Planes; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

Planes

As a pilot, I was primed to enjoy Planes. It features lots of details that aviation folk will understand, it tells an inoffensive “believe in yourself and all will be well” story, and it does as fine a job of skirting the horrifying realities of the post-singularity world it portrays as its predecessor, Cars.


Here's the setup: a crop duster wants to be a racing plane. It races. It wins. The kids pass out in a Red Vines -induced coma during the closing credits. Done.

And that's pretty much it. Planes is an inoffensive, effective entertainment with a nice eye for aviation detail. You could do worse.


Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

Hey, do you like puns? Do you like visual puns? Do you like food-related visual puns?

If so, then Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is for you. It's pretty much one pun after another, and your enjoyment of the film will vary directly with your enjoyment of that kind of humor. Personally, I like that kind of thing and, while it didn't make me laugh out loud, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 put a smile and my face and kept it there for 95 minutes.

The story? It doesn't matter, as it only exists to keep things moving along between gags. The performances? Professional. The animation? Great fun in conception, acceptable in execution. The entire package? A perfectly fine way to spend an evening on the couch with your little one(s).

Get Smart

GET SMART is a formulaic comedy based on a television series I can barely remember. It also happens to be laugh-out-loud funny.

It's not even that GET SMART is particularly well written. It's just particularly well delivered. Steve Carell is perfect as Smart, the bumbling yet oddly capable analyst who finally gets to be a field agent. He plays the character as a man in tight control of his emotions, but who's always just one cone of silence away from gut-bursting joy. Anne Hathaway is, well, Anne Hathaway, upon whom I now formally bestow the title of Can Do No Wrong. She's tough and vulnerable and funny and dazzling and just a pleasure to watch. Dwayne Johnson is one of those guys who's good in whatever he's in, and his sense of comic timing gets better with each outing. Terry "President Camacho" Crews dials it down (for him) and finds just the right volume, and his partner David Koechner has the "laughable jerk" thing down to a science. And then there's Alan Arkin, the Chief, whose deadpan delivery anchors the production and allows it to soar.

The villains are duly villainous without ever being truly threatening, the third act shift into action territory works quite well, and the whole thing kept DB and me amused throughout. GET SMART is slick Hollywood comedy done right. Color me pleasantly surprised.

The Godfather

You know you married the right woman when she says to you, "Let's stay up. I feel like watching a movie together." And she selects THE GODFATHER.
I hadn't seen THE GODFATHER since 1985, and I'd remembered it as an interminably long slog. But then "The Sopranos" came and went, and somewhere along the line we both raced through Puzo's novel, and this time, I was ready.

And this time, THE GODFATHER bowled me over. From the Swiss-watch screenplay to the career-making (or cementing) performances to the lighting to the music, this film puts down one sure foot after another. It breathes, it gives us time to learn about its people and place, and it fully invests us in the journey of Michael, a character who falls as he rises. The look in his eyes when, during the baptism scene, he announces, "I reject Satan and all his promises," is so thoroughly heartbreaking that the entire film is worth it for that moment alone.

THE GODFATHER is one of those films that's so well known it has become akin to cultural wallpaper. What happiness it gives me that it stands in its own right as a brilliant, captivating picture. Wow, my wife has great taste. What the heck is she doing with me?

El Dorado

John Wayne. Robert Mitchum. James Cann. Howard Hawks in the director's chair. EL DORADO has so much testosterone, I'm growing hair on my knuckles just typing this.

EL DORADO is the second of Hawks' and Wayne's three varations on the same story, told also in RIO BRAVO and RIO LOBO. In this iteration, John Wayne's a hired gun come to town to sell his services to one Ed Asner, a rancher involved in a local range war. Robert Mitchum's the sheriff and trusted friend who warns Wayne that he's signing up with the wrong side. Western Stuff ensues.

The problem with John Wayne movies is that the actor often blows his coworkers off the screen. In Robert Mitchum, Hawks found a man that could hold his own with Wayne, one that audiences can believe isn't just his friend but his peer. The casting choice adds that much more punch to the unexpected and delightful tonal shift that marks the beginning of the second act. I'd never seen Mitchum do slapstick before, and I'd never have guessed that the man had the power to make me laugh out loud. The impossibly young James Cann acquits himself well in the heartthrob role, getting in enough of moments of genuine toughness to show us what the film's grizzled vets may have seen in this greenhorn. As for the rest of the cast, well, they're just fine: Asner snarls, Christopher George is a principled competing gunman, and Michele Carey defies gravity as the courageous daughter of the good-guy rancher.

I noticed that Edith Head designed the costumes for this picture, by the way. I suspect she had loads of fun because while these people wear clothes that'd never work in the real West, they sure look great.

I've been in the mood for a solid western for some time now. EL DORADO filled the bill.