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The most unasked for movie of a series becomes the most essential film of the year. You know that when this film was announced, everybody said "whaaat? We already have the perfect conclusion to the Toy Story Series, we don't need a return visit to screw it all up." Then the teaser spots were weird, and the new main character is a plastic fork? You gotta be kidding, right? Well leave it up to Pixar to get it right in the end. They usually know what they are doing and this film might give you the confidence to even feel a Toy Story 5 could be justified. Many of the same themes that were covered in the first films are raised here as well. All of us have a need to be needed. Maslow seems to be right in this regard, even when it comes to the toys. From early on, Woody has been the key character in the adventures of the Toys. He is a fussbudget with a need for control and a strong desire to be at the top of the toy pile heap. He is so likable that we overlook his selfish

I like music and movie themes are always a favorite, but you can count on one hand the number of movie themes that can single-handedly rescue a movie from mediocrity and make you care about something that is average. Whatever residuals Lalo Schiffrin gets for Mission Impossible, he has earned ten times over for that movie series. Isaac Hayes is gone but his estate should get a big check for making these movies work as well as they do. As much credit as I want to give to the theme song however, there is one other essential component that also fills the film with the value that it has, the lead actor. In the 1970s Richard Roundtree became a star playing the part of the cool private dick who is a sex machine to all the chicks, and he swaggered through three films magnificently. I don't really know why it took 19 years to get back to the character after the 2000 version of the film, because the lead actor then and now makes the theme song real. Samuel L. Jackson may not have matinee id

The long daggers have been out for this movie since it was announced. How dare Disney remake "Aladdin", how dare Will Smith get cast as the Genie, What the hell is Guy Richie doing as the director of this movie?  The purists were waiting with their skepticism and animus and you could here snarky comments everywhere. The same criticisms that have been made by people who hated on " Beauty and the Beast ", "Alice in Wonderland" and " Dumbo ".  While admittedly the last two were misfires, "Beauty and the Beast" managed to catch fire at the box office and please a lot of fans of that movie. " The Jungle Book " also managed to overcome early doubts and be a critical as well as commercial success. So the question now is which category is this film going to end up in, Disney Magic pile or Tim Burton tinkering wreck? ...I'm going to make you wait a little while longer to find out what I thought. First, I have an answer to a questio

I'm going to be frank, I have never seen a film by Jim Jarmusch before. He has made a dozen films I have heard of and several that never crossed my radar. It was clear from the aesthetic I could see in promotional materials that his style is idiosyncratic and idyllic. I cannot say how representative the current film is of his movies, but I can say that if "The Dead Don't Die" is typical, I don't think I made a bad choice by avoiding his movies. It's not that the film is bad, it is simply not in sync with the way I want my cinema experience to play out. I heard high praise for many of his other movies and if I come across them I might stop down and give them a try, but I will not be seeking them out. The trailer for this film suggests a comedy full of dry wit and zombie action. They have done a good job selling this movie to an unsuspecting audience. The film's sensibility is very different from the way it plays in the promotional material. This movie is sl

I'm starting a new series that I hope to come back to on a regular basis. When I have a few of these entries I will put up a page with links to each one so they will be easy to catalog. There are several blog sites that do a very similar theme, forgotten films. I have participated on a few podcasts with one of my on-line friends talking about movies that fall into this category, and perhaps inspired by that, or simply my love for seventies nostalgia, I thought I would start off with this movie. Islands in the Stream This has nothing to do with the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton hit written by the Bee Gees, although some of the romantic themes in the song could apply to the events in the story if you look hard enough. It is based on a posthumously published work by Ernest Hemingway and features a character clearly based on Hemingway himself. Supposedly it was turned down by Steve McQueen but I can't imagine a more perfect choice for the part than George C. Scott. The film is set in t

Last night was a wonderful opportunity to spend time with an old friend that I've never met. Malcolm McDowell has been an actor I have watched for decades now in a variety of parts. I was of course first introduced to him as were most Americans by his brilliant turn in the Stanley Kubrick film "A Clockwork Orange".  This is a film that I love but that my wife loathed, but her dislike for the movie had nothing to do with McDowell. In fact, one of the two films playing last night was a favorite of hers and it may be one of the most romantic films we saw together as a couple.  One of the ways you can get a little spoiled by living in Southern California is by having these kinds of opportunities on a regular basis. In fact it was only six months ago that Malcolm and I previously spent time together. He was a host at a musical salute to Kubrick by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Most of the stories he told that day focused on his work with Kubrick and their subsequent relationsh

Part concert film, part behind the scenes featurette and part documentary, "Echo in the Canyon" was a delightful surprise that is likely to end up on several year end lists because of it's subject matter. Laurel Canyon has been known for forty years as a mecca for the creative community in Southern California. The 2002 drama featuring Christian Bale and Francis McDormand explored some of the bohemian lifestyle that flourished there but it was mainly focused on the psycho sexual drama of it's story. This film emphasizes a very different component, one that a lot more people are likely to care about, the music scene in SoCal, particularly the years from 1965-1967. Automatically, modern audiences might be put off by the subject of music from fifty years ago that they may be unfamiliar with. I was flabbergasted a couple of weeks ago at some of the bands my students had never heard of. But once the music starts flowing in this film, our DNA kicks in and even people who don

I know a lot of people who have "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" high on their lists of most anticipated films of the year. If you grew up watching the many variations of Godzilla movies that were primarily a man in a suit, stomping on miniature versions of Tokyo, it's easy to understand your attraction to this franchise. These were the original disaster films, that featured large swaths of civilization laid to waste by giant monsters battling one another. Before "Transformers" or the MCU, this was your go to fix for mass destruction. A few years ago, I had a slight aversion to these types of movies, a hangover of 9/11. The thought of the death that would be involved took most of the joy out of this after a while. Maybe it is true that time heals all wounds because I did not have a negative reaction this time around. In part it may be that the cities are mostly abandoned in anticipation of the arrival of the monsters, but I also think that since there is such a

Please don't mistake what I am about to say as a dig at the movie, "Booksmart" is well made, targeted at an audience that should embrace it and it is really well cast. It is not however the second coming. Every time a film has some progressive element which appeals to cinema fans, it gets pushed at them as if it is medicine that will cure the reactionary ills that drive the movie business. Trying to force fans of independent movies into a moment runs contrary to the instincts of those fans.  I think that's exactly what has happened to this movie. Had it been discovered by cinephiles and shared with their own passion, it could have taken off like some of the movies it is compared to. As it is, there was a big launch of this, focusing on the fact that it is a female centered film, and the world shrugged. The two young actresses who star in this film are accomplished performers.  Beanie Feldstein was terrific in " Lady Bird " a couple of years ago, playing a si