Spango Dips

Ratatouille ★★★½

Enchanting Pixar piece about a Parisian rat who yearns to be a great cook, and quite understandably has a number of hurdles to clear in pursuit of his dream. Spectacularly beautiful, in the studio’s usual way, and cradling characters as fleshy (so-to-speak) and well-developed as are to be found in any live-action film, not to mention one of the most successfully inspirational stories to hit the movies in recent memory.

(2007) C-110m. D: Brad Bird. W: Brad Bird. DP: Robert Anderson and Sharon Calahan. VOICES OF PATTON OSWALT, IAN HOLM, LOU ROMANO, BRIAN DENNEHY, PETER SOHN, PETER O’TOOLE, BRAD GARRETT, JANEANE GAROFALO, WILL ARNETT, JULIUS CALLAHAN, JAMES REMAR, JOHN RATZENBERGER. Digital Widescreen. [G]

Live Free or Die Hard ★½

It’s got a really unfortunate title, and that’s the least of its problems; this misbegotten, feeble-minded attempt at punching up a fallow franchise for a hip young audience—by making it about “cyber-terrorists,” and directing it like it’s a Mountain Dew commercial—sullies the memory of its predecessors at every insulting, formulaic turn.

(2007) C-130m. D: Len Wiseman. W: Mark Bomback. DP: Simon Duggan. BRUCE WILLIS, TIMOTHY OLYPHANT, JUSTIN LONG, MAGGIE Q, CLIFF CURTIS, JONATHAN SADOWSKI, ANDREW FRIEDMAN, KEVIN SMITH, YORGO CONSTANTINE, CYRIL RAFAELLI, CHRIS PALERMO, MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD. Super 35. [PG-13]

Die Hard ★★★

First on most lists of the decade’s iconic action pictures, this problematic, if still thrilling, blockbuster concerns a New York City cop (Willis) visiting his estranged wife (Bedelia) in Los Angeles for Christmas, just as a group of trigger-happy German thieves seizes the high-rise where her office party is taking place. When Willis finds himself the only person in the building not discovered by the baddies, he plays the hero and tries to take them all down himself. The older I get, the tougher it is to overlook the truly crass gender politics that this movie espouses. And the story’s just a little ridiculous. But, honestly, it’s still loads of fun, thanks in large part to some magnificent stuntwork, and the inimitable Alan Rickman; it’s no wonder it grossed into the hundreds of millions. From the Roderick Thorp novel Nothing Lasts Forever. Followed by three sequels.

(1988) C-131m. D: John McTiernan. W: Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza. DP: Jan De Bont. BRUCE WILLIS, ALAN RICKMAN, BONNIE BEDELIA, ALEXANDER GODUNOV, REGINALD VELJOHNSON, PAUL GLEASON, DE’VOREAUX WHITE, WILLIAM ATHERTON, HART BOCHNER, JAMES SHIGETA, LORENZO CACCIALANZA, ROBERT DAVI, RICK DUCOMMUN, REBECCA BROUSSARD. Panavision. [R]

Knocked Up ★★★

Endearing comedy about one-night stand between ill-suited couple (Rogen, Heigl) that results in a pregnancy, forcing them to grow up a little faster than they’d like. Woefully overlong, as Apatow’s pictures already have a reputation for being (did we really need to spend four minutes with Ryan Seacrest?), and not as funny as his earlier THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, but sweeter and more observant. Rudd and Mann, as the leads’ closest reference point for a married couple, steal the show.

(2007) C-129m. D: Judd Apatow. W: Judd Apatow. DP: Eric Edwards. SETH ROGEN, KATHERINE HEIGL, PAUL RUDD, LESLIE MANN, JASON SEGEL, JAY BARUCHEL, JONAH HILL, MARTIN STARR, CHARLYNE YI, IRIS APATOW, MAUDE APATOW, JOANNA KERNS, HAROLD RAMIS, ALAN TUDYK, KRISTEN WIIG, BILL HADER, KEN JEONG. [R]

Terminator 2: Judgment Day ★★★

It’s now the mid-1990s, the future savior of humanity (Furlong, god help us) has already been born, and Schwarzenegger has been sent back again, though this time it’s to protect him from a much more advanced robot assassin (Patrick) engineered to finish the job. Strong sequel can’t but fall short of its masterpiece of a predecessor—mostly because a.) the story was already given a perfect final resolution in the original film, making it difficult to pick up again, and b.) it’s hard to root for a Terminator—but it’s at least faithful to the spirit of the original, and it sustains its momentum quite admirably on a series of smashing set pieces and landmark special effects. People seemed mostly to agree; the film was a humongous box-office phenom. Commonly known as T2.

(1991) C-136m. D: James Cameron. W: James Cameron and William Wisher. DP: Adam Greenberg. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, LINDA HAMILTON, EDWARD FURLONG, ROBERT PATRICK, EARL BOEN, JOE MORTON, S. EPATHA MERKERSON, CASTULO GUERRA, DANNY COOKSEY, JENETTE GOLDSTEIN, XANDER BERKELEY. Super 35. [R]

The Terminator ★★★★

A young woman of no apparent significance (Hamilton) is targeted by a relentless cyborg killer from the future (Schwarzenegger); with the help of a human ally from the same future (Biehn), she must face the twisted circumstances that have led to her pursuit, and fight back against the machine. Simply put, this is one of the best ideas for a movie that anyone ever had, and the story becomes richer as it goes, although that alone wouldn’t have been enough to make it one of the decade’s most successful and iconic films, one that instantly endowed Schwarzenegger and writer-director Cameron with lifelong careers. No, the film’s legendary status owes as much to the directorial tone, which masterfully walks a line between titillating exploitation action-horror and heady—even profound—science fiction, to the fleshiness of its characters and the bravado of their portrayers, to the timeless score by Brad Fiedel, which is among the most haunting collections of synthesizer music ever laid to tape, and most remarkably, to the fact that it manages to find an emotional kernel at the core of a story that seems at first like it ought to be exclusively visceral and cerebral. Underneath all of its clever plot devices, special effects, and famous one-liners, and despite the fact that it’s (at least nominally) about robots, it rings totally authentic chords of despair, grief, fear, love, and hope. Lamentably sequelized to excess, though the first of the sequels wasn’t half bad.

(1984) C-108m. D: James Cameron. W: James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd and William Wisher, Jr. DP: Adam Greenberg. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, MICHAEL BIEHN, LINDA HAMILTON, PAUL WINFIELD, LANCE HENRIKSEN, RICK ROSSOVICH, EARL BOEN, DICK MILLER, BILL PAXTON. [R]

Grindhouse ★★★

Labor-of-love double-feature homage to 70s exploitation films, composed of Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR, in which Texan vigilantes band together to fight a growing horde of ex-military zombies, and Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF, in which Kiwi daredevil Bell straps herself to the hood of a muscle car and gets chased all over Tennessee by a homicidal stuntman (Russell). Long, to be sure, and not without lulls, and lacking any of the real freshness that Tarantino brought to the genre with the KILL BILL movies, but blessedly gruesome, titillating, and funny enough to be worthwhile. Highlights include the best car crash in the history of cinema (about forty minutes into DEATH PROOF), a brilliant use of a “Scene Missing” card in PLANET TERROR, and the splendid set of trailers that runs between the two pictures (written and directed by Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, and Eli Roth, in that order).

(2007) C-191m. D: Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez. W: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. DP: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. ROSE MCGOWAN, FREDDY RODRIGUEZ, MARLEY SHELTON, JOSH BROLIN, BRUCE WILLIS, JEFF FAHEY, MICHAEL BIEHN, NAVEEN ANDREWS, MICHAEL PARKS, TOM SAVINI, STACY FERGUSON, QUENTIN TARANTINO, NICKY KATT, KURT RUSSELL, ROSARIO DAWSON, ZOË BELL, VANESSA FERLITO, TRACIE THOMS, JORDAN LADD, SYDNEY TAMIIA POITIER, MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD, ELI ROTH, DANNY TREJO, CHEECH MARIN, NICOLAS CAGE, UDO KIER, SHERI MOON ZOMBIE, TOM TOWLES, SYBIL DANNING, BILL MOSELEY, JASON ISAACS, JAY HERNANDEZ. [R]

Killer of Sheep ★★★

Quasi-documentary chronicle of life in the Watts district of inner Los Angeles, as seen through the eyes of a slaughterhouse worker (Sanders) emotionally estranged from his family. Told in snapshots, which gives it a flavor of Italian neorealism and which really seems in hindsight like the only approach; the film’s pointed portrayals of sorrow and disappointment are surely much more powerful scattered amid scenes of humor and revelry than if they had been required to set the picture’s entire tone. Great naturalistic filmmaking by Burnett, who shot the film for peanuts between 1973 and 1976, intending it for his thesis project at UCLA film school. Went unseen by commercial audiences for thirty years due to licensing restrictions on the film’s many treasured pop songs, used initially without permission; its belated theatrical berth is owed to Steven Soderbergh, who in 2007 wrote the necessary check.

(1977) 83m. D: Charles Burnett. W: Charles Burnett. DP: Charles Burnett. HENRY G. SANDERS, KAYCEE MOORE, CHARLES BRACY, ANGELA BURNETT, EUGENE CHERRY, JACK DRUMMOND.

Volver ★★★

Stirring, tenderhearted story about a young woman (Cruz) whose mother (Maura), believed to be dead, reappears in her life to resolve unfinished business. Clever, funny, and touching in the director’s usual ways, with Cruz demonstrating in every scene that she’s in the role of a lifetime.

(2006-Spain) C-121m. D: Pedro Almodóvar. W: Pedro Almodóvar. DP: José Luis Alcaine. PENELOPE CRUZ, CARMEN MAURA, LOLA DUEÑAS, BLANCA PORTILLO, YOHANA COBO, CHUS LAMPREAVE, ANTONIO DE LA TORRE, CARLOS BLANCO, MARÍA ISABEL DÍAZ. [R]

Tron ★★½

Inventive film about a prodigious software programmer (Bridges) sucked bodily into his former employer’s computer network due to a hacking mishap, and subjected to a series of video-game-like challenges by a spiteful A.I. system administrator. Once mind-boggling special effects still dazzle; committed performances keep the momentum up when the story starts to flag.

(1982) C-96m. D: Steven Lisberger. W: Steven Lisberger. DP: Bruce Logan. JEFF BRIDGES, BRUCE BOXLEITNER, DAVID WARNER, CINDY MORGAN, BARNARD HUGHES, DAN SHOR. Super Panavision 70. [PG]