jsliberatore Reviews

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

Only 7.1? Pinfeathers and gullyfluff!

[10/10 · 29 June 2022]

An odd choice, maybe, but this is my absolute favorite Disney movie. So perfectly voiced, the characters are timeless and endlessly quotable.

"You call washing dishes and sweeping floors a work of evil?"

"That, my boy, is a mountain of knowledge."

"I hate sunshine! Hate! HATE sunshine!!"

"Where did he go?' 'To Bermuda, I suppose..."

Among Disney classics, it's really one of a kind. Villains have a very minor role, there is no princess, no happily ever after, not a lot of "action" or slapstick comedy. The characters don't really change all that much, either. There's no grand story arc. It's just a silly, lighthearted romp with a cranky old wizard, a highly educated Owl ("Educated owl??!"), an awkward young boy, and a bit of a moral. It's the kind of movie Disney wouldn't make anymore, because it doesn't have obvious commercial appeal. But it really is a charming, lovable movie, easily rewatchable.

Though some folks think it's a poor telling of Arthurian legend, it's actually a pretty close adaptation of its source material, "The Once and Future King," by T. H. White.

The Book of Boba Fett (2021–2022)

Boba Fett... Boba Fett? Where??

[2/10 · 21 June 2022]

The Disneyfication of Star Wars is on full display here. Nice visuals, plenty of fan service, and shallow, vapid, Marvel-esque characters.

Here's a bounty hunter so ruthless and unhinged that Darth Vader worries he needs to reign it in... "No disintegration." I want a show about that character! But what does Disney do? Fett meets some generic Sand people who fit the "Old Wise Native" character trope. Then he becomes a vanilla Tough Good Guy, indistinguishable from the protagonists in any number of unimaginative PG-rated Spaghetti Westerns. Disney is just not capable of making a show about the Boba Fett from the original trilogy.

Pretty disappointing, but hardly surprising.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Dinosaurs would catch them if they didn't stop and go "ROOAAR!!"

[3/10 · 21 June 2022]

Another installment of Transformers with dinosaurs... paper-thin characters imperiled by CGI monsters. The movie merges two disjointed plots, papering over the whole "dominion" footnote, as an excuse for a JP family reunion bottled up in yet another jungly dinosaur sanctuary.

In no particular order, I'm supposed to believe:

(Spoilers below)

Chris Pratt's magic hand inoculates him from all danger.

No matter how fast the dinosaur, it never gains when chasing main characters.

Malta is apparently like Dagobah; if you just go there, you end up right where you need to be.

The evil megacorp Biosyn is run by morons, even by supervillain standards. Prominent bio-engineering critic Ian Malcolm has had a lectureship there for six weeks, and for some reason he has all access to the lab? They store a bunch of mutant bugs just... in the room... so that they can swarm with the slightest provocation? And then there's a button that sets them on fire, but just a plain old glass window they can break through? And again, with practically no clearances, you can SHUT OFF POWER to the complex?? Isn't this a lesson they learned from the first movie?

A few burning bugs take five minutes to set a swampy jungle ablaze.

I just don't get the laser pointer that sics a dinosaur on somebody. This is a holdover from the last film I know... but you know what else points a laser at people? A rifle.

Finally, in one of the laziest sequences of the film, let's just put some dinos down there in the tunnel. No explanation as to how they got in... but we need to off the main villain... so what'll it be....? Oh, how about.... Dilophosaurus. They killed Newman... so that's poetic, right?

Is it fun? Eh, maybe. I know nobody expects this movie to be good, in say, a "Mystic River" sense. But I have to wonder, is a movie the like first JP even *possible* today? Can Hollywood still make an engrossing story with believable characters in real peril? I guess they figure it's not worth the effort.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Why not pull the trigger?

[5/10 · 22 June 2018]

So if I'm getting this right, the weapon of the future is: aim a sniper rifle at someone, then press a special button that causes a super-bad-ass dinosaur to maul them. Instead of... I don't know... pulling the trigger.........???

Beyond Skyline (2017)

...if you like bad movies...

[3/10 · 17 June 2018]

Maybe some minor spoilers here, but come on, what is there to spoil?

It's bad. How bad is it?

Well, the movie revolves around aliens who steal brains; it starts in LA, then there's about an hour escaping the alien mothership, then they land in Vietnam and everyone knows martial arts, including the aliens (you know, because, Asia). Yes, including the token female, who was a subway engineer at the beginning of the movie. It all wraps up in some kind of macho fantasy with fighting robots and some paper-thin inspirational boondoggles about human resilience. The action sequences are so silly that I just want them to get on with it... but when the action stops, attempts at character and story development are excruciating! Yea yea, the little girl is the key to the blah blah blah... turn this glowing blue orb into a glowing red orb...

I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it-you just have to know what you're getting into. I like bad movies. I like movies that try, but are still bad, like maybe they're not quite in on the joke (for that reason, I don't like movies like Sharknado, where everyone is in on it). That's this movie. It's a special kind of bad movie, that might just hit the spot if you're looking for something truly absurd.