Super Mario World

Super Mario World; animated fantasy series, USA, 1991; D: John Grusd, S: Walker Boone, Tony Rosato, Andrew Sabiston, Harvey Atkin, Tracey Moore, John Stocker, Michael Stark




Plumber brothers Mario and Luigi now live in prehistoric world inhabited by dinosaur Yoshi and cave people. They try to arrange it by their birthplace New York. They again protect princess Toadstool from reptile Bowser Koopa and his kids Cheatsie, Kooky, Hip, Hop, Bully, Kootie Pie and Big Mouth. In numerous adventures, Mario invents the telephone and the wheel; Koopa stages a circus or an improvised TV-station; whereas Luigi tells Yoshi how they met...

The final American animated series about Mario, "Super Mario World" is considered better than the weakest, first cartoon, "Super Mario Bros. Super Show", but a step back when compared to the arguably most engaging TV show, "Super Mario Bros. 3". Once again, it's a pity that such animated series depend on the changes of the authors of the video games, which makes them inconsistent and it turns out they are playing more with the feelings of the fans of the heroes than with the video games: all of the characters' relationships from the previous two shows are here completely eradicated. Still, the prehistoric dinosaur world is wonderfully cheerful whereas they ironically did well when they replaced the slightly annoying Toad with incredibly sympathetic Yoshi, who is a much better sidekick. "Super Mario World" has only 13 episodes with a 10 minute running time and is thus easily watchable.

One must also mention the music, which is the best of all three Mario animated shows. Unfortunately, the animation and the jokes are bland, some of which even borrow from "The Flintstones" (a lizard as a pipe wrench), while the story doesn't have a beginning or an end. That way it all stays just "hanging there". Too bad. The authors demonstrated excellent potentials only in two episodes - "Mama Luigi", written by Phil Harnage (an irresistibly sweet episode that is incredibly adventurously fun in showing how Luigi met baby Yoshi, riding on dolphins, drying his hat and commenting: "Compared to this dinosaur, Mario eats little.") and "Gopher Bash", written by Brooks Wachtel (culminating in Cheatsie's ontological cynical line "Don't just help him, stand there!" as well as "cartoonish" facial expression after he sees Mario, Luigi and Yoshi) - and to some extent in episodes "The Wheel Thing" and "Send in the Clowns", yet the rest is just standard fluff with mild inspiration, lacking that real spark that does not completely exploit the melancholic possibilities of the two plumbers who have to chose between theirs and this world, though it is a watchable, harmless solid fun with a few interesting "abstract" moments, as always when Mario and Luigi get their super powers.

Grade:+

Henry Poole Is Here

Henry Poole Is Here; Drama/ Comedy, USA, 2008; D: Mark Pellington, S: Luke Wilson, Adriana Barraza, Radha Mitchell, Morgan Lily, George Lopez

A mysterious but sloppy stranger, Henry Poole, buys a house somewhere in California and just stays laxly there, not caring for anyone or anything. He drinks and remains secluded towards his neighbors. However, one day his Mexican neighbor Esperanza spots a water stain on his wall and perceives it as the face of Jesus Christ. Henry is annoyed by this, but two miracles happen when two people touch it: girl Patience, who doesn't need glasses anymore, and little girl Millie, who starts talking after a year of being mute, causing her single mother Dawn to start a relationship with Henry. He finally admits her that he was diagnosed with a terminal disease. When he destroys the wall, he lands in a hospital, but it turns out he is not sick anymore.

An unobtrusive little film, "Henry Poole is Here" works both as a light spiritual film about some mysterious in life as well as a gentle satire on religious people who see divine apparitions in unusual places, in this case, the face of Jesus Christ in a water stain on the wall. The film is the best in the first half, when it takes on a humorous approach towards the matter, while Luke Wilson is very good as the sceptical, slightly sloppy title hero who just sees it as a normal water stain on the wall. It turns heavily sentimental and pretentious towards the end, which is unsuitable for such a simple, one-note concept, yet all in all it is a pleasant, mostly harmless fun that juggles somewhere between drama and comedy. However, it has two great quotes. In the first, Esperanza tells how she expected she was never going to get married, until she met her husband and spent so much happy time with him that she "didn't even remember how it is to be sad anymore". In the second, Henry confronts her about the "miraculous" water stain: "You just want me to believe because that way your own beliefs seem more real".

Grade:++

Open Your Eyes

Abre los ojos; science-fiction drama, Spain / France / Italy, 1997; D: Alejandro Amenábar; S: Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Chete Lera, Fele Martinez

Cesar, with a mask on his face, tells his story to a psychiatrist: he was a successful businessman, attractive, rich, with a lot of a women for one night. His last lover is Nuria. On his birthday, he meets Sofia, the girlfriend of Pelay. Nuria is jealous so she drives him into a car crash: she dies, while his face gets mutilated. From there on, Sofia avoids him... But suddenly, she starts loving him again and the doctors restore his face. When he spots Nuria, he kills her. He and the psychiatrist go to L.E., a company that can hibernate life. Cesar realizes that he actually lives in a dream: he signed a contract in L.E. and in the year 2145 voluntarily went into a machine that creates an artificial, pleasant memory-dream world in his mind. He jumps off a building and wakes up.

A semi-forerunner to Nolan's "Inception" and Wachowski's "The Matrix", a European movie that was so intellectually stimulating in its concept of simulated reality that it even led to the American remake "Vanilla Sky", "Open Your Eyes" is an interesting little science-fiction film involving dreams where director Alejando Amenabar likes sudden twists and leads them skillfully and precisely, but they don't fit in entirely. The story is the best in the first half: the superficial hero Cesar falls in love for the first time, in Sofia, who is played excellently and shrill by Penelope Cruz. There's a nice scene in her apartment that wonderfully displays her charm, when she draws a caricature of him in the form of a "dude" with a car and a bunch of money, while he made a serious-realistic portrait of her. The story contemplates how all our lives are hanging by a thread, since after the car crash, Cesar becomes ugly and thus loses all he had in his life: it speaks volumes about friends who only stay because someone is attractive and popular, not because they care about someone's character. The plot twist, that transports it from a normal into a surreal, science-fiction story, is rather problematic; namely, it turns out his whole life, presented in the film, is an artificial dream. The film has a great style and the dreamy scenes, with grainy cinematography, are the most realistically conceived and close to a real dream to date, yet the concept carries a crucial problem: it is revealed only 5 minutes before the end of the film. And that is a problem. Even "The Truman Show" and "Groundhog Day" had great unusual stories, but they did not set in just 5 minutes before the end, and were instead developed already earlier. This way, unfortunately, "Eyes" did not exploit all the possibilities and is closer to the one-note concept similar to "The Sixth Sense" than to the above mentioned two films. However, it is so unusual and different that it became one of the most notable Spanish films of the 90s.

Grade:++

Donkey

Kenjac; Drama, Croatia/ BiH/ UK/ Serbia, 2009; D: Antonio Nuić, S: Nebojša Glogovac, Nataša Janjić, Ljubo Kapor, Emir Hadžihafizbegović, Roko Roglić, Tonko Lonza

Croatia, a few days before Operation Storm. Boro, his wife Jasna and their son Luka arrive from Zagreb to a small village in Herzegovina to visit the place where he was born. Once there, Boro discovers that his brother Petar, who managed to escape from the siege of Sarajevo, is now in wheelchair after he was injured. In the meantime, the old Ante persuades an old woman to transport a donkey to his estate so that he can try to sell it for her. Boro is anxious, ignoring Jasna because he wanted her to give a birth to a daughter for him. But there's more: Jasna discovers that Paško, Boro's aggressive and abusive father, drove his mother to suicide. Boro finally confronts Paško who confesses him that he never loved his wife but that the marriage was already arranged. In order to try to make it up for his behavior, Paško buys off the donkey for 1,000 Euros to cheer up Luka who pitied the animal. As the family leaves back for Zagreb, Ante now has both the money and the donkey.

The talented director Antonio Nuic didn't demonstrate a lot in the pale, thin drama "Donkey", a film that is as unattractive both in its title as well as in its content. After a great, stylish intro involving just a panorama shot of a long queue of soldiers walking up a road on a hill, "Donkey" comes to a virtual standstill because it has almost nothing to offer than the already a thousand times seen story about a man, Boro, in an argument with his wife and his father. In one scene, Boro drives his brother Petar in a wheelchair, until he looks at the sky at night and says: "Look at the sky. It's as if you can reach out and touch it!" - that is bland writing, and unfortunately the majority of the dialogues is equally as (un)inspiring. It's not a good sign when already half-way into the film you notice that it has only 3 interesting moments. Also, the setting of the story during Operation Storm is completely irrelevant to the plot: when they hear on the radio about it, they act as if nothing happened. That is not a natural reaction. Here and there only the kid actor Roko Roglic manages to steal the show and lift the film up a bit, like in the scene where he is looking at the donkey standing in night - his father then has this amusing dialogue with him: "What are you doing here so late at night?" - "The donkey is bored." - "Why do you say that?" - "Because it is not sleeping." - "It is sleeping." - "But it's standing!" - "Donkey's sleep while standing!" - "But its eyes are open, he is watching us, he can't be asleep!" The amusing end, a resolution to the dramatic conflict involving the donkey, is charming but also overrated and not half as good as it should have been to be a real payoff for the film.

Grade:+

Lethal Weapon 4

Lethal Weapon 4; Action comedy, USA, 1998; D: Richard Donner, S: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Chris Rock, Jet Li, Kim Chan

It became complicated for police seargents Riggs, who is about to become a father, and Murtaugh, who is about to become a grandfather. When one criminal is burning the neighborhood with a flamethrower, Murtaugh takes his clothes off in the rain to distract him, whereas Riggs immobilizes him. 6 months later, while sailing on Getz's ship, they hear a gunshot and conclude that illegal Chinese immigrants are being transported on a tanker. Murtaugh even adopts one Chinese family. They stumble upon the Triad criminal Wah Sing Ku and stop his counterfeit plans.

6 years were needed until Richard Donner manage to persuade Mel Gibson to appear one last time in his famous role as police detective Riggs in "Lethal Weapon 4", the final part of the film series. Even though it was the most expensive and the 2nd most commercial addition to the series, only the original actors still remind us of the classic characters from the first three films, but not their procedures anymore. The opening where Danny Glover's character Murtaugh strips and walks only in his underwear in rain in order to "distract" a (mad?) flame-thrower is arguably the most silly-naive gag in the whole film series, Joe Pesci again received an unthankful role of a guy who gets humiliated by everyone whereas this time there are surprisingly little action sequences present. Still, despite being the weakest - and the most harmless - of the four films, part 4 is still easily watchable and offers a light, but solid fun with a few interesting ideas (shooting under water).

Grade:++

Lethal Weapon 3

Lethal Weapon 3; action thriller, USA, 1992; D: Richard Donner, S: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo

Police Detective Murtaugh has only 7 days left before retirement, but his partner Riggs uses a pocket knife to cut the wrong wire while trying to deactivate the bomb, which is why it goes off and blows up the whole building. The duo thus gets degraded to street patrol. Still, they get promoted again when they stop a bank robbery and get a new partner, Lorna Cole. Their new enemy is ex-cop Jack Travis who sells special bullets, that can penetrate bullet-proof vests, to criminals. Murtaugh and Riggs are also again annoyed by the fast talking Getz. Riggs and Cole start a relationship and kill Travis, whereas Murtaugh changes his mind and postpones his retirement for a few years.

The third part of the "Lethal Weapon" series somewhat schematically repeated the tried formula of a blend of action and humor, yet due to a bigger budget and crystal clear cinematography is seems more glamorous—and has more broken cars. The oscillation of quality will continue even in part 4 due to overcrowded characters in the story, and it is a problem here, too: the new character addition, played by Rene Russo, did not receive some especially good dialogue, whereas Joe Pesci got an unthankfully written role of a goon who gets humiliated by everyone. However, the opening, where Riggs goofs while trying to deactivate a bomb in a building, is hilarious, whereas his cynicism is continuing in the scene where he puts a bag over a parking machine or when he talks with Murtaugh's daughter over the phone ("Hi, honey! Where are you, I miss you..."). This third film is somehow more relaxed than the predecessors and contains good action sequences (i.e. Riggs shoots at the gasoline in the air, it ignites and falls on the bad guy), with a lot more humor, which is why this is still a good film.

Grade:++

Lethal Weapon 2

Lethal Weapon 2; action thriller; USA, 1989; D: Richard Donner, S: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland

Police Detectives Riggs and Murtaugh are chasing after smugglers, but fail to capture them. They discover that the embassy of South Africa is involved in the smuggling, which is a very problematic situation - namely, it is prohibited by law to arrest ambassadors, which suits the bad guys fine. Also, Riggs and Murtaugh have to watch out after the protected witness Leo Getz, who annoys them with his babble. The bad guys place a bomb under Murtaughs toilet seat, but the SWAT team and Riggs manage to save him. They stop their ship and shoot Rudd, the diplomat.

The sequel to the 'hard boiled' original, "Lethal Weapon 2" is considered by some to be an even better addendum to the action series, even though it also has a fair share of heavy handed moments. The two heroes are placed as 'tough altruists' who bring justice the violent way, the dialogue is wooden, whereas Riggs' romance with the bad guy's secretary ends up in a completely tedious manner. Still, there is a lot of fun: at the start of the film, the police officers bet over whether they will catch the criminals or not; Murtaugh gets flabbergasted when he finds out that his daughter stars in a TV commercial for condoms; the bad guys cynically place a bomb under Murtaugh's toilet seat, leaving him sitting there waiting for the SWAT team, but they also place it in bizarre places to assassinate other cops (one police officer opens his refrigerator and his house explodes). In some better hands, this fun film could have turned out into a little classic, like "Die Hard" or "Hard Boiled", since the blatant Apartheid accusations are a little bit cheap, yet the film still has its moments.

Grade:++

Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon; action, USA, 1987; D: Richard Donner, S: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Mitchell Ryan, Darlene Love, Tom Atkins, Traci Wolfe

Numerous heroin smugglers, remnants of former paramilitaries from the Vietnam War, have found their sanctuary in Los Angeles. Among the police officers who are trying to arrest them is the African-American Roger Murtaugh who gets a new partner, Martin Riggs. Roger is a family man averse to action, but it turns out that Martin is his exact opposite, a hysterical, unpredictable and suicidal cop who still has trouble coping with the death of his wife in a car accident. Despite their contradictions, the two of them will become great partners. The bad guys kidnaps Roger's daughter, but she is saved, Roger shoots McAllister, whereas Martin eliminates the villain Joshua. Roger invites Martin at his home for Christmas.

Ultra-fast action film, "Lethal Weapon" is a successful and well made mainstream product, as well as a commercial one since it grossed solidly at the box office. Crammed with chases, shooting and humor, where rhythm is more important than the plot, and snappy dialogues by screenwriter Shane Black, this "buddy cop" film will not leave many indifferent and not amused, especially thanks to a dynamic interaction between Danny Glover and Mel Gibson as Murtaugh and Riggs. This is one of the cinematic bastions of the 80s—the aesthetic cinematography dazzles with crystal clear images, and several situations are highly unusual and unpredictable. In one near the opening act, cop Riggs is captured by a criminal who holds him at gunpoint, but Riggs actually encourages the cops around him to shoot him anyway. 

In another, when the police is securing the ground because a man threatens to jump off from the top of the building, Riggs climbs up, handcuffs said man and then jumps with him (!) together. Another comical sequence in the shooting range has Murtaugh showing off by shooting at a paper target, revealing a bullet hole in the middle of the paper head, but Riggs tops it when he just shoots six more rounds, brings the paper target closer, and thus reveals that he made a "smiley" face around Murtaugh's original bullet hole. However, "Lethal Weapon" has some plot holes—it's not clear what the villains want from Hunsaker, to scare him or to kill him, since by killing his daughter they lost all ability to blackmail him, and they could have killed him before he talked to Murtaugh—and the final act is much weaker, featuring sadism and some cheap 'hard boiled' elements that are occasionally bothersome (when the bad guy is torturing Gibson's Riggs with electricity), whereas Riggs' final fight is banal. Nontheless, "Lethal Weapon" flows so smoothly than one can forgive even its weaker moments.

Grade:+++

Barb Wire

Barb Wire; science-fiction action; USA, 1996; D: David Hogan, S: Pamela Anderson, Temuera Morrison, Victoria Rowell, Xander Berkeley, Udo Kier

In 2017, the Second American Civil War broke out. Steel Harbor is the last free city in the US. It is there where the blond macho girl Barb Wire runs her bar, "Hammerhead", and often has to do extra jobs, like saving a kidnapped girl, in order to pay her staff. The Chief of Police Willis half-heartedly raids her bar and is actually her friend. One day, the leader of the resistance movement, Dr. Cora, arrives in her bar and brings her husband, Barb's ex-boyfriend Axel who left her without explanation years ago. Despite her grudge against him, she helps Axel and Cora escape to the free Canada, away from the Congresionals, while she stays with Willis.

A strange modern re-telling of "Casablanca" set in the futuristic US and with a blond woman taking over Bogart's part, "Barb Wire" is a 'guilty pleasure', a trashy film that never manages to be as fun as it could have been, but is still amusing to watch nonetheless. The critics were a little bit too harsh towards it: the film has only two truly terrible sequences (the 'fake hooker' moment and Big Fatso), while other than that it is a watchable and rather fluent "light" science-fiction action film where Pamela Anderson is actually very good in the leading role as the macho girl Barb Wire, delivering arguably one of her lifetime performances thanks to a few humorous dialogues ("I do believe I'm falling in love", says Willis, and she replies with: "Get in line!"), though Udo Kier also steals a few scenes as her cynical assistant. One has to admit that "Barb Wire" is really not sloppily directed, whereas the cinematography is stunning, yet the film lacks suspense, humor, style, spirit, developed characters and much more that would attach the viewers into an active movie experience or what would offer something more except for Pamela's body.

Grade:+

From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity; drama / war, USA, 1953; D: Fred Zinnemann, S: Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancester, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra, Philip Ober, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Warden

Hawaii, a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Soldier Prewitt arrives at his military base. The egoistical Captain Holmes immediately wants to have him to win the boxing match for his Company, but Prewitt vowed never to fight again after he accidentally punched a fighter so hard he lost his sight. Thus, Holmes' goal is to make his life at the base as unpleasant as possible until he agrees to the boxing match. Still, Prewitt meets Lorene in a night bar and falls in love with her. Sergeant Warden, on the other hand, is having an affair with Holmes' wife Karen. After Prewitt's good friend Maggio deserts his post to drink at the night bar, he is arrested and brought to the military prison run by his arch enemy "Fatso" who beats him heavily. After Maggio dies, Prewitt kills "Fatso" and hides at Lorene's place, wounded. When the attack on Pearl Harbor starts, Prewitt decides to return to his unit, but is shot and killed in a misunderstanding. Lorene and Karen leave Hawaii on a ship.

The famous scene of a couple kissing and lying on the beach, indifferent to the sea waves splashing them, originates from the classic and critically acclaimed film "From Here to Eternity", winner of numerous awards; it does not reach the grasp of a masterwork, but it is still nonetheless an excellent achievement. At first glance, the modern viewers may wonder what is the difference between a TV soap opera and this film, but after viewing it the fundamental differences will slowly start to become more and more apparent and undeniable, most notably in the compact story written with care and intelligence. Some of the dialogues are simply plain clever, like in the scene where Sergeant Warden arrives at Karen's home in the middle of the rainy night and she has this conversation with him: "If you're looking for the Captain, he ain't here." - "And if I ain't looking for the Captain?" - "Then he still ain't here."

Montgomery Clift is brilliant while Frank Sinatra may have won his best supporting actor awards only because he plays a 'pity character', yet his hyped performance as Maggio is still a great role, if anything just for the funny scene where he drinks; Lorene tells him: "Drinking is a weakness", and he replies: "I grant you that!" She then asks Prewitt: "You don't like weakness, do you?" and replies with: "No, I don't like weakness...but I like to drink!" Having the Pearl Harbor attack show up only in the last 13 minutes of the film, the story achieves an interesting setting: life was not idyllic and peaceful before the start of World War II, it was always a conflict. It is a story about loyalty and honor, clearly showing how Prewitt was bullied by others because he did not want to attend the boxing match, fighting his "personal war" for integrity ("You guys want to put the screws on, go right ahead. I can take anything you can dish out.") against his enemies, the egoistical Captain and Prison Sergeant. It may be an uneven shift from a normal drama to a war film, but it somehow works all right: the characters are "shaken away" from their problems by bigger things in life.

Grade:+++