Tag Archives: Paul F. Tompkins

I Re-Watched Anchorman (2005, Dir. by Adam McKay)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

“Ron Burgundy was the balls.”

You got that right!  That’s one reason why I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve watched Anchorman.  Whatever’s going on in the world or my life, I know that Anchorman is going to make me laugh and make me feel better about things.  The adventures of anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and his news team (Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Steve Carell) never cease to amuse me, whether they’re capturing the birth of a panda or getting involved in a street fight with their rival newsmen.

“Brick killed a guy.”

He did!  Where did Brick get a trident from?  When the street fight started, he only had a hand grenade.  Ron Burgundy suggests that Brick should find a safehouse and I hope Brick took his advice.  There’s a lot of funny people in Anchorman but Steve Carell, playing the weatherman with an IQ under 80, is my favorite.  Brick saying that he loves the lamp is so touching.

“Fare thee well, Baxter.  You shall always be a friend of the bears.”

The first time I saw Anchorman, I couldn’t believe it when Baxter was drop-kicked off that bridge.  I swore that I would never watch another movie featuring Jack Black!  Baxter was so cute!  When Ron broke down over the loss of his dog, I wanted to break down with him.  Later, when Baxter emerged from the river and barked, “I’m coming, Ron!,” I was so relieved.  Baxter lives!  Baxter’s conversation with the bears warmed my heart.

“Stay classy, San Diego.”

That’s right, San Diego!  Stay classy.  Anchorman is in a class all of its own.  Ron Burgundy makes beautiful music with his jazz flute.  Brian Fantana is a walking advertisement for Sex Panther.  Veronica Corningstone (Christine Applegate) strikes a blow for women’s liberation and teaches Ron an important lesson about teleprompters.  It’s the little moments that make me laugh the most, whether it’s Fred Willard talking to his son’s school about why his son has been expelled or Tim Robbins as the PBS anchor who smokes a pipe and chops off Luke Wilson’s arm or Vince Vaughn shouting about the ratings.  Best of all, Will Ferrell has never been better than as the pompous Ron Burgundy, so stupid but so committed to his job that you can’t help but love him.

“Wow, that really escalated.”

You bet it did, Ron!  Each moment of Anchorman is funnier than the last.  (I wish the same was true of Anchorman 2.)  That’s why Anchorman is a film that I watch and rewatch.  In fact, I think I’ll go watch it right now!

“Thanks for stopping by, San Diego.”

JACK FROST – should Frosty the Snowman be worried?

Posted on by Bradley Crain

My wife and I have been watching a Christmas movie every night for the last week or so. We’ve already watched DIE HARD 1 and 2, LETHAL WEAPON, HOME ALONE 1 and 2, CHRISTMAS VACATION, YES VIRGINIA THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS, FOUR CHRISTMASES and a Hallmark movie called THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR with Fonzi. She’s been wanting me to watch JACK FROST with her for a while now. I’ve been somewhat hesitant because a movie about a talking snowman not named Frosty doesn’t seem that appealing to me. I was explaining this reluctance to a couple of my co-workers at the accounting office, and they both assured me that it’s a good movie. With this newfound confidence that I would enjoy the film, my wife and I settled in to watch JACK FROST a couple of nights ago…

JACK FROST is about a guy named Jack Frost who is having a difficult time with his work life / home life balance. He loves his wife Gabby (Kelly Preston) and his son Charlie (Joseph Cross) very much, but his musical group, The Jack Frost Band, is taking up a lot of his time. He’s one of those dads who says he’ll “for sure” be at his son’s hockey game but then misses it because the band’s recording session runs late. It’s always something like that with Jack Frost. Tragically, before Jack can get this stuff figured out, he dies in a car accident on Christmas Eve. Jump forward a year later where a depressed Charlie decides to build a snowman like he and his dad always did together for Christmas. Just go with me here… through the magic notes of Jack’s old harmonica as played by his son Charlie, Jack’s spirit is transferred to the snowman, and the two have another chance to bond like they always wanted to. Will Jack be the father he should have been now that he’s a magical snowman dad? How long will he be around this time? Will an abnormally warm Colorado winter melt him? Will he get to watch Charlie play one more hockey game? These are just a few questions to be answered over the course of the film’s 100-minute running time.

I have always been drawn to movies that focus on the relationships between fathers and their sons. For example, FIELD OF DREAMS and FREQUENCY are two of my very favorite films. The reason I love both films is that dads and their boys are able to reconnect and experience each other in a way that resolves pain or regret from the past. The movies may not be realistic in how that happens, but I think each of the films tap into a universal truth about the connections between kids and their parents. If you want to see me cry, just watch either of those movies with me. JACK FROST seems to have this noble intention of magically re-connecting a father and his son for a second chance, and I give it credit for that. Only the most cold-hearted cynic would blow off the scene where Jack’s wife and son get to see him in his human form just one last time. It was touching. I also enjoy some of the songs on the soundtrack. I was able to take my wife to see Stevie Nicks in concert here in Little Rock earlier this year. I enjoyed when her “Landslide” played as Charlie made a snowman for the first time after his dad passed away. I thought that was a strong scene. With that said though, for me, JACK FROST doesn’t come together in a way that packs much of an emotional punch even though it’s clearly going for the heart. Part of that could be the fact that Michael Keaton turns into a snowman, and statements like “snow-dad is better than no-dad” are made. When I think of the other films, sure there are supernatural elements at play, but they’re still set in the real world, even if that place is in Iowa! In the case of JACK FROST, neither the comedy nor the drama worked well enough for me to get emotionally invested. The filmmakers overestimated the comedic nature of a snowman in general, and they seemed to dwell on that one note way too long, and to the film’s detriment. I did think a scene where Charlie’s hockey coach, played by Henry Rollins, refuses to allow the word “snowman” to be spoken in his presence was funny, but that was the exception and not the norm. 

After watching JACK FROST, I do understand why Frosty has retained his place as the world’s favorite talking snowman even after this film’s 1998 release. I think the idea of a talking snowman works much better in Frosty’s context. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go ahead and watch Frosty the Snowman again when I’m done here. But you never know, JACK FROST just may grow on me. Since my wife loves it, I know we’ll be watching it this same time next year! 

Sci-Fi Review: Regular Show: The Movie (2015, directed by J.G. Quintel)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Regular_Show_the_MovieAfter airing for seven seasons and counting on the Cartoon Network, Regular Show has finally gotten its own feature-length movie!  In Regular Show: The Movie, the Earth is in danger of being destroyed by a time jumping volleyball coach and it is up to our two favorite slacker groundskeepers — Mordecai the Blue Jay and Rigby the Racoon — to save the world.  But to do so, they are going to have to confront their past and Rigby is going to have to reveal something that not even his oldest friend, Mordecai, knows about.

Regular Show: The Movie opens in the future, with a massive battle in space.  Rigby is leading a squadron composed of his former co-workers at the state park against the forces of the evil Mr. Ross, a former high school volleyball coach-turned-cyborg who is using a “timenado” to destroy time itself.  (Ross is in a hurry to destroy Earth because, after devoting 25 years to his evil plan, he has a lot of television to catch up on.)  During the battle, Rigby is shocked to discover that his former friend Mordecai is one of Ross’s soldiers.  Mordecai tells Rigby that he wants revenge for something that Rigby did in the past.  Rigby manages to escape in a time ship but not before getting shot by Mordecai.

Regular Show

Future Rigby lands in a Georgia state park where, as usual, present day Rigby and Modecai are trying to get through the day by doing as little work as possible and without getting fired by their boss, an uptight gumball machine named Benson.  Before Future Rigby dies, he reminds Present Rigby and Mordecai of the time that they built a time machine in high school.  The time machine malfunctioned and caused the science lab to explode, which led to Rigby and Mordecai being expelled from high school.  It also caused Mr. Ross to lose a volleyball game, which set Mr. Ross on his path to madness (or, as Mr. Ross, puts it, drove him “craze-o” because that is how they say crazy in the future).

Regular Show

Using the time ship, Present Rigby and Mordecai try to stop Past Rigby and Mordecai.  But before they can save the world, Rigby has to find the courage to reveal his secret to Mordecai, a secret that causes them to question and reconsider their friendship.

Regular Show: The Movie is a fun and trippy movie that is full of nods to 80s and 90s pop culture.  (The Ferris Bueller homage was my favorite.)  The voice work is also excellent, with Mark Hamill a stand-out in the role of Skips, a very intelligent and reasonable Yeti.  Devotees of the series will not be disappointed by this frequently hilarious expansion.

regular-show-3

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #109: There Will Be Blood (dir by Paul Thomas Anderson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There_Will_Be_Blood_PosterYou know how there are some films that you really want to love and that you know that, given your taste in cinema, you probably should love but yet you somehow just cannot bring yourself to actually love?

To a certain extent, that’s the way I feel about the 2007 best picture nominee There Will Be Blood.  It’s a film that I greatly respect, as I tend to respect all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies.  He’s one of the best director working today and also one of the most consistently interesting.  (He’s also probably the only contemporary filmmaker who would actually base a two and half hour epic on the first 150 pages of a forgotten novel by Upton Sinclair.)  And I think that There Will Be Blood is a well-made and well-directed film.  I also think it’s well-acted, though I do think Daniel Day-Lewis goes a bit too far over-the-top at the film’s conclusion.   (If anything, Paul Dano is the one who actually deserved to win an Oscar for his work in this film.)  There Will Be Blood is an original work of cinematic art.  I’m thankful that it was made and that Anderson stayed true to his vision.

But, with all that in mind, it’s never been a film that I’ve been able to love.  Unlike Anderson’s earlier Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood holds the audience at a distance.  We remains outsiders looking in.  As a result, the film engages intellectually but not emotionally.  It’s a film that earns respect without necessarily winning the audience’s love.

Speaking of respect, that’s something that you have to give to both Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson.  From the start of the film, Daniel Plainview (played by Day-Lewis) is a cruel and self-centered bastard and that characterization remains consistent throughout.  Briefly, it does seem that Plainview might truly care about his deaf, adopted son but, by the end of the film, Plainview has even proven that to be wishful thinking on our part.  (The only other character to whom Plainview is consistently pleasant is a young girl named Mary but Day-Lewis plays those scenes with such a corrupt twinkle in his eye that the subtext becomes increasingly creepy.)  Give Anderson and Day-Lewis credit.  They commit to portraying Daniel Plainview as being an almost Satanic character and, at no point, does either one of them waver in that commitment.  As we watch Plainview ruthlessly buy up all the land and drill all the oil that he can find, we wait for him to have some moment of redemption.  It took guts for neither Anderson nor Day-Lewis to allow him one.

Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday, an evangelical preacher who stands in the way of Plainview’s efforts to buy up all the land around the Sunday family farm.  The film presents Eli and Plainview as being two sides of the same coin.  Plainview hides his moral emptiness behind his money.  Eli hides behind his religion.  The two characters hate each other because they alone truly recognize what they truly are.  Dano, who also plays Eli’s brother, gives a mesmerizing performance, one that unfortunately has been overshadowed by Day-Lewis’s work.

It all ends, as all things must, with violent death in a bowling alley.  I know that a lot of my fellow cineastes think that the bowling scene is the highlight of the film but, to be honest, this was the point where the film lost me.  To me, this was the scene where Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance crossed the line from being flamboyant to shrill.  The end just did not work for me.

However, two things that did definitely work for me: Johnny Greenwood’s wonderfully ominous and atmospheric score and Robert Elswit’s amazing cinematography, which made the film’s landscape appear both beautiful and threatening at the same time.  The mix of Greenwood’s music with Elswit’s cinematography created some truly haunting moments.

In the end, There Will Be Blood is a lot like Daniel Plainview.  It is powerful, memorable, unpredictable, flamboyant, overbearing, and at times a little frightening.  And, again much like Daniel Plainview, it’s a film that’s easy to respect and difficult to love.