Salon.com > Christopher Orr

Films of the decade: The Pixar oeuvre

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:15:00 +0000

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Brokeback Mountain," "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "City of God" and even tiny, touching "Once" -- I could happily make the case for any of them. But the truth is -- if I may expand the parameters of the exercise a tad -- nothing this decade has astonished me and fed my faith in film as a popular art form more than the inspired craftsmanship of the Pixar oeuvre: "Monsters Inc.," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles," "Cars," "Ratatouille," "Wall-E" and "Up." No one picture among them is at the level of the first films I cited, but together they represent a standard of consistent excellence with few historical precedents.

How to make a superhero movie that doesn’t suck

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 19:44:00 +0000

They're everywhere. Blue, green or orange skinned, clad in Lycra, leather or nothing at all, superheroes have taken over America's multiplexes. The lords of Hollywood have evidently concluded that we can't get enough of the costumed freaks -- and if the surprisingly strong opening of "Fantastic Four" is any indication, they may be right. But if we're destined to spend the next several years watching movies about mutants, musclemen and assorted other misfits, it'd be nice if those movies were good. To improve the odds, here are a fistful of easy rules for making a superhero movie that doesn't suck.

1. Find the right director.
Good candidates will be on the young side and have either a history of interest in the genre ("Spider-Man's" Sam Raimi (pictured at left), "Hellboy's" Guillermo del Toro) or a background making diabolically clever neo-noirs ("X-Men's" Bryan Singer, "Batman Begins'" Christopher Nolan). To be avoided are directors with little or no relevant expertise ("Fantastic Four's" Tim Story), and those in any way connected with "St. Elmo's Fire" ("Batman Forever's" Joel Schumacher) or France ("Catwoman's" Pitof). Meanwhile, famous auteurs ("Batman's" Tim Burton, "Hulk's" Ang Lee) are a bit of a crap shoot: They'll do their own thing, regardless of whether it's called for. Don't believe the director makes that much difference? Wait until next year, when Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour") gets his hands on the "X-Men" franchise.

Dirty Harry or p.c. wimp?

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 21:00:00 +0000

Clint Eastwood is sorry. Sorry about those extras he shot dead in the Spanish desert for an Italian director. Sorry that Dirty Harry Callahan embodied the idea that we should just Kill All the Bad People. Even sorry for all the people he punched in the face while his ape buddy Clyde stood on the sidelines, raising the roof.

Or so it seems. Eastwood's latest film, "Million Dollar Baby," is a decent bet to win him Oscars for best picture and best director this Sunday. But it's hard to shake the sense that the film, with its somber, unsparing portrayal of injury and suffering, is another in a series of efforts by Eastwood to make amends for his early career, when he became famous as the vengeful loner, the angel of violent retribution, the Man with a Gun. It's an interpretation that Eastwood himself dismisses -- "I'm not that haunted by my past," he recently told Entertainment Weekly -- but one increasingly common both among his (predominantly liberal) admirers in film criticism and his growing number of conservative detractors.