Mrs. Santa Claus

 Mrs. Santa Claus (1996)

Starring Angela Lansbury, Charles Durning, Terrence Mann, and Michael Jeter

Directed by Terry Hughes

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: D+

Tenth Avenue Angel

 Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)

Starring Margaret O'Brien, Angela Lansbury, George Murphy, Phyllis Thaxter, Warner Anderson, and Rhys Williams

Directed by Roy Rowland

Written by Harry Ruskin and Eleanore Griffin

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: D+

Gaslight

Gaslight (1944)

Starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Mae Whitty, and Angela Lansbury

Directed by George Cukor

Written by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Starring Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, and Dick Van Dyke

Directed by Rob Marshall

Written by David Magee

Summary (in 500 words or less):  The iconic Mary Poppins returns to help Jane and Michael Banks save the family home on Cherry Tree Lane.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Anastasia

Anastasia (1997)

Featuring the vocal talents of Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst, and Angela Lansbury

Directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

First, let's dispel the notion that Anastasia is a Disney movie.  Upon its release in 1997 and in subsequent years after, the public often assumes that this Don Bluth/Gary Goldman directed feature is a Disney film.  Admittedly, the film arrived at the end of Disney's 1990s animation renaissance and Bluth and Goldman tailored the flick to mirror Disney's successes in that era.  Our title character looks like a mash-up of Ariel and Belle.  The film opens with a song sung by the townsfolk.  The typical fairy tale storyline is certainly present.  But Anastasia is not a Disney film.

That being said, this flick is actually better than I remember it being and, with the exception of one fairly major problem area, Anastasia is a success.  Granted, it simplifies the tale of the Russian Romanov family whose dynasty was overthrown by public revolt, but considering this is a film aimed at children, I'm okay with that notion.  The film weaves its tale around Anya (voiced by Meg Ryan), a teen girl who ten years prior showed up at an orphanage unaware of who she was or how she became abandoned.  It turns out that Anya is the only surviving daughter of the Romanov clan, but she has no clue of her legacy.  Out for a quick buck, young Dimitri (John Cusack) and older Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer) have set out to find a young girl who can pass for the missing Anastasia and present her to the girl's grandmother -- the Dowager Empress Marie (Angela Lansbury) -- to earn reward money.  Little do Dimitri and Vladimir know that Anya truly is Anastasia.

I must admit that I liked the plot above.  I found the premise intriguing and the internal conflicts of the above characters surprisingly mature for a film of this type.  Unfortunately, feeling the need to spice up the plot, the film flounders hugely by throwing in an unnecessary villain in Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd).  Here, Rasputin has sold his soul to the devil and is essentially dead and living in hell where is various body parts fall off for purportedly comedic effect.  Rasputin's one mission in life is to end the Romanov blood line and he'll utilize a variety of witchcraft and sorcery from his underground lair in order to achieve this.  The film doesn't need him whatsoever.  There's plenty of surprisingly emotional conflict to be had without his fake magical powers.  By placing Rasputin at the crux of the flick's denouement, the film falters greatly and ends in a disappointing fashion.

Animation-wise the film is solid, but I don't think it can really compare to the Disney films of the era (although I'll soon find that out as we continue on our Disney Discussion journey).  However, I appreciated the voice acting, particularly that of John Cusack who admittedly isn't doing much else other than being the stuttering John Cusack who we all know, but for some reason proves successful.  I found the songs and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty quite good as well and much better than I remembered them being.  While it's certainly true the songwriters and screenwriters are following the Disney formula, it's a formula that works.

I must say that I didn't go into this expecting to enjoy it at all, but I found Anastasia a surprisingly solid animated film with an admittedly major flaw.  Remove that and the flick would've been great, but with it, it just ends up lukewarm.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

The Personal Canon - Beauty and the Beast

The Personal Canon is a recurring column discussing my favorite movies of all time.  While they may not necessarily be "A" rated, they are the movies that, for some reason or another, hold a special place in my filmgoing experience.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

[in 3D in select movie theaters]

Featuring the voice talent of Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, and Angela Lansbury

Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

Where does one even begin when writing about a movie that they absolutely love?  Right up there with Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho (and only a smidge behind that horror classic), Disney's Beauty and the Beast is my (2nd) favorite movie of all time.  I don't know if it came along at the right time in my youth (I would have been eleven at the time it was released), but something just clicked from the first time that I saw this film.  A meld of lovely hand-drawn animation, the best musical score ever written for the screen, and a simple story with charming characters, it's easy to see why Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.  [And let's be honest, if the field wasn't opened to ten nominees in the past two years, there's no way Up and Toy Story 3 would've been nominated, so part of me still feels that Beauty and the Beast is rightfully the only "real" animated Best Picture nominee.]

There's no way anything I write here is going to do this movie justice or truly depict why I think this movie is so special.  I don't even know if I can pinpoint and express all the reasons I love it so much.  However, watching it again on the big screen was a real joy.  [Although I'd love to see it with the non-necessary 3-D which, while not detrimental to the film in the slightest, didn't do a thing to enhance the experience.]  Animation-wise, it's amusing now to look back and see how far we've come in two decades.  The shift from hand-drawn to computer animation is certainly the key change, but even from a hand-drawn stand-point, the advancements have been huge.  That isn't to say that Beauty and the Beast looks out-dated or passé, but it is interesting to note that what was perfectly acceptable back then (most notably background characters standing perfectly still rather than have some motion to them) would never be kosher now.  Still, the film looks stunning.  Even with the darkening caused by the 3-D glasses, it looks bright and vibrant.  Scenes like the ballroom dance are gorgeous on the big screen and haven't lost any of their awe-inspiring wonder over the last twenty years.

The simple story is enhanced by charming songs crafted by the duo of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.  The songs come naturally here, fitting in perfectly, enhancing and advancing the characters' storylines rather than stopping the story cold.  It struck me as I was watching the film this go-around (which was my first watch of this movie in probably close to five years) just how witty the late Howard Ashman's lyrics were.  One need look no further than "Gaston" than to see this on display where Ashman manages to rhyme "expectorating" and "celebrating" with great ease (and a lack of any feeling of force).  That isn't to give short shrift to Alan Menken's music either which runs the gamut from Broadway showstopper (in "Be Our Guest") to introspective (the often overlooked "Something There") to expository ("Belle" tells us all we need to know about several major characters within the first five minutes of the movie) to love song ("Beauty and the Beast"), each, with the help of Ashman's lyrics, hitting exactly the tone they set out to achieve.

Even at age eleven, I guess I was predestined to like this as I was already being groomed to be a Disney fan by my parents which may very well explain why I liked Beauty and the Beast so much back then.  However, the love for this flick has continued on for two decades and I think it's because it combines so much of what I look for in a great movie coupled with the love I have for the genre of animation.  It's got fantastic visuals, strong characters, comedy, drama, a great villain, wonderful songs, and beautiful animation.  All of that is coupled with a story that despite its simplicity resonates with audience of all ages.  This isn't a children's film -- this is simply a film.  It doesn't try to appeal to the six year-old in the audience any more than it tries to appeal to the sixty year-old in the audience (heck...what six year-old would get the classic Cogsworth joke "If it's not Baroque, don't fix it?" which still made me crack up even though I knew it was coming).  Often, this lack of trying to pin down an audience proves to be a failure for movies, but in the case of Beauty and the Beast it's what makes it so successful.

Much like when I wrote my first thoughts on Psycho on this blog, nothing I can write for Beauty and the Beast will be able to give justice to my thoughts on it (and anything that I do write about it will just be a disappointment when I go back and look at it two weeks from now).  So, rather than ramble on, I'll just bring this review to a stop only to say that I can't recommend enough that you go check this masterpiece out on the big screen once again.

The RyMickey Rating:  A+

Check out the other films in my Personal Canon like Return to Me and Once by clicking this link.