The clown is down: See, it's just a scary movie

ALL HALLOWS' EVE

2013

Written and directed by Damien Leone

Spoilers: moderate

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

Gimme some Sugar, baby

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR and six three more

2023

Written and directed by Wes Anderson (based on the short stories "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," "The Swan," "The Rat Catcher," and "Poison" by Roald Dahl)

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: No longer of God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty

TWICE-TOLD TALES

1963

Directed by Sidney Salkow

Written by Robert E. Kent (based on the stories "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "Rapaccini's Daughter" and the novel The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Spoilers: moderate

American Gothic Week: The notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest

TALES OF TERROR

1962

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Richard Matheson (based on the stories "Morella," "The Black Cat," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" by Edgar Allan Poe)

Spoilers: moderate

Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose

THE FRENCH DISPATCH OF THE LIBERTY, KANSAS EVENING SUN

2021

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, Jason Schwartzman, and Wes Anderson

Spoilers: moderate

If it was gay, bright, and beautiful, that's how Ziggy wanted it

ZIEGFELD FOLLIES

1946

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Charles Walters, George Sidney, Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, and Robert Lewis

Spoiler alert: inapplicable (and as I've said before, it's difficult to be brief with musicals or anthologies, and this one's both)

Cineramarama: Beautiful for spacious skies

THIS IS CINERAMA

1952

Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Michael Todd Jr., Ernest B. Schoedsack, and Gunther von Frisch

Spoiler alert: as inapplicable as it gets

G-d Week: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

THE BIBLE: IN THE BEGINNING

1966

Directed by John Huston

Written by Christopher Fry (based on the book by P, D, and J)

Spoiler alert: oh, inapplicable

King Week: Stephen's cat

In which Halloween-related marathoning has resulted in reviews of several spooky movies from the mind of the world's favorite horror author, Stephen King.

CAT'S EYE

1985

Directed by Lewis Teague

Written by Stephen King (based in part on King's short stories from Night Shift)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part XIV: You can't reason with a headless man

THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD

Half a masterpiece is still something to celebrate, and Disney closed the 1940s out stronger than it had been in years.

1949

Directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, and James Algar

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part XIII: Trees, underwear, and America

MELODY TIME

Great: another half-good, half-crap Disney package film.  Oh, Melody Time.  Whatever shall we do with you?

1948

Directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson, and William Morgan

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part XII: What was the name of this movie again?

FUN AND FANCY FREE

Breezy and likeable, Fun and Fancy Free is exactly what we needed as we move through the dark days of Disney during the late 1940s.

1947

Directed by Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts, Hamilton Luske, and William Morgan

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part X: Ain't no rule says a whale can't sing at the Met

MAKE MINE MUSIC

Though blessed with at least one genuine high point, and even a few good bits after that, for the most part this anthology isn't even up-and-down, it's mostly one single flat, boring line, spread across some of the most disposable animation in the whole Disney canon.

1946

Directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Joshua Meador

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part IX: I mean, has anyone ever been to Baía?

THE THREE CABALLEROS

The package film era of Disney at its most playful, of course that must be very playful indeed.  Tastes may vary on whether that makes The Three Caballeros actually good or not, but, heck, it's certainly something to see.

1944 Mexico/1945 USA

Directed by Norman Ferguson

Spoiler alert: inapplicable in the extreme

Walt Disney, part VII: Won't you be our neighbor?

SALUDOS AMIGOS

A reasonably pleasant diversion for a film made at the behest of the U.S. State Department, Saludos Amigos has some pretty low lows, but its usual tack is genial, colorful, and funny, and if you showed it in a classroom today it's at least possible you might not get mobbed on Twitter, which for a Disney film made in 1942 about people other than Europeans is, frankly, a sterling achievement.

1942 (Brazil)/1943 (USA)

Directed by Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, and Norm Ferguson

Spoiler alert: mild

The meanness of the used-ta-been

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

The Coens are back with another oddball project, an anthology that, in some ways, is more coherent than a lot of their monolithic narratives; and it's a damn fine thing, too, although that doesn't stop parts of it from being somewhat less than worth your time.

2018
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part IV: The happiest place on Earth

THE RELUCTANT DRAGON

An odd little prepackaged voyage through Walt's then-new studio in Burbank, The Reluctant Dragon doesn't accomplish much, though I certainly don't begrudge its existence.  At least, not as a bonus feature on the Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad blu-ray.  As a theatrical feature film, on the other hand...

1941

Directed by Alfred Werker and Hamilton Luske

With Robert Benchley (Robert Benchley), Nana Bryant (Mrs. Benchley), Frances Gifford (Doris), Buddy Pepper (Humphrey), Clarence Nash (Clarence Nash and Donald Duck), Florence Gill (Florence Gill and Clara Cluck), various other Disney employees and, for some reason, Alan Ladd (various Disney employees), and Walt Disney (Walt Disney), plus Billy Lee (the Boy in "The Reluctant Dragon"), Claud Allister (Sir Giles in "The Reluctant Dragon"), and Barnett Parker (the Dragon in "The Reluctant Dragon")

Spoiler alert: moderate, and not really applicable

If I had the chance, I'd ask the world to dance

INVITATION TO THE DANCE

If every musical of the 1950s winds up turning into a pretentious art film for ten or twenty minutes, what would happen if a musical was simply conceived as a pretentious art film from the start?  That's the experiment Gene Kelly ran when he made Invitation to the Dance, and the results, while mixed, suggest that Kelly's opus deserves a higher profile amongst its brethren musicals than the near-obscurity which, sadly, it actually enjoys.

1952/1956

Directed by, choreographed by, and starring Gene Kelly

Spoiler alert: moderate

Joe Dante, part VIII: That's not a baby—that's a Mister Potato Head!

AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON

An inoffensive, indeed, often-pleasing curio from the deepest parts of the 1980s.

1987

Directed by John Landis, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Hoton, Robert K. Weiss, and Joe Dante

Written by Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland

With "lots of actors," according to the opening title card, and I imagine you feel like reading a four-line list of performers almost as much as I feel like writing it

Spoiler alert: mild