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a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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As I write this, the news media are reporting about the latest amazing pictures from Saturn. People are eating this stuff up, ravenous for some new and exciting experience, the sense of the unfamiliar, of going somewhere we haven’t been before.

At the same time, in theaters, a quiet little movie is offering views that are equally awe-inspiring, unfamiliar, and compelling. But this isn’t a gallery of blurry photographs. It’s breathtaking cinematography of a place populated by fascinating strangers, people who take care of creatures you won’t find in your own neighborhood, living in a landscape as spectacular and foreign to the folks of my town as the rings of Saturn.

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Stuart Little 2

a short review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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In the world of American children’s entertainment, the perspective seems to be “They’re just kids. They’ll eat anything.”

Stuart Little 2 treats children as if they might deserve something better. It’s a well-crafted, visually delightful family movie that successfully avoids most of the common family-movie mistakes.

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Tarzan

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Tarzan… him only 88 minutes long! Yet, while Tarzan go by fast, movie show Disney animators fumbling back to relevance! Maybe Disney rediscover how make original, engaging movie! Good Disney!

Okay, enough primitive ape-man talk.

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An abridged version of this review was published today at Christianity Today Movies.

How is childhood like a red balloon?

Watching Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s new film Flight of the Red Balloon, there are many possible answers to that question.

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Into Great Silence

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply: Create silence! The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God. Therefore create Silence.

- Soren Kierkegaard:

… surrender to Into Great Silence as you would to a piece of music, noting the repetitions and variations, encountering surprises just when you think you’ve figured out the pattern. By the end, what you have learned is impossible to sum up, but your sense of the world is nonetheless perceptibly altered.

I hesitate, given the early date and the project’s modesty, to call Into Great Silence one of the best films of the year. I prefer to think of it as the antidote to all of the others.

- A. O. Scott

Need a little peace and quiet?

How about a life-changing spiritual retreat?

German filmmaker Philip Gröning is inviting you on a journey no filmmaker has taken before… a venture into the extraordinary Grande Chartreuse monastery to spend time in meditation and prayer with the Carthusian monks, the strictest order of the Catholic Church.

Now wait a minute. If we’re to believe the movies we’ve seen, monks are child abusers! They lash their own backs in secret, and murmur sinister chants. They conspire to steal our freedoms and kill our imaginations. They seek to cut us off from any sort of pleasure. Right?

No, of course not. While Hollywood loves to take rare exceptions to the rule and exaggerate them as if they were the norm, the truth is that most Christian monks are sincere, humble, God-fearing people who have devoted their lives to asking God to give his mercy to all of us. And Into Great Silence is a powerful work that opens up their private, prayerful world.

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Titan A.E.

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Titan A.E. gives me the same feeling you have when you find a video game that looks exciting… cool graphics, nice design… but because you don’t have any quarters to put in, you just see clips of action-packed scenes. So you stand there listening to the mysterious characters quoting clichés like “I got him!” “We’ve got to get out of here!” “Help me!”

Actually, the movie is even worse than that. Imagine stuffing quarters into the video game, taking the controls, and still nothing happens. Just the same impenetrable nonsense, and pictures of figures that never become characters.

How did a film from such talented writers (The Tick‘s Ben Edlund, Go screenwriter John August, and Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and great animators (Don Bluth’s studio) turn into the summer’s biggest disaster?

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Toy Story

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Movies achieved through digital animation are a big deal these days. Toy Story deserves all the attention it gets.

And that came as a surprise to me. I had lost faith in Disney in recent years; films like Pocahontas showed that they have become more interested in being politically correct and crowd-pleasing than they are interested in retelling a classic story or developing strong characters.

Toy Story is a rare and wonderful exception, a return to the inspiration and genius that powered the old Disney classics. In some ways, its even better than the classics. This film is innovative AND it has a memorable, unpredictable, interesting story. The script passed through some good hands and became more than just a string of clever toy-oriented jokes (although the jokes are much sharper and funnier than you’d expect); it became a great story about pride, jealousy, and identity.

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Toy Story 2

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

“I don’t like stories to have a moral: certainly not because I think children dislike a moral. … Let the pictures tell you their own moral. For the moral inherent in them will rise from whatever spiritual roots you have succeeded in striking during the whole course of your life. But if they don’t show you any moral, don’t put one in. For the moral you put in is likely to be a platitude, or even a falsehood, skimmed from the surface of your consciousness. It is impertinent to offer the children that. For we have been told on high authority that in the moral sphere they are probably at least as wise as we. Anyone who can write a children’s story without a moral had better do so: that is if he is going to write children’s stories at all. The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author’s mind.”
- C.S. Lewis on “Three Ways of Writing for Children”

In a year when this moviegoer has been bewildered to find Warner Brothers’ animated film The Iron Giant as the most memorable and enjoyable movie so far, now there’s ANOTHER animated flick that’s every bit as strong, while also far more complicated and daring. Toy Story 2 joins the short lists of sequels (Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Terminator 2) that are superior to their predecessors. And we have John Lasseter and the Pixar team to thank for it. Go see for yourself, whether you have kids or not. This is one of those rare movies that didn’t spoil its best moments in the preview.

How did they do it?

How did John Lasseter and his Pixar animation team top their own 1995 masterpiece? Not only that, but how will moviemakers worldwide react when they see that an animated feature has surpassed almost every movie of the 1990’s in storytelling, characterization, action, and comic genius?

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