Cruella

Well, no—it’s not that exhausting rooting for the antihero. If, indeed, you do wind up rooting for her. That’s the tough trick to pull off in this outing: making a most iconic villain into something resembling a sympathetic character. It undermines the mission when, in the midst of these goings on, the henchmen start complaining about the nature of the lead character. It shows just how wide a span there is for this story to bridge. In this case, the program is helped a lot by Emma Stone’s work in the title role. She inhabits the personage to the maximum extent while still leaving room for the audience to give the well-known criminal a bit of a break. The rest of the rehabilitation is accomplished through transference: the movie introduces a new villain who takes up the mantle of vileness, and indeed, Cruella earns points by being the new monster's victim. It’s a fine line to walk, but it is mostly accomplished successfully here. As an added bonus, the film’s music—an aural travelogue of the 1960s and ‘70s—really helps put the viewer in a sympathetic (or at least neutral) mood. So does it all work in the end? Mostly, yes. All of the positives listed above, along with some fine humor and a solid (and admirably consistent) storyline make for a piece that, in certain respects, exceeds its inspiration and stands as a success in its own right. For once, Disney mined the back catalogue without going to the dogs.

Men in Black: International

A tired retread of a concept done much better before. The supposedly witty repartee isn’t, much of the scenes are mere excuses for displaying weird-for-the-sake-of-weird CGI characters, and little of the story, such as it is, makes much sense. It’s a movie that has no good reason for existing. Alas that I cannot flash this film from my memory!

Treasure Planet

As soon as I saw the rocket propelled wind-surfboard, I knew there was trouble. That item shows up as merely one bit of hopeful patronizing toward an intended--presumably uncritical--audience of children; other aspects of the production are not just trend-chasing but actual baffling decisions. The story here is a proven winner--Stevenson’s Treasure Island has been a classic for about a century and a half at this point--so the make or break with this picture had to come from how that story was presented. The filmmakers could have gone with a straightforward retelling, hewing to the original work. Or they could have presented an updated version, one set in a future in space but otherwise recognizably the same as the source, with a spot of alien presence interwoven into a human tale. But making it story with one primary human character, and everyone else, good or bad, is a total freakshow weirdo? That decision is really hard to grasp for this viewer. It simply doesn’t work for most of the characters--even the protagonist’s allies--to be, essentially, monsters. Further, having the  story's setting happening in space, yet still giving most of the infrastructure a pronounced 18th-century look and vibe just comes across as strange and distracting, not as a particularly clever or creative bit of blandishment. (If they’re sailing through space, on a tall ship with no particular atmospheric containment going, how is everyone not immediately asphyxiating, if not actually exploding from the vacuum? Any viewer with even the mildest scientific frame of mind will have trouble setting that aside.) Finally, the kid-directed aspects of the movie--including a silly shapeshifter character--grow tedious very fast, as does the shifts in tone from high action to maudlin sentimentality. There’s just enough of positive elements in here to hold the viewer's interest--mostly that happens where the film hews to the original tale--but overall, this work has conceptual issues it just can’t overcome. Best to let this ship sail without you.

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

I must be getting soft in my old age. This is not the hit-it-out-of-the-park masterpiece that it should have been. There are a number of problems with the movie, in particular a tendency to make everything epic, even in moments that should have been more intimate. Also, as always, the usual message comes through loud and clear: if you want love, you'd better be pretty. Doesn't help a lot of us out here. So why is the Bad Cat purring? Mostly on the strength of the sweetness and charm of Emma Watson, who grounds the proceedings and makes its excesses forgivable. It's a movie worth your time, especially if you're really a sucker for the romantic stuff, but this was perilously close to a take-it-or-leave it proposition.

Saving Mr. Banks

I’m uncertain here. The PURR could just as easily be a MEOW. It’s hard to get a handle on whether this is a really good movie or not. This film features fine performances from a lot of really good actors; then again, in at least one case (Emma Thompson in the P.L. Travers role), that good performance makes for a rather unlikable character. Some of the backstory scenes take way too long to tell their tale--we get the drift long before that curtain closes--and the film drags in those sequences. But those are forgivable lapses, given the overall quality of the thing. I’ll stick with the positive, but I won’t argue very hard against anyone who says otherwise.

Brave

Why isn’t this movie considered racist? Is it only because the over-the-top character portrayals feature blue-eyed people? You may ponder that enigma at your leisure as you watch this one--and you probably should watch it, since this is an effective, well-done work of cinema, one of the better recent efforts to come out of the Pixar mold. While there is a bit of that usual Disney corn pone--the stuff that always threatens to ruin anything released under their banner--the rest of the film is an involving story of family tension, fairy tale fun, and just enough comedy to keep things light. Oh, and don’t you change, Merida--you’re exactly the girl you need to be.

Peter's Friends

So here's the set-up: take a group of old friends, each with a catacomb's worth of skeletons in his or her closet, get them together for a little stay in the country, and watch them fall apart--upon each other and--as individuals. It's better than it sounds, though the movie does sometimes veer too wildly between comedy and drama. But the dialogue is razor sharp, the soundtrack holds many great tunes, and a great cast (including Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh [who directed], Stephen Fry, Rita Rudner and Hugh Laurie) holds it all together with style and aplomb. The ending comes off as too abrupt, perhaps, but otherwise it works.

Henry V (1989)

The Branagh film--basically his coming-out party. It's undeniably a classic, though I must admit that there are some flaws here. For me the whole Falstaff back-story scenes seem flat, though whether the fault lies with this production or the source material (!) is debatable. What stands without question is that when Branagh's Henry is on screen, this movie is electrifying; no wonder everyone was so impressed.

Primary Colors

If only the real Clinton cared as much as Travolta's fictionalized version of him does in this flick. A mostly entertaining veiled look at the '92 campaign that can leave one feeling wistful for the promise that once was, and a little bitter over the disappointment that ultimately came.