Do you ever find that once in a while, you'll come across a movie you feel was made just for you? Despite the film coming out in 2009, it does a fantastic job of illustrating the 'Star Wars' hype train that everyone boarded with the "Special Editions" in 1997, and significantly derailed in 1999 with the thoroughly disappointing 'Phantom Menace.' With that said, I really can't overstate how much the film's concept speaks to those of us hardcore 'Star Wars' geeks who lived in that small window of an era. Our hype was filled by only three movies at that time. I had a certain group of friends who enjoyed the "Special Editions" with me, and those films (despite what some purists have to say about them) managed to not only bring me back into the fandom I remember feeling when I was a kid, but bring it to its peak. I watched and re-watched those three movies, bought myself a lightsaber, went to 'Star Wars' themed parties, it even reignited my childhood love of Lego that lives on to this day. Like most, I was absolutely psyched to learn that Vader's origin story was gonna unfold over three new movies. And that's what this movie is all about - what that meant for us hardcore fans. The movie even kicks things off by wrapping a 'Star Wars' geek like me in nostalgia by starting at a Halloween party in 1998, where three like-minded geeks by the names of "Windows" (Jay Baruchel), Hutch (Dan Fogler) and Linus (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette) show up dressed as Vader ("Windows") and a couple of Storm Troopers. Also present at the party is their token female friend, Zoe (Kristen Bell) and their old friend, Eric Bottler (Sam Huntington), who has since grown out of 'Star Wars,' and become a car salesman for his father (Christopher McDonald). While Eric reunites with "Windows" and Hutch, however, there is tension between him and Linus, as they once had a grand plan to become something great in the comic book business. While Linus held onto the dream, though, Eric decided to move on to other things, especially with certain promotional guarantees under his father's wing. Unfortunately, after the party disperses, the tension remains heavy between the two after an argument that, to me, speaks volumes about how a true 'Star Wars' geek feels about the franchise, especially back in 1998 when the original trilogy was all we had, and we just plain weren't critical about it yet. The following day, "Windows" and Hutch meet Eric at the car dealership and deliver the bad news that Linus has been stricken with cancer, and offer Eric a chance to make ammends. Proving he still has a heart, and despite not being as much of a 'Star Wars' fan as he once was, Eric brings an old plan to Linus' attention that involves going on a road trip to break into George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch to steal a cut of the upcoming 'Phantom Menace.' With that, the four embark on their super risky journey to get that bucket list item in for Linus before its too late. While the overall idea behind this movie is a pretty tragic one, that one might take as contrived just to tug at our heart strings, I do end up taking a lot of dialogue and ideas to heart from this. Some of it goes into probable spoiler territory, but some of it, like Hutch's speech about "finding your death star" go to show that you can pop 'Star Wars' thoughts into many different life situations, and they can give one inspiration. And I think that's part of why it's so close to my heart. I get these guys. I would have been friends with these guys. So it's like the film is speaking directly to me and anyone else who may feel the same. There's a scene here that I like, and I'm not even sure if it was meant to be intentionally poignant, or laughed off. It involves Eric and Linus arguing, and when a very fickle point is brought up about something in the films, Eric asks "who cares about this stuff?," as anyone would, and it's answered with a simple "I do! I care!" As Eric brushes this off as silly, I always took that to be the film illustrating to outsiders how much this shit means to us! We're not talking life and death, but speaking personally, we're talking about something that helped shape who we are as people almost as much as musical taste does. Potentially accidentally poignant moments aside, however (and there are quite a few), the film is also loaded with brief cameos that are so in-line with the concept that I don't even wanna spoil it for anyone here. The comedic moments in this speak a bit more to the average 'Star Wars' geek than anyone else though, and you're not really getting 'Big Bang Theory' types here. These guys are something I'd consider a little closer to the geeks I associated with at the same time in high school. 1997-1999 was a really fun time for the 'Star Wars' hype train, and I hold those memories near and dear to me.
Of course, time has since moved on, and I now look at the prequels in a certain nostalgic light, despite how rough the first two can be to get through (I'll die on the hill that 'Revenge of the Sith' is still solid). If I'm being honest, the prequels might actually outdo the latest trilogy. It's all a matter of opinion of course, but that's all the more reason to appreciate what this movie was as a hardcore fan of the original trilogy. It feels like a time capsule for a simpler time for the saga, and it all ends on one of the best movie punchlines of all time. If you remember that '97-'99 slice of time and you love 'Star Wars' as much as I do, then you should definitely give it a watch!
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Believe it or not, there was a point in time when Disney and Warner Bros. teamed up in order to make a ground-breaking movie where they existed together, and were simply known as "toons". They lived their lives working in 1940s LA, acting in theatrical cartoon shorts, and living in their own segregated city known as "Toon Town." There, one could find Mickey Mouse AND Bugs Bunny, and nowadays, this movie acts a wonderful little time capsule for those of us who remember a time when it wasn't about which studio held the better superhero franchise. To give a little education for some new-comers, this was released under Disney's offshoot, Touchstone Pictures - a studio Disney could use to release some of their more leaning-towards-adult material. I'd say that nowadays, the comparison might be Star, which one can find through Disney+. Either way, when I saw this as a kid, there was quite a bit that went over my head that I'd come back to as an adult and have a good, somewhat shocked laugh at. This was the same effect that 'Ghostbusters' had on me, and that gives 'Roger Rabbit' here a serious boost in my love for it as well. Despite its lovable cast of childhood cartoon characters, one can also find hilarious jokes in here about mistaking the words "prostate" and "probate," adult lines from the cigar smoking Baby Herman (Lou Hirsch) like "I got a fifty year old lust and a three year old dinky," and plenty more that might come as a surprise for a first-time viewer. It's interesting to think of this as a movie that doesn't seem to know who its for, yet somehow or another, this movie really worked out quite well, including being selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." More than anything, that came from the skills at that time of combining animation with live-action, which had been done plenty of times before, but never to such a scale. One could compare it to 'Toy Story' and the use of full CG animation. It was a bit of a first, having actors communicate with a bunch of tennis balls on sticks, and putting animation over that which used no computers - a process everyone born after the year 2000 should check out to appreciate how difficult and time-consuming things used to be with animation. Plot-wise, our story follows detective, Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) who once worked with his brother on several famous cases in Toon Town, until his brother, Teddy, was killed by a murderous Toon one day by having a piano dropped on his head. After that, Eddie stopped working with Toons, lost his sense of humour and fell into alcoholism. Meanwhile, head of Maroon Cartoons, R.K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) is struggling with one of his biggest stars, Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer), turning in poor performances. Sensing a broken heart, Maroon hires Eddie to spy on Roger's wife, Jessica (Kathleen Turner), to catch her in the act of cheating. Eddie is led to the "Ink and Paint Club", and catches Jessica in the act of playing Patty Cake (which I guess is supposed to be sexual for Toons) with Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye), who owns both the Acme company as well as Toon Town, and is generally beloved by toons. Returning to Roger with the bad news, Roger doesn't take it too well, but is suddenly found suspect #1 when Acme is found murdered the next day. This makes Roger seek out Eddie's help even further in clearing his name. Hesitant at first, Eddie takes Roger's case, as it's the right thing to do. The whole time, Eddie attempts to solve the real crime with the help of his sweetheart, Dolores (Joanna Cassidy) while he hides Roger from a group of mobster weasels known as the "Toon Patrol" (David Lander, Charles Fleischer, June Foray and Fred Newman) and their boss, Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) who destroy criminal toons by using terpentine, acetone and bensine; a combination known as "The Dip" (or, essentially, paint thinner). While there may be elements to this movie that haven't aged particularly well, I'd still suggest this one has its place in the cinematic history books for various reasons, namely the balance of real-world and cartoon characters. But it was also a point in time when Disney and Warner Bros. worked together, and it breathed new interest in the golden age of animation. As a kid at the time, being familiar with all of these character and getting able to see them all coexist was almost akin to seeing 'The Avengers'. Bearing in mind that it was 1988, nothing like it really existed, and it was a pretty big deal.
'Roger Rabbit' is a pretty interesting time capsule of a movie, and if you haven't seen it since your childhood, I'd highly recommend a re-watch. I can't really see it being a huge hit for the younger generation, but I do think there's still a ton to appreciate here no matter who you are. The adult jokes are great, and are a friendly reminder of what PG used to get away with. Beyond that, one has to appreciate the effort put into making the film at the time, and its timelessness considering it taking place in the 40s. It's a solid detective noir storyline, punctuated with humour and more cartoon characters from the golden years than one could shake a stick at. Just to get it out of the way, yes, the documentary entitled 'Dogtown and Z-Boys' is technically better. Narrated by Sean Penn, it features a deeper look into the legendary Z-Boys, who for all intents and purposes invented the modern way of skateboarding. It's furthermore a deeper look into the culture that surrounded the sport at the time, and all in all, it provided the perfect amount of fuel to adapt a movie from its ultimately fascinating story, in which several things coincided to come together almost perfectly. While the documentary is pretty great, I have to say, I still have a super soft spot for the film that followed, as it's perfectly representative to my interests at the time. The film was released in 2005, and this was a time when I was still practically addicted to the 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater' series, owning everything at the time from the original to the more recent (and peak) releases of 'Tony Hawk's Underground' (1&2). To be clear, I could not skateboard worth a damn, and it always kinda blew my mind with how easy people like Tony Hawk made it look. But I was into the culture, establishing my favourite skateboarder as Rodney Mullen with his insane manual skills, and watching Bam Margera in just about everything he was in. Skateboarding, to me, is about as close to a fascination in sports as I'll ever get, because it was always so different from the ordinary. I could never really get into much of any sports in my time, but this was different. It was defying physics and showing us that (despite a broken limb or five) the seemingly impossible could be achieved. I had an admiration for it. So with all of this going on, it's truly surprising that somehow or another, I missed 'Lords of Dogtown' in theatres upon its 2005 release. Knowing me, it was probably overshadowed by 'Star Wars: Episode III.' It probably also doesn't help that the film debuted at #6 in the Box Office and was immediately knocked down to #12 the following week. But lack of popularity aside, I still stick to my guns on this actually being a solid bit of storytelling, giving us the info that it needs to, coming straight from the mind of Stacy Peralta, himself. If you're unfamiliar, he was one of the more famous Z-Boys, basically lead Z-Boy of the film, and he's pretty much responsible for ushering in Tony Hawk and contributing a great deal to skateboarding history. In other words, you know the writer gets what the movie should be about. The film centres on a trio of surfers in 1970, in the Venice Beach area of Santa Monica. The aforementioned Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), and his friends Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk) and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch) go day by day, taking to the waves with their surfboards and the pavement with their skateboards along with board designer and mentor of sorts, Skip Engblum (Heath Ledger). One day, polyurathane wheels are introduced to the skate game, providing grip and allowing skateboarders to get away with trying out all sorts of cool tricks, treating the pavement as though it were the waves in the ocean. Skip, Stacy, Tony and Jay all test these new wheels out, and are amazed at what they can do, so Skip makes the decision to form a skate team dubbed the "Z-Boys" (basically "Zephyr Boys", after Skip's "Zephyr" surf shop). Things get off to a decent start, but get even better when a drought forces citizens to drain their swimming pools, which the boys trespass on to use and gain a damn near celebrity status of popularity. The cool thing the film does is take these three characters and show us what they did with their popularity. Eventually, all of the Z-Boys became famous in their own right, but this shows Stacy take things as they come while Tony strives to be #1 in everything he does, risking friendships in the pursuit of fame and Jay... well, remember how I said Rodney Mullen was my favourte skateboarder? He took a back seat to Jay Adams after I saw both this and 'Dogtown and Z-Boys'. Jay was more humble, yet was probably the most talented of all of them, not caring much for the fame and just enjoying the freedom of it all. I couldn't help but admire the guy despite his unfortunate downhill trip with drugs. Something about his attitude just felt pure. Perhaps the best performance through the film is Heath Ledger, who many still saw as a bit of a "pretty boy" at the time. Remember when it was announced that he would play The Joker and everyone seemed to be against it only to one day see him as one of the best portrayals of the character? I was in the 1% at the time because of his performance in this movie. It's not quite what he ended up doing for The Joker, but one can definitely see where the idea may have come from.
I could go on and on here with things, including a solid soundtrack, the heartbreaking stories within the movie involving Jay and his mom (Rebecca De Mornay), and the group's sick friend, Sid (Michael Angarano) and more. But to wrap things up here, I might say that I recommend the documentary a bit higher for mass audiences, but I really think that this is still worth checking out as something perhaps a little more fun than a doc. The idea that it was written by Peralta, reflecting on his own past is something I'd call a bonus too. When this was initially released, I was very quick to jump the gun on claiming it as my "favourite film of all time". I eventually buckled the hell down and put real thought into what that movie should be and landed on 'Ghostbusters' for all the reasons explained in that review. But getting back to this, I can honestly say that over the years, this never really dwindled in my high praise for it. It's enough to say that if I presented a 24-hour marathon of my favourite films of all time, ranked, this would absolutely make the list as one of the first I'd think of. I have very fond memories of catching this one in theatres, seeing it three separate times because after the first go 'round, I had to introduce it to everyone. Most enjoyed it for what it was, if not on an equal level as I did. But some were understandably confused by what was going on, and I can even remember some pretty harsh commentary in the theatre with how the film ends (one of my favourite endings to a film as well). I always took great pride in the fact that it was a confusing film that I seemed to be able to follow with little effort. But I can't necessarily brag either, since much of his other work confuses the hell out of me. The thing to note before I get into this, however, is that the film is full of personal bias towards it. I love Leo as an actor, it reintroduced be to Joseph Gordon Levitt who turned out to be just as solid, I had a bit of a thing for Ellen (Elliot) Page at the time, the subject matter had to do with dreams which I've always been very interested in, and yes of course I fell into the group of many who were blown away by the special effects that were largely practical. The film looked riveting from the get-go and there was no need for CG or 3D to make it look like it would be an awesome time... And an awesome time it was! The film introduces us to the concept of "extractors", who use a new technology which allows them to plug into the dreams of others where they perform acts of espionage to gather information hidden deep within a person's subconscious for some generous payment. Said extractors are Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur Freeman (Gordon-Levitt), opening the film, on the job in the dreamworld of their latest target, Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe). Despite the excitement, however, it ends up being a test by Saito to make sure their good enough for a much more difficult job. After Saito learns of Cobb's ability to "layer dreams" in order to reach the subconscious, thus complicating the dreamscape, he figures him right for the job he has in mind; performing "inception" which means implanting an idea in someone's mind but having that person believe it to be their own idea. The target is the son of Saito's soon-to-pass-away competitor, Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite), Robert (Cillian Murphy), with the intention for Robert to dissolve his father's company rather than take it over. In exchange, Saito would scrape Cobb's criminal status, which would allow him to return home to his family. With that offer, Cobb assembles a "Dream Team" (sorry) consisting of a "forger" (who specializes in in-dream impersonations) named Eames (Tom Hardy), a chemist who can concoct the right dream-sharing serum for this mission's purposes named Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and a college student named Ariadne (Elliot Page, credited as Ellen) who's responsible for being the dream architect by basically designing the environments of the dreams. There's a whole big unfolding of the team's plans as to how they're gonna do what they're gonna do, and I admit that it does get pretty complex. However, I would say that while trying to follow along just keep in mind that all the team's mission boils down to is getting deep into the subconscious mind of Robert Fischer through layered dreams in order to implant an idea that he will think he has himself upon waking up. The conflict comes from the subjects subconscious projections of people who will attack dream invaders like the "extractors", and getting shot or kills basically just means waking up, but at the cost of blowing the mission, so "no big deal" turns to "all the marbles" real quick. Putting even more risk on the line are projections of Cobb's now deceased wife, Mallorie (Marion Cotillard) who makes an effort to stop the team. How does a projection do this? It boils down to Dom's guilt in losing her after introducing her to shared dreaming. This is where Cobb's totem comes in, in the form of a top he can spin. If it falls over, he's not dreaming. If it keeps spinning, the dream is still going. Without the totem, things can get confusing and someone may try to defy physics while assuming it's still a dream resulting in their death (which is what happened to Mallorie).
I'm not entirely sure if I made things easier or harder to follow with my breakdown here, but sometimes I have a hard time putting so much into trying to keep it simple. There really is quite a bit going on here. But the fact of the matter remains that I still love this movie and hold it in high regard. I don't know if I can recommend it to just anyone and everyone like I once used to. But what I can say is that it remains a personal favourite since its release, and this is JUST me, but I'd consider it Christopher Nolan's best work. Chances are that most movie-goers would primarily recognize actor John Boyega from the latest three 'Star Wars' instalments as Finn. Before he fell into that, however, he headed a British sci-fi horror comedy that seemingly went over a lot of heads, 'Attack the Block.' Now, he's most recognizable for playing a 'Star Wars' side character more than he's known for this role - a role badass enough that I wish the MCU had chosen him to play the new Blade rather than Mahershala Ali, who's still good, but I see Blade more in Boyega because of this. The film opens with an innocent lady named Sam (Jodie Whittaker) heading home to her flat, only to be accosted by a handful of punk teenagers, going by the names of Pest (Alex Esmail), Jerome (Leeon Jones), Dennis (Franz Drameh), Biggz (Simon Howard) and their leader, Moses (Boyega). The mugging is ultimately successful, but if we don't see these kids as little monsters already, things are soon interrupted by a crash-landed alien creature, which the group chases down and kills without knowing a thing about it. Lie it or not, these guys end up being who we're supposed to route for. Once the kids have this alien creature in their possession, they head up to Ron's (Nick Frost) flat in hopes to keep in his weed room. Here's where we also meet the gangster Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) who basically runs the block selling drugs, and sees potential in Moses. Whatever this was going to lead to, however, is quickly interrupted by more aliens falling from the sky, and more of the kids' desire to get out there and kill those things. However, what's falling now isn't quite as easy to take on as the first one, and soon these guys find themselves in the midst of a localized alien invasion. As the night wears on, and these kids aim to survive it, more and more unfolds about these characters (namely Moses) that lead us to understand why they have to do what they do. The film does a great job of making these guys out to be little bastards in the beginning, as we so quickly relate to Sam's vulnerability. But it even manages to get to the point where the strategy of their mugging is explained, and while these kids aren't exactly good, we do understand them to be just as vulnerable human beings, if not more, considering their respective living situations. This is one of the finest examples of character development that can be crammed into an hour and a half when it comes to this gang, but it also gives us some entertaining side characters who do a decent job of playing the audience; namely Sam and a dude named Brewis (Luke Treadaway) who just sort of goes through this movie with things happening around him. But I've also gotta give credit to the young kids in this, Mayhem (Michael Ajao) and Probs (Sammy Williams), who are just a couple of kids trying to make a name for themselves amid Moses' gang and add a whole level of child-like comedy to the mix. All-around likable characters aside, let's take a moment to talk about the look of these invading aliens. I breathed a breath of fresh air when I first laid eyes on these things as they were aliens, unlike anything I can remember seeing in anything else. They were roughly mid-large dog-sized, pitch black in colour, almost as if its fur was made entirely of shadow, and their teeth glowed a bluish-green in the dark. They're a bit reminsicent of Geiger's uber-famous Alien mixed with a gorilla mixed with a bear. Further to their design, I appreciated that for once, other than Geiger's uber-famous alien, we had a species here that existed entirely within the alien animal kingdom instead of being some kind of intelligent alien species bent on enslaving the human race, abduction or even communicating with us in a way shape or form. The reason the come to Earth and localize themselves to this neighbourhood is eventually explained, but It'd be a huge spoiler if I talked about it in much more detail. Once you discover their reason for being there, though, it gives the film a big sense of rewatchability, much like 'Fight Club' or 'The Sixth Sense'. The only real problem I can see with this movie is that some may not make it very far past the language, which consists heavily of Enlish, inner city slang. There's a lot of "innit" and "fam" and "brov", and I'm not ashamed to say I had a tough time with it the frst few times around. But the language is heavily outweighed by the film's atmosphere, action scenes, soundtrack, stunts, humour, gore, and the simple idea of taking what could be compared to 'The Goonies' and making it more adult five years before 'Stranger Things' did it.
This is one of my favourite films of all time based on everything I've mentioned about it and more. It's full of clever ideas and humourous call-backs to various situations, and it'll keep you on the edge of your seat while still being quick and to the point and having you laugh along the way. This is a film that defines "thrill ride" when it comes to watching something fun, and the more times I go on the ride, the better it gets. If you're looking for a solid hour and a half of unique laughs, thrills, music and chills, look no further! |