I guess I’ve changed since my last review. You can’t overlook the overwhelming darkness of this movie with the usual, cynical, “oh, they so totally Disnified it,” comment on the ending. This is probably the darkest children’s movie ever made, referring so frequently as it does to the very bowels of hell, sins of the flesh, ugliness, blood and fire, all to the almost Omen-esque tones of Alan Menken’s score, one of his very best, and Stephen Schwartz’ irresistible lyrics. Even the lightest song referred to below, “Guy Like You,” contains an image of hanging marionettes. It’s thick with the grisliest aspects of humanity and if all Disney needed to do to justify all this was let Esmerelda live, then so be it as far as I’m concerned now.

December 27th, 2004:

This is a way better movie than a lot of Disney’s stuff that came later, but no where near as good as I originally thought. It does have scene after scene of haunting music and images: from “The Bells of Notre Dame” to “Out There” to the ultimate bad guy showstopper, “Beata Maria / Hellfire”, Alan Menken’s score and Stephen Schwartz’s lyrics are a treasure, overlooked at the Oscars (not even a song nomination, it’s sacrilege). Even the standard ‘Hakuna Matata’ ish “A Guy Like You” is fantastic (how can you not love a song that begins, “Paris, the city of lovers, is glowing this evening – / True, that’s because it’s on fire, but still there’s l’amour…”)

Where Hunchback stumbles, aside from comparisons to the classic 1939 movie which is simply irreplacable, is perhaps a result of all the gloriously heavy scenes. I guess, being a Disney movie, they had to balance it with something for the kids. I actually don’t mind some of the humour, it’s not too bad sometimes, but it’s too much of a contrast, I’d rather have an all-out gothic madness fest. And of course, Esmerelda doesn’t stay dead, which bugs me a lot – and I’m somebody who didn’t mind the absurd alterations Disney made to The Little Mermaid etc. It’s not necessarily the fact she doesn’t stay dead – it’s more the fact that it looks like she’s going to, and then it looks like somebody at Disney said, “Well, we can’t have her re-animated with a kiss, that’ll be just like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White and oh, everything that worked… so how can we get her back in action?” and some cleaning lady or vending machine filler passing by suggests, “She could just stand up in the background?”

However, after the disappointment of this PC gloss-job, Disney do have at least one superb emotional pay-off at the end. I never fail to cry when that little girl comes out of the crowd and the ‘camera’ pans so slowly around them as Quasimodo finally sees a glimmer of hope in the world around him.

I’m trying to catch up on my one-movie-a-day promise and was scheduled a virgin viewing at this point but after my John Hughes/Molly Ringwald double-bill yesterday I just had to give this a second shot, in a way almost just to make sure it was the classic I’ve made it in my mind since my first viewing (it amazes me I’ve only seen it once, so huge has it grown in my mind in the meantime). In fact it was meant to form the middle part of a triple bill, technicalities decided otherwise though. For the record, that triple bill would’ve been a good one … heck … the whole John Hughes slate would be good, make a day of it lol.

Anyway, long story short, it really is a classic. Not only that, it’s special. It just always (okay, all two times, but I know this feeling is never gonna change) strikes me like some kind of special document, it just really feels like it captures something true. And like the other Hughes movies, it’s a slow burn. It’s very much almost “just” a teen comedy for a long while, lulling you into a sense of security before disarming you with what the characters you’ve now come to love are really feeling deeper than you expect. My fave is still Ally Sheedy. She’s so me it almost hurts. This movie is just so cathartic on levels I don’t even wanna talk about. If you love it, then you know what I mean. It’s the best John Hughes movie for certain; the best teen movie ever, possibly; like I said, it’s just really special, it can’t be denied.

January 2nd, 2004:

My first “proper” John Hughes experience, I think. I’ve seen Curly Sue and loved it (and will be reviewing it soon, I’ve got the VHS coming… it’s a shameful personal fave…) but from what I’ve learned, that’s not exactly a John Hughes movie. He’s famous for the 80s stuff. I’ve seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (and loved it) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, even Uncle Buck, but they too aren’t really John Hughes movies. I now see wherefrom Kevin Smith springs. I see wherefrom all teen movies spring in fact. But this does owe something to the 70s horror chain. It’s just missing the horror. But all the better for it. A total character piece, and I’d guess that almost anybody could relate to at least one of the widely varied characterisations. I personally loved Ally Sheedy. A great soundtrack, and ultra-simplified moments (hey, what’s your personal lunch concoction) make this some kind of classic.

Good British movie alert! This one’s going to require a few extra viewings to fully decipher, but the atmosphere is perfectly built-up, it’s sad, lonely, eerie, and finally shocking. I love the way the director uses double images to distort reality and confuse the viewer, for example, when Colin Firth and Mena Suvari are looking at an old photo album of him and is dead wife, and they come across a picture of them in the exact same pose that we can see Firth and Suvari in. There’s another weird disorienting moment early on when Firth wanders accidentally into a crime reconstruction scene. Suddenly everyone is frozen around him. For a moment you think the movie’s going to turn into Vanilla Sky or The Matrix, then a disembodied voice yells action, and everything starts to move again. I love stuff like this.

I’d recommend this as a double bill with last year’s other great British thriller, Freeze Frame. Give yourself a healthy burst of paranoia

This movie’s a lot more fun than expected. There’s some great set design and make-up effects (even if the ghosts do look a lot like the Cenobites of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series sometimes) and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Matthew Lillard is extraordinarily irritating, the other actors seem to be reading their lines from someone’s indecipherable handwriting offscreen. But it’s definitely worth a look for the real star of the movie, the house.

I’d seen this movie before, it turns out, but I’d be forgiven for thinking I hadn’t, since it’s so damn short. When the ending arrives, there is a real sense of, “that’s it?!?”

It’s basically another Bonnie and Clyde clone, or a severely tame Niagara, Niagara. Around about half way through reality hits you and you suddenly think to yourself, wait, was William Friedkin’s name in those opening credits?? (it shortly follows the thought, “is that Oscar-winner Adrien Brody??”) Yup the mastermind behind The Exorcist, The French Connection, and To Live and Die in L.A. really fell down on this one. There’s definite attempts at moments, I’ll give it that, but overall it stinks as much as you’d expect.

I think this movie was part of some series of movies from some company or other, remakes or homages of 50s teen rebel movies. Robert Rodriguez made Roadracers, which totally rocked, as part of the same series. I think this is true, anyway, don’t quote me.

If you have any kind of interest in the director, and want to see how bad he went (believe me, it makes The Hunted and Rules of Engagement look like works of genius), or if you just like looking at Shannen Doherty’s face, then it’s not a complete waste of time at 75 minutes.

I was kind of astonished by how harsh this movie is. It was kind of housed in the prejudice section of my movie brain, one of those movies I just had this gut feeling I simply wouldn’t like at all, one of those movies that’s called a ‘classic’, yet it’s not a classic, it’s just old. I still pretty much feel that way about it – it’s no masterpiece, that’s for sure. But it is pretty way ahead of its time. I expect a lot of the things in this movie you wouldn’t be able to put in a movie today, even. Of course I’d heard the “Do you feel lucky, punk?” line many many times before, but I liked the way it’s used, repeated, altered, to bookend the screenplay very neatly. Kick-ass score by Lalo Schifrin, too.

This is a grotesquely beautiful, amazingly unpleasant movie. It reminds me of the Takeshi Kitano stuff I’ve seen, with the sadism of the Takeshi Miike I’ve seen, along with more Hollywood movies like Fight Club and even the original Matrix.

I don’t really know what to say about it after one viewing… it’s shocking, beautiful, intensely visceral, with a beautiful score, great use of classical music, and amazing visuals.

This installment, a prequel set nearly 2 centuries before the other two movies, isn’t as good as the original or the insanely good sequel, but as a fan of these movies, I just can’t get enough of watching these two girls. Looking at the trilogy as a whole, they’re really the only major consistent force in the three movies’ making – the director and writers for all three are always different, yet Ginger and Brigette always come over as the exact same characters. Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle are just amazing.

Though the setting is early 19th century, the two girls are pretty much as we know them – early on, Ginger glances round and deadpans, “These people are f*cked,” and the girls’ basic attitude is particularly anachronistic, kind of bemused, kind of terrified, fairly omniscient of the situation they’re in.

The special effects are saved up for a gory climax, and when they come, they’re good. Since the story pretty much takes place in the snowy wilderness there’s no call for big period sets – it’s basically a small camp and good costumes. Hence, it’s one of the better looking low-budget period movies. Funny I was saying recently, reviewing Gosford Park, how I don’t like period costume type movies. I guess this is an exception (for the record, I like The Age of Innocence among others: just so no-one assumes I’m a splatter hound, lol).