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Off to the Cinema
Aug. 19th, 2002 01:24 pmSaw two current films over the last few days...
Blood Work: Ever since Unforgiven, I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood-directed films, and of Eastwood. He's comfortable with his image as a star, with the passage of time, and with other actors. (The best performance that Kevin Costner ever gave was in Eastwood's A Perfect World.) This is a good thing because Blood Work is a very conventional thriller that swings wildly between being totally ludicrous and being totally predictable.
Eastwood gives a strong performance as a retired FBI profiler who just received a new heart and who is asked to find the man who killed the woman whose heart he now has. He's still a tough guy, but one who isn't a tough as he'd like to be while his body recovers. The cast also includes Angelica Huston and Jeff Daniels, both of whom play well off Eastwood. There is little here that we haven't seen before, but a well-written screenplay gives the actors enough to do to keep me engaged for two hours. There are worse ways to spend a hot summer's afternoon.
Lilo and Stitch: Disney triumphs again. This hysterical, handsome-drawn comedy adventure continues the string of well-made non-musicals that do the job without any singing cute animals or talking umbrella stands. This is also the second animated comedy from Disney in the past two years, and given how funny both this and Emperor's New Groove are, I wonder what Disney was thinking all those years it shied away from the funny cartoon.
There is much to note here, from the good voice acting - special kudos to Ving Rhames and David Ogden Stiers - to the likeable characters to the effective use of Hawaii. But let me note one thing: Noni's belly. Noni is Lilo's pretty 20-ish sister. She tends to dress in belly-revealing clothing, like I guess anyone in Hawaiian heat might. But if you look closely, she actually has a belly there, not something so imposssibly flat that you couldn't take a measurement. In other words, she is attractive but realistic. All the people we see here are like that. This is not the usual idealized world of perfect princesses and princes. daresay that this is a huge leap for Disney away from the Barbie dolls of years past.
This is not a perfect film - there are a few plotholes and sometimes things happen a bit abruptly - but once again the old-fashioned animators of Disney have come through. This could have worked, maybe, as a a CGI film, but why waste your time with that when it worked so darned well this way?
Blood Work: Ever since Unforgiven, I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood-directed films, and of Eastwood. He's comfortable with his image as a star, with the passage of time, and with other actors. (The best performance that Kevin Costner ever gave was in Eastwood's A Perfect World.) This is a good thing because Blood Work is a very conventional thriller that swings wildly between being totally ludicrous and being totally predictable.
Eastwood gives a strong performance as a retired FBI profiler who just received a new heart and who is asked to find the man who killed the woman whose heart he now has. He's still a tough guy, but one who isn't a tough as he'd like to be while his body recovers. The cast also includes Angelica Huston and Jeff Daniels, both of whom play well off Eastwood. There is little here that we haven't seen before, but a well-written screenplay gives the actors enough to do to keep me engaged for two hours. There are worse ways to spend a hot summer's afternoon.
Lilo and Stitch: Disney triumphs again. This hysterical, handsome-drawn comedy adventure continues the string of well-made non-musicals that do the job without any singing cute animals or talking umbrella stands. This is also the second animated comedy from Disney in the past two years, and given how funny both this and Emperor's New Groove are, I wonder what Disney was thinking all those years it shied away from the funny cartoon.
There is much to note here, from the good voice acting - special kudos to Ving Rhames and David Ogden Stiers - to the likeable characters to the effective use of Hawaii. But let me note one thing: Noni's belly. Noni is Lilo's pretty 20-ish sister. She tends to dress in belly-revealing clothing, like I guess anyone in Hawaiian heat might. But if you look closely, she actually has a belly there, not something so imposssibly flat that you couldn't take a measurement. In other words, she is attractive but realistic. All the people we see here are like that. This is not the usual idealized world of perfect princesses and princes. daresay that this is a huge leap for Disney away from the Barbie dolls of years past.
This is not a perfect film - there are a few plotholes and sometimes things happen a bit abruptly - but once again the old-fashioned animators of Disney have come through. This could have worked, maybe, as a a CGI film, but why waste your time with that when it worked so darned well this way?
