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Dan Owen reviews

DAN'S   MOVIE   DIGEST

2 0 0 4   r e t r o s p e c t i v e

P a r t   T h r e e

Thunderbirds certainly weren't go at the box office. A live-action movie of the classic 60's puppet TV series has been awaited by decades, and when it arrived courtesy of an American director... the result wasn't good. Despite a note-perfect Sophia Miles as Lady Penelope, the Spy Kids influenced project was mired by a woeful script, bad casting and iffy special effects. A disastrous "assault" on the US box office hammered the final nail in the FAB coffin. Oh, as did the Busted revamp of the theme tune!

Hellboy, a superhero movie based on a relatively obscure comic, floundered worldwide but gained some success in the US. Guillermo Del Toro directed the excellent Ron Perlman as a red-skinned demon who now works for the US government hunting down occult monsters. Hellboy was definitely different and blessed with good production design and a strong emphasis on its central characters. Sadly, though, it all rang a little hollow.

Tom Cruise turned bad in Collateral as a hitman being driven around Los Angeles by Jamie Foxx's cab driver. Michael Mann always directs with incredible vision and ensures this drive into the dark side of L.A life was riveting entertainment with some marvellous acting - particularly from Foxx.

Halle Berry may be an Oscar winner, but her win has quickly turned into a curse if Gothika and now Catwoman is anything to go by. Berry plays the titular superheroine, in an appallingly silly cat-suit. Sharon Stone played the villainess in this camp and downright stupid exercise in how not to make a comic-book movie.

Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow perplexed movie-goers and became one of the year's biggest disappointments. The movie was filmed entirely in blue-screen, in case you didn't know. Unfortunately, that's all anyone seemed to know about the movie thanks to duff marketing that put the effects-work before the characters and plot. Sadly, the characters are fairly wooden and the plot is one long clich�. There is style and production polish occasionally, but this is one B-movie adventure they don't make any more for a reason!

Finding Neverland was a "serious movie" that found success and will hopefully win a few Academy Awards next year, with Johnny Depp playing Peter Pan author J.M Barrie alongside Kate Winslett. A beautiful and well-acted biography of a somewhat overlooked talent and with a phenomenal turn from child-actor Freddie Highmore (now taking the title role in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, alongside Depp!)

Alien Vs Predator was widely despised before its release - thanks to the presence of rent-a-hack Paul W.S Anderson behind the camera - AVP is a cynical marketing ploy to pull in fans of the Alien and Predator franchises. The fact it works is down to deep-seated love for the sci-fi monsters on display here, although AVP is never half as bad as you're probably expecting. There's enough low-brow fun and violent fisticuffs to keep most people happy, just don't expect anything equalling James Cameron's Aliens.

There are always movies with "bad productions" and The Exorcist: The Beginning is perhaps the new daddy of them all. Taxi Driver. screenwriter Paul Schader completed the prequel to the 70's classic and was told it just wasn't scary enough and the studio canned it entirely. Amazingly, they then hired Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) to recast and reshoot the movie with more blood and shocks. The result? A mess of a movie with barely a redeemable feature and another cynical parasite of William Friedkin's masterful original.

The Grudge amazed many people when it did great business worldwide, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as a nanny living in Japan who discovers a sinister building cursed by bitter ghosts. This remake by the original's Japanese director was hardly original, and did lift some elements from The Ring, but it's hard to deny it's a genuinely affecting horror with plenty of scares and a few masterly moments of menace.

Following Pixar's Finding Nemo, Dreamworks also dived into the fishy world of animation for their altogether more "hip" movie Shark Tale. Featuring the vocal talents of Will Smith, Jack Black, Robert DeNiro, Angelina Jolie and Martin Scorsese, the movie was expected to be a huge success. It was commercially, but failed critically. After Dreamworks' success with the Shrek movies, Shark Tale should make the studio realize that Pixar's devotion to decent characters and lack of product placement (Coral Cola?) is a vital part of the game.

Not content with Hero, the same director also bettered that movie a mere few months later with House Of Flying Daggers. It's another sumptuous wonder of creativity and retina-jazzing production design. Quite simply a masterful experience from an expert director in his field - this really does put Western action movies to shame.

Bridget Jones returned in The Edge Of Reason, again starring the excellent Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant. For many this was a mildly entertaining sequel, although it's painfully obvious it's treading water much of the time and resembles a remake of its own predecessor more than anything else. Disappointing but entertaining fluff.

Showing Dreamworks how it's done, Brad Bird (The Iron Giant) teamed up with CGI powerhouse Pixar to bring The Incredibles to life. It was the story of a family of outlawed superheroes now hiding in suburban America and keeping their superpowers under wraps... until a dastardly villain lures The Incredibles back into action. Wonderful animation, gorgeous scenery, excellent characterisation, punchy music, great jokes and an engaging story - everything we've come to expect from Pixar. The only downside is that one day, when they do make a stinker, it's really going to be a fall from a massive height!

Director Robert Zemeckis pushed the boundaries of special-effects with seasonal Christmas family adventure The Polar Express. This was a computer animation where every character was motion-captured by real actors to give a startlingly realistic "painterly" look to the animation. Think Gollum meets Van Gogh! Starring Tom Hanks in a variety of roles (including Santa Claus himself) The Polar Express became a modest hit with a great deal of technical brilliance, but was altogether a little too saccharine and flimsy to be a true blockbuster.

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2007 Retrospective: Part One 2007 Retrospective: Part Two 2007 Retrospective: Part Three 2007 Retrospective: Part Four

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2006 Retrospective: Part One 2006 Retrospective: Part Two 2006 Retrospective: Part Three 2006 Retrospective: Part Four

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