Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Deadpool, but for kids: Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool and does Pikachu’s voice, and has pretty much the same dynamic, but without the penis jokes and wanting to kill Baby Hitler, etc. Otherwise, a forgettable cast, and there was that one scene near the end where somehow the protagonist went from one of the top floors of a skyscraper down to the ground unusually fast, without showing how. Remember: this is a world filled with magic animals that do the bidding of humans. Why can’t the writers show a Pidgeot, or whatever, glide the guy down? Don’t make the audience write your script for you!
The Neverending Story
One of the great 80’s fantasy films for kids, right in that sweet spot between edgy and fun. Some blood but not enough to make mom frown. That one scene where Bastian screams his real name (Moon Child) out of the school attic window during the storm and you can’t understand is remedied in the Internet age with easy subtitles. Or, if you were enough of a loser to read books, you would know it from there.
Dragonslayer
Another great 80’s fantasy movie. This one was unique because it bucked the trend of the solitary protagonist, adventuring out and gathering companions along the way to the Big Bad. The Big Bad— a dragon awesomely named “Vermithrax Pejorative”—is actually fought near the beginning and kinda sorta defeated for the time being. The stop-motion special effect for said dragon was one of the first to employ computers, so it wasn’t so jittery as the hand-moved versions.
Excalibur
An abject lesson for dudes to keep their pants buttoned and a lot of bad things can be avoided.
Stalker
I hate that I sort of liked this, and I hate that this was labeled sci-fi when there’s barely anything sci-fi about it, aside from the futuristic Soviet ruin p0rn. This is supposed to be a “real film,” which means a lot of important people who know things about moviemaking have labeled it thusly. Usually those kinds of films are unwatchable, maybe meaningful, garbage, but not all the time; it’s hard to tell because critics you can make anything feel important while saying nothing at all, even as a joke. Lingering shots, sometimes with very little happening, men throwing Dostoevsky dialog and falling asleep in strange places. It’s 28,000 hours long, and I was prepared to x out of it if was a dud but I literally couldn’t stop watching it.
Ash Lad: In the Halls of the Mountain King
A very fairy tale-like modern fantasy movie. I think the characters and events are based on Norwegian folktales but I’m not sure.
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Arnold in his prime. He never looked freakishly large or disproportionate compared to some of the “mass monsters” of today, and his unemotive acting fit well with the character. The opening village raid scene gave Conan a better personal reason for revenge that the remake replaced with something a little overwrought.
Deep Impact
90’s doomsday meteor ocean floodwater stuff. Like Knowing, the apocalypse comes but it’s not as complete. I couldn’t be bothered to care too much about the characters much, but the tsunami scenes were interesting.
Armageddon
Michael Bay before he got his hands on Transformers. Completely implausible outer space physics and a nearly impossible solution to implement, though some of the on-asteroid scenes were well-shot and captured the desperation well. The story uses the “do it manually”-type Heroic Sacrifice trope, which is overused now but may not have been back then.
12 Monkeys
One of the great time travel films of the 90’s. Why? It’s not just about time travel and multiple timelines, but about James and Kathryn’s relationship. It gets romantic, but not embarrassing or unconvincing, and it helps with emotional payoff at the story’s climax. You also have two characters who are considered mentally ill by the standards of the (present day) time, though they’re not exactly wrong: one character the audience knows isn’t insane because he knows the future, and one that simply acts insane because we come to find out he knows too much about reality in the present.
4 Comments
Ever see Conan the Librarian? 😉
https://youtu.be/mZHoHaAYHq8
Of course I have! I got his autograph once when I saw him in Spatula City.
Good one, Graham. All I remember about Neverending Story is the incredible performance of the Childlike Princess character. Tiny, subtle facial movements and vocal tone that portrayed extravagant feeling. I vaguely remember a few scenes from Dragonslayer, but I also remember not liking the film. I grew tired of Arthurian Legend a long time ago; he was a skirt-wearing Celt warlord at the end of the Roman Empire when lamellar was the most advanced metal armor in existence. I read a lot of Conan books and the film was a little disappointing, but I agree that Schwarzenegger did portray the book hero’s character very well. I skipped Armageddon and still feel no regrets. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of 12 Monkeys. I’ll have to look into that.
Agreed about the Childlike Empress. I remember the final scenes with her being very intense, especially at the age I was watching this (maybe 9 or 10). Part of that was when she was speaking straight to the camera. At the time, I didn’t know how unusual it was for a non-comedy movie to break the 4th wall so deliberately, but that’s probably how it was so intense.
12 Monkeys is a good watch. May require a few viewings to catch everything, but it doesn’t try to be cute and coy with the audience.