This is the story of the hurricane

SNAKE EYES

1998

Directed by Brian De Palma

Written by David Koepp and Brian De Palma

Spoilers: high, sort of

What can I say? I'm a spy

TRUE LIES

1994

Written and directed by James Cameron (based on the screenplay La Totale by Claude Zini, Simon Michaёl, and Didier Kaminka)

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LVI: I believe you left a wake-up call for the dawn of time?

DINOSAUR

2000

Directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton

Written by John Harrison, Robert Nelson Jacobs, Walon Green, et al

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LV: Mars and beyond

MISSION TO MARS

2000

Directed by Brian De Palma

Written by Lowell Cannon, Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part LIV: Pompous circumstance

FANTASIA 2000

2000

Directed by Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Paul Brizzi, and Gaёtan Brizzi

Spoilers: moderate, I guess

Walt Disney, part LIII: Only thing about me is the way that I walk

TARZAN

1999

Directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck

Written by Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White, et al

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part LII: The buck bounds here and there, whilst the doe has narrow eyes, but when the two hares run side by side, how can you tell the female from the male?

MULAN

1998

Directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft

Written by Rita Hsaio, Chris Sanders, Philip LaZebnik, Raymond Singer, Eugenia Bostwick-Singer, and Robert D. San Souci

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part ΔΔΔΔΔI: You swoon, you sigh, why deny it, uh-oh

HERCULES

1997

Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Written by Donald McEnery, Bob Shaw, Irene Mecchi, Ron Clements, and John Musker, et al

Spoilers: severe

Walt Disney, part L: It's not my fault, if in God's plan, he made the Devil so much stronger than a man

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

1996

Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

Written by Tab Murphy, Irene Mecchi, Bob Tzudiker, Noni White, and Jonathan Roberts (based on the novel Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo)

Spoilers: high

Walt Disney, part XLIX: The pits

JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH

1996

Directed by Henry Selick

Written by Karey Kirkpatrick, Jonathan Roberts, and Steve Bloom (based on the novel by Roald Dahl)

Spoilers: moderate

May thy knife chip and shatter

DUNE: PART TWO

2024

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Written by John Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve (based on Dune by Frank Herbert)

Spoilers: it's still just Dune, bros

Walt Disney, part XLVIII: At the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine

POCAHONTAS

1995

Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg

Written by Carl Binder, Sussanah Grant, Philip LaZebnik, et al

Spoilers: N/A

Walt Disney, part XLVII: Stand out till you notice me

A GOOFY MOVIE

1995

Directed by Kevin Lima

Written by Jymn Magon, Chris Matheson, and Brian Pimental

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part XLVI: Bad and good luck tales

DUCKTALES THE MOVIE: TREASURE OF THE LOST LAMP

1990

Directed by Bob Hathcock

Written by Alan Burnett

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part XLV: Slimy, yet satisfying

THE LION KING

1994

Directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff

Written by many

Spoilers: high

Live girls are easy

LISA FRANKENSTEIN

2024

Directed by Zelda Williams

Written by Diablo Cody

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part XLIV: I'm bored from leering my horrible glances, and my feet hurt from dancing those skeleton dances

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

1993

Directed by Henry Selick

Written by Caroline Thompson, Michael McDowell, and Danny Elfman (based on the poem by Tim Burton)

Spoilers: moderately highish, I guess

Walt Disney, part XLIII: You ain't never had a friend like me

ALADDIN

1992

Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Ron Clements, John Musker, and what appears to be the entire staff of Walt Disney Feature Animation

Spoilers: moderate

Disney's Challengers, part XI: Après moi, le déluge

ROCK-A-DOODLE

1992

Directed by Don Bluth

Written by David N. Weiss and numerous others (based on the play Chantecler by Edmond Rostand)

Spoilers: moderate

Disney's Challengers, part X: A thriving animation studio, somewhere in the world

AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST

1991

Directed by Simon Wells and Phil Nibbelink

Written by David Kirchner, Charles Swenson, and Flint Dille

Spoilers: moderate

Reviews from gulag: The red [door/car/nosed reindeer]

As we continue our clean-up of 2023 with a series of reviews for movies that may or may not have deserved their own entries, we arrive upon Insidious: The Red Door, annoyingly both the fourth and the second sequel to James Wan's 2011 horror superhit, Insidious, picking up the Lambert Saga ten years after Wan finished it in Insidious: Chapter 2 for no obvious reason besides giving perennial supporting-actor champion Patrick Wilson his first crack at directing; Ferrari, Michael Mann's biopic of Enzo Ferrari that, hypothetically, appeals to Mann's historic strengths as a filmmaker or should at least offer some good racing scenes; and Silent Night, John Woo's pun-titled, Christmas-themed experimental action film.  As the title up top indicates, there is indeed something meaningfully red in all three of these movies, but the actual secret theme of these graybles is that they all involve a director I respect a great deal, even if it's for reasons besides directing, nevertheless proving a disappointment.

INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR

I've suggested in the past that the Insidious franchise, prior to Insidious: The Red Door, is not good, and, having recently reacquainted myself with them (or become acquainted with some of them in the first place), I'm happy to recant that, albeit with faint praise; it's a horror franchise with the agreeable distinction of improving steadily throughout all of its first three entries, going from a low 7/10 for the first Insidious all the way to a medium-high 7/10 for 2015's Insidious: Chapter 3.  This was unlikely to continue apace and it did stumble, rather hard, with its fourth entry, 2018's Insidious: The Last Key, which at least had a few strong novelties to offset the feeling that the franchise had clearly exhausted most of its best moves already.  (The first three all had the benefit of being directed by one or the other of its creators, James Wan or Leigh Whannell, which makes more of a difference than you might be ready to guess, given how formulaic the scares and stories are.  Meanwhile, The Last Key was at least written by Whannell, which didn't save it, but it felt of a piece with its three predecessors.)  Other than The Last Key not being good, however, the worst thing about those first four films is that Chapter 3 took the unusual step of being a prequel focused upon Lin Shaye's paranormal investigator and spirit medium, Elise Rainier.  Obviously, insofar as Elise was almost objectively the single best element of the franchise, its focus on her was not the bad part; that's the "prequel" part, where Whannell blinked and took his franchise back in time to give Elise a new story, despite having already ended Chapter 2 with an inordinately strong sequel hook, for while that film concluded the "central" story of the Lambert family on a satisfying and happy note, it also promised Further adventures (ha, ha) with Elise and her sidekicks, irrespective of the fact that Elise had been dead for an entire movie by this point.  I mean, it's a franchise entirely about ghosts and the metaphysical dark mirror of the real world where ghosts hang out after they die; this was not some insuperable challenge.  The worst thing about the worst thing, meanwhile, is simply that, flying in the face of all logic, Whannell's prequel was still named "chapter 3."  This had to be awfully irritating when development began on Insidious: The Red Door, which finally does offer a chronologically-third Insidious movie, as well as another (and presumably the final) chapter in the story of Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) and Dalton Lambert (Ty Simpkins), father and son astral projectors whose unique talents had tended to get them into trouble.

The annihilator

THE MARVELS

2023

Directed by Nia DaCosta

Written by Megan McDonnell, Elissa Karasik, and Nia DaCosta

Spoilers: moderate

Disney's Challengers, part VIII: Dog damn

ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN

1989

Directed by Don Bluth (co-directed by Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy)

Written by David N. Weiss and zillion other people

Spoilers: moderate

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should

WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY

1993

Directed by Phil Nibbelink, Ralph Zondag, Dick Zondag, and Simon Wells

Written by John Patrick Shanley, Flint Dille, and Sherri Stoner (based on the picture book by Hudson Talbott)

Spoilers: moderate

Disney's Challengers, Part XII: Humans will always lend a hand with the destruction of this worthless jungle land

FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST

1992

Directed by Bill Kroyer

Written by Jim Cox (based on the novella by Diana Young)

Spoilers: moderate

Reviews from gulag: Vampires suck

It's that time again, when we face the necessity of getting fast and somewhat dirty as we dispose of the detritus of the previous year.  For our first batch of titles, we have a convenient theme in 2023's major vampire films: The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which is the Dracula-on-a-boat adventure it says it is, adapting Chapter 7 of Bram Stoker's novel; El Conde, the new Pablo Larraín film, of all things, which deploys the curious conceit of wondering what it would be like if Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet had actually been a vampire who never died; and Renfield, which, like Demeter, looks to the beginning of things with Stoker for its inspiration, and wonders what it would be like if Dracula and Renfield survived long enough for Renfield to read self-help books and decide to rebel against his toxic boss, while also giving Universal Pictures an opportunity to do something/anything with its Dracula IP, still good for a few more years.  You would never, ever guess which one of these is not a piece of shit.

Note: I will be spoiling The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a little.  I guess I kind of spoil El Conde, but only if you're unrealistically ignorant of late 20th century history.

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER

Of course, if I warn you that I'm spoiling The Last Voyage of the Demeter, have I not already spoiled The Last Voyage of the Demeter?  But then, if it's even meaningful to ask "guess who survives the Demeter?", the project has already failed in the first place.  Look, The Last Voyage of the Demeter ends not with extinction, but a fucking sequel hook.  This insane unwillingness to fully embrace the fatalistic nihilism that ought to be burned right into this weird sidequel's bones was always going to be its biggest problem; yet, with this treatment, I'm not entirely sure that if it had done so it still could have managed to have clawed its way up to an adequate movie—I just wouldn't have totally despised it. I felt a deep sense of pessimism about its chances sweep over me within the first seconds, which outline the basic scenario in its introductory text—the Demeter wrecked on the English coast (this is, uh, not the most faithful adaptation in any respect), the captain's (Liam Cunningham's) log found—and then wrench you right out of the story it's telling, by announcing right in the midst of its text narration that it's "based on the novel Dracula," which is almost correct, in that Dracula offers itself as a curated archive of documents that are real in its universe, but are only a novel in ours.  A few seconds after that, it shows us exactly what it just told us, I suppose so you'd know that superfluousness was going to be a major element of this movie.  I don't think anything in the movie ever gets wonkier than this first minute, at least, but the screenplay does frequently flirt with similar malapropism, notably when a character asks if everyone has been "struck dumb," meaning "stupid," even though "dumb" has never meant "stupid" when you put "struck" in front of it (and it would be exceedingly hip and with-it for this Russian to use "dumb" for "stupid" in his mostly-fluent British English in 1897 anyway, so it's not "character embroidery").  There's also a line where a Romanian claims that Dracula's castle is older than any of them, which, from context, is supposed to be impressive for some reason.

Hall of egress

THE TUNNEL TO SUMMER, THE EXIT OF GOODBYES

aka Natsu e no Tonneru, Sayonara no Deguchi

2022 Japan/2023 USA

Written and directed by Tomohisa Taguchi (based on the novella and comic books by Mei Hachimoku, Kukka, and Koudon)

Spoilers: moderate

When the oceans drank Atlantis

AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM

2023

Directed by James Wan

Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Thomas Pa'a Sibbett, Jason Momoa, and James Wan

Spoilers: moderate

Another castle

THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE

2023

Directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic

Written by Matthew Fogel

Spoilers: moderate

The ecstasy of gold

KELLY'S HEROES

1970

Directed by Brian G. Hutton

Written by Troy Kennedy Martin

Spoilers: moderate

Discontinuation War

SISU

2023

Written and directed by Jalmari Helander

Spoilers: moderate

Yeah? Well, I'm gonna go make my own Blade Runner, with blackjack, and hookers

THE CREATOR

2023

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Written by Chris Weitz and Gareth Edwards

Spoilers: moderate

The aristocrats!

SALTBURN

2023

Written and directed by Emerald Fennell

Spoilers: moderate