SF and Fantasy Movie Reviews Starting With P
Panda! Go Panda! (1972 Japan) 
Genres: Kid F Adv Com
It's Miyazaki for the really little kids -- easy and mellow. There's plenty to amuse the sensitive adult, but it helps if the adult is also vicariously enjoying the kids' enjoyment or else he is a serious Miyazaki fan, otherwise he might get bored; this is not the kind of extravaganza that Miyazaki's later work became.
Technically there's two separate short movies on this DVD; the first title is as given, while the second is Panda! Go Panda! & the Rainy-Day Circus, where we learn that unlike us crybabies, the Japanese delight in floods. They are disturbed only by really big disasters like tsunamis and volcanoes and atom bombs and Godzilla, and treat natural disasters of smaller caliber as light entertainment.
Pete's Dragon (1977) NR
Genres: Ani F Kid
Watched: 30 min
When I was about nine I walked out because I was bored.
P.I.: Post Impact (2004) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: 15 min
Guest review: SciFi Channel has now made all the possible one-topic movies. And so now they must double up. This one has a comet that causes an ice age, but also an evil satellite that's blasting everything.
Oddly the military seems to be reasonable -- they're gruff but not completely insane and they're out to do good.
There's some amazing geological activity going on here! It causes giant ice spears to shoot out of the ground. One speared their truck so they're dangling way up in the air now . . .
A says: I don't see why it's so amazing. So on top of everything there's earthquakes, why not, and the ice spears are like blackheads in the frozen ground, so if you squeeze the ground they pop out.
Picking Up the Pieces (2000)
Genres: Com MR
Stars Woody Allen and Sharon Stone. Nice laid-back black comedy with magic effortlessly woven in. Well it's sometimes laid-back, sometimes speeds up and gets pretty crazy, kind of does this and that to its own tune. It's quite enjoyable.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976 UK)
Genres: F Dra
The novel this is adapted from is ridiculous. Poor Wilde wrote about what was close to his heart, but the decision to conform it to be socially acceptable warped it utterly. The beginning gave me hysterics -- I'm afraid not the good sort -- and by the middle I was unable to proceed. It might have worked as an underground gay sexy fantasy, but then Wilde wouldn't have gotten paid, and he had money trouble. The pressure to make money is often very useful to an artist's art so it shouldn't be thoughtlessly deplored, but this wasn't one of those instances.
I wouldn't have chosen quite the same chunk of material for the adaptation, but it's not that bad. I don't think they gave any sense of how Dorian passed his later years. By then I was bored and fast-forwarding some, but I think it's still true. And they really screwed up with that first glimpse of the picture after the actress affair: that's not what was supposed to have happened to it.
The acting is mostly good. The biggest problem is Dorian himself. Is this the most beautiful youth they could find? Good grief. Although in the picture he isn't bad looking: younger, cuter, and more ideally innocent and boyish. Still, even there he's no Bosie. That photo that can be found online of Wilde with Bosie together looks obscene -- Wilde bending over him like a big grotesque beetle, and Bosie so pretty it hurts.
Well, this version is good at maintaining the same degree of hints at gayness as the original. And the acting is so British that the whole almost works.
The Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
Genres: Act Adv F Hor
The plot has some problems, but they got lots of things right, down to the details. Like the spurned lover: he isn't a caricature; he is a competent and honorable leader, though too square to be attractive to the young lady. And her father, the governor, when he's told to lock himself in the cabin and not fight, that's what he does, although he has to fight an errant disembodied arm. The girl inexplicably develops some sword-fighting skill in the final battle; that's sort of lame but it's a minor point.
The worst plot problem and the scariest thing in the movie is: The male love interest's (I don't mean the love interest of the female viewership and probably much of the male viewership, I mean the much dorkier-looking one) father was cursed along with the pirates and then the pirates tied him to a cannon ball and sank him in the sea and then like ten years later the curse was lifted, the curse under which the cursee can't die until it's lifted!!! The worst thing about it is that everyone knew this, everyone including the dorkier-than-Depp-looking male love interest. Yet they never tried to find said father before lifting the curse. Well, the pirates did say the son was the spitting image of the father. He must have inherited more than looks from him. I mean what sort of idiot can't untie himself in ten years?
Depp is so cool! He has all this nutty advanced-syphilitic twitching going throughout the movie. Which is very appropriate because he's a womanizing pirate. He looks so sexy doing it. I would so totally do him, syphilis and all.
Pitch Black (2000) NR
Genres: SF Hor Act
The planet in question is a blasted desert because it is orbited by three suns providing continual illumination. But once in 20 years all three suns are eclipsed for a month. At this point, the planet's inhabitants come out of hiding because they can't stand the light. They're feeling peckish, as there's nothing to eat underground where they normally hide. Their life cycle is based on ships crashing on the surface exactly prior to this eclipse. This cycle's ship contains a guy with surgically enhanced eyes that can see in the dark, which puts the poor aliens' ecosystem in jeopardy.
You know what would fix it? If one of the characters throws up his arms and yells: "But what do they eat?!" and then gets gobbled! Because that's what the audience is asking.
Planet of the Apes (1968) NR
Genres: SF
Watched: bits on TV
So boring and silly. However its imagery has for some reason entered American culture. Like, there was a Simpsons episode where they remade this as a musical. The point was that such musicals are crass entertainment, but also it was a huge improvement on the original.
The idea is that in the future, apes wear clothes and can talk and have a civilization which scorns humans who don't wear clothes and can't talk and live in caves. So when Charlton Heston arrives from our present world, there is understandably quite a bit of hostility and misunderstanding. It's like a soap opera, but much much more boring and the protagonists are monkeys with no fashion sense. And I don't think he sleeps with any of them, even the sweet sympathetic female monkey. They are all losers.
Pleasantville (1998)
Genres: F
This movie has one gimmick -- how the world of 50's sitcoms is unnaturally constricted and wouldn't it be fun to disabuse its inhabitants of the fact. It is possible that it's making a deep artistic statement by handling this very sitcom-worthy subject in a way no more complicated or interesting than a sitcom. And I'm too shallow for being annoyed at the inaneness. But then sitcoms are only half-hour. Maybe this would have gotten more stars if it were no longer.
The Polar Express (2004) NR
Genres: Ani F
Watched: trailer
The animated people are freakishly bad -- they have no real expressions. It's like their eyes are frozen. How does the director expect to get away with something this -- not just shoddy, but repugnant -- when people have seen really nice computer animation, like in Shrek? It's frightening, and it surely will cause psychological damage to your children if you let them watch a whole movie of this. They'll end up like those kids who keep getting in trouble and the theory is that they can't tell what others feel, and so they need therapy, rather than to be smacked. The therapists teach these kids to recognize cues of others' feelings from facial expressions, which these kids purportedly have trouble parsing. If you nurture your kids on entertainments where nobody has real facial expressions and your kids get in trouble . . . well, probably it runs in the family.
Pom Poko (1994 Japan)
Genres: Ani F Com Dra
"The film is not so much fiction as a documentary of the destiny of the raccoon dogs as seen through their own eyes." -- writer/director Takahata
Japanese cinema loves eco-preservation themes, and Studio Ghibli is no different. Miyazaki harps on this stuff constantly, and so does this movie. In Miyazaki's hands the message is easily dismissed because his approach is heavy-handed and simplistic in this regard (especially in earlier efforts, like Nausikaä). Takahata, on the other hand, really had me. The poor little creatures! Bawl!
The creatures, translated as "raccoons" in the subtitles, are in fact raccoon dogs, animals not found in the States. They do resemble raccoons, so the translators understandably went with not overly complicating the issue for the kids (who as is have plenty foreignness to handle in this movie). Raccoon dogs, or tanuki, are larger and fluffier than raccoons. Unlike raccoons, which were introduced to Japan as pets only in the 1970's, raccoon dogs have long been known in Japan to be imbued with shape-shifting magic.
The second big translational difference pertains to the English dub only. Raccoon dogs' testicles play an important role in shape-shifting. There's no way to sweep this issue under the carpet for the American audience, but apparently it was decided that something had to be done to protect the youngest audience members, or at least those most likely to watch the movie dubbed. In the dub, they call testicles "pouches." I don't know that this is any less disturbing. Wouldn't the child be very confused -- "Mommy, I thought opossums were the only North American marsupials?" Either way parents are forced to answer awkward questions . . . Maybe they are more comfortable lying about marsupials than clarifying testicle issues. Kids aren't the ones uncomfortable with stuff like this. It's like racism -- kids aren't born uptight or racist, but eventually pick up their tribe's taboos.
Porco Rosso (1992 Japan)
Genres: Ani F Adv
Dir: Miyazaki. A dashing pig pilot adventurer flourishes in Italy in the 1930's. (Nobody else in the movie is a talking animal. So why is he a pig? That isn't the point. It doesn't do to ask strong silent types too many personal questions.)
Powerpuff Girls: Twas the Fight Before Christmas (2003)
Genres: Ani SF short
I approve of the poetry, but it feels like they padded an OK episode (not an especially good one, but OK) to make a 40-minute Christmas special.
Predator (1987)
Genres: SF Act
It's OK I guess and has Schwarzenegger. It's not his worst film. But it's pretty boring. I remember lots of wandering around in the jungle. And then some more wandering. But given this structure, it's pretty good.
The Price of Milk (2002 New Zealand)
Genres: F Rom
Sometimes when you have it really good you'll go out of your way to screw it up and the universe will go out of its way to help you . . . Sometimes when you think you're being decisive you're actually going insane . . . Sometimes when things are awful you just have to keep fighting even if it's making things worse . . .
Life is like the ancient Aborigine's magic. It might turn on you, suck you down, but if you don't let it it won't beat you utterly, and then suddenly you'll be through the badness and the next delicious chapter lies before you.
Alexander from Xena stars here. And yes he is. Delicious. (A wooden puppet based on his likeness is also in Lord of the Rings II.)
Prince Charming (2001) NR
Genres: F Rom
Watched: 22 min
Dumb script. Nothing worth seeing in the first 22 minutes. The best thing I can say is that it isn't excruciating.
Movies have filler (as genre books do) between the exciting parts. This movie is nothing but filler. Did anyone look at the script before they spent money making this movie? What parts of it were supposed to be interesting? I can't even tell.
The Princess Bride (1987)
Genres: F Adv Rom
Wonderful fairy tale about true love: beautiful, exciting, funny, sweet, and a bit scary.
How come I don't get a gorgeous stable boy to do my bidding? No fair.
Project A-ko (1986 Japan)
Genres: Ani SF Com
This was the first anime movie I ever saw and I thought it was hilarious. Although it makes fun of anime conventions and specific anime movies so presumably for the anime fan it would be just too funny.
The panties are really funny, and the Japanese are really funny for loving panties so much. The plot is driven by peeking under A-ko's skirt as often as possible. Also there's aliens and superheroes and lesbianesque schoolgirls and evil schoolgirl geniuses and giant robots and lots and lots of hugely destructive fighting.
C-ko looks and acts a lot like our cat except our cat isn't so cheerful. Despite the very high death toll it's a really cheerful movie that will leave you with a high! Unless you're a stodgy cultivated older person who is incapable of appreciating anime. Don't like this = old and stodgy.
Project A-ko: Love and Robots (1987 Japan)
Genres: Ani SF Com
Three shortish sequels are on this DVD. The first one, Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group, frequently drags so it gets only two stars, but the other two (Cinderella Rhapsody and Final) get three stars. Oh boy, love is rough enough even without robots!
Project A-ko: Uncivil Wars (1990 Japan)
Genres: Ani SF Com
Watched: 8 min
A-ko and B-ko are drawn badly and are pals. Their boring banter matches the crappy animation. This is what happens when the main creative force behind something cool is finished with the project and moves on, but others wish to keep milking it.
Prospero's Books (1991 UK) NR
Genres: F
Watched: 30 min
So boring. Even with all the nudity and the peeing. The plot, as much of it as I caught, could be summarized in a couple of sentences. It is loosely based on The Tempest. Loosely. Which is a minor point; this thing could have taken its point of departure from anything. This particular treatment has nothing to do with Shakespeare. Anyway the basic story-line of a Shakespeare play is not Shakespeare, it's probably something he lifted; the nitty-gritty of what he did with it is. No, the point here is in no way Shakespeare but all the scenes of lavish boredom -- the imagery. The boring, pointless, unsexy-though-full-of-naked-people, boring imagery.
Imagery is great, and naked people can be great, but it's all much better if there is a plot. True, walking through an art museum isn't boring if the art is good, although there is no plot. But, isn't there? There is, because each piece you're interested in has various kinds of things to say, and there are various overall themes among the pieces in a collection, and you can see how the art changes over time, etc. Since the images in the movie didn't work that way for me I have to conclude the "art" sucks.
For pretty imagery with sexy people that won't put you to sleep, see Satyricon.
And when you see a little boy swinging overhead on a swing and peeing you know what the director's thinking. You may try not to but you know.
Purgatory (1999)
Genres: Wes F
Fun fantasy-Western, although the title has nothing to do with the movie; it's actually a mistranslation of the original Italian title.
The point of this movie is something like "God appreciates L'Amour." My opinion is that a world created by a being who doesn't appreciate L'Amour would be very different from the one we inhabit.
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Genres: Com F Rom
Lovely
Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie.
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