The Little Mermaid

Time is rarely kind. What was once considered great tends to suffer for growing old. So it seems with this work. It may have wowed audiences back in 1989, but watching this flick today, one is struck by how pedestrian the presentation seems. Partly that’s a product of the technical, computer-generated wizardry that has become so ubiquitous these days in animation; partly, though, it feels like this movie was celebrated due to low expectations. It is perhaps a measure of how far Disney had fallen that, at that point, a film that by today's standard comes across as little more than a Saturday morning cartoon could serve as the revitalization and foundation of a media empire. Strange things do happen, and fairy tales do come true, in a sense. I guess this one proves it.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

I keep trying. I keep hearing, from one source or another, how great Robert Altman films are. And I keep watching them, with the expectation that I will see a flick that will, at some point, help me see the light. But this isn’t that one, and at this point I’m drawing the inevitable conclusion that Altman’s oeuvre is way, way overrated. I’ve no doubt that the tone of this movie—dispassionate, disaffected, and distant—is meant to convey the seriousness of the artistry being presented, but it certainly doesn’t help viewers who simply want to watch a good movie. Most definitely, it does not serve the needs of those who want a good story. The telling of the tale lacks some of the most fundamental aspects of good storytelling; for instance, we never really see the Special Event that is supposed to make us care about what happens to McCabe, or Miller, or the whores and the whorehouse, or even the whole damn town. It’s easy to look down upon such standards as trite, or hackneyed, or even bourgeois, but there’s a reason that standards become standards: they work. What happens here doesn’t. Also, the performances are uneven; Beatty and Christie are, at times, nearly unintelligible by the manner in which they deliver their lines. That may reflect poor sound recording or editing, which further damns the director for not going to the trouble of doing the job technically right. As for the look of the thing, it’s fine, excepting perhaps the director and cinematographer’s deep fondness for the camera’s zoom feature (it really gets a workout—and wears out—here). It isn’t awful, but a new form that shook up the world of cinema? I’m not seeing it. Maybe, just maybe, this emperor had no clothes.