Labyrinth

Originally, the idea of reviewing "Labyrinth" came a bit more than a year ago, after we reviewed this movie. In that review the scribester randomly lamented about the size of Jennifer Connelly’s breasts then and now... (Aaah, scribe, what would we do without ye?)

GREEN'S "NICE YOUNG GIRL, TERRIBLE BLACK UBLIET" REVIEW:

UTTERLY RELEVANT TRIVIA QUESTION! Do you know what the connection between Labyrinth and Star Trek: The Next Generation television series is? Something to think about as you read. {BTW, the answer is not obvious.}

What do you get when you have George Lucas as co-Executive Producer, Jim Henson as the director, and Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) as the writer, David Bowie writing songs, singing and acting plus a cadre of Muppets and Jennifer Connelly, a 14 year old future Oscar winning actress starring in your movie? Throw in bit parts for Star Wars alums Frank Oz, Kenny Baker and Warwick Davis and what do you have?

Obviously, the answer is Labyrinth, a truly wonderful movie.

It's hard for me to believe that this film was released 23 years ago. However, it is not hard to believe that this film is still as captivating now as it was then.

It's the coming of age (well, sort of) story of Sarah (Connelly) who is forced to baby-sit her step-brother, Toby. When he won't stop fussing she wishes that the Goblin King (Bowie) would take him away.

Until he does.

Sarah immediately regrets the wish and begs for his release. Suddenly, before she realizes it, The Goblin King himself is standing in her room! He, quite frankly, is having none of her whining. That is until he decides to make a deal with her, one which (he thinks) she cannot possibly win: If she can solve the Labyrinth and reach the Goblin City at the center of the maze and enter the castle in less than 13 hours, she'll get her brother back. But if she can't, he'll become a goblin and be lost forever. On the journey she meets all sorts of wonderful and imaginative characters, some friendly and some not so friendly. Can she remember how to defeat the Goblin King and save her little step-brother in time?

Don't be fooled. This is not just a movie geared for kids. Adults ought to enjoy this movie, too - especially if you're a fan of David Bowie and his music. {BTW, what's up with the Speedo-like costume? Female viewers must loove that.}

Jim Henson's incredible genius as a puppeteer and innovator can not be overstated. He and his crew of muppeteers do a fabulous job of making the non-human characters real and relatable. We can identify with them to some degree, so we care about them.

I hardly need mention, but I will anyway, that one of the great tragedies in the last 20 years for true movie fans happened when Jim Henson died suddenly in May 1990 at the way too young age of 54 from bacterial pneumonia. Can you imagine the great movies that he might have made, had he lived, possibly combining muppet magic with CGI wizardry? Fortunately his legacy lives on with this film and the many other films and television shows that he worked on throughout his career. Coincidentally, Jim Henson would have turned 73 on Sept. 24^th, had he lived.

I watched the 1999 DVD release of this film because it was readily available to me at the time. Included on the disc is an excellent 'making of' featurette, which is primarily narrated by Kermit the Frog, er, Jim Henson. I’ve since purchased the Anniversary Edition of this DVD because its a two disc deal which has many more cool special features on it. Just the kind of extra stuff that I love to watch.

This is an all around excellent movie which, if you haven't watched in a while, is definitely worth revisiting.

***** out of *****

Oh yes, I almost forgot to tell you what the Star Trek: TNG connection is! Did you cheat and find out the answer? Well here it is: The title of 'Director of Choreography and Puppet Movement' for this film was none other than Cynthia McFadden, aka Gates McFadden aka Dr. Beverly Crusher. I didn't believe it either until I saw her for myself in the featurette. Recognized her right away, I did. Want more proof? Here you go.



SCRIBE'S SUCH A PITY REVIEW:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my co-reviewer over these past few years, it’s that he loves child-friendly movies and wussy, contrived romantic comedies. So it came as no surprise that he chose “Labyrinth” for us to review on this blog. Actually, he chose it a long time ago but I kept shuffling it off to the side because I wasn’t in the mood to watch this Eighties Jim Henson film.

I finally knuckled down and watched a film I hadn’t seen in at least ten years and found myself enjoying it a lot more now than I had before. To give you an idea of my frame of mind, most of my experience was spent staring at a young Jennifer Connelly and saying, “Man, does she get hot in a few years!” But the movie was entertaining as well.

Unlike the superior and much more artistic “The Dark Crystal,” Henson and company decided to go a more child-friendly route with this one. Featuring two principle human actors, Connelly as the female protagonist and David Bowie as the “Goblin King,” this is a faster paced fairytale with songs and goofy characters.

The plot is rather thin when compared to “Crystal,” but this is a film about mood and imagery and it works very well in that regard. The loss of Jim Henson was a far more serious one than I’d thought. The incredible imagination at work in his films is sorely missed in this era of off the shelf software CGI flicks.

Connelly is a tad awkward in her role at the beginning but she grows into it nicely as things go on. Bowie is a natural as the Goblin King, menacing yet charming at the same time, much like a seductive and charming vampire with a New Wave haircut. The muppet characters are amazingly rendered. The plot is thin, basically revolving around Connelly angrily wishing her baby half-brother would be taken away by goblins and her struggles to get him back by traversing a…LABYRINTH, that’s right. Thanks for following along at home.

The music, provided by Bowie, might sound dated if not for the overall bizarre quality of it. Yes, it’s a tad annoying to sit through the scene with Bowie and the goblin muppets boogieing down but one must expect such cheese when watching such a film. Besides, this isn’t one of your happy-go-lucky Disney adventures. It’s pretty dark and mentions death rather bluntly. Some of the imagery is downright disturbing, especially the “helping hands” and stench pit sequences. The latter actually features something that looks like a multitude of flatulent rectums protruding from a swamp at random intervals! Sid & Marty Kroft couldn’t have done enough bong hits to come up with that one!

None of those things detract from an enjoyable film. If you have small children, which I don’t, some of the darker aspects of the film might bother them, but on the bright side you can always threaten them with banishment to the Goblin king’s realm if they don’t do as you say.

*** out of *****

Labyrinth (1986, PG, 102 minutes) starring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Shari Weiser and Brian Henson (voice). Story development by Dennis Lee and Jim Henson, written by Terry Jones and directed by Jim Henson.

Babel

SCRIBE'S NEVER TAKE A GIFT WEAPON FROM A JAPANESE HUNTER REVIEW:

“Babel” is the aptly titled movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett involving several characters and as many languages.

Another in a growing sub-genre of dramas featuring disparate characters in different locations whose seemingly unrelated lives will connect in some significant way by the time the movie ends, this one extends into international territory. I’m a sucker for these films. Crash, Traffic, Magnolia, Reservation Road, 21 Grams are all good to great films. This one falls somewhere in the middle.

With a two and a half hour running time, Babel features four basic stories revolving around a single, mindless incident of violence. Everything has a tumble down effect in this film. The man in Morocco who sells a rifle to his friend obtained the weapon from a different character whose life is in a shambles. The sons of the man who buy the rifle indulge in random target shooting to prove the rifle doesn’t fire as far as claimed. The little tykes wind up firing on a tour bus and one of the bullets strikes a passenger.

What results is a rather convoluted mess, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. The “mess” is what the characters experience. This is a film with a rich tapestry of interwoven tragedies. Pitt is the understandably emotional husband whose wife (Blanchett) is shot. This causes him to call his Mexican nanny whose poor judgment in finding a way to keep her employer’s kids with her while attending her nephew’s wedding in Mexico will have terrible consequences. Meanwhile, The Moroccan police scour the countryside in an attempt to locate the perpetrators of the shooting and prove there are no terrorist cells in their nation. Pitt commands the tour bus driver to take them to the nearest village with a doctor (turns out he’s a “very good” vet) and basically holds his fellow tourists hostage. And somehow, in far off Japan, the sad life of a deaf mute teenage girl whose mother committed suicide connects with these people in ways none will ever know.

If you’ve ever read a David Mitchell novel, this is familiar territory. His novels often feature similar themes of human connectivity, although the underlying story tends to be more substantive.

Babel is beautifully acted by all involved. We already know Pitt and Blanchett can act, but the non-AmerEnglish speaking actors are phenomenal. The fact that the Japanese girl didn’t garner an Oscar for her performance is a criminal offense. It’s well known that the Academy favors performances featuring damaged characters and none are more damaged than her.

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu provides a fever dream style of shooting reminiscent of Soderberg, but with jarring intrusions no doubt designed to keep us awake. There are so specific memorable images but this isn’t a film that calls for such things. The whole point is the random, improbable elements of chance and human experience.

A quality, ambitious film.

**** out of *****

GREEN’S “IS THERE A DOCTOR ON THE BUS?” REVIEW:

This film reminded me a lot of “Magnolia” (which we reviewed here.) because there are several separate stories going on all at the same time, except these stories happen on a worldwide, cross-cultural, multi-lingual scale instead of a local one. The four seemingly unrelated stories are unfolding all at once and only near the end do we realize how the one seemingly disconnected story from all the others is really the angle from which all of this mayhem originates and through which all are connected.

A Moroccan man sells an automatic rifle to a nearby farmer (Mustapha Rachidi), who charges his boys with killing jackals in the desert. Instead, one boy fires the gun at a distant tour bus on the road below to demonstrate the weapon’s apparent lack of range. A Japanese deaf-mute teen (Rinko Kikuchi) is trying to find her place in the social structure of her culture while trying to cope with her disability, the death of her mother and the absence of her working father (Koji Yakusho) who had just been to Morocco on a business trip (a fact we don‘t realize until much later in the film). A Mexican housekeeper/nanny (Adriana Barraza) in San Diego is forced to take the two American children she is watching to her son’s wedding across the border in Mexico, because the parents are away on vacation in Morocco. Two American tourists (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) are sitting at an outdoor café in Morocco arguing. Later they are riding on a tour bus through the desert when a stray bullet...

Of course there’s more depth and detail to the story than I’m telling you. You’ll have to watch to find out the rest, but you get the idea.

Babel isn't only about (intentional or unintentional, it doesn't matter) gun violence and its tragic consequences. It's about communication and/or the lack of it. It is also about how much of a global community our world has become, where one seemingly innocuous event can have consequences reaching around the world and across cultures.

The film doesn’t lack in its share of indelible moments, many of which are pretty stark and grim and yet the story doesn’t lose any of its potency or emotional impact. This film’s run time of 143 minutes is much more palatable than that of Magnolia (which was 45 minutes longer...)

Interesting to me is the film’s title: no doubt derived from the multi-cultural, multi-language barrier for the different story lines and is certainly an indirect reference to the Biblical events depicted in Genesis 11:1-9 {go ahead and look it up… you know you want to.}

The seemingly unrelated stories are brilliantly edited together by writers Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also directed (they also collaborated on “21 Grams” which was reviewed here.) the film. The film’s headliner stars are Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, who both give remarkable performances, along with the rest of the ensemble cast giving fine performances all around.

Babel was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 2006, including Best Picture, Best Director and two nods for Best Supporting Actress (Barraza and Kikuchi). Surprisingly, Babel only took home one Oscar, for Best Achievement in Music. That’s ironic to me because I hardly noticed the music while I was watching, so involved in the story I was. It didn’t bother me one bit that the two Best Supporting Actress nominees, despite excellent performances, didn’t win. Pitt or Blanchett, the film’s biggest names, could have just as easily been nominated.

I’ll admit that sometimes I end up buying the DVD’s of the movies that we review here. Even though the film is gripping and definitely worthwhile to watch, it is not a film that I would choose to see again anytime soon.

***½ out of *****


Babel (2006, R, 143 minutes) starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Mustapha Rachidi, Rinko Kikuchi, Adriana Barraza and Koji Yakusho. The film was written by Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro González Iñárritu and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.