Cinema (101): Huckleberry Finn ** (1974, Musical)
Summary: Huckleberry Finn, a rambuctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River. Accompanying him is Jim, a slave running away from being sold. Together the two strike a bond of friendship that takes them through harrowing events and thrilling adventures.
Cinema (101): Hammerboy (2003, Action / Ad)
Summary: In 2112 AD, on a future Earth transformed by cataclymic earthquakes and tidal waves, the continents are submerged under the sea, and remnants of land barely sustain scattered civilization. The film opens on isolated Candlestick island, which is little more than the remains of an immense skyscraper. Here a small, close-knit community providers a home for Manchi, a rambunctious pre-adolescent boy, who years to discover the world beyond his isolated enclave. The orphaned Mangchi enjoys the loving care of his wise and spry grandfather who is training Mangchi in the mystical art of the Great Echo, a concentration of all of one's energy attacks. One day a small plane carrying the teen-aged Princess Poplar, who's being pursued by the soldiers of the treacherous General Moonk, crashes onto Candlestick island. mangchi makes a daring rescue on his trademark vehicle? a cleverly conceived, solar-powered flying tricycle. The two set off on a boisterous treasure of lost gold, a greedy bandit chief, the villainous Moonk, and an all-powerful crystal.
World Cinema-HD: Shadows and Fog ** (1992, Comedy)
Summary: No other Woody Allen film has ever been hustled into oblivion faster than this black-and-white mélange of Mittel-European nightmare, absurdist farce, and homage to German expressionism--sort of Woody Allen meets Franz Kafka in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, set to Kurt Weill's score for The Threepenny Opera. Yet the daft experiment is not without charm and, as the title suggests, oodles of atmosphere.
In a murky, seriously deranged cityscape only a studio art department could create, a giant bald strangler (Michael Kirby) is going around killing people with piano wire. The authorities are powerless (though he stomps about freely, occasionally declaiming speeches), so vigilante posses start roving the streets. For some reason, they dragoon a noisy nebbish named Kleinman (Allen) to assist them. So Kleinman goes into the fog, kvetching, and meets Irmy (Mia Farrow), a circus sword swallower (no double-entendres, please) whose clown of a husband (John Malkovich) is two-timing her with the strongman's wife (Madonna). Add an "et cetera" here, because the big, mostly wasted cast also includes Kenneth Mars as the strongman, Donald Pleasence as a philosophical coroner, John Cusack as a student who mistakes Irmy for a prostitute, and Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster, and Lily Tomlin as the real prostitutes in whose company she happens to be at the time. None of this adds up, and the whole thing moves and feels less like a film than one of Allen's oddball New Yorker sketches. Still, as the fever dream of an art-house addict, it has its moments. --Richard T. Jameson
