Black plays the title character, here reimagined as a long-time worker in the mail room of a New York newspaper whose crush on one of the paper’s writers (an appealing Amanda Peet) leads to him traveling to Bermuda where, thanks to a fancy CGI whirlpool, he ends up in the land of Lilliput, home to said pocket-sized people.

I do realize the film is meant to appeal to kids, as sophomoric gags abound, including the aforementioned robot with which Black does battle, but none more so than the sight of Black dousing a fire in the Lilliputian castle by relieving himself on it. And if Black falling on a Lilliputian soldier rear-end-first doesn’t get the little ones laughing, nothing will.

Black does little more than his standard slacker shtick as Gulliver, using phrases like “condish” and “grade-A courtage” to try and make the material seem more hip. But what seemed like very funny behavior in School of Rock just doesn’t work here. Admittedly, the film does mine a decent sight gag out of his flabbiness that involves cannonballs.

I can’t really fault director Rob Letterman for trying to impart a grow-up-and-be-responsible message, either, I suppose, but it’s a half-hearted effort at best. Black learns his lesson in the broadest way possible, so I didn’t buy it when he admits to Peet that “These little people have grown very large in my heart.” I rolled my eyes, in fact.

None of this is to say the film lacks laughs. Indeed, Chris O’Dowd is hilarious as an arrogant Lilliputian general who sees right through Black’s where-I-came-from stories (“Vice President Yoda”), while Jason Segel (I Love You, Man) earns some chuckles as a Lilliputian commoner with a crush on the kingdom’s princess (Emily Blunt, also funny) and Billy Connolly makes for a perfect king.

The only sequence I truly enjoyed (which borrows from the second story in Swift’s novel) was the one in which Black ends up on an island whose inhabitants are giants and where he’s captured by a little girl who keeps him in her dollhouse. Nothing else here made me laugh more than seeing Black being forced to wear a doll’s dress while being force fed a baby bottle. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Adventure/Drama/Fantasy

Rated PG-13

Clint Eastwood

In order we meet a French television journalist (Cécile De France) vacationing in Thailand who has a harrowing near-death experience, a former professional, but genuine, psychic (Matt Damon) in San Francisco trying to live as normal a life as possible, and a shy British boy (Frankie McLaren) who becomes even more withdrawn after the loss of his identical twin brother.

This is nothing if not a classy production. It’s beautifully lit, and the low-key score, composed by Eastwood himself, gives it the right melancholy mood. I also give Eastwood points for the relatively straightforward way he treats the material, which is less about ghosts, anyway, and more about how these otherwise normal people deal with death and move on.

The problem is Eastwood’s casual directorial style. I concede the sad nature of the story here merits an unhurried pace, but Eastwood’s wont to give seemingly every scene, and emotion, the same leisurely weight renders the film so dramatically inert that it positively creeps along. And the ending is so low-key I initially wondered what was the point of everything that came before it.

The acting feels equally subdued, which is not to say incompetent. Indeed, Damon is solid as the soft-spoken psychic, De France a little more energetic as a woman with a need to understand her near-death vision, and McLaren serviceable in a role without much dialogue. As Damon’s older brother, Jay Mohr performs his usual wheeler-and-dealer act, only with a little more seriousness.

Having said all that, a few emotionally resonant moments do manage to sneak in, like De France breaking up with her producer boyfriend, and Damon’s brief relationship with a cooking-class partner (Bryce Dallas Howard) is also well-handled. And while some may find it hard to watch the opening-scene tsunami, it is impressively rendered, and, ironically, is the only time the film feels alive. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Fantasy

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/15/11

Tales From Earthsea

The superficial look of the characters and environments is classic Miyazaki. Supposedly, Hayao had no involvement at all with his son’s film once it was underway (they were apparently not even on speaking terms), so it is disappointing that Goro did not establish his own aesthetic for his film, rather than borrowing his father’s style wholesale. But despite the clear intention to mimic the appearance of a Miyazaki classic, Earthsea’s characters look strikingly flat, opaque and disconnected from their watercolor environs. At times I even thought it looked like a lower budget television production, not the blockbuster feature film it was in Japan. In the end, though, it mostly only pales in comparison with other works from Ghibli. The world of anime in Japan is vast, encompassing a broad spectrum of genre and quality. To put it another way, Hayao Miyazaki is to Pixar what Goro is to Dreamworks Animation. As for its suitability for kids, I wouldn’t recommend Earthsea for younger kids–its content is closer to the PG-13 range. Of course, even if you don’t watch Tales From Earthsea, that shouldn’t stop you from revisiting the real Miyazaki classics. This week also saw the release of Hayao’s second feature, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, on Blu-ray, which is a perfect excuse to watch (or rewatch) one of the great classics of animation. – [DVD]

Animation/Adventure/Fantasy

Rated PG-13

This is a broad attack to take in reviewing a horror film, but since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897 and ushered into popular ken a soulless creature who lived forever, consumed human beings then turned them into more monsters like itself, well, the vampire seemed to fit the bill as the epitome of evil. At least as far as the go-to villain in film and fiction.

As time passed and the vampire became a little “been-there-done-that”, Anne Rice’s 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire reconfigured undead life as antebellum romance laced with the ennui of the grave and ushered in the premillennial permutations of the vampire as a tragic figure (Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992), the Twilight series, Abel Ferrara’s downtown hipster metaphor for aids and addiction, The Addiction (1995)). Evil got soul.

In Let Me In, directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield (2008)), evil comes to a teenager named Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) living in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Reagan era 80’s. His parents are divorcing, so he’s shunted to one side in their attentions. Small, bullied by his peers, spying on his neighbors and daydreaming of candy and revenge in equal measure, he’s befriended by a strange girl, Abby (Chloe Moretz), who moves into the apartment next door. She’s impervious to cold, lost and sad, then oddly calculating and predatory in her demeanor. She lives with her “father” and has something to hide as a detective investigating “Satanic” killings in the area closes in. She’s Owen’s savior who will be true to her nature, doing so much bad to be good to him.

Let Me In has things standing in its way. According to director Reeves, his movie is a direct adaptation of the 2004 novel Let the Right One In by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindquist, but the looming roadblock to this claim is the 2008 Swedish version directed by Tomas Alfredson and for which Lindquist himself penned the screenplay. The film Let the Right One In made its way onto many end of the year top ten lists, and was acknowledged as a modern classic. Reeves is a fan of both book and film and has said his version is not just an Americanized take on the original film, but elements he’s said to have reworked don’t make any real improvements.

Let the Right One In, even as a horror film, is distilled to its right and true melancholic adolescent essence and jettisoned the baroque plot contrivances of Lindquist’s book. Reeves gives his actors more to work with but it feels like an obligation just to change things up and comes not from inspiration or even homage. The film works on its own only because Reeves does a one eighty from Let the Right One In in the overall tone of the movie.

Let the Right One In was elegiac, minimalist, lyrical. Reeves successfully moves his film into darker realms with Moretz’s Abby carrying the weight of that darkness. You see the manipulations behind her eyes and you know there’s no real hope in what Owen and her have together. Abby may have been helpless in the face of whatever evil caused her creation, but she’s assimilated some of it to survive, if not gathered it in a full embrace.

So Let Me In is a solid film. It has concessions to horror movie special effects 101, but the genuine terror that adolescence is a locked down cage where nobody really listens to you is acutely felt. This isn’t a harlequin romance with fangs in the high desert of New Mexico.

But was this film a shameless dart toss at moneymaking while riding the critical cachet and genuine excellence of its predecessor? Was it a little bit of I-can-do-better egoism mixed with fanboy ardor?

Are we damning by faint praise?

Now that’s evil. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Fantasy/Horror

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 2/1/11

Since this is an Emma Thompson project, A-list actors appear for choice bits and cameos. This installment had wonderful surprises in the shape of Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, and Ewan McGregor for the grown-ups and lots of nutty CGI magic (swimming piglets) for the kids. Although the first 20 minutes were a bit cacophonous (noisy children need Nanny McPhee to appear), once Emma T. is on screen the film is an old-fashioned delight for both children and their parents. Also stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as the Mom. - [DVD]

Comedy/Family/Fantasy

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 12/14/10

This time around, tensions arise between sensitive pretty-boy vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) and hotheaded werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) as Jacob starts making a play for vampire-wannabe Bella (Kristen Stewart), all while a redheaded vamp (Bryce Dallas Howard) builds up a vampire army to exact revenge on the Cullen clan.

Lack of angst notwithstanding, this is still silly stuff, a bunch of overheated romantic nonsense replete with epic declarations of love (“You’ll always be my Bella”), lots of emo music and a surplus of superfluous shots of gym-toned Lautner strutting around shirtless. Not to mention the somewhat silly sight of a bunch of model-pretty people with fangs running around in the forest.

The vampire army stuff, despite being given a screen-time backseat to the romance-novel antics, as well as scenes of characters trying to talk Bella out of becoming a bloodsucker, is what makes the film bearable. It allows for some actual bloodshed, PG-13 though it may be. Necks get snapped, heads lopped off and people hurled against trees.

David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night) proves a proficient enough director of all this, giving the action stuff energy and the film as a whole a smooth and efficient pace, though, like New Moon helmer Chris Weitz, he lacks any discernable directorial style. Still, he manages to pull a half-decent performance out of the half-naked Lautner, whose turn in the last film wasn’t even that.

Stewart is solid, I guess, actually getting to smile for once. It helps that her character has more to be happy about, despite her romantic choices being limited to a vampire and a werewolf. Speaking of which, Pattinson also does a decent job, and especially shines in the film’s best scene, a quiet heart-to-heart between Lautner and himself that shows there’s more to him than just an unkempt hairdo. - [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Fantasy/Romance

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 12/7/10

The story is fairly simple–the Irish abbey at Kells is under threat from the Vikings, and the Abbot (Brendan Gleeson), obsessed with security, has ordered the construction of a monumental wall around the village to protect its inhabitants. His young nephew Brendan (Evan McGuire) would rather hang out in the scriptorium with the monks than haul stones to the wall. Complicating matters is Brother Aidan (Mick Lally) a master illuminator who comes to Kells carrying a legendary book that he has been working on for years. Aidan takes a liking to Brendan and begins to teach him the art of illumination (creating intricate artwork within the text and margins of manuscripts). While fetching ingredients for a special ink, Brendan meets Aisling (Christen Mooney) a beautiful, tempestuous forest fairy who guides him to his goal.

Though The Secret of Kells does include a dangerous, mostly faceless villain (the Vikings), it eschews the typical confrontation between good and evil, instead imparting the much more sophisticated notion that the preservation of a culture has more to do with saving books and art than erecting walls. This is a kid-friendly film that genuinely promotes literacy, nonviolence and humor as supreme values. The visual style is unique and often spectacular. The final sequence, in which the filmmakers took pages from the actual Book of Kells (among the most spectacular and precious artifacts of Medieval Europe) and restored and animated them, is brief but worth the price of admission alone. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Animation/Adventure/Fantasy

Unrated

DVD Release Date: 10/5/10

I’m not saying he’s a bad actor. Just a lazy one. He says his lines, hits his marks and, well, that’s about it. There’s no character in his characters. No fire. That includes his performance here as Perseus, demi-god and son of Zeus (Liam Neeson) who embarks on a mission to find a way to stop a colossal creature created by the gods from destroying mankind.

Worthington is really no worse in the part than the original’s Harry Hamlin, who played the hero as a somewhat vacuous pretty boy, but I still would have appreciated some effort. As it is, Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) does the best thesping as one of the soldiers escorting Worthington on his trek. Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, who plays the god Hades, are suitably theatric.

It’s more about the effects anyway, I suppose, and this thing’s got loads of them, from the eerie sight of Medusa slithering through her underworld lair, to the occasionally frenetic finale featuring the dreaded Kraken (which resembles the Rancor from Return of the Jedi). In the film’s best sequence, Worthington and the soldiers battle a pack of gigantic scorpions in the desert.

Director Louis Letterier (The Transporter) moves the action along briskly and for the most part refrains from any kind of hyperactive editing. This is especially helpful during the energetic sword fights with the disfigured former king known as Calibos (Jason Flemyng), scenes in which Worthington briefly comes to life, jumping and somersaulting about.

In the end the film’s not nearly as enjoyable, nor as memorable, as its predecessor. That movie, while hardly a work of art itself, benefited from Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion techniques and Laurence Olivier’s scenery chewing. This one’s got Liam Neeson and $125 million worth of CGI, neither of which is nearly enough to make up for a lethargic leading man. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Adventure/Drama/Fantasy

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 7/27/10

In Bluebeard, a father dies performing a selfless act and two sisters must return home from a convent. The family now impoverished and their education ended, one sister decides to become the wife of an aristocrat of whom tales are told of his previous wives’ demises. This sister, Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton), though too young for the marriage bed proper, beguiles the imposing Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) and after they are wed they become devoted, but chaste companions. There is the matter of a locked door and an admonishment to know your place and obey the rules. As always, the core lesson fairy tales were meant to impart and just the themes that are Breillat’s stock in trade to kick against, if not completely knock down.

Still, Bluebeard is unlike Breillat’s other work. It’s reasonably sedate for her. There are only two mildly shocking scenes. She frames the tale with a dual narrative telling it in break-away scenes of a modern pair of sisters reading the book in a dusty attic, the younger sister needling the older one with the more horrific aspects of the story. They are the Greek chorus that gets its own comeuppance. The film is most reminiscent of Rossellini’s historical dramas. Mannered and proper of dialogue but never insipid and with truly haunting moments. But the telling set-up is early in the film. Marie-Catherine is riding home in a carriage with her older sister Anne (Daphné Baiwir). They sit on opposite sides of the carriage. Even in their grief there is no closeness. Through a small window you see the back of the coachmen, slightly higher than the girls; he converses with his back to them. You come to find that the sisters are more close than you know, but again all of Breillat’s themes are there. The gulf between the sexes and between siblings themselves. Knowledge comes from on high and is patriarchal and judiciously divvied out. Acceptance of this is yours to choose along with any consequences and throughout the film this taffy pull of identity versus whatever status quo is in place is played out.

Bluebeard may seem a touch slight, given Breillat’s previous work, but maybe it’s a cleansing of the palette. She’s been said to be working on a version of Sleeping Beauty. She bucks expectations with this one, perhaps being more true to a classic fairy tale than we’d like her to be. Consider this when watching the end of the film. On one hand abrupt, but more like how those stories conveniently ended than maybe we remember. Consider too the lesson usually imparted in those tales. Accept and be safe little one. Breillat never plays it safe. – [DVD]

Fantasy

Unrated

DVD Release Date: 6/22/10