ALADDIN (2019 Disney version)

Publicity poster for Aladdin (© Guy Ritchie/Walt Disney Pictures/Rideback/Marc Platt Productions/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 13 June 2019, I visited my local cinema to see the brand-new 'live-action' (i.e. heavily CGI-augmented) version of Disney's much-loved 1990s animated film Aladdin, and wow! Now that's what I call a fantasy movie!

I've made no secret of the fact that with the major exception of 2016's The Jungle Book, I'm not a great fan of Disney's modern-day trend of remaking its classic animated movies as live-action/CGI ones - if it ain't broke, don't fix it, that's my mantra. But I am happy to eat my metaphorical hat with this new Aladdin – or, as Chris Pratt would have said if he'd been in it (which he wasn't), R-some!!

Directed (and also co-written) by none other than Britain's very own Guy Ritchie (an unexpected but very successful choice), Aladdin 2019-style is visually stunning and dazzlingly colourful throughout, with newcomer Mena Massoud as Aladdin so close to his original cartoon counterpart in both looks and behaviour that it's almost as if the former had physically come to life. In contrast, the better-known Naomi Scott is a somewhat more imperious Princess Jasmine than her own cartoon facsimile.

However, the star of this movie is, without question, Will Smith as the Genie. The late, great Robin Williams's voicing and irrepressible ad-libbing of this character in the cartoon version was such a stupendous tour-de-force that anyone attempting to duplicate it was doomed to fail miserably. Consequently, Will has wisely reimagined and reinvented the character in his own very different but equally unique, inimitable manner, to yield a rather more streetwise genie but one that is every bit as hip, loyal, OTT, and loveable as the original.

Bearing in mind that this new Aladdin movie is over 2 hours long, several additional scenes and a major new song have been added, but the main story is much the same, and is absolutely mesmerising to watch, blending live-action and CGI seamlessly to create a spectacle of truly fantastical proportion. Aladdin, the 2019 Disney version, is the best movie of its genre that I have seen in a VERY long time!!

Pedants' Corner – Yes, I did notice that despite this film being set in the Middle East, Iago is a South American macaw and Abu a South American capuchin monkey, but who's going to quibble about zoogeographical anomalies when the star of the show is a giant blue genie with unlimited magical powers?? It's a FANTASY movie, folks!

Incidentally, there are also plans for both a sequel and a prequel to this Aladdin film, and even a spin-off featuring Prince Anders, Aladdin's ultimately unsuccessful rival for the hand of Princess Jasmine - a veritable Aladdin franchise, methinks!

Be sure to click here to view a thrilling trailer for this truly sensational spectacle of a film that will take you on an enchanted flight of fantasy that even Aladdin's very own magic carpet would find difficult to simulate!

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!

 

EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (2001 version)

Publicity poster for Earth Vs. The Spider (© Scott Ziehl/Creature Feature Productions LLC/Columbia TriStar – reproduced here on a non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

What do you get if you cross Spider-Man with The Fly? As I discovered when viewing it last night, the answer is an entertaining super-hero/monster movie mash-up entitled Earth Vs. The Spider.

Directed by Scott Ziehl, this film was the first in a series of modern-day Creature Features made for television and co-created by Academy Award-winning special effects expert Stan Winston. Earth Vs. The Spider premiered on Cinemax in 2001, and as a tribute it took its title from that of a 1958 cinema-released film, although the latter has a totally different storyline. Winston's Earth Vs. The Spider is a decidedly kooky, offbeat addition to the super-hero genre but one that I found unexpectedly engrossing – despite the fact that notwithstanding its title, the threat posed by this movie's featured creature does not extend beyond the reach of a single city precinct, let alone the entire planet!

Earth Vs. The Spider introduces us to one Quentin Kemmer (played by Devon Gummersall), an avid comic book-reading geek who works as a security guard at a classified research laboratory. Quentin dreams of becoming a super-hero equipped with super powers, like his favourite comic book character, an eight-limbed human-spider hybrid named the Arachnid Avenger, but he is viewed by others as vapid and ineffectual. One evening, after Quentin and his fellow security guard Nick, who is also one of his only two friends, spy on some research involving transferring body fluid from one spider into another one to make the latter as strong and injury-resistant as the donor, intruders burst into the laboratory, hotly pursued by two police officers seeking to restrain them. In the resulting melee, Nick is killed, as is one of the two cops. The other one, Officer Williams, blames Quentin for his partner's death and attacks him, but is sent away by the arriving Detective Inspector Frank Grillo (Dan Aykroyd).

Quentin blames his own perceived uselessness as being responsible for Nick's death, and vows vengeance, especially when instantly sacked from his job. Inspired by his obsessive reading of Arachnid Avenger comics and his conversations with his only other friend, Han, owner of comic book store Hero Worship where he buys his comics, Quentin sneaks back into the laboratory room where he and Nick had earlier spied upon the spider research, sees a syringe that still contains some body fluid from the powerful donor spider, and injects it into own arm.

Meanwhile, Det. Insp. Grillo is striving but failing to track down a serial killer dubbed the Midtown Murderer who has attacked and killed several women locally. Unbeknownst to him, however, the killer is staking out his next victim close by – none other than a young woman named Stephanie Lewis (Amelia Heinle), who is Quentin's next-door neighbour in an apartment block, Quentin is attracted to Stephanie but is far too shy to ask her out on a date, resigning himself to a few chats with her here and there. The killer sees Stephanie enter the block, follows her, and throws her to the ground, where her screams alert Quentin, who is returning home after injecting himself with the spider fluid. Enraged, he seizes the killer and, with incredible newly-obtained strength from the injection, hurls him through a nearby door with such force that the killer's neck is broken, killing him instantly, but Quentin then swiftly leaves before Stephanie can identify him.

Later, however, after Quentin defends her very forcefully and confidently from the unwanted attention of two layabouts outside their block, Stephanie is immensely grateful to him for saving her, seeing him in a whole new light thanks to his surprising bravery and his unexpected strength. Suddenly, everything is looking good for Quentin…but not for long.

As the days progress, Quentin becomes shocked, and scared, by the series of physical and behavioural changes that he begins to experience, including a web-like tattoo that spontaneously appears on one of his arms, an insatiable hunger that cannot be satiated by his normal foods, and, most bizarre of all, a hole that appears in his belly and from which he can shoot forth a stream of thick, all-enveloping spider-web gossamer. No longer able to consume solid food, Quentin finds himself uncontrollably drawn towards living prey – other humans – which he kills and then sucks dry of all body fluids just like a spider does (how he physically achieves this is mercifully never revealed, as all such activity occurs off-screen, with only the web-enwrapped carcases subsequently shown, hanging down from the roof inside the apartment block's dark, dingy basement where no-one but Quentin ever goes).

Eventually, Quentin finds himself unable to halt his metamorphosis into a human spider, and hides himself away from the unsuspecting Stephanie, who cannot understand why he refuses to let her see him. However, it's not long before his killings of vagrants and ne'er-do-wells to sustain himself attracts the attention of Grillo. He soon suspects from the discovered spider webs and other arachnid clues linked to the murders, as well as from information reluctantly provided by the head of the research laboratory (revealing that their top-secret investigations concerned transferring spider attributes to humans), that Quentin may be the mysterious miscreant. And so, very aptly, like a brave – or foolish – fly venturing forth into the spider's parlour, Grillo resolves to track Quentin down and discover the truth, however terrifying it might be…

Despite its DVD rating a 15 Certificate in the UK, Earth Vs. The Spider is not a blood-and-gore movie by any means. Only in the climactic scene do we finally get to see the horrific man-spider that Quentin has ultimately transformed into, but even then it is fully shown for no more than a few seconds. Also, as noted earlier, none of the killings by Quentin are shown on-screen. Instead, like all of the best thrillers, such grisly details are left very much to the viewers' imagination, and in my opinion this movie is all the better for it, because such a ploy very effectively creates an ongoing compulsion to see what happens next, never letting the viewers' attention flag or wander.

I bought the DVD for Earth Vs. The Spider purely on spec, not being at all sure whether I would like it, but as it was priced at only 50p I was willing to give it a chance – and I'm very glad that I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed this film, and can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who loves super-hero movies, monster movies, or both.

And if you'd like a sneak preview of what to expect from Earth Vs. The Spider, click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

Official Stan Winston Studio action model of Quentin Arachnid, the super-hero created as a tribute to Quentin in the movie by his comic book store friend Han (© Stan Winston Studio – reproduced here on a non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

JURASSIC CITY, JURASSIC GALAXY, THE JURASSIC GAMES, and JURASSIC HUNTERS - A QUARTET OF MESOZOIC MONSTER MOVIES!

My official DVDs for Jurassic City, Jurassic Galaxy, and The Jurassic Games, plus a publicity poster for Jurassic Hunters - click picture strip above to enlarge for viewing purposes (© Sean Cain/Vertical Entertainment / © James & Jon Kondelik/Dual Visions / © Ryan Bellgardt/High Octane Pictures / (© Ari Novak/Oracle Film Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Browsing through my collection of monster movies on DVD during the evening of 27 June 2020, I was surprised to notice just how many of them had titles whose first major word was 'Jurassic' - and not just the famous five constituting the ongoing Jurassic Park/World blockbuster franchise either. Yet despite owning these lesser-known Jurassic wannabes for quite some time, I'd never actually watched any of them.

So in an attempt to at least part-remedy that sad situation, on 28 June 2020 I watched no fewer than four of them (with another five still to go, plus, just for the sake of variety, one that begins with the word 'Triassic', and one that does include 'Jurassic' in its title but not as its first major word). As for which order in which to view them: as they are all entirely separate, stand-alone movies, it seemed simplest to watch them alphabetically. So this first viewed quartet consisted of Jurassic City (2015), Jurassic Galaxy aka Jurassic Planet (2018), The Jurassic Games (2018), and Jurassic Hunters aka Cowboys Vs. Dinosaurs (2015).

My official DVD for Jurassic City (© Sean Cain/Vertical Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

None of these monster movies feature any A-listers (although two of them, Jurassic City and Jurassic Hunters, do star Australian actor Vernon Wells, from Mad Max 2), but I strongly suspect that all four of them used the same or associated SFX companies, because their CGI dinosaurs and pterosaurs are virtually identical. Having said that, The Jurassic Games also includes a sabre-tooth, giant spider, and man-eating plant, thereby adding some variety to the usual dinofest. The four storylines, conversely, are very different.

Directed by Sean Cain, Jurassic City is all about some escapee (and, later, deliberately released) genetically-engineered theropods causing murderous mayhem in a Los Angeles detention centre, before venturing forth into the centre of LA itself to wreak further devastation and death. In contrast, Jurassic Galaxy, directed by James and Jon Kondelik, follows the attempts at reaching a space shuttle by the few survivors from a spaceship that has crash-landed upon a planet inhabited by ferocious Terran-type T. rex and raptor dinosaurs (convergent evolution is one thing, but this is taking parallel dinosaurian development to highly implausible levels, to say the least!) as well as huge sky medusae (although they only feature minimally, sadly).

My official DVD for Jurassic Galaxy (© James & Jon Kondelik/Dual Visions – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Directed and also co-produced by Ryan Bellgardt, The Jurassic Games is rather like I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here hyped to the ultimate level, in which 10 convicted Death Row (mostly serial) killers (but including one who just may be innocent) volunteer to take part in a top-rated TV virtual reality game show fighting off dinosaurs and each other until only one is left alive, winning the prize of freedom and absolution of all crimes committed, with all those who die in the game also dying (via lethal injection) in real life too. As for Jurassic Hunters, directed and co-produced by Ari Novak, this features a mining town in the modern-day Wild West that is overrun by ravenous raptors, T rex, and even a belligerent Triceratops that have been released from a deep subterranean cavern-world (where prehistory presumably still reigns supreme) during a mining explosion.

Of these four films, Jurassic Planet is to me the least effective, its plot disjointed and featuring characters suddenly behaving in some unexpected manner for no apparent reason. Jurassic City and Jurassic Hunters are standard monster movie fare, the humans battling the invasive dinos with all that they can muster, although Jurassic Hunters also incorporates a slyly seditious, deftly tongue-in-cheek approach to much of the proceedings, and is all the more entertaining for doing so.

My official DVD for The Jurassic Games (© Ryan Bellgardt/High Octane Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

To my mind, however, The Jurassic Games is by far the most engrossing, with the lethal TV game show's slick host and ratings-obsessed producers so skin-crawlingly insincere, coldly uncaring, and entirely conscience-lacking that you actually begin to root for the contestants, momentarily forgetting that they are psychotic, murderous SOBs who fully deserve the grisly fates that await all but the one who wins the game.

So, yes, it was an interesting, diverse day of CGI dino viewing, with more Jurassic-entitled entries still to watch, and soon – so don't go away!

Publicity poster for Jurassic Hunters (© Ari Novak/Oracle Film Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

To pay a thrilling visit to this quartet of Jurassic-themed movies, click here to watch a trailer for Jurassic City, here to watch one for Jurassic Galaxy, here for one for The Jurassic Games, and here for a Jurassic Hunters trailer – they're all monstrously good fun!

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

Publicity poster for the Cowboys Vs. Dinosaurs retitled version of Monster Hunters, depicting Rib Hills as cowboy rodeo star turned dinosaur decimator Val Walker (© Ari Novak/Oracle Film Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

HARLEQUIN (aka DARK FORCES)

The official UK DVD for Harlequin that I own and watched last night (© Simon Wincer/Ace Productions/Australian Film Commission/The Caidin Films Co./Farlight Investments/Western Australian Films/Greater Union Organisation – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Not so long ago, FB friend Dave Baldwin who shares my love for the more esoteric of fantastical, surreal movies, recommended to me an Australian movie that I'd never heard of before. Released in 1980, it is known through much of the world by the title Harlequin, but in the USA it was retitled as Dark Forces. After watching a trailer for it, I decided that this was a movie I definitely wanted not only to watch but also to own, so I duly purchased its official DVD and watched it last night. Nor was I disappointed – far from it!

Directed by Simon Wincer, Harlequin centres upon Gregory Wolfe, an enigmatic figure who may be a mystic with supernatural faith-healing powers, or, alternatively, a very proficient trickster who uses adept stage-illusion skills and hypnotism to achieve his perceived successes. The movie begins with the apparent death by drowning of Deputy Governor Eli Steele – intriguingly, the country in which this movie is taking place is never made deliberately apparent (more about which later), although the inference is that it is the USA. The scene then switches to a huge mansion where a very ill young boy, Alex Rast (played by Mark Spain), is the centre of attention at his birthday party, but is only interested in a clown who performs some sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks for him to keep him entertained. We learn that his father, Nick Rast (David Hemmings), is an aspiring politician, who married Alex's mother, Sandra (Carmen Duncan), not for love but purely to advance his career as she is both wealthy in her own right and connected to all the right people in society. However, they are united by the plight of their son, who is suffering from seemingly terminal leukaemia.

That same evening, after Alex has been examined by the family doctor who tells the grieving parents that there is nothing more that he can do and that they should now be prepared to let Alex slip away without subjecting him to any more invasive treatments, a black-and-white bird alights on Alex's windowsill, then disappears. Moments later, the windows open and in steps a tall dark-haired man with unnervingly piercing eyes (played in a suitably mesmerizing, charismatic manner by Robert Powell), who has uncannily managed to elude all of the mansion's security systems and reach Alex's bedroom even though it is high above ground level. After introducing himself as Gregory Wolfe and before the Rasts can say much in reply, this strange figure picks up Alex, commands him to get well in a loud, stern voice, then places him back in his bed and tells the astonished persons that he is now well.

And sure enough, Alex improves daily, until he is soon perfectly fit and healthy. Moreover, with Sandra's full approval and, indeed, her active encouragement, Gregory becomes a permanent house-guest, looking after Alex, who is totally devoted to him (it later transpires that unbeknownst to Alex's parents, Gregory was also the clown at his birthday party). And it is not long before Sandra finds herself drawn to him too, but in a much more passionate, adult manner. Although never actually confirmed, the movie makes it apparent that she has entered into an affair with Gregory, as surmised by Nick too, though as he is openly liaising with his secretary Zoe there isn't a great deal that he can say about that! Various scenes are shown in which Gregory ostensibly displays various paranormal abilities, but equally he may simply be exhibiting proficient legerdemain.

Meanwhile, Nick is being pressured by corrupt, power-wielding political backer Doc Wheelan (Broderick Crawford, chosen for the role after Orson Welles asked for too high a fee), because Wheelan wants him to assume the Deputy Governor position vacated by the recently-drowned Steele, albeit serving as little more than Wheelan's puppet. However, Wheelan has also learnt about Gregory and suspects that he may be a spy, an infiltrator from some rival political camp, sent to disrupt his scheme. So Wheelan concocts a bogus file containing a fake history of Gregory and fraudulent compromising photos of him, as well as hoax claims that he hasn't cured Alex, that he has instead surreptitiously fed him various drugs that temporarily improve his health, in order to ingratiate himself into the Rast family and thence spy upon them.

Following a social gathering at the Rast mansion where Gregory seemingly heals an elderly woman but is also accused of raping a maid, he is arrested and thrown into jail, only to inexplicably escape, and succeed once again in penetrating the inner sanctum of the Rast mansion, despite its active retinue of guards and Nick himself being on full alert after being alerted of Gregory's escape. Gregory duly confronts him and states that the dead Steele whom Wheeler is coercing him to replace didn't drown but was specifically assassinated.

Startlingly if fittingly attired in a classic Commedia Dell'Arte Harlequin costume (Harlequin traditionally being an unpredictable, mercurial masked figure of mystery and magic), Gregory then tells Nick to make the right and just choice for his next move – at which point events take a decidedly chilling turn. Suddenly, bolts of lightning shoot from Gregory's eyes at a terrified Nick, a wall of flame seemingly encircles and threatens to engulf him for a moment before abruptly disappearing, and Gregory vertically levitates several feet off the ground in front of him.

Thanks to Wheelan, however, who has driven to the Rast mansion as soon as he hears of Gregory's jailbreak, Gregory does not have it all his own way. Let's just say that after his confrontation with Wheelan and the hired muscle, Gregory's Harlequin costume is in no condition to be handed back any time soon to whatever fancy-dress shop it may have originated from!

The movie's final scene shows Sandra and a still totally healthy Alex sitting on some grass by a river. The boy is facing away from the camera, until the very last shot, when he turns to face it, and viewers suddenly realize that the world may not have seen the last of Gregory after all…

Perceptive readers will no doubt have guessed not only from the names of the characters but also from the basic plotline that Harlequin is in fact a modern-day retelling of the history of Russia's so-called 'mad monk' Grigori Rasputin, whose claimed faith-healing powers were sought by Tsar Nicholas II's wife Tsarina Alexandra to save their son the young Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from haemophilia, but who bewitched and seduced her as well as becoming firmly entrenched within their family, until his political enemies set out to destroy him. Gregory Wolfe is of course the movie's Rasputin counterpart, with the Tsar represented by Nick Rast (Nick being short for Nicholas and Rast being Tsar spelt backwards), his wife Sandra representing Tsarina Alexandra, and their leukaemia-stricken son Alex representing the young haemophiliac Alexei. And just as with Rasputin, whether or not Gregory does possess mystical powers remains ambiguous throughout.

Incidentally, a particular surprise for me came from the climactic scene between Gregory and Nick as briefly summarized by me above. Once, many years ago, I remember my parents watching something on TV that I hadn't been paying any attention to, until I happened to look up and saw to my great shock a brief scene of a man suddenly surrounded by a wall of flames that just as suddenly vanished again. It left a very profound visual impression in my mind that I've never forgotten, but because I hadn't known anything about the TV programme or film that it had appeared in, I had no expectation of ever tracing the latter – until I saw the above-noted scene from Harlequin last night, and realized that this is exactly what I had seen all those years ago. Another TV mystery duly if unexpectedly solved!

Also, I've read that in order to make it as globally (and hence commercially) successful as possible, when producing this movie every attempt was made to hide the fact that it was shot in Australia, and even in its storyline to render its geographical location undetermined. If so, I can only assume that they didn't hire a zoological consultant, because the black-and-white bird mentioned earlier here, and which appears repeatedly throughout the movie, is none other than an Australian magpie Gymnorhina tibicen. Moreover, despite its common name, this species is not related to the familiar magpies of Europe and North America belonging to the crow family, but is instead a member of an entirely different, exclusively Australasian family of birds, the artamids.

Ornithological oversights aside, however, Harlequin is an absolutely spellbinding movie that captivated me totally throughout, thanks to Powell's tour-de-force performance as the bedazzling Gregory. Apparently David Bowie had originally been approached to play the part, but although I can well believe that he too would have filled this role superbly, I'm glad that it eventually went to Powell because I cannot see how even Bowie could have bettered it. Powell's icy demeanour yet electrifying presence, his ethereal, enigmatically expressionless facial and spoken delivery, and those green laser-beam eyes combine so effectively to create a character as truly harlequinesque as its original inspiration.

Part fantasy, part mystery, part horror, part psychological thriller, and wholly fascinating, Harlequin is an evocative, entertaining, and thoroughly engrossing movie quite unlike anything that I have seen before, and greatly deserves to be far better known and appreciated than it currently is. High time, in fact,  for it to attain cult movie status, methinks, and if you'd like to see what I mean, click here to view a captivating Harlequin trailer on YouTube (although its visual colour appears oddly drained), and here to watch the entire movie for free on there, at least at the time of my posting this review.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

Publicity poster for Harlequin (© Simon Wincer/Ace Productions/Australian Film Commission/The Caidin Films Co./Farlight Investments/Western Australian Films/Greater Union Organisation – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)