Fantasy

YesterMovies Rewind: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

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rewind

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Cannon Films 1987.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Cannon Films 1987.

Five years ago this month, Yesterday’s Movies officially began. To celebrate half a decade of movie reviews, I’m rewatching some of the highlights and giving them second-look reviews. This week I’m taking another look at the worst movie I ever reviewed, Superman IV.

I remember this being a completely irredeemable movie. The acting phoned in, the story misguided and nonsensical, and the special effects being too terrible to forgive. The only time I couldn’t recommend anyone watch it. So I’m gonna watch it again!

I’m really hoping I’ll find something good about it that I missed the first time. The story is what it is because Christopher Reeve believed in its message, so hopefully I’ll find at least him to be fully committed to the result.

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YesterMovies Rewind: L.A. Story

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L.A. Story. Carolco Pictures, 1991.
L.A. Story. Carolco Pictures, 1991.

Five years ago, on December 4, 2009, Yesterday’s Movies officially began. To celebrate half a decade of movie reviews, I’m rewatching some of the highlights and giving them second-look reviews. I’m kicking it off with a look back at the best reviewing experience I had, L.A. Story.

As I recall, I’d heard the film spoken of glowingly, but never expected it to be much more than one more copy-paste romantic comedy. I didn’t expect the amount of fun, warmth, and satire, and I certainly didn’t expect the element of fantasy. At this point the main thing I remember about the plot is that Steve Martin falls in love with a woman he probably shouldn’t. Also there’s a cameo with Patrick Stewart.

I’m concerned that it won’t be as good as I remember, simply because so much of my impression was born from the gulf between what I expected and what I actually saw.

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Gulliver’s Travels

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Gulliver's Travels. Fleischer Studios 1939.
Gulliver’s Travels. Fleischer Studios 1939.

Before watching the movie:

This is a story that gets remade every so often, probably because the state of film technology marches on and someone decides they can do better than the last one. Certainly, the recent version with Jack Black established the look very realistically. However, hardly anyone has adapted the entire book, and the title is almost universally considered to refer to only the Lilliput section, which this appears to do. Brobdingnang sometimes gets included since it’s just the reverse of the scale effect, but to my knowledge no version, or at least no enduring version, has attempted, for example, the island of the horse people. Not even the Harryhousen-powered The Three Worlds of Gulliver tried.

This is a staging by another great name in animation and effects, Fleischer Studios. I feel animation is underrepresented on this site, and I’m glad to bring in a historically significant animated feature now. I’ve never really cared much for the Fleischer style, so much as I’ve seen it, but Fleischer didn’t really endure long enough to develop as well as Disney and Warner Bros. did. But it should serve to tell the story adequately.

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High Spirits

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High Spirits. Something 1988.
High Spirits. Palace Pictures 1988.

Before watching the movie:

I’d never heard of this movie when I came across it, and to be honest, I didn’t put a lot of thought into enqueuing it. I searched for a few widely known Peter O’Toole movies and this came up as a similar title. Comedy, ghosts, Irish castle, I’ll take it. He seems to have been in a lot of odd movies later in his career, which are coming to the surface first.

I’ve only recently begun to notice the… charisma(?) of Steve Guttenberg, and I’m reluctant to classify the strengths of Daryl Hannah just yet for fear of putting her in a box.

The flying bed in the poster reminds me far too much of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Anonymous Content 2004.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Anonymous Content 2004.

Before watching the movie:

The basic plot seems attractive enough, as I’ve always been fascinated by explorations of mind and memory. I was even more interested when I learned about the dream imagery included. And I’m interested in Jim Carrey, even though I’m pretty sure he’s in a purely dramatic role here.

The reason I’ve never gotten to this is because it seems entirely concerned with the emotional drama, which is something I’m rarely in the mood for, especially at a feature-length scale. And so it’s now eligible to be among the movies this blog has given me a kick into seeing.
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Flash Gordon

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Flash Gordon. Starling Films 1980.
Flash Gordon. Starling Films 1980.

Before watching the movie:

I’ve been wanting to see this movie ever since I learned while reviewing Highlander that Queen did music for it. That is the biggest selling point of this movie for me, and will likely be the best thing about it, even if it does turn out to be an effective update of a campy adventure serial. I’m just not sure this sort of thing can be done seriously anymore.

I was surprised to learn from the box that Flash is a football player. Some quick research showed that in the original comics, he was a polo player, so that’s not a big change. I never picked up on him being an athlete. I should probably invest more time in familiarizing myself with source material.

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Small Soldiers

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Small Soldiers. Dreamworks 1998.
Small Soldiers. Dreamworks Pictures 1998.

Before watching the movie:

So. Toys come to life. War toys are violent. This sounds familiar. But it has a cult following, it’s been praised for its writing, it has some familiar names I like, and I’m in the mood for a violent comedy right now.

The marketing is entirely focused on the living toys, so I actually have no idea what the overall aesthetic of the movie is. I really want it to be stop-motion style toys in a live-action environment, but I expect I will be disappointed. For one thing, I want them to be in 12 frames per second, but that would clash with the live action as stupidly as the ED-209 did in RoboCop.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

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Journey to the Center of the Earth. 20th Century Fox 1959.
Journey to the Center of the Earth. 20th Century Fox 1959.

Before watching the movie:

It seems like this is Jules Verne’s most-adapted story, and it’s widely different from version to version. That’s probably because from what I remember of the book, there isn’t so much plot as an excuse to go on a low-tech sci-fi adventure. Exotic locations, exciting science, and fights with dinosaurs. If anyone else had been doing what Verne was doing at the time, we might consider him a pulp author.

So coming into this, I’m mainly expecting some high-budget, relatively innocent excitement. The blockbuster movie of the 1950s. I’m also interested in seeing how much of the parts of Verne’s book that aren’t “dinosaurs underground” still remains.

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Toys

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Toys. Baltimore Pictures 1992.
Toys. Baltimore Pictures 1992.

Before watching the movie:

Yet another that’s been sitting on my list forever, continuing what will hopefully be a trend for the next few weeks.

I first saw this on a library shelf what seems like millennia ago. It probably was last millennium, actually. I recall it was during my period shortly after connecting the Robin Williams from Flubber to the voice of the Genie in Aladdin and deciding I wanted to see everything he’d ever done. That came to a halt long before I came close to doing that, though, which is why I can review this now.

Why didn’t I take it from the shelf then? I think the idea of building toys to go to war gave me a sense it was darker than I wanted, and also I was probably under the age of 13. We took “Parental Guidance, possibly inappropriate for children under 13” very seriously in our house. I did sneak Jakob the Liar once sometime when I was twelve. I probably would have been better off with Toys.

I’m kind of glad I didn’t see it then, though. Not only is it going to provide me with review fodder now, but I’ve also lately been revisiting some things I saw at a very young age and musing on how I wasted my First Watch of them when I wasn’t capable of appreciating the subtleties of storytelling and acting. And I wouldn’t have known who Michael Gambon was then.

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