I have had a few instances recently of re-watching some films that, at first, I did not like, but upon the second watch, finding the film more enjoyable.  I wondered if that would continue by watching The Phantom.

Spoiler alert:  It did not.

The Phantom was horrendous.

It was actually way worse than I remembered it being.

The Phantom aka “The Ghost Who Walks,” secret identity of Kit Walker (Billy Zane), is the legendary, mythical hero of the jungle and he gets involved in a plot from businessman Xander Drax (Treat Williams) to uncover the magical Skulls of Touganda and claim the mystical power they control.  Kit’s old college flame Diana (Kristy Swanson) was involved too.  Oh and Catherine Zeta-Jones was a villainous sidekick for Drax, until she wasn’t.

The plot is an absolute mess.  There is no explanation of the plot.  Everybody just goes through the motions and people then drop some exposition moving along.

The dialogue is laughable.  Nobody talks like this.

It felt like a super hero version of an Indiana Jones movie, but really less intelligent or less fun or less well developed.  This makes the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull look like a considerably better movie of this genre.

This is way worse than I remembered.  It is truly a bad film.

A Goofy Movie was an animated Disney film based on the TV cartoon.  What happens when Goofy has a kid and has t be a parent?  Hijinks.

It is summer vacation and Max (Jason Marsden) has set up a date with his crush, Roxanne (Kellie Martin) to watch the broadcast of a concert together.  However, a phone call to his father Goofy (Bill Farmer) from the Principal (Wallace Shawn) puts Goofy into a panic.  Goofy decides to take his son fishing following the same path that his own father had done with him.

To cover the absence, Max tells Roxanne that he and his father were going to the live concert that they were going to watch on TV and that they were going to go on stage and dance with them at the end of the show.

There really isn’t much to the plot.  It honestly feels like an episode of any other TV show, just extended out to an hour and a half.  If you have ever watched a family comedy on TV, then you have seen the “twists” that happen here, just with that Goofy flair.

The music was catchy, but forgettable.  I just watched this not an hour ago, and I cannot recall any of the song titles or melodies.

The film does a good job of portraying adolescence and how the relationship can be between a father and his son.  It is not all sweetness.  Teens can be a nasty bunch and they are embarrassed at parents, no matter how much they may love them.  Goofy and Max have that relationship and we are exposed to the connection between them as the film moves on.

A Goofy Movie was fine.  The film would, most likely, be a big hit among the kids while the parents would not hate themselves for watching it.  It may not be a massive success, but it was far from a flop either.

I had heard about this movie on one of the movie talk shows that I listen to and I thought it was odd, but I had never known of this before.  It was referenced by the podcaster as one of his favorite movies ever and, again, I had never heard of it before.  So The Edge went on my list of films to see.

Billionaire Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) accompanied his model wife (Elle McPherson) on a shoot in Alaska.  Photographer Robert “Bob” Green (Alec Baldwin) and his assistant Stephen (Harold Perrineau) went in search of another local photographer.  The helicopter that carried them crashed and stranded the three men in the Alaskan wilderness.  Before long, they realize that they have been stalked by a man-killing Kodiak bear.

This action/survival tale had some definitive benefits to it.  First of all, Anthony Hopkins is a master actor and he can make nearly every silly or cheesy scene watchable, if not tense and exciting (Transformers: Last Knight notwithstanding).  Hopkins’ character is intelligent and observant, understanding the situation and finding ways in which to help them survive.

I wonder if this was on the resume for Harold Perrineau when he applied to be Michael on LOST (Waaaaaaaaalllllllt!) as he showed off his skills of running through the trees and navigating water and rivers.  There were a couple of scenes with Perrineau that were painful and extremely dramatic.

I do have to say that Charles Morse was probably too great of a person.  I truly respected his kindness and his heroic efforts, but I have to say there were a few moments that made me question what he does.  I am not sure I would have done the same thing making him the best among us.

However, I do love the fact that the movie highlights his intelligence as one of the key character traits of this man.  He is shown to be able to think on his feet and to plan out a strategy that will give him the best opportunity to survive, whether it be from the wilderness, the animals or the human component.

I did find it difficult to accept the film’s assertion that the bear was tracking them the whole time, but I have to say the confrontations with the bear made up for any issues I might have had with the narrative.

The Edge had some good action scenes, but they knew that the real elements of survival were not just built on the action.  The moments of character interaction were every bit as good as the action, if not better.  Except for the bear fights.  Those ruled.

One of the great pulp/comic strip characters of all time was featured in a 1990 movie with Warren Beatty.  Dick Tracy came out a year later than the Tim Burton 1989 Batman, but the films shared a definitive tone.

Police detective Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) is out to bring down crime lord Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) and his variety of henchmen while trying to balance his relationship with dame Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly).  Along the way, Dick helps out a street orphan, Kid (Charlie Korsmo).

When Big Boy kills Lips Manlis (Paul Sorvino), his nightclub’s singer Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) is an eye witness and Dick tries to get her to testify, bringing trouble right to his front door step.

Dick Tracy is an iconic cartoon strip and this film does an incredible job of bringing that comic strip to life.  The very feel of the city gives it life and, much like Gotham in Batman films, a character all unto its own.  The colors here make this different than Gotham and gives the movie its cartoon ambiance.

The characters are also extremely over the top cartoony which gives a flare to the film.  The ugly villains and the brightly colored police create a wonderful contraction.

The score does remind one of the Batman ’89 score.  Part of that reason was the scores for both movies were done by Danny Elfman.  There was a time that Dick Tracy was running along the rooftops that I actually thought they were using the actual Batman theme.

The cast of Dick Tracy is amazing.  Not only does Warren Beatty completely inhabit the body of the iconic detective, Al Pacino is utterly perfect as the enigmatic criminal.  Throw in roles for Dustin Hoffman, William Forsythe, Charles Durning, Mandy Patinkin, Kathy Bates, Dick Van Dyke, Catherine O’Hara, Estelle Parsons, James Caan, and Charles Fleischer.  It is an unbelievable excess of talent making up these characters, and many times unrecognizable characters.  You have Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman playing a character named Mumbles who, as his name says, just mumbles when he talks.

The story is not overly strong and it feels as if the film is disjointed like a comic strip, which may have been purposeful.  However, there is a nice reveal at the end of the third act, which is fairly solid by comparison to some of these types of films.

The best part of the movie is the relationship between Dick Tracy and the Kid.  The sweet connection between the sticky-fingered orphan and the hard-nosed and gruff cop works very well and you connect more to Dick Tracy by seeing him through the Kid’s eyes.  Charlie Korsmo, the actor who played Kid, had several big roles in the early 1990s including Hook and What About Bob?.  As an adult, Korsmo has become a successful lawyer and assistant professor of law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

This is about as well done as you could ask for when you try to bring Dick Tracy to life.  I found this even more interesting now than I did back when I first saw it.  Dick Tracy is a lot of fun.

When I saw The Green Hornet for the first time in theaters in 2011, I came out of the film hating it.  I just watched it for a second time on Netflix and I did not hate it near as much as I did the first time.  Mind you, it is not a good movie, but the flaws did not seem to bother me as much this time as it did then.

I can’t stop to think of why that is.  It is not that the movie is different from the time I saw it back in 2011.  Perhaps I like Seth Rogen more now than I did then.  He typically falls into the category of comedic actor that is too loud and whose characters are all basically the same.  In my head, I compare Rogen to comedic actors such as Kevin Hart, Adam Sandler, Zach Galifianakis etc.  That style just seems to wear on me.  Throw in the drug humor and most movies with Rogen in it, I consider iffy.

Still, he has done some better work over the last few years, featuring some films that I have dug.  Long Shot, Steve Jobs, The Disaster Artist are a few of the projects that may have helped me see Seth Rogen in a different light.  He is funny too, when he stays in line and keeps control.

So with a solid character, Seth Rogen’s The Green Hornet was less offensive as I found it then.  He was still too loud and the story beats were sadly predictable, but I found this more acceptable than before.

Part of that was Kato (Jay Chou), who is played to perfection here.  I am sure that I mentioned in a previous review all those years ago that Kato was the standout of the film.  He was this again.  I have always been a sidekick fan (I actually preferred Robin to Batman growing up) and I loved the contradiction between Kato and Britt Reid (Set Rogen).  Kato appeared to be great at everything while Britt was a loser wasting his life away in senseless partying.

However, when Britt’s father (Tom Wilkinson) dies, leaving his media empire to his son, Britt takes his father’s legacy in a diverging path.

The whole Green Hornet is pretending to be a bad guy to do good is an iconic part of the character and is done reasonably well here.  I did like how the film touched upon how Britt felt guilt over the response to the Hornet’s activity by the criminal underworld.  I would have liked more character development like that.

The whole Kato and Britt break up over Lenore (Cameron Diaz) was tired and dull, as was the physical fight between the two of them.  The third act was a gigantic mess with silly and improbable situations.  I kept wondering if there was any injuries or deaths from the bystanders here or was the car chases and gun fights just conveniently missing them.

There were some funny bits in the film too.  The time when Britt accidentally shoots himself with the Hornet gas and he is out for a week and a half was quite clever.

I go back and forth with Christoph Waltz as the villain Chudnofsky.  On one hand, I did not find him to be a strong villain, but that could be why he was as he was.  His own self image led to his grab of power and his subsequent mental instability.    When pushed by someone he could not control in the Green Hornet, Chudnofsky responded by diving deeper into his insecurities to become “Bloodnofsky” and start donning more of a super villain type facade with red attire and themed actions.  The movie does not go into this enough, but I think there is a fascinating concept at work here.

The Green Hornet has a lot of problems and is considered a failure, despite making a modest amount of money worldwide.  I did not hate it near as much as I once did, but it is a film that could sting you.

This was a film that I had not seen before and it felt as if it should be right up my alley.  I even named a character in my book Psybolt Unleashed after Napoleon Dynamite.  The movie came up in discussion with some friends earlier this week, so it went on the list.

I have to say… it was okay.

I was not blown away by it.  It was sweet and had some funny parts to it.  It is certainly quirky and unlike most movies.

Napoleon (Jon Heder) has a strange life, with a strange family.  He is totally deadpan and downright odd, and he decides to help his best friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) in an election for high school class president against mean girl Summer (Haylie Duff).  As this is going on, Napoleon continues his weird world including trying to interact with his hopeful girlfriend, manage his jerk of an uncle (Jon Gries) and learn to dance.

There was a ton of awkwardness with many scenes in the film, an obvious conscious decision from the filmmakers as there are shots that linger on actors, bringing the feeling of uncomfortableness to everyone.

However, there is no doubt that this is an original idea and the execution is unlike much of anything we have seen before.  It makes one think of films of Wes Anderson.

Jon Heder is fascinating as Napoleon Dynamite.  His performance is very strong as you never know what to expect from the character.  And every weird thing he does feels natural for Napoleon.

Napoleon Dynamite as a cult classic certainly makes sense, as I can see why some may find it an unwanted experience.  I thought it was fine.

And so the re-watch comes to an end.

After, what has been 26 movies, the James Bond movies have been re-watched.  I have to admit that, at one point, this felt like an undertaking that was going to be more than what I could finish.  Then came the epidemic and quarantine and time changed.  So I decided to push forward with Dr. No.  After viewing Skyfall (and that horrid 1967 Casino Royale travesty), I came to the last Bond film before the arrival of No Time to Die in November (hopefully).  That film was Spectre.

I saw this film once in 2015 and I did not love it.  In fact, it was quite the letdown for me after the wonderful Skyfall.  Again, I was intrigued to see how my second viewing of this movie might be the same or different.

You know what? I quite enjoyed Spectre this time.

I found this to be considerably more entertaining than I did when I first saw it in the theater.  There could be many reasons why that is the case.  Perhaps expectations outweighed what I saw, considering how much I loved Skyfall.  Maybe I did not understand the references, since I had not seen (or it had been a long time) some of the earlier Bond films in which Spectre makes allusions.  Maybe it was just too long (which it is).  Who knows.  This time, Spectre was a much more engaging film.

James Bond (Daniel Craig) received an ominous video message from M (Judi Dench) from seemingly beyond the grave, setting him on a path to uncover a international shadowy organization called SPECTRE and the mysterious enigma who ran it.  As this was going on, our new M (Ralph Fiennes) was trying to keep the Double O program afloat as a new, big brother type data organization was rising on the worldwide stage, pushed on by Max  “C” Denbigh (Andrew Scott).

Of course, as we all know when in the James Bond mythos, when you mention SPECTRE, the man behind it is the one and only Ernst Stavro Blofeld, now being portrayed by Christoph Waltz.  Spectre was wise about the return of Bond’s nemesis to this new series of films with Daniel Craig at the helm.  While the rest of the Bond lore…sort of… had a continuity and a through-line in the movie franchise, everything had since been rebooted with Craig.  So they took Blofeld and gave him a more compelling and connecting back story that tied him closely with Bond, more than ever before.  I liked the tie, although one wonders how closely this had been planned out.  This movie basically tied everything from the Daniel Craig Bond films together beneath the Spectre umbrella.  I am not sure that if you really analyze the plot it would necessarily hold up, but it does, for the most part, work for me.

Dave Bautista joined the film as Hinx, the silent assassin for this film.  The silent hired gun is a trope of the Bond franchise and big Dave fits right in.

It was fun because a couple of the old Bond motifs showed up here…almost.  They were on a snowy mountain with ski lifts and I though, “Oh look, they will be skiing!”  However, they avoided slapping on the skis for a chase scene.  However, they did return to the “death trap” concept when they could have just shot Bond in the head and be done with him easily.  One wonders that part of the job description for Bond villains is “you must place yourself in a situation where you are going to be caught/killed.”

There had been some belief that Spectre was going to be the final Bond film for Daniel Craig.  Craig had even made some references about never playing the character again specifically the he would rather “slash [his] wrists” than play Bond again.  Because of that, the end of Spectre could have easily been a beautiful send-off for James had it gone that way.  However, we know that they backed up the Brinks truck full of money for him to resume the role once more.

I am pleased to have finished the Bond re-watch and I am ready for No Time to Die.

I do like this movie poster.

That is where my compliments end.

Out of a feeling of completism, with my James Bond franchise movie re-watch coming to an end soon (I am down to Spectre remaining), I felt the need to watch the 1967 version of Casino Royale.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

An aging James Bond (David Niven) comes out of retirement to star in a spoof comedy lacking a coherent plot or, you know, laughs.  Meanwhile superstar actors Orson Welles, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen damage their legacies with appearances in this travesty.

I don’t know if you get the idea, but I hated this.

And it was 2 hours and 11 minutes long.  Holy cow.

This film had five different directors and 10 writers.  Is it any wonder why this film is the mess that it turned out to be.

I’m done.

Skyfall is the third Daniel Craig James Bond film and it was my favorite Bond movie coming into the re-watch.  I was interested in seeing how it would fare this second time.  I had only seen the film once, and it blew me away then.

The cold open was strong and ended with a hugely dramatic moment.  Bond, shot and plummeting into the water, looked to be dead.  As he recovered in secret, a bomb at the MI6 office brought him out of hiding.

The attack on MI6 appeared to be targeting M (Judi Dench), as someone from her past has shown up with a plan.

Javier Bardem, who played the villainous Raoul Silva, and he was one of the very best Bond villains of the entire franchise.  He was menacing, dangerous and manipulative.

However, Bardem’s plan as shown in Skyfall is really a stretch and depends completely on coincidences or knowing things that you cannot know.  This was not something that bothered me the first time and does not make a huge issue this time, but it is something that I see and affects me.  It may be a minor truth, but it does take me back a step.

Judi Dench is magnificent here.  The first time, I heard someone talking in the theater and the end result was spoiled for me, mitigating my emotions for the situation (SPOILER… M dies)END OF SPOILER.  However, it is still a strong moment and it was just as powerful this time as before.

Skyfall feels as if it is a transitional film too, as Bond is being moved back into a more familiar situation with the re-introduction of Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) and Ralph Fiennes assuming the new position.  We also get a new Q (Ben Whishaw), though the gadgets are kept fairly realistic.  The joke about the exploding pens was very funny.

And… we were back to the carnivorous animals as a danger. No sharks or piranha.  This time…Gila monsters.

The ending sequence at Skyfall is utterly cinematic, with some of the best imagery ever seen in a Bond film.  The shots in the film are beautiful and rousing.  It does not surprise me when I discovered that EYG Hall of Famer Roger Deakins was involved.  He received an Oscar nomination for his work on Skyfall, and that is well earned.

The title track by Adele is one of the best themes recorded as well.  Skyfall has that perfect flow for the feel of this Bond film.  Adele deserved her Oscar win for that song.

In the end, I loved Skyfall, but, to be honest, it is not my favorite Bond film right  now.  It is close to the top though.  There is not much about Skyfall that isn’t fantastic and it is easily in the top 3 Bond movies of all time.

Recently, I joined the Patreon of Dan Murrell, formerly of Screen Junkies and now starting his own YouTube channel.  I have been a fan of Dan for several years, back to the old days of Movie Fights.  I joined his Patreon basically to join his Movie Club.  One of the first films he put forth as a film to watch was the animated An American Tail.

Produced by Steven Spielberg, An American Tail tells the story of little mouse Fievel (Phillip Glasser), a Russian immigrant to the United States, who gets separated from his family on the trip.  Fievel’s family came to America because they believed that there were no cats in America.

The animation here is surprisingly good, though it looks like a basic cartoon.  There are some scenes that are just beautifully drawn and the imagery is, at times, haunting.

The music is really well done, but it is not overused.  Somewhere Out There is a beautiful song and the duet with Fievel and Tiger (Dom DeLuise) is a lot of fun.

Fievel sure goes through a lot in this movie and the near misses with him and his family were maddening.  The little mouse has to face so much adversity that it really builds to a powerful emotional moment in that third act of the film.

This movie is certainly from the perspective of an immigrant to the United States, something that is relevant in this point of time in our history.  An American Tail uses imagery of the Statue of Liberty to promote that theme.  The attitude of the mice in coming from Russia, looking for a better life in America is a powerful message that we should still embrace.

I think as well that the fact that these Russian mice are basically Jewish is a great use of the animation.  It allows children to see a different culture represented on the screen without it being called into attention.

This was the first time I actually saw this movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

After a bit of a break with James Bond, I have returned to get the second of the Daniel Craig Bonds with Quantum of Solace.

When I first saw this, I was very disappointed.  After the stunning success that was Casino Royale, I had high expectations for this film and, honestly, it fell flat for me.

James Bond becomes involved in a case to try and stop a shadowy and mysterious international organization from doing general bad guy stuff (it is not clear).  The story leads Bond to a environmentalist named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), who was involved in an assassination attempt on M.  There is a storyline involving a South American despot too, but it is fairly convoluted.

I still enjoyed the performance of Daniel Craig, and I also enjoyed the relationship that they were building between Bond and M (Judi Dench), but the rest of this action film was just blah.  The villain was forgettable.  The story was lacking.  They did not give me much specifics to care about anything that was happening here.

They tried to recreate the stunning foot chase scene from Casino Royale, but this one was a pale imitation.

There are some good action set pieces, including a thrilling scene with airplanes, but action without reason or connection is Transformers movies.  Especially after the rousing masterpiece of Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace was all the more lacking.

Daniel Craig holds no level of disappointment though as he continues to be outstanding as a grittier, more hard nosed Bond than we have seen before.  There is a feeling that this guy would rip your throat out if he felt like it.  This Bond is a killer first whereas the other Bonds are more of a lover first.  Craig did have some solid emotional moments too though, specifically in a scene with Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini).

Sadly, this movie feels like a placeholder between Casino Royale and Skyfall, which will be up next.  I have just two more Bond films (three if I choose to go back for the 1967 Casino Royale) and Skyfall has been one of my favorites since it came out.  We’ll see if it holds up.