Gideon58's Reviews

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
2024's Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is actually the seventh film featuring these delightful stop animation characters that was so clever, so imaginative, and so freaking funny, it earned a 2025 Oscar nomination for Outstanding Animated Film. It also motivated me to go back and watch the first six films.

For those who are new to this franchise like myself, what I gathered from what I saw here, Wallace is an eccentric, slightly dim, but always well-intentioned inventor who lives in a secluded cabin somewhere in an English countryside with his dog Gromit, who doesn't speak, but actually seems to spend most of his time keeping Wallace out of trouble and learning deal with Wallace's constant inventions that are supposed to make their lives easier.

This film opens with Wallace and Gromit being hailed as heroes for capturing a renowned jewel thief, a bird named Feathers McGraw, who is sentenced to life in a zoo. Meanwhile, in another attempt to make his and Gromit's lives easier, Wallace has invented a robot named Norbot, who Gromit feels Wallace is planning to replace him with. Unfortunately, Feathers figures out a way to reprogram Norbot for his own agenda, which includes Norbot cloning hundreds of himself.

The near brilliant screenplay by director Nick Park, Mark Burton, and Holly Walsh is a delicious blending of these eccentric characters with a lot of 2025 pop references and sensibilities that we don't see coming, as well as nods to films of the past without directly ripping them off. I loved when Feathers McGraw is first observed in his new zoo prison and he is observed doing chin-ups with newspaper clippings on the wall...it was so Robert De Niro in Cape Fear. And those Norbot duplicates were an uneasy combination between oompa loompas and those gremlins that popped out of Gizmo after feeding him chicken after midnight. Also LOVED when Feathers was reprogramming Norbot and beforre the computer would allow him to finish, it made him click on all images of cheese before going on. I was on the floor.

I loved the animation techniques employed to produce these characters. Can't even begin to explain how it's accomplished, but director Park and his animation crew nail it. Even though the characters of Gromit and Feathers McGraw don't have mouths and are unable to speak, the viewer is able to experience every mood or feeling their characters do, it's absolutely spooky.

Park and company keep things moving at a nice pace and provide consistent surprises along the way. Love the voice work by Ben Whitehead as Wallace and Reece Shearsmith too. Smashing entertainment from start to finish, can't wait to go back and watch the first six films.

Real Genius
Since Val Kilmer's passing, I'm pretty sure movie buffs are all over the world were re-watching Tombstone, so I decided to go a different route in my homage to Kilmer by taking another look at the first film I ever saw with Kilmer, 1985's Real Genius, an outrageous and overly complex comedy that combines elements of several different genres with varying results.

The story follows a 15 year old science prodigy who gets early acceptance into one of the most prestigious engineering colleges run by a Professor Jerry Hathaway who recruits Mitch to be part of a team he has working on a special laser that is to be part of a nuclear weapon, that Hathaway has been commissioned by the government for very nefarious purposes. Mitch immediately bumps heads with Chris Knight (Kilmer), the last genius recruited to the college who has learned not to take school and himself too seriously and tries to teach Mitch the same.

The very intricate screenplay by Neil Israel, Pat Proft, who wrote the previous year's Bachelor Party, and PJ Torokvei combines several different kinds of movies, but the primary canvas, a college hijinks comedy, looks original here because the student population for this school is all at genius level, bringing about several kinds of college hijinks we're not accustomed to seeing in most college comedies...it's not every film where we see students with the ability to freeze a staircase in their dorm into ice suitable for skiing that turns to gas in a few hours. Mitch's discovery of Lazlo's underground lair has not been seen in a lot of college comedies either.

There is a science fiction element to the story in that this project that Jerry, Chris, Mitch, and his crew are working on is part of a nuclear weapon that the government is apparently paying Jerry through the nose for, seems a little out of place with the rest of the story and kind of slows things down and takes focus away from the part of the story that really works...the meeting of the minds between Chris and Mitch where Chris tries to get Mitch to relax and Mitch tries to get Chris to take this project seriously, the combined efforts of which are used to combat Dr. Hathaway. Not to mention the Revenge of the Nerds finale, that will invoke cheers, even if it takes a little too long to get there.

Director Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl) manages to find a balance of discipline and fun in her direction. Val Kilmer commands the screen in one of his funniest performances as Chris Knight and William Atherton, an actor who has made a career out of playing smarmy characters, has one of his smarmiest here as Jerry Hathaway. Robert Prescott, who so funny in the previous year's Bachelor Party, is equally funny in a similar character named Kent. Coolidge even found a small role for her Valley Girl leading lady, Deborah Foreman. And that's Jonathan Gries playing Lazlo, who fans of The White Lotus might recognize as Greg/Gary. The story is a little busy, but Kilmer keeps the viewer invested. RIP, Val.

Babygirl
Despite an eye-opening performance by Oscar winner Nicole Kidman in the starring role, 2024's Babygirl doesn't really succeed in its attempt at being a 21st century Fatal Attraction due to leaden direction and a confusing screenplay sending all kinds of mixed messages.

Kidman plays Romy, the CEO of a state of the art shipping company a la Amazon Prime, who is married to a theater director (Antonio Banderas) and the mother of two daughters, who finds herself drifting into an unconventional affair with one her company's new interns.

Director/screenwriter Halina Reijn has offered us an overly complex rending of a very simple story that takes way too long to get where it's going, keeping the viewer on the outside looking in. The story takes way too obvious a route in establishing how unhappy Romy is with her marriage in order to make it easy for us to accept why Romy is drawn to this guy. the attraction between Romy and this guy feels forced and unnatural and it's not helped by the fact that this guy wants to play by his rules. I mentioned Fatal Attraction but the relationship between Romy and this guy reminds me more of Mickey Roarke and Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks .

There's something really annoying about the way the story establishes that Romy is looking for a little something more in her sex life and when it comes to her, the guy spends a lot of time pushing her way. Watch the superb scene of their first kiss or the first time she gives herself to him sexually and he just pushes her away. Maybe because of the "Me Too" era we live in today, it was uncomfortable watching a man treating a woman like this and don't get me started on what happens when the guy shows up at her house.

Reign's static direction makes the film seem a lot longer than it really is and audience attention is definitely challenged. The glamorously aging Banderas makes the most of his thankless role as the husband and, as pretty as he is, Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness), doesn't bring a lot of heat to the intern either. Kidman got some Oscar buzz for this performance and she is great, but the movie, not so much.

Inside Moves
The late Richard Donner, whose directorial resume includes Superman, Scrooged, The Omen, and all four Lethal Weapon movies was in the director's chair for 1980's Inside Moves, a quietly claustrophobic and often achingly real look at a small circle of dysfunctional misfits who have found their own solace in a world that has pushed them aside.

The film stars John Savage as Roary, a depressed young man who tries to commit suicide by jumping out of a ten story window. He survives the jump and after a long recovery, starts hanging out at a dive bar that seems to cater specifically to the handicapped where he strikes up a friendship with Jerry (David Morse), an ex-basketball player sidelined by an injury but saving up for an operation that might get him back on the courts. The bumpy friendship that develops between Roary and Jerry is the crux of the drama.

Donner has a cringy but effective screenplay to work with, supplied by Oscar winner Barry Levenson and former wife Valerie Curtin, that brings such a diverse group of characters together who display such genuine affection for each other that the viewer can't help get wrapped up in the "where everybody knows your name" atmosphere at this bar, filled to the rim with people who are blind, wheelchair bound, or have lost limbs among others. It's interesting how the friendship between Roary and Jerry never affects their feelings about the rest of their friends at the bar and these friends never desert Jerry even though at a point they feel forgotten or when Roary feels betrayed by Jerry, the guys at the bar never take sides.

What was particularly impressive about this film was the attention Donner and his cast pay to the physicality of the characters. It's never forgotten that Roary jumped out of a ten story window. When he leaves the hospital, he is not walking properly and doesn't walk properly for the remainder of the running time. There's one scene with Roary where the way he moves his head during a conversation you can tell there is permanent damage to his neck and cannot turn his head normally. Or watch Jerry when he's getting dressed to challenge a pro basketball player to a one on one...Morse never forgets that Jerry is unable to bend one knee and neither does Donner who gets in up close and shows us this guy can't bend his knee.

Savage's work as Roary rivals his previous performance in The Deer Hunter, disciplined and yet quite moving. Morse, best known for playing the tortured Dr Jack Morrison on NBC;s St Elsewhere, lights up the screen as the equally tortured Jerry. There are some terrific character actors in the supporting cast including Bert Remsen as the blind Stinky and Bill Henderson as wheelchair-bound Blue. Diana Scarwid's sensitive waitress Louise earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination and the film also marked a return to the big screen for the first time in 34 years for Harold Russell, the handless war veteran who won the Best Supporting Actor of 1946 Oscar for The Best Years of our Lives. Never seen anything quite like this and the lion's share of the credit has to go to Donner.

Snow White (2025)
2025 in film continues to be a disappointment thus far. From the "if it Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" school of filmmaking comes 2025's Snow White, an overblown and overly complicated reimagining of the Disney classic that suffers from an overstuffed screenplay that steals from other fairytales, and over the top musical sequences, making a one hour and 39 minute film seem fourteen hours long.

In this version of the story, Snow is actually living with the wicked queen when the queen learns that she is no longer the fairest of them of all. Instead of sending the huntsman into the forest to find Snow White to kill her, she sends him and Snow out to the wilderness on a pretense and then orders her death and the return of Snow's heart in a box. He, of course, can't do it and tells Snow White to disappear where she eventually encounters a cottage that turns out to be occupied by seven little guys who work in their own mine.

I'd like to start out by saying that when I went online to watch this movie, I put in the title character's name and seven other movies came up along with this one. Did we really need another version of Snow White?. We needed another version of Snow White like we need another version of A Christmas Carol. Erin Cressida Wilson's screenplay combines too many elements from other films and fairytales. In this version of the story, Snow White is being held captive by the Wicked Queen and a big scene is devoted to Snow's hair being cut off that smacked of Rapunzel. Snow's journey into the woods on her way to the Dwarves reminded me of the perils that Westley and Princess Buttercup face in The Princess Bride, a little too intense for this story. That nightmarish vision as she runs into the woods was just a little over the top, making the segue into her Wizard of Oz-like entrance into the dwarves cabin greeted by thousands of CGI animals just a little hard to swallow. It looks like she travelled through time.

There was also a big plot point that I couldn't get past. When the Queen sends the huntsman into the woods with Snow White, he gives her the box to put her heart in after she's dead so that the queen can reward the huntsman with anything he desires. When the huntsman returns, the Queen encounters the mirror about her beauty first before looking in the box and learning that Snow was still alive. Why wouldn't she have looked in the box first? And upon discovering the box had an apple in it, why didn't she kill the huntsman instantly?

Someone decided that the film needed some new songs supplied by the composers of The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen and none of them are even in the territory of memorable and the songs we know and love like "Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work" are blown completely out of proportion and go on much too long. And what happened to "I'm Wishing", which would have been a perfect fit for Rachel Zegler's voice.

I loved Zegler in Spielberg's remake of West Side Story but she's kind of one note here. And if you're going to CGI the dwarves, why not use A-list actors for their voices? If the truth be known, they should have gone with real litt\le people for the dwarves too. Four of the actors voicing dwarves I've never even heard of. The only completely satisfying performance in this film came from Gal Gadot as the Wicked Queen, but even her performance doesn't make this film worth the trouble it was.