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Reviews
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
A sequel as charming as the original! Can you imagine that?
A sequel as good as "Mary Poppins" (1964)? That's a tall order. But the Disney folks pulled it off. The M.P. adventures are as entertaining as the original. Marc Shaiman's songs are wonderful.
There were nods to 1964. M.P. is seen sliding UP the banister. There are animated dancing penguins. The kite that starts off the whole adventure looks exactly like the one that ends the original. The animation is hand-drawn. (Kudos to director Rob Marshall for fighting the people who wanted to use computerized animation.)
There are differences. The pace is much quicker than 1964. There are two villains. Thus the level of tension is higher. But,as in the original (and in good Disney tradition), there is a happy ending for everyone who deserves one.
So I rate this movie "Practically Perfect in Every Way"--and 10 stars.
Destination Saturn (1966)
Kiddee matinee from 1930"s: HILARIOUS
I saw this in 1971 at college. It may have made sense to kids in the 1930"s, but at times the auditorium rocked with laughter. Have you ever seen a movie that was so bad it was funny? That's what this is. The basic story was passable, but its execution (I mean that literally!) was terrible. The dialogue was inane; the acting was amateurish at best; the directing could have been done by one of the youngsters in the target audience.
The special effects were extremely low-budget, and primitive by today's standards. It made for a hilarious evening's entertainment, but not because it was handled by good comic actors.
King Kong (1933)
Great animation, but out-of-date acting and direction turn this into and unintentional comedy
I am about commit heresy. Whenever this movie shows up on television, it is given a 4-star rating, and the commentator just gushes about how great it is.
I beg to differ. The truly great works of literature, stage, and screen have a timeless quality. For example, the 1968 movie version of "Romeo and Juliet" was done with Shakespeare's dialog and period costumes. Yet the teenagers of that time (including me) flocked to the theaters. They could STILL identify with the story and characters.
"King Kong" (1933) may have been considered a great film at its original release, but it has not held its ground over time. The gestures, the dialog, the direction and the acting look ridiculous today's standards. I admit that I was frequently convulsed with laughter, and so were my fellow movie patrons. The animation was superb. Too bad not much else about this movie was.
Blue Water, White Death (1971)
An interesting but unsatisfying documentary
This movie's poster shows a great white shark with its mouth wide open. Thus when I entered the theater, I expected something spine-tingling. On this point the movie did not deliver.
It was, in fact, a story about a scientific team searching for a great white to study. Most of the movie is spent searching rather than studying. To my way of thinking the movie was not a total waste of my time. There is footage of sharks (none of them great whites) feeding on a whale carcass. In addition some of the researchers leave the safety of the shark cages and swim among these unjustly maligned fish.
Eventually they find a great white which they study from the ship and in shark cages. Huge and formidable these sharks certainly are, but anyone expecting "Jaws" type of excitement will be be disappointed. Ditto to those who would have preferred more information about great whites than was offered. Such is my reason to call "Blue Water, White Death" 'interesting but unsatisfying'.