Reviews

When her hospital co-worker Anna asks this of Catherine in the cafeteria, these five simple words bring all of human life into sharp focus. Our ability to communicate with one another and with our Creator is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. For the record, my own personal top ten list of the greatest movies of all time (BEN-HUR, THE QUIET MAN, SEABISCUIT, STAGECOACH, 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, HARVEY and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK)runs the gamut of elements that make for great cinema: chase scenes, animal stars, physical comedy, music score, special effects, scenic locations, and fight scenes of all kinds. Beyond these elements, these great movies provide a palette for movie makers to explore the way people connect with each other on human terms (OK, I'll admit that HAL in 2001 is not human, although his logical reasoning functions mimic human thought devoid of emotion.) As good as it is, FIREPROOF is not in the same class with my top ten films, although I would place it in the bottom half of my top ten list for just that genre. Having said that, at the time of its release in late September of 2008, the film became a huge box office hit with audiences then. People were seeing a society on the brink of economic collapse due to a breakdown in moral and spiritual values. Its message of faith in God and fidelity in marriage was a welcome contrast to the greed that had fueled astronomically high gas prices and a breakdown in the financial services sector of the economy. All of this factored into the victory of a presidential candidate who promised change in the way he planned to govern a nation teetering toward a great depression. Last week, shortly after Tax Day rallies across the country were protesting this leader's changes, our Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church in Spokane took a welcome respite from these events to view FIREPROOF. As a widower myself more than a few years separated from his spouse, I was as deeply moved as the married members of our small audience by this story of a man troubled by not one but two fractured family relationships. How the protagonist Caleb meets these challenges is well worth watching for anyone seeking to improve their own interpersonal relationships. I'll warn you, though, before you see it, even for a second time, to keep the Kleenex handy. FIREPROOF is definitely not tearproof. Dale Roloff

As a film reviewer with over 50 comments and plot summaries to his credit, films featuring animals have always been among my favorites. When I recently compiled a personal list of the all-time ten greatest movies (no CITIZEN KANE, THE GODFATHER or CASABLANCA among them), my love of motion pictures with animals as stars or as integral parts of the plots therein were points of consideration. The ten, in order, are BEN-HUR, THE QUIET MAN, SEABISCUIT, STAGECOACH, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, HARVEY, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Numbers 3 and 9 involve animals as the main focus, and 1,4,5 and 6 have them in key scenes. 7 and 10 are less obvious, but still provide essential elements in the story: Robin Hood becomes an outlaw after killing a deer and who can forget Maid Marian riding Roy Rogers' future co-star? And RAIDERS' most memorable action sequences are Indy in the snake pit and his chase of the Nazi caravan that starts on horseback. Hollywood history is replete with animals stars as well. Rin Tin Tin and Lassie were superstars of their studios and Tony, Trigger and Champion garnered nearly as much adulation as the Western stars who rode them. But none of these four-legged thespians talked, at least in human terms. Cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop were among the first to vocalize human speech, and nobody was better at it than Bugs Bunny. But except for a talking lion in THE WIZARD OF OZ, no live-action film tackled the notion of animals making like Mickey and Bugs until 1950, when Universal released FRANCIS. Chill Wills, the voice of the talking mule, never received any screen credit for his voice work, but his voice was so recognizable that it was never an issue to him. Call it coincidence or maybe Providence, our Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church screened RACING STRIPES last Friday on what would have been the late Wills' 105th birthday. As the church's members and neighborhood guests sat in the parking lot and enjoyed this mostly funny family flick together, I like to think that if Chill Wills could, he would have been looking down at us and joining in with that famous Francis laugh. Dale Roloff

One of my earliest childhood memories was getting home from school and sitting down in the family kitchen to hear "The Lone Ranger" on our big console radio. Of all my first TV heroes, none were bigger or braver than Davy Crockett, Superman and The Lone Ranger (not to forget his "faithful Indian companion and a fiery horse called Silver.") Until now, I'm sure I'd never seen Fess Parker, George Reeves or Clayton Moore as a bad guy. A few hours before this movie aired on cable, I saw the text of the preview box which read "Pete:Clayton Moore" so I was curious to see what color hat he was wearing. Actually, I later found out from IMDb filmographies that Parker, Reeves and Moore had each played villains more than once. Still, I had to wait until the third reel before I could be sure I was seeing Moore. In the first few scenes, what little dialogue he spoke didn't really identify him. But in the last scene he played with Autry, he spoke long enough that his clear deep voice revealed the familiar one we would grow to recognize from the long-running series which began not many months after the release of this film. There's little else about this oater I'd recommend. There are some good but forgettable songs, by Gene and others, just fair action and cinematography, no real romance, and not even a comical sidekick. It's not a great western by any stretch or even one of Autry's best films. For all that, it's still a passable way to spend an hour and ten minutes, which is about the length of one of my church's Sunday morning worship services. Forgive me, Pastor Mark, but Gene Autry's films haven't yet put me to sleep. Now, Rev, if you're hankerin' to liven up the congregation, I'd reckon you might try to wear a Stetson and fire a six-shooter (blanks-loaded, naturally) now and then. Dale Roloff

Many of us in the audience at the Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church, which is where we watched SNOW BUDDIES last Friday, have fond memories of watching ongoing film series with recurring characters, like Tarzan and Jane, Blondie and Dagwood, Andy Hardy and his family, to name just a few of the longer-running ones. But most moviegoers are unaware of which characters or group of characters has been filmed most often. Not counting silent, animated and short films, made-for-TV movies, and foreign-language films, TARZAN, not surprisingly, is #4 on the list, just a few films less than were made featuring Sherlock Holmes. Topping Holmes is another detective, a Chinese cop from Honolulu, Charlie Chan, who was in 45 pictures in all. By the way, none of the actors who played him was Oriental. At the top of the heap is that gang of ruffians from the Big Apple, the Bowery Boys, who were in a total of 48 flicks. Not all the actors or the characters they portrayed were in all 48, but the three or four main actors and their characters stuck together for a good share of them. And before that, the gang made 38 more movies as the East Side Kids and Dead End Kids-all told, more than Chan and Holmes combined. What, you ask, does this have to do with SNOW BUDDIES? Well, this AIR BUD sequel is Disney's longest running film series of all time, even surpassing the LOVE BUG bunch. The sixth film, prior to this, AIR BUDDIES, featured Bud's puppies as the main stars, as does this one, and presumably the next one, still in production, called SPACE BUDDIES. While SB has some fine voice talent in supporting roles, notably Whoopi Goldberg and Kris Kristofferson, the story stretches credibility with the young puppies pulling a dog sled in a grueling Alaskan race against adult dogs. But, hey, it's only a movie, so I'll cut Disney some slack over that. But I do give the studio some grief over the way they treated their canine actors. As an animal lover who loves to watch them in movies (SEABISCUIT is among my personal all-time Top Ten favorite films), I was appalled that the producers cut so many corners and disregarded so many guidelines and regulations by organizations like the American Humane Association, which is responsible for the end-credits line in movies with animals that states "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture." If you want to know more of the grisly details leading to the death of five puppies during the shoot, check out the blogs which accompany the User Comments and other info about this film. Sad as this case was, it is to be hoped that Disney and other film makers learned some lessons from these mistakes. I would not have watched this picture if I felt Disney had no remorse over its actions. I believe their next AIR BUD picture should carry a dedication which reads something like, "This film is dedicated to all past and present animal actors in the AIR BUD series who have performed so well and given so much of themselves in the production of these films." As moviegoers, we should insist the studio that is home to Mickey, Donald and Goofy does no less. Dale Roloff

Calling this a western...well, it is and it ain't. Some say the Wild West ended when the last famous outlaw Harry Tracy ended his career a little over a century ago, his Boot Hill being in a field about 50 miles west of Spokane, Washington. This movie takes place in Australia, which true enough, is some 8,000 miles west of the Mississippi, but it's also in the Far East part of the Eastern Hemisphere. And it's not your typical shoot-em-up either. There are no bank-robbing bandits, no gunfights on Main Street, no cavalry fighting the natives. But you'll find here a great coming-of-age romantic tale, with some stirring action sequences never seen before on film, all in the midst of some gorgeous location footage of the Snowy Mountains, which John Ford would have envied for his western films. This area of Australia, if one superimposed the map of the continental U.S. over Australia, would place the Snowy River country in about the same place as our Florida Everglades and not too far from where the Smoky Mountains begin in Georgia. Besides similar sounding names (Snowy-Smoky) this highest part of Australia contains its highest peak with an altitude very nearly the same as the Smokys' highest one in Tennessee, and a landscape that could pass for the southern part of the Appalachian chain as mentioned. Despite recent droughts and wildfires Down Under, the Snowy Mountains have changed little since Banjo Paterson wrote the poem on which this film is based and the equally memorable "Waltzing Matilda," unofficial national anthem of that nation, in the 1890s. Paterson, by the way, is such a famous person even today, that his face appears on the Aussie 10-dollar bill. In contrast, the American sawbuck only has a guy whose greatest fame was getting shot in a duel. Sad to say, this film never did as well at the U.S. box office as other Aussie films like the Mad Max trilogy, which launched Mel Gibson to super stardom, and the even bigger moneymaking franchise of the Crocodile Dundee films. TMFSR never rated a single Oscar nomination (not surprising for a non-Hollywood film), but amazingly enough only won a single AFI award (the Australian Oscar) for its musical score. The Golden Globes, however, gave it a Best Foreign Film nomination, won that year by GANDHI. Since its release, though, audiences worldwide have fallen in love with this gem of a movie, as did the folks at the Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church where we saw it last weekend. While not a true Western per se, it contains the same Judeo-Christian values that the best classic Hollywood westerns espouse. These values were embodied in the Code of the West, a liberal interpretation of the Ten Commandments: Always fight fair, protect women and children, respect others' property, and honor God and country. If you've never seen this movie, you're in for a treat when you do. If you've seen it before, it's worth watching again. Movies as good as this are a rare find. Dale Roloff

While this is not my favorite silent film, it definitely rates in my top ten silents. I enjoyed Chaplin's futuristic vision in MODERN TIMES much better, but Lang created a marvelous tale of what he felt the future (and our present, more or less) might be like. I saw this film at our neighborhood Garland Theatre last night. The print was advertised as the longest version yet to be restored and I wished I had seen more of the scenes that were hinted at by the titles, but sadly missing from the screening. The score was provided by a musical duo called Enuma Elish, which is touring the country accompanying the showing of METROPOLIS in other cities (You can access their work by going to www.lithiq.com.) The music, though a bit loud for my taste, was very good at adding a futuristic techno beat to enhance the enjoyment of the movie. I heartily recommend this showing if it becomes available in your area. I commend the Garland for the screening of this and all older films. I enjoy the availability of watching old movies on venues like the Turner Classic Movie network and of having them being sold in the DVD and VHS format for seeing at home. But there's nothing like the thrill of seeing a film on a large, theatrical-size screen, surrounded by an appreciable audience, as the producers intended them to be shown. I look forward to seeing more oldies but goodies in the future and I urge you to take advantage of the same opportunities when they arise. Dale Roloff

While not of the caliber of C.B.'s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, this animated version does a fine job in recreating the story of the Passover and of the life of the second-greatest Biblical hero of all time (if you don't remember who's number one, you must have slept through way too many Sunday sermons.) At the time it was made, this was the most expensive full-length animated feature ever made. Part of the reason was the assemblage of an incredible array of vocal talent. Val Kilmer, who had previously brought rich characterization to the roles of Batman and Doc Holliday, headed a magnificent cast not duplicated in an animated feature since Disney's THE JUNGLE BOOK thirty years earlier. While this reviewer didn't think the visual elements were as good as the aural parts, the film was still very entertaining and very faithful to the narrative of the true story, some parts of which the original writer, Moses himself, would not recognize. Most of the audience at the Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church where this picture was shown may not have felt that PRINCE rates as an animated masterpiece to equal films like FANTASIA and SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS which they had seen when they were the same target age or thereabouts as for this film. Still, I would recommend this as an excellent way for children (and adults) to learn about a part of history that is still remembered as an integral part of a rite of the Jewish faith ever since, and that led to the founding of a great nation and its rich cultural heritage. Dale Roloff

For a nation founded on high ideals of freedom and equality, we have often failed to practice what we preach, certainly in our relations with American Indians and black slaves and their descendants. Less well known are the feelings of distrust and even hatred we felt toward those who had a common ancestry to our bitter enemies in war, the Japanese of World War II and the Germanic people of World War I. Watching the screening of this film in my own Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church last week, I was reminded of how my maternal great-grandfather Jacob Eilmes, an immigrant from Austria, pretended to being Polish during WWI to escape the wrath of his Spokane neighbors. Set in a time and place of the U.S. and shot on location,ironically, not far from which a great many communities existed in real life, including in southern Lincoln County, Washington, where my own father's family lived after leaving Europe, "The Basket" weaves a story of a town disrupted by the simultaneous appearance of two orphans and an opera from Germany. Perhaps for dramatic effect, by the way, the story takes some literary license with historic facts. The flashbacks shown of American soldiers killing civilians in Germany could never have happened during the war because our ground troops never got out of France in that time. The orphans and opera have a huge impact on the whole town, accomplished primarily by the introduction of a game called basketball. Today in eastern Washington, especially the small farming communities like the one in this story, high school basketball is still the linchpin that brings townsfolk together, so this movie may be preaching to the choir to those of us who live in the same area depicted in this film. But even if you live in an area outside basketball-mad places like eastern Washington or the state of Indiana, you should enjoy this fine story, which won the 2001 Movie Guide Award for "best film for families." (These awards are also known as the Christian Oscars.) I stop far short of calling this the greatest movie ever made about intolerance rearing its ugly head in a small town, but it's still well worth the effort of buying the DVD or going to see it when it's next shown at your neighborhood library, church or other venue. Dale Roloff

Oops, no tigers, but there are lots of bears in this fantasy world. As much as I enjoyed the spectacle of the polar settings, flying ships and fighting bears while watching this with friends at the Garland Theatre, I was troubled by the theological implications. Not since STAR WARS replaced God with "The Force" in our collective consciousnesses, has a popular movie so skewered religion, the Catholic Church in particular. While it's doubtful this film will ever be as huge as the STAR WARS franchise, its evil Magisterium and henchwoman Mrs. Coulter, herself a veiled parody of arch-conservative author and talk show hostess Ann Coulter, paint a picture of a Dark Side that abuses children much as the Catholic Church too much tolerates its clerics who do the same. In the STAR WARS saga, the Dark Side represented a political power that we saw in real life as the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. Ironically, the Catholic Church, under Pope John Paul II, played a great part in dismantling that Evil Empire.The evil forces that Lyra and her bear take on are less well defined than Darth Vader and the Emperor's storm troopers of an earlier cinematic generation, but they are no less real than their counterparts of today. The bad will engendered by child-abusing priests and church leaders getting involved in the mud and scandals of politics bring down their religious support from the masses, not to mention what Islamic zealots are doing to their faith today. Without spoiling the ending too much, it appears Lyra and her bear face many more battles ahead, as do we all, in our quest to find and spread the truth in God. Dale Roloff

At its best, the medium of motion pictures can enrich body, mind and spirit of its audience. A delight to the senses of sight and hearing, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was the best example of a film meshing stunning visuals with a stirring classical music score, an achievement pioneered by Disney thirty years before in FANTASIA. Then, you can take a well-written story to engage the mind of the viewer who follows the travails and triumphs of an on screen character, especially if he or she is involved in the twists and turns of a thriller or whodunit by a master like Hitchcock. Finally, there are those films like FACING THE GIANTS that inspire us with a strong moral or spiritual message. Making the film on a minuscule (by Hollywood standards) $100,000 budget, all raised by community donations, the Georgia church that produced it was a bit surprised that it did so well at the box office. Released in over 400 theaters in 86 markets, its take swelled to $2.7 million in the first 10 days, good enough for #13 in America's box office poll. The final total was $8 million after a 10-week run, and it's still enriching church coffers by DVD sales. Part of the reason for its success can be traced to a ratings controversy that turned into a real godsend. When FTG was submitted to the MPAA for a rating, the film's supporters in Georgia and elsewhere were shocked that it earned a PG instead of a more family-friendly G. As initial sources indicated that the high-toned religious content was the reason, 15,000 e-mails flooded the board, ten times the previous record for a ratings protest, and even some members of Congress demanded to know what was happening. MPAA policy is not to explain their rationale for a film's rating beyond a few explanatory words in the rating box that precedes each movie. Uncharacteristically, then, the MPAA head explained that the PG was granted due to the violence in the football scenes and to the discussions about pregnancy and fertility between the coach and his wife. Owing to the showbiz maxim that there's no such thing as too much bad publicity and that teenage moviegoers consider G movies the "kiss of death" and will avoid them like the plague, no movie with religious backing has caused such a stir among moviegoers since Mel Gibson put his Christian principles on the line to make and distribute THE PASSION OF THE Christ. As we in the Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church audience watched the screening last week and cheered on as the hapless coach led a revival of school and team spirit with homilies like the quote that began this review, we were cognizant of what associate pastor and actor/writer/director/producer Alex Kendrick said before he took his church into the unfamiliar realm of movie-making with this second of three films that they have so far produced. Remembering that Jesus delivered his message to the masses with parables, Kendrick wondered why his church couldn't do the same by spreading the Gospel via their own stories in movies. As churches are similarly facing the giants of secular humanism who would silence religion's place in the public arena, it is hoped that more churches and religious organizations will join the battle begun by Mel Gibson and taken up on the local level by Alex Kendrick and his Sherwood Baptist Church. Dale Roloff

In most spy thrillers, the villains are people from outside the U.S. who run roughshod over the world with their military, political or economic machinations. But not since Rambo has a cinematic hero taken on our own government as the bad guys. Like Rambo, his training has turned him into a nearly invincible fighting machine, who ironically now opposes his former bosses. As each sequel has progressed from the first BOURNE outing, Jason has attempted to come back home, like a loyal dog, but his masters keep barring the door. This dogged pursuit of his goal has made Matt Damon's character a screen icon right up there with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan. This latest "Bourne" installment, which I caught at my favorite Garland cinema house, is as equally well-made and entertaining as its predecessors. Great locations set the scene for great action sequences like the chase scenes on the streets of Tangier and New York City, and the fight scene in the bathroom with the asset is arguably Jason's best ever albeit shot at a little too fast a pace. Throw in some fine character development, a good musical score and a story full of suspense, and you'll find yourself strapped in for a great thrill ride. And without giving too much away, the story comes full circle back to the same physical environment from where Jason began his odyssey. I'm really looking forward to popping the cork on the next entry in the series, especially now that Jason seems to have picked an an ally and possible love interest in the form of Nicky Parsons. Dale Roloff

As a history buff and a published writer in that subject, I was distressed to see how the film's storyline warped the real history of Squanto, especially in how he was treated by his English hosts, which was mostly cordial by all accounts, during the many years he actually lived on the other side of the Pond (and should have gotten Frequent Sailor Miles for all those trips he made back and forth over the Atlantic.) But it does show he learned the lessons of the Christian virtues taught him by the Franciscan monks and others who befriended him during that time, and more important, he passed them on to his Indian brethren so that they might live in harmony with their new neighbors. Like two other films that were released about this same time, DANCES WITH WOLVES and LAST OF THE MOHICANS, it shows that people of differing cultures can work together to accomplish great things, even in the face of great hostility between the two sides by those not so enlightened. At the screening of this film last night at the Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church, we watched this tale unfold and found it to be a great way of remembering why we celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.S.A. History teaches us (or it did when most of us in the church's audience went to school)that Squanto played a huge part in ensuring the Pilgrims could grow enough food and hunt and fish well enough to survive the coming winter, a task he did so well that it enabled the Pilgrims and their Indian neighbors to partake in a feast that continues as a tradition in America almost four centuries later. But this film carries a message beyond our traditional rationale for having a uniquely American holiday set apart to give thanks to God for providing bounty and blessings to all Americans in this land.That mostly overlooked message that many of us don't see today but that Squanto recognized is that peace and brotherhood and charity must be practiced if we are to survive and prosper in this world.

In a year (1994) when the Disney Studios released so many entertaining films (IRON WILL, THE LION KING, THE JUNGLE BOOK, THE SANTA CLAUSE, ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD, D2-MIGHTY DUCKS,) this stood out as a real gem of a movie that still entertains and inspires us today. I think Walt Disney would have been proud to have put his name on such a fine production by the motion picture company bearing his name. Thanks be to Walt, thanks be to Squanto and thanks, most of all, to God. Happy Thanksgiving. Dale Roloff

If anyone is entitled to make a movie that in some ways mimics RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, it's one of the visual effects designers who won the Oscar for ROTLA. Joe Johnston also was one of the creative artists responsible for the first three STAR WARS films (Yoda was his artistic creation) and he also did similar work on the TV series BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA. While this film was not the critical and artistic success of his first directorial effort HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS, I think it still rates as one of the top ten Disney live action films of the last 20 years. It didn't quite bomb at the box office when it was released, but it was unfortunate enough to come out on the same weekend as TERMINATOR 2. T2 was such a juggernaut, it was bound to eat up everything in its path. After such huge successes with the STAR WARS films and first two RAIDERS films as one of a group of talented whiz kids who helped give these films their visual style, some might have thought he moved up to the director's chair too soon, even though HONEY was big enough of a hit to spawn two sequels and the ending to ROCKETEER is tantalizing enough to suggest a sequel also. For whatever reasons Disney shelved any such plans. Johnston moved on to make JUMANJI, JURASSIC PARK 3, and HIDALGO, and it's certain he'll continue to make good films.His films are always entertaining and he knows how to fill the screen with memorable images. THE ROCKETEER is no exception. While not in the same class as his later films mentioned above, it does a fine job of bringing to life the old Saturday morning serials, with dashing heroes rescuing damsels in distress and saving the world from dastardly villains. The flying scenes are first rate, including those with the rocket. Interestingly, the special effects were old school, using models and miniatures, without the computer-generated graphics that its box office rival TERMINATOR 2 used extensively and are now the norm in special effects. Old as it is, this film can still give audiences a good ride. I had the pleasure of watching it last night at Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church, with an audience mostly older than me. We all remembered the Republic serials that inspired ROCKETEER's filmmakers and the Errol Flynn-type swashbucklers that make a brief appearance in the storyline. Some in the audience were old enough to have battled Nazis themselves, as do Cliff, the FBI agents and the patriotic gangsters in the end. In these days after September 11th, when we're still, like the Rocketeer, caught up with fighting people whose values and ambitions for world dominance clash with ours, it was enjoyable to see everyone unite to fight a common enemy. It's sad to think that those battles are still being waged long since those nostalgic Saturday mornings. Dale Roloff

I should have guessed something was wrong when I showed up at my neighborhood Garland Theatre and there were only a handful of patrons to watch this latest PIRATES flick. Of course, it was 9:45 pm, on a school night and this was the last day of its 3-week run at the Garland. But when such a paltry crowd shows up, it makes for a bad omen of things to come. Unfortunately, my fears were realized. This is not to say that this latest epic is a bad picture. It's just not up to the standards of the first two, although many of my fellow commentators rate the third PIRATES ahead of the second. For one thing, the whole story in this series has taken a decidedly darker turn from the first film, which was suitable for younger children without being dumbed down for their elders. The sequel, with its Kraken and bloodthirsty squid crew, was not at all suitable for younger folks, and the most recent work has a much darker tone, with very little of the warmth and humor that the characters brought to life in CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, and to a lesser extent, DEAD MEN'S CHEST. AT WORLD'S END manages to bring in some intriguing characters, but never really develops them. The Oriental captain, played by Chow Yun-Fat, never gets to do much and his back story with Jack Sparrow should have been filled in with some flashbacks. The same can be said for Jack's father. After so much hype about Keith Richards coming aboard the PIRATES franchise, he has few lines and little contact with Jack. On the other hand, the witch plays what I call a "Mary Potter" character, who's there to bring Jack back from the dead, but performs no magic, and instead wanders around mumbling mostly unintelligible dialogue. Her character and the evil Lord Beckett and his henchmen, which later includes the disgraced commodore, serve to bog the narrative down, and their villainy lacks the spirit that Barbossa and Davy Jones gave the first two films. All in all, my main gripes here are that this sequel is much too long, leans too much to the dark side, and it fails to develop some of its more interesting new characters, although I really liked the scenes with the one-eyed pirate and his bald buddy, not to mention the funny bits with the monkey and parrot. Will Turner also gets short shrift in the plot, but the actors playing Elizabeth, Jack, Barbossa and Davy Jones make up for the deficit with outstanding performances. And the visuals, action and rousing score make this a worthy film to see and to own. It's just not up to par with the first two in the series, and if the Disney people can't do any better than this, it's time for the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN to walk the plank when it comes to further sequels. Dale Roloff

In this over-the-top sequel to BRUCE ALMIGHTY, Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman bring to the screen this tale of a nonbeliever who talks to God 30 years after John Denver and George Burns played the same mismatched characters. Putting aside the notion that the real Almighty would likely appear to someone who's so indifferent to His existence, be it a character played by Denver, Carell or Jim Carrey, and that God would call forth a modern-day Noah to build an ark and save a bunch of animals and some people after He promised in His own Bible that He would not destroy the world again with a flood, I found myself a bit uncomfortable enjoying this film so much. It's one thing for Hollywood to make a film with historical characters or events that veers far from the truth, but it's a bit unnerving when these characters include the Creator of the universe who's been worshipped by billions of people. I'm sure God must have a sense of humor, as someone said when they first saw a platypus. The same can't be said about the folks who made this film. When the first real slapstick scene has a dog biting Evan in the crotch, you know this movie's in trouble. For a comedy that's not really too funny, there are some good bits to recommend. The scenes with the animals are very good and if animal wrangling ever becomes an Oscar category, this deserves the statuette. The scenes with Evan and his problems with facial hair were well done and the flood scenes were well staged, although a bit improbable to see mountains and deep river valleys in an area that's supposed to be the D.C. tidewater basin.

Ome more personal note I would like to relate. When I went to my neighborhood Garland Theatre to see this movie, I realized I had forgotten my wallet. Luckily, I had been sorting through the state quarters I've been collecting and I had placed the ones that were duplicates or not in anything approaching mint condition in my coin purse, which I realized was the only money I was carrying when I reached the ticket window. By the time I counted my change, I had 80 cents in pennies, nickels and dimes, but I had 13 quarters, worth $3.25, which paid the bulk of the $3.50 admission price. I may not be able to see and talk to God like Evan, Jim and John do on screen, but I think He was there for me nonetheless. Dale Roloff

I saw this during the Spencer Tracy tribute on Aug. 18 on Turner Classic Movies. Ironically, that date is the birthdate of Meriwether Lewis (1774.) Much of the action in this film mirrors the toils and turmoils of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which occurred less than 50 years from the time of this story. When you see the men malnourished, facing difficult portages, battling mosquitoes and having to wade through cold water for long stretches, fearing Indian attacks constantly, you have some ideas of the challenges facing the Corps of Discovery. Their co-leader, Lewis (Actually, he officially outranked Clark during their trip, because Clark's orders promoting him to captain equal to Lewis didn't arrive before their departure) had a career that had much in common with Maj. Rogers. Like Rogers, he was a brilliant leader and his men followed him loyally to the end. Both men toiled along with the men and consulted their junior officers and men before making difficult life-or-death decisions. Both were hailed as great heroes by the public and government they represented after their marvelous feats of derring-do, but both came to bad ends. Rogers sided with the British during the Revolutionary War and his Rangers eventually became a Canadian outfit and he never was able to achieve his mission of finding the Northwest Passage, although as Tracy says in the film, he may have had little faith in there actually being such a water route. Lewis also never saw his extensive journals of his expedition come to be published, dying mysteriously in a Tennessee travelers' inn a few years after arriving home from that epic trip, which was charged with also trying to find the elusive Passage. Langdon's summary quote about Rogers could also apply to Lewis, as American adventurers since then carry his spirit of discovery with them, even into outer space. This film has always been one of my favorites. As a lover of westerns, I can enjoy many of the familiar elements: an arduous journey over breathtakingly beautiful but perilous land and water, battles with Indians, men and women of unflinching courage. I'm lucky enough to live in a part of the northwestern U.S. where some of the film footage was shot, which was only a little more than a hundred miles from the same part of Idaho which had proved so difficult to the Lewis and Clark expedition. In fact, this film and COME AND GET IT (1936), also featuring Walter Brennan in his first Oscar-winning role, were the first two films made in this part of the Northwest (specifically, northern Idaho) to achieve Academy Award nominations and NORTHWEST PASSAGE had some great photography which was so honored. If you've never traveled to the Northwest, I urge you to do so. And I urge you to see NORTHWEST PASSAGE. In either case, you'll enjoy the trip. Dale Roloff

Professor Marvel needn't have worried about Dorothy. She had what another screen icon displayed in an equally memorable role 30 years later: True grit.The 'true grit' that Mattie Ross admires in Rooster Cogburn was something she also possesses and I find a lot of similar character traits in Mattie and Dorothy. In 1939, audiences then loved Garland's performance as the girl who survives falling into a pigpen,losing her dog,riding out a tornado,then has to battle a witch and an obstreperous wizard on her journey back home. I mention the Duke because her Dorothy and his Rooster role both netted them Oscars in their somewhat similar careers. Her Oscar was a smaller honorary statuette (which she called a "Munchkin" award) given for her work as Dorothy. The Duke's Oscar was close to an honorary one also. It was far from his best work and his other nominations for THE ALAMO and SANDS OF IWO JIMA were much beneath his better efforts in RED RIVER, THE QUIET MAN and THE SEARCHERS, just to name a few. I think the older members of the Academy voting the awards wanted to give Wayne the prize for his body of work to that point, partly because they were a bit shocked at the popularity of THE MIDNIGHT COWBOY, an X-rated film that garnered best actor nominations for Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. I think the Academy knew they both had long careers facing them and would be up again for awards, and they do have 3 Oscars and 11 nominations between them. The other two actors up for the award then were equally deserving. Richard Burton had received his sixth Oscar nomination and went on to a record seven nominations without wins and Peter O'Toole had picked up his fourth nomination and just this year broke Burton's record with his 8th non-winning nomination. I'm sure a lot of the voting members felt O'Toole and Burton more deserving of the Oscar, but sentiment for the aging Duke won out and it was probably a very narrow margin of votes that carried the day. While the Duke's Oscar came near the end of his career, Judy's came when she was just getting started. But like Wayne's Rooster role, her most honored and beloved screen character represents just the tip of an iceberg. She earned two other Oscar nominations and sold a lot of records and was a popular TV performer. As John Wayne could never overcome his western/war hero screen persona (and probably never really would have given that up), Garland was never able to find a plum part like Dorothy again either. That's not to say she went totally downhill from there. By all accounts, she had an outstanding career, plagued though it was by personal troubles. But Dorothy put her star up in the cosmos and she could never reach that high again. Her plucky character and her memorable friends and foes in the enchanting world of Oz set this film apart as one of the greatest of all time and deservedly so.I just saw this on the big screen at my neighborhood Garland Theatre. Although like millions of others who had seen this on television more than once, it was still a great story brought to life by the magic of cinema. I don't know if I suddenly became allergic to popcorn, but the climax brought tears to my eyes. Few films do that for me and I was surprised at my reaction to what I thought was an old chestnut I'd seen more times than I can remember. Maybe I'm just getting old and decrepit and overly sentimental for the good old days or maybe it's because this film can still carry a powerful message to new generations seeing it anew. I'd like to believe it's more of the latter than the former. Dale Roloff

Having just seen this at the Garland Theatre,a second-run discount theater in my neighborhood,I'm glad I didn't pay for a full price cineplex ticket. Not that it's a stinker, but it just doesn't qualify as a very good film in the superhero genre. There's a telling bit in the wedding scene where Marvel honcho Stan Lee is refused entry to the event. Stan and Marvel have not had a lot going their way this year. SPIDERMAN 3 is doing just OK at the box office, but, worse, it's collecting less than stellar reviews from some quarters who say it's the worst of the trilogy.The X-MEN franchise is going downhill also and there don't seem to be any comic superheroes waiting in the wings for Marvel to take Hollywood by storm as Spidey and X-Men did. If it's any consolation, Superman and Batman are not doing much better on the big screen. These things go in cycles, though, and I'm sure the comic book superhero will rebound again. It will take some new faces and characters to do it probably, but the superhero is not dead, it's just like a sleeping volcano that's bound to erupt again. Getting back to this movie, I give it good marks for some clever plot devices. The wedding was played way too straight, though, and the director should have either given it more humor or more suspense. The switching of super powers was another thing that should have been given more play, and the possible breakup of the team should also have been emphasized more than with just a few lines like my summary quote by Thing to Johnny. At just 91 minutes, this film was just way too short to develop much of the storyline better. Sometimes, more is not better, but in this case, what I saw on the screen just left me wanting more. It was mildly entertaining, but SILVER SURFER never got me, pal. Dale Roloff

Whether or not Wyatt Earp ever made such a statement, it sounds like something we'd expect from a full-fledged western legend: short and sweet, with a trace of modesty. While Kurt Russell was not the biggest star to ever play Wyatt (Such honors go to the likes of Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Kevin Costner and James Garner and the quintessential TV portrayal by Hugh O'Brian), he does a decent job with the part and Val Kilmer heads an outstanding supporting cast. Many actors have played Doc Holliday on big and small screen, the earliest I can find on the IMDb website is Harvey Clark in LAW FOR TOMBSTONE (1937), while others have included Cesar Romero,Kirk Douglas, Victor Mature, both Dennis and Randy Quaid, even Willie Nelson and Adam West.Doc Holliday has always been my favorite among all the historic gunslingers of the Old West. Earp and Hickok may have been more of the white hat sort of hero, but Doc made no pretense about having redeeming qualities, except for one: he stood by his friend Wyatt when the chips were down. No lawman or cowboy could ask any more or expect any less from a true friend. Of all the portrayals of Doc, Kilmer's version is one of the best ever done for this complex man. His pathos and comic relief that he brings to his part turned this picture into an outstanding example of its genre. In real life, the western hero was never a totally William S. Hart/Hopalong Cassidy type of good guy, but a human being with flaws just like anybody else. In fact, sometimes the flaws that a western hero has to overcome make his character all the more extraordinary and entertaining, like the Duke does with his Ethan character in THE SEARCHERS. TOMBSTONE's not in a class with the classic all-time westerns, of which THE SEARCHERS is one, but it's a good tale of how a vicious outlaw gang gets its comeuppance from two of the greatest gunfighters who ever strapped on their shootin' irons to clean up their town. Dale Roloff

Sallah wasn't the only one who was saddened to say goodbye to Indiana Jones. At the end of this showing at the Garland Theatre, we all had to bid him a reluctant adieu. Anybody that hates snakes, Nazis and unscrupulous treasure hunters is a hero to be admired. This was the first film in the saga of Indiana Jones, and what a character he was and will be again, if the fourth film in the series makes it to the big screen next year. It would be hard to top this first one, although the third picture had some more character development than the others and Sean Connery nearly stole the flick from Ford in one of Connery's most memorable roles since playing James Bond. Let's hope he will appear in the next one in a flashback, since he was killed off in his last appearance. There's little I can add to the hundreds of user comments posted here already. But I will say that we can all thank MAGNUM P.I. for RAIDERS' success. Had Tom Selleck been able to leave MAGNUM and play the Indiana Jones role as Lucas and Spielberg apparently wanted, he, not Ford, would have been the face of the franchise. I can't see anyone but Harrison Ford playing Indy. Perhaps Selleck could have had the kind of career that Ford enjoyed after playing Indy, but I doubt it. Selleck never got such a plum role offered again and the casting decision of Ford for Selleck makes for a terrific what-if scenario had it gone the other way. It's probably my second favorite what-if Hollywood story. Number one on my list goes back to 1968 when a series called STAR TREK was cancelled because the NBC network thought it was too cerebral and too expensive to produce, so they put ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN in the show's time slot. When STAR TREK was cancelled, it became the Cinderella that was rejected by the evil network, that became a hit in syndication and went on to spawn a series of successful movies and TV series as no other TV series has done before or since. If the fans had gotten their fill of STAR TREK after a few more seasons on the network, would it have gained the impetus to take off like it did with later movies and TV sequels? I think not. And neither would it be the same RAIDERS trilogy without Harrison Ford. Dale Roloff

The above line wasn't in the picture, but it's always been one of my favorite sayings. You just never know how things might turn out when you do them, and often they end up either pretty well or quite awful. I was hoping going into this viewing that I might see something very worthwhile like a Rambo version of a young Viking turning his back on his countrymen in a battle for survival in the deep woods. Or they could have gone with the Fenimore Cooper story of the Deerslayer hero raised by his chosen people who must battle both the bad Indians and the bad white guys. Instead, they pretty much followed the plot line of the kid leading the bad guys away from the villagers as the original PATHFINDER had done in the Norwegian film of the same name 20 years earlier. In doing so, they made just a fair remake of what could have been a great story. There was very little back story of the Ghost's Viking life and even less of his formative years spent with his new foster family. This would have given the Ghost character much more depth and made him someone we could care about. As it was, he was just the sword-wielding Indian wannabe taking on the evil Viking raiders,so who could blame his erstwhile allies from totally buying into his newly discovered loyalty to them against his own race. The romance lacked much spark between the hero and his girl, and the action scenes were only marginally effective, except for a very good chase scene down the mountainside. The set director, however, did a fine job of recreating the ancient villages and the costumes were quite good, even if they were a bit fanciful from an historical notion of how the Vikings might have looked. At first, I disliked the black-and-white effect of the lighting, but I think it added more than detracted from the visual effect of the film overall. This was, after all, an unusual way of looking at how the first encounters between the two cultures would have gone, so seeing history in a different light was done here literally. As for the historicity of the film, I think there could have been just a little bit of humanity shown by the Vikings and maybe a bit of the savagery by the Indians that they possessed before this encounter and especially how these raids would have engendered more of a warlike spirit if they had been relatively peaceable heretofore. As a lover of westerns, it was refreshing to see the roles reversed in this early saga of cowboys versus Indians. I would say I got the better of the bear this time, but it did its share of gnawing on me before the battle was over. Dale Roloff

I think that Ida Lupino was one of the most scathingly brilliant women film directors of all time. And she was probably one of the greatest actresses of her time who was not an A-list star. It's true she never had a break out role that put her up there with her contemporary actresses and none of her films would probably make a list of the greatest of all time. She never received an Oscar nomination as an actress or director or screenwriter. Yet she worked steadily in Hollywood for half a century, alongside many great stars. Perhaps she was just so good that it was hard for those who were selecting awards nominations to single out her work from that of her peers. Whatever the reasons, it was a shame that her work was not better recognized. This movie was one of those overlooked gems. Student Hayley Mills and her "scathingly brilliant" pranks never seem to unnerve mom superior Roz Russell very much, as both deserve A grades for their acting work here, and the story has a great ending that was mildly surprising, but not unexpected from the way Ida presented the story. Sad to say, it was Lupino's last feature film she directed, although she helmed several more TV shows afterward. I'm sure she had some more great stories to tell on the big screen. She saved a very good one for her last. Dale Roloff

As someone who writes quite a bit about history and movies, I found this to be an intriguing subject. The "what-if" notion has always been an interesting question when we look at historical events and wonder how history would have been altered by people and events taking a different turn from what really happened. The idea that the South could have won the Civil War is one of those things that never could have happened. Sure, if things had gone better, they might have beaten the North badly enough that Lincoln would have sued for peace and decided to let the Confederacy go their own way without trying to force them back into the Union. That's the best the South could have hoped for and that's all they wanted. It's ludicrous to believe that they could conquer the North or that they would desire to do so. Worst case scenario, there would have been two nations occupying North America, one free and one with slaves. Eventually, as the South moved toward an industrial economy (and the Civil War moved it in that direction sooner than it might have without the war) the necessity for slave labor might have disappeared as well. Slavery had been steadily declining, anyway, but the Civil War was not so much that the South loved their "peculiar institution" but that they resented being told that they had to get rid of their slaves or else. Taking all this into account, if we accept the premise of their being just one United States as a Confederacy existing today which still has slavery legal and prevalent in society, the rest of the scenario about siding with Hitler, etc., is not any more far fetched. As a satirical piece, it succeeds in making us think about the issues it raises. But don't for a moment think that there's much here that even Stephen Colbert would call "truthiness." Admittedly, racism still exists in America, as it does every where else in the world. But America still offers the best opportunities for people of any color or creed despite all its drawbacks. And no other place has the freedom of speech that we enjoy. That's why we can see a film like this and I can comment on it right now. For what it's worth, I give the film high marks for making the statement it does. As Jefferson said, I may disagree with what they're saying, but I defend their right to say it. I'm glad we don't live in a country that this mockumentary suggests could have been. But it exists only in your wildest nightmares, which we can all share by this cinematic experience. Dale Roloff

John Carradine said this was the worst movie he ever made. It may have also been his worst performance as Dracula, a role he had assumed more than than any other character he portrayed in his illustrious career (at least six times in films and twice on TV, according to his IMDb filmography.) That being said,it's still not half bad as a B western-horror movie. It may be odd to see a vampire in the old West, but maybe he was looking for Frankenstein's daughter to help her take on Jesse James, the movie which veteran director William Beaudine released just before this one (JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER.) Ironically, this was the last film Beaudine made in a career that lasted from the silent films he made four decades before with Mary Pickford, to a series of Bowery Boys flicks, then on to a string of memorable TV shows like SPIN AND MARTY, RIN TIN TIN and LASSIE. Although Beaudine's cinematic career might have ended here,he kept working, shooting more LASSIE episodes, a DISNEYLAND episode called "Ten who Dared" about Major Powell's epic boat journey through the Grand Canyon and a couple of GREEN HORNET episodes, which were packaged with other programs into two Green Hornet films, a much better ending to his career than his silly film about two legendary killers. The film is just getting started when the story takes an ironic turn. The vampire has boarded a stagecoach at night where he meets a whiskey drummer, just as Carradine's gambler character had done in the classic STAGECOACH film he made with John Wayne. After he kills an Indian girl at a rest stop, her tribe takes off after the stage, in the director's homage to his colleague John Ford's masterpiece. There's not a lot more to recommend for this film. Billy only has one gun fight and two fist fights before the inevitable final showdown between the title protagonists. Dracula faces little resistance except from the immigrant mother of his second victim, who has a hard time convincing anyone a killer is going around biting helpless women and sheep to death. Some memorable TV character actors are seen here, such as Kurt Russell's dad Bing, who played Sheriff Coffee's deputy on BONANZA,Roy Barcroft from SPIN AND MARTY and the aforementioned Folgers Coffee lady.When all is said and done, the film does a fair job of telling what might happen if these two legendary figures from history and literature had met. Sure, the vampire may appear in daylight and the means chosen for dispatching him is something other than a wooden stake, and Billy the Kid would be the last cowboy to give up gunslinging glory to become a sheep puncher for anyone, but this is a Hollywood film after all, so don't expect much accuracy in either historical or literary rendering. Beaudine was never in a class with other great directors of his time, but there were few that lasted in Hollywood for over half a century as he did. Producers liked his way of shooting within a budget and audiences liked the stories he told on film, so his films usually made money and his movies and TV shows were seldom boring to watch. This flick may not have been his or Carradine's best works, but it's a good opportunity to see the efforts of such screen legends as these two at work together, along with some familiar faces from the small screen. Dale Roloff

I don't usually watch "trash" movies, so this is my first review of any of that genre. It was shown on TCM, right after THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, and host Robert Osborne questioned the dichotomy of its selection paired with the above by his guest host. In some ways, they are not dissimilar. The main characters are compared to goddesses, one to the manor born and the other an exotic dancer who just looks like one, with two thrill-happy friends who may surpass her in looks but not deviltry. (Lori Williams may appreciate the hunk of stuff she ogles, but she's the best hunk of stuff in this picture.) While the George Cukor classic cited drips with charm and class, Russ Meyer here has neither, but it's still an entertaining flick. While my favorite genre is the western with good guys overcoming nasty villains, mixed with blazing guns and gut-wrenching chases, Meyer crafts a B-western of sorts, with the women wearing the black hats and the chases of the sporty looking, screaming engine variety. Strong women on film is nothing new, going back to the afore-mentioned heroine of THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but these gals are over the top in more ways than one (or two.)The villainess on screen is every bit as sadistic as Robert Mitchum in CAPE FEAR or Anthony Hopkins in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and the final fight scene was as finely staged as one between opposite-sexed protagonists would hope to be.Fittingly, her end comes by means of one of her favorite playthings, which as close to a spoiler as I ever hope to write. By all rights, I shouldn't have enjoyed this so much. But the fight scenes and racing scenes were well done, and the shots of the desert locations, even though in glorious black and white, stand out nearly as much as the physical charms of the title characters. It's not great cinema by any stretch, but it's wonderfully trashy good, and I'll leave it at that. Dale Roloff