as well as you'd expect:  on par with The Haunted Mansion, a less-than-stellar film which probably shouldn't have been made in the first place.  Unlike Maleficent, which was flawed but thematically compelling, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a muddled mess of an adaptation.  Tonally inconsistent and obsessive in its need for grandiosity, this film is the mark of a studio that has yet to develop a clear path, which makes The Sorcerer's Apprentice forgettable and mediocre at best.

Let's begin, shall we?

Movie Review: Monsters (2010) (A SFF Film Odyssey Selection)

I didn't realize until pulling up the IMDB page for Monsters (2010) that its writer and director, Gareth Edwards, is also the director of the upcoming Godzilla (2014).  And that makes a ton of sense.  While Monsters is hardly Godzilla-ish in form, it does take what is a painfully small budget for a kaiju film (supposedly $500k) and put it to good use, providing a measured and sometimes look into humanity's interaction with nature and with himself.  In short, where Cloverfield fell into all the wrong traps, Monsters simply avoids them in favor of what should have mattered in Abrams' viral-media monstrosity:  the characters.

The plot of Monsters is fairly straight forward.  Six years ago, enormous alien creatures arrived on Earth.  Everyone believes this is an invasion and quarantines the "infected zones" in hopes of keeping the aliens from taking more territory.  Jump ahead to the present:  a photojournalist in search of the perfect shot of the enormous creatures is forced by his boss to escort Samantha, the boss' daughter, out of Mexico to the American border before the next cycle of aggression threatens the quarantine borders.  In their struggle to escape, Samantha and Andrew learn about one another's past:  what they're running from, what they're running towards, and who they really are in a world that wants them to conform to contradictory identities.

A SFF Film Odyssey (2010): The Official List

The following is a list of every film I'm going to watch and discuss/review this year.  These titles will eventually link to posts here or on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.  Keep an eye out as I fill this whole thing up!

Note:  if something is missing from the list, please let me know in the comments; I've tried to include every sf/f "feature" film released in 2010, but I could have missed something.  I'm also going to go back to some of these films if I have already reviewed them in the past.

The full announcement about this project can be found here.

Here goes: