I understand that it’s a lot of work to expand a short picture book into a feature length film, but there’s something about the pop psych interpretation that just felt a little off. I know it’s not entirely fair that I am so fond of Return to Oz, which has the same blatant “this fantasy world is all an allegory for our protagonist’s problems back home,” but something about having Max become the parental figure seemed weird.

Actually, the more I think about it, what kind of message is that? Kids should put themselves in their parents’ position? I know that viewing the world from someone else’s point of view is part of growing up, but it seems a little dismissive of some valid issues children have. Max is entirely within his rights to feel anxiety about his mother not paying attention to him or to be upset that his sister didn’t care that his friends hurt him.

I must say, though, while I was able to spend most of the film complaining to myself about this sort of thing, I’d be lying if I said the bit at the end where they all start howling to each didn’t get me pretty hard.

I wasn’t aware until the film was over that this was a spin-off of a TV series, but, looking back, it kind of makes sense. There is sort of an expected familiarity with the Malcolm Tucker character (and, especially, with his henchman) that was a little odd for those of us not familiar with the series. It didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film. The film is perhaps a little hamstrung by the premise being heavily inspired by the rush to war in Iraq, but determined to be non-specific. Everything feels a little more vague than it really should. I understand they don’t really want to be hemmed in by historical facts and don’t want to feel dated, but it kind of makes the film feel rootless instead of timeless.

I’m going to have to address this movie in a couple distinct chunks, mostly because I have to deal with the opening ten to fifteen minutes separately from the rest of the film. It’s a moving segment, but it sort of seems like a low blow to open your film with a “you will find the love of your life, then she will die leaving you old and alone.” I mean, it’s certainly effective, but it seems a little unearned to basically do that in the credit sequence.

It’s especially odd since the film then turns to light hearted adventure and pairing-of-opposites comedy. It’s hard to shake off the air of melancholy from the credits, which I guess is sort of the point, but it sort of clangs a bit with the hyperactive young boy. It’s like being hassled at a funeral by a cheery youngster.

Again, I guess that’s sort of the point. We’re supposed to allow the excitement of youth keep us out of despair and loneliness, but it doesn’t seem like there’s really much of a mourning period (for the audience, at least. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed between the credits and the first proper scene of the movie). Anyway, were it not for the sense of melancholy and resentment from unearned heartstring-pulling, the remainder of the movie would have been pretty enjoyable. I have a low tolerance for the freneticness of modern animated films, but this didn’t grate too badly.

I’m fairly torn on this one. The attempts at verisimilitude end up being more annoying than anything else – pretty much every scene with the “real” Dr. Tyler are pretty unpleasant to watch (though there are scenes in the “fake” movie that are as poorly acted – Will Patton, in particular, seems like he’s wandered in from a much worse movie). On the other hand, the actual abduction storyline is more interesting than I would have guessed. I found the dialogue about owls who aren’t owls effective at conveying a particular kind of dream logic that ended up being actually creepy. The tie-in between aliens and angry Sumerian deities was interesting, if not entirely fully explained (though, really, that’s for the best – you don’t want your angry alien gods to be overly explanatory). I particularly liked the “actual video” footage of abductees being “possessed.” Distended mouths are on my short list of things that I reliably find creepy in movies, so I found that one particularly nice.

Still, there’s a lot I didn’t like here. The half-hearted attempt to introduce a level of doubt in the narrator seemed both ill-timed and hard to pull off in a movie where we’re presented with visual evidence (outside of the re-enactment framework) that supports her version of events. The fact that we were (apparently) supposed to be shocked to learn that she’s in a wheelchair was just confusing.

I really wanted to like this one, if only because I admire the chutzpah of Scorsese making an epic musical, but I just couldn’t get past the relentlessly unsympathetic protagonists. I’m not saying that filmmakers need to make their characters come across as people a viewer might want to be friends with, but they should at least be interesting. The arguments between Jimmy and Francine get endlessly repetitive, so, by the third or fourth screaming match, it just gets painfully dull. The final musical number is impressive but in more of a “Liza Minnelli is terrifying” way instead of an “empowered woman” sort of way.

One of my biggest problems with Liam Neeson is that I watched Darkman way too often as an impressionable teenager, so it’s virtually impossible for me to watch him in any sort of serious role without picturing him screaming “Take the fucking elephant!” at people. He doesn’t really get a lot of work where that sort of behavior seems in character, so I was very pleased to watch him go to town as a remorseless revenge machine here. I read Charlie Huston’s Hank Thompson books a while back and have been discussing them with my dad, and I think Bryan here is on roughly the same moral footing as Hank; there is virtually no act repellent enough to stand between him and his goal.

I wonder if this is perhaps a better projection fantasy. The viewer may not have the particular training to become a secret agent, but she can always imagine that she possesses the will to pull the trigger without hesitation that sets someone like Bryan apart.

I think this film suffers a fair bit from the later reputation of the Broken Lizard troupe. If it’s possible to judge the film on its own (nearly impossible to do, given the packaging), it’s actually a fairly well-done (if very low budget) sweet little independent romantic comedy. I can certainly see how it would have done well at festivals, but, had I seen it at the time, I would have been stunned to see the same guys come up with Super Troopers. Overall, the filmmaking is kind of rough, and it gets a little slow at times, but I still liked it, even if it bears very little resemblance to the rest of their work.

I had extremely low expectations for this one. I have no particularly interest in the Dalai Lama (except in regards to Dave Emory’s claims about his Nazi ties), and I was fairly skeptical about Scorsese’s ability to handle genres outside his comfort zone after watching Age of Innocence, but this was surprisingly enjoyable, if not particularly groundbreaking (though I am kind of amused that Scorsese is really sticking with that “looking through telescope” effect he came up with for the opening of Age of Innocence). I was particular pleased with the depiction of pre/non-Buddhist pagan elements in Tibetan Buddhism, which I don’t feel often get included in depictions of the religion.

I’m not sure how I managed to miss Mean Streets back when I was really into Scorsese at around age nineteen or so, but I am glad to have finally seen it. I know Easy Rider gets the credit for the first film to really utilize rock songs as soundtrack, but Mean Streets is the earliest example I’ve seen of a film that uses those songs in the same seamless fashion they’re used today. Scorsese backs away from the style a bit as the film progresses, but it makes the first forty minutes of so seem much more modern than the last half (though, that might be partially due to the fact that the first half is casual and well-observed, and the second half is a little overwrought and hammy).

I must say, if I wasn’t in the middle of a concerted effort to get through the entire Scorsese filmography, there is absolutely no way I would have made it more than about twenty minutes into this film. While I’m kind of amused at Scorsese’s attempts to stick with his “cross fade/slow zoom” style, despite genre conventions, this movie is just awful, though, I admit, I am not exactly the target audience for period dramas about romantic repression.