Ranking the Doctor Who Christmas Episodes

Dec 242017

December 24, 2017

It’s hard to add a tradition. Traditions take time and have to be something really special to jump the cue. The yearly Doctor Who Christmas episode has become a tradition in record time and one of my favorites. The best of these is magnificent television. The worst is… Well, up through #8 should be watched every year. Watch #14 if it happens to come on TV when you’ve nothing better to do.

Note: I said Christmas episode, not Christmas special, as there is one ep that isn’t a special, so most rankings are one short.

Starting with the least:

#14 Last Christmas (2014)

wholastchristmas Twelve, Clara
The least of the Christmas specials. Nothing original in sight. We’re given Inception‘s dream within a dream without a touch of irony, delivered via Alien‘s facehuggers. Since we know from the beginning that everything is a dream, nothing matters. It doesn’t help that the ep is dealing with the huge mistake that was the Clara/Danny relationship nor the rubbish split of The Doctor and Clara (to be fair the actress had quit and then changed her mind). However, it’s an acceptable diversion.

#13 The Return of Doctor Mysterio (2016)

WhoReturnofDoctorMysterio Twelve, Nardole
After a twelve-month drought following the spectacular The Husbands of River Song, this is one of the most disappointing moments in Who history. It isn’t a bad episode; it isn’t significant enough. It is emotionally empty. Since superheroes are all the rage, they added a costumed superhero to the Who universe, but they had no idea of what to do with one and nothing to say. There’s some lackluster villains, some ho-hum new characters, and a forgettable story. Twelve is in pretty good form but that’s not enough to make this memorable. That doesn’t mean it is a bad time. It’s a pleasant watch, but not an ep you’ll dwell on after it is done.

#12 The End of Time Parts 1 & 2 (2009/10)

whoendoftime Ten, Wilfred
I am being really kind by evaluating both parts together. Everything good—the farewell to Ten—is in the second half that was broadcast at New Year’s. So if I were to only count Part 1, it would be at the bottom of the bottom. So much is painful: Hulk-jumping, electro, super, undead Master. Turning everyone into The Master and then just tossing that plot. The misuse of Donna. Wilfred turned into a moron. Leaping Doctor. The pistol target switching. Most of this two-parter is trash, but at least it isn’t boring trash.

And then we have the ending: deeply emotional, occasionally funny, and thoughtful. The last 20 minutes are gold. It’s a proper ending for Ten.

#11 The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (2011)

whowidowwardrobe Eleven

We had A Christmas Carol, so now we get Narnia. The Doctor is irrelevant (except for supplying a portal). This is a story of a mother rescuing her wandering children from fairyland. It is also a story of grief. It manages both of those stories well, treading carefully at times, and diving in at others. There’s a real feeling of loss and need. The Doctor may be an extra in his own show, but he acts as comic relief and this is one of the times when Smith’s gags work.

Each of the several endings is heartwarming.

#10 The Time of the Doctor (2013)

whotimedoctor Eleven, Clara
So, was there any reason any number of ships, like the papal one, didn’t just blow up the planet instantly? Eleven regenerates, after we suddenly learn the Doctor is on his last regeneration. (Really? Was there any reason not to have mentioned that a season ago and then done something with it?) We get sudden answers to multi-season-long questions that turn out not to be very interesting. And the end is a cheat. I do love the church, and Clara is quite good for Clara. It doesn’t fit together as satisfyingly as it should have, but it is about the moments, and a lot of those are good.

#9 The Snowmen (2012)

whosnowmen Eleven, Clara, Paternoster Gang
An episode that would have been greatly improved by eliminating The Doctor. He is unnecessary to the plot. Clara, Vastra, Jenny, and Strax are all that’s needed and are all wonderful. Clara would never be this much fun again while the other three prove they deserve a spin-off. Unfortunately the villain turns out to be less than advertised and the plot is equally uninteresting. I watch this for the sidekicks. Think about how good the end of S7 and all of S8 could have been if this version of Clara had become the companion.

#8 The Runaway Bride (2006)

whorunaway Ten, Donna
Donna is always a bit shrill, but here she is truly unpleasant. Her mother is… wow… Doctor Who hates mothers. Donna gets better over time; her mother does not. The story isn’t great and the FX spider is worse. It’s fast-paced, which helps, and funny, which helps more. But it is Ten that makes it all work. He switches from emotional & dramatic to funny to an action hero three times in the same scene and it always works.

#7 Twice Upon a Time (2017)

WhoTwiceUponaTime Twelve, One, Bill
It leans more on nostalgia than I’d like, but new Who has rarely done it so well, and if that’s the plan, going back to the first Doctor is nice. There really isn’t a plot, although for a while the two Doctors think there is one. This is about two dying Doctors thinking about their past and if they want to go forward. The play between the two of them is good, and the nods toward your racist uncle are funny and relevant. It’s very sentimental, but then the Xmas eps usually are, and this one isn’t cloying. I wouldn’t have tossed Bill in (her ending has been mangled enough), but this is her best appearance, so it worked out.

#6 The Next Doctor (2008)

whonextchristmas Ten, Jackson Lake
A real shame that David Morrissey wasn’t the next Doctor. He would have been excellent. He’s very good in his very brief run. If there is a failing, it is that it didn’t keep the ruse going longer. Miss Hartigan is a sympathetic villain. And it is one of the best-looking episodes. The use of color is stunning. How much you like this episode seems to be based on how you feel about a daikaiju cyberman.

#5 Voyage of the Damned (2007)

whovoyage Ten, Astrid
It’s The Poseidon Adventure in space. How much you like it will depend on how much you liked that film. I liked it a lot. I’ve never understood the Astrid hate. She makes a good, if very traditional, companion. This might be more like a regular episode than many of the Xmas eps, but also feels epic.

#4 The Christmas Invasion (2005)

whochristmasinvasion Ten, Rose
The Doctor sleeps through two-thirds of the episode, leaving us with a struggling Rose, Mickey, and Jackie. It also gives us the welcome return of Harriet Jones. Once Ten wakes, it sails with David Tennant showing off some impressive acting chops (and the ability to clearly speak twice as fast as any normal human). An extra point for Santas with weapons and a buzz saw tree.

#3 A Christmas Carol (2010)

whochristmascarol Eleven, Amy, Rory
It violates one of the fundamental rules of time travel set up early on in the show’s history, and it is a version of A Christmas Carol, which is the most overused Christmas story in existence, but somehow it still works. Part of that is the music. Casting mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins was genius.

#2 The Unquiet Dead (2006)

whounquiet Nine, Rose
My favorite of the historical celebrity episodes. Everything is done right. It’s a spooky ghost story with well-developed secondary characters, plenty of emotion, lots of humor, and a bit of meaning. It is pretty much the perfect standard Doctor Who episode; to beat this the series had to do something unusual, and do it well. It happened, but not often.

#1 The Husbands of River Song (2015)

whohusbands Twelve, River
Peter Capaldi’s Doctor had been improving over the year but this Christmas special is where he nails it and becomes one of the best Doctors. Everything around him is as good. The script is the best the show has seen in years. There is wit, fun, and the right amount of emotion at the end. The story works, but it doesn’t matter if it did or not. This is about two characters, The Doctor and River Song, interacting, and it shines.

Lists, Thoughts

Ranking the Star Wars films

Dec 222017

December 22, 2017

Ranking the Star Wars films gives me a chance to rate them without writing full reviews. I’ve always wanted them listed on my site—to show where they fit with other F&SF films, but thought it was a bit silly to fully review the first six. The overlap between “People who do not already have a strong view on Star Wars I-VI” and “People who read my web site” is zero. Here I can just quickly state my feelings on the earlier films without bothering to go into details that no one cares about. So, starting with #11

#11 The Rise of the Skywalker

We start from scratch with new villains, a new threat, a new big bad, new allies, a new quest, and new histories. By “new” I mean re-purposed from earlier Star Wars movies, but they’re not the ones from the last two films. The Last Jedi is mostly retconned out of existence as director J.J. Abrams replaces it with “borrowed” material. He starts with a copy of Return of the Jedi and then just jams in anything he can find. There are multiple characters who exist in this film only because they existed in earlier films. We have repeated action scenes, repeated locations, and a repeated finale, all of which exist only to point to those previous versions.

For a good portion of the runtime, its three friends off on adventures, which is pleasant, if overly familiar, like an adventure serial. It’s given some emotional force by the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. Whatever heart and depth the film has is with them. Of course, it all looks and sounds great. And unlike the first six films in the series, the acting isn’t a detriment. It’s cheap, lowest common denominator fun that I’ve seen too many times before. The Last Jedi tried to be more. The Rise of Skywalker puts in real effort to be less. (Full Review)

#10 The Phantom Menace

Here is the beginning of a backstory we never asked for and never should have been given. Even good movies detailing Darth Vader’s history would have damaged the character and the original films, and these were not good movies. What is good about this entry? It is a very pretty film with great art design and costume design. And Ewan McGregor does the best job of acting of anyone in the first six films. The score is excellent and there’s one good lightsaber fight.

The bad? Everything else. The Jedi are idiots for no reason, with Qui-Gon Jinn being the icon for stupidity. He’s never right. No one besides McGregor can act, with Natalie Portman particularly bad. Then there’s Antisemitism, racist Asian characters, young Anakin, Shmi, immaculate conception, and the never-ending pod race. Even things that at first seem like they will be good are a mess. Darth Maul seemed “cool,” at least in the advertising, but in the actual movie, he is a void. He is given no personality at all. He is just some guy with a different kind of lightsaber. That’s his character. And of course, there’s Jar-Jar, who is not funny nor dramatic nor interesting. The general defense is that he’s “For the children,” but that’s insulting to children.

#9 Revenge Of The Sith

The biggest mistake of Revenge of the Sith is making it so self-serious. It wants to be a Shakespeare tragedy, which is odd for a series based on afternoon serials. The second biggest was Hayden Christensen. Granted, the actor never had a chance, But Ewan McGregor managed to elevate his poor dialog while Christensen drags it down from horrendous into a deep, dark pit. He is so relentlessly bad that it is almost some kind of weird victory. How could he have managed this level of ineptitude? No moment with Christensen/Anakin is good, and you can’t escape him. Of all the prequel films, this is the one truly about Anakin, which makes it even worse as his arc is constructed so poorly. Nothing about his character is human. People do not act this way, and his sudden (and it is ridiculously sudden) switch to being a villain comes off as funny. But that’s not the only unintentionally humorous moment. Killing children shouldn’t be a laugh-riot, but there’s no other way to take it.

Does this film have anything? Well, again, it looks good. The music is good. And all the lightsaber battles are nicely choreographed—even if the one that is supposed to be dramatic has that stupid “I’ve got the higher ground” moment.

#8 Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story exists to answer questions I wasn’t interested in having answered or specifically wanted to remain unanswered. Where did Han and Chewbacca meet? Where did Han get his trademark gun? What was the Kessel run like? How did the card game that got him the Milenum Falcon play out? If you were curious about any of these, then Solo is intended for you. I was not curious.

Solo avoids the lows of previous installments, but also never hits the highs. The basic story of a failed heist leading to a bigger heist and people and groups not being what they originally appeared is a workable foundation for a film. My only complaint with the movie they made is that the cinematography is too dark.

Of course the real problem is that this isn’t the movie they should have made. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were planning on making a comedy, but executives got scared and brought in workman director Ron Howard to make a safer film. The failure of Solo is in imagination. It takes no risks. It sits comfortably within the Star Wars canon. It was tailor-made for the fanboys who were upset that The Last Jedi wasn’t exactly what they imagined when they were six. You should never give the fans what they want, and more often than not, they will decide they didn’t really want it after all. (Full Review)

#7 Attack Of The Clones

This film has a vast advantage over the other two prequel films: it has parallel stories. The Anakin stuff is again pretty bad, with Christensen putting in a career-mutilating performance as he and Natalie Portman utter uncomfortable “romantic” dialog. But with this film, if we removed the bad material, there’s still something left. Obi-Wan has his own quest with no Anakin in sight and that stuff is all pretty good. There are huge swaths of the film that aren’t embarrassing, which is a triumph for a prequel film. It also helps that segments near the beginning and at the end that do involve Anakin are large ensemble action scenes, thus he can’t completely destroy those. Yes, every time Christensen says anything “dramatic” it is cringe-worthy, but we aren’t stuck with him, and when we’re off on the water planet, I can just sit back and enjoy the movie. And as an added plus, there is Yoda with a lightsaber; when he broke that out, the entire theater cheered.

I also have a better view of this film than others because of how I first saw it. In 2002, IMAX films were shown on 2-hour reels and often if a film went over 2 hours, they would cut it. So my first viewing of Attack of the Clones was an IMAX version with 20 minutes cut—and they did a good job of cutting. It was 20 minutes less of Anakin. If I was ranking just that version, I’d move it up at least one place. That shows that this film, unlike The Phantom Menace and Revenge Of The Sith, is still salvageable. A good fan edit turns it into a very good film.

#6 Return Of The Jedi

This film is a lot of fun, no question. I enjoyed it when I first saw it and still do. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a disaster, just an enjoyable disaster. The problems really start with the acting. Yes, all the first six films have poor acting but among the original trilogy, it stands out here. This is partly due to the actors’ displeasure with the script. Harrison Ford wanted Han to die and when not only did he not, but he was forced to say sub-par dialog, Ford tossed in the towel. He wasn’t trying, and it shows. The rest of the cast isn’t good either. There’s also the repeated plot elements (another Death Star and another run of little ships to blow it up) and the Ewoks. There’s no getting around those teddy bears; they could have been cute or transgressive (if made vicious), but instead they scream out Mattel. By this time it was clear that much of the films were about selling merchandise, but couldn’t it have been done inconspicuously? Even things that would have been good in the first film were feeling old by now. The cycle chase is a bore, and I’ve already mentioned the final space battle. And no, they did not “always know” that Leia was Luke’s sister (a reveal that does not bear up to scrutiny). It’s a clunky retcon.

So what’s good? As always for the franchise, it looks good. We’re given the iconic Slave Leia that gets a bonus with the strangulation scene. The final lightsaber duel is excellent (though that is interrupted by the Emperor—he’d have won if he just shut up). And that’s about it.

#5 The Force Awakens

Star Wars 7 is a construction more than a film, made up of pieces from the other six films (mainly the original three and primarily A New Hope). It’s all homages and repeats. It’s well done, with every aspect meticulously crafted. We may have seen it all before, but the new paint looks good. The actors do better than under Lucas’s care, and so do the characters. It supplies exactly what the audience asked for. I don’t believe art involves supplying just what an audience asks for. That’s the job of hucksters and conmen. This is the finest movie you are likely to see that demonstrates the emptiness of the blockbuster business. It’s a bullseye on a low target. It’s hollow corporate fun. It would have never created a legend, but it can live off of one.

#4 Rogue One

The narrative stumbles in the first half, with time wasted on needless travelogues and meeting characters of no importance, while we are distracted by obvious call-backs to earlier films. Re-watching Rogue One, the first hour comes off even worse than on first viewing.

Then it turns it all around. Suddenly it knows its direct kin: The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, and The Guns of Navarone, with behind-enemy-lines skirmishes and a few actions that would keep our protagonists out of polite society. This isn’t the heroism of special folks, but of soldiers in a war, that comes with hard choices, violence, and real sacrifice, and it makes for the most satisfying Star Wars film since 1977. The ending makes sitting through the failings of the first act worthwhile. This isn’t the film to bring the magic back to the Star Wars franchise, but it is the one to bring back meaning and emotion, and that’s better. (Full Review)

#3 The Empire Strikes Back

Note: For those grabbing torches and pitchforks, I am giving Empire a good rating. I know here is where people will get upset with me as many want to rank Empire as #1, but it just doesn’t belong there. Yes, the cinematography is a little better, but it was good in Star Wars {A New Hope}. Yes, the acting has improved, but it still isn’t that good. And the SFXs might be a touch better, but that’s insignificant and they were a wonder already in the first film. And I do not give it points for introducing Boba Fett. Why does anyone care about some tertiary character with a so-so costume?

Sure, Empire has some great battle scenes. It also has one of my favorite lightsaber duels. And while character development is shaky and nothing deep is delivered, it isn’t embarrassing either. This is a good film; I don’t think I need to convince anyone of that.
But it has some problems. First, it’s a bridge film. It has no plot, but is only a couple chapters in the larger story. It starts nowhere and ends nowhere. Then there is the reveal where the response is unearned. The only reason anyone thinks it is a big deal that Vader is Luke’s father is if they themselves would find this a big deal in their own life. The film does nothing to sell this. Why does Luke care? Why does he scream out in that pathetic way? If Aunt Beru had been Vader, I can see why that would have had some emotional resonance; he knew her. Luke is a whiny kid with daddy issues, but that isn’t enough to explain it, nor is it a good thing that our hero turns out to be more of a child here than when we started with him. But besides the film not making this moment important, it has the effect of shrinking the universe as well as shifting the message. In A New Hope, the universe is vast and anyone could become a hero. Now everyone you run into is family and the saga has shifted to being one of royalty and chosen ones. It would be a very long time before this failing was repaired.

#2 The Last Jedi

As The Force Awakens was a remake of Star Wars {A New Hope}, The Last Jedi is a remake of The Empire Strikes Back, but it is a cleverly made, artistically constructed, updated and upgraded remake. It is shocking how the same this movie is while managing to feel really different.

Rey, Poe, and Finn have previously hidden depth. And Kylo Ren is significantly less annoying, no longer appearing to be whining Anaken 2.0. Rose is a nice addition, carrying half the theme. And Luke finally comes into his own as a character.

The Last Jedi has humor without ever getting campy, and cute critters that don’t get on my nerves (like Ewoks…). And damn is it pretty. There are some sets (the throne room) and some shots (overhead of the speeders on the salt planet) that are magnificent. Plus, as the most layered Star Wars film, it finally undoes the damage of Empire by stepping away from the elite nobles and special chosen ones that have infested the franchise for too long. Finally, we are not in the saga of one family, but in a universe where heroism doesn’t depend on blood. (Full Review)

#1 Star Wars {A New Hope}

It all started here. It was all new. I’d never seen anything like this before and it was breathtaking. The first scene, with the rebel ship flying overhead followed by the star destroyer, is amazing and has never been equaled. Star Wars took old stories and myths and icons, tossed them into a sandy blender, and came up with something new. It isn’t perfect. The acting is…rough, and the dialog is rougher. Luke is an annoying git and the emotional states of the characters don’t hold up under inspection. But all is forgiven here. The later films don’t get a pass on their weaknesses, but being first counts. No one had seen a lightsaber before and they’ve never been as good. The Death Star was incredible (Death Stars 2 & 3 were not). Darth Vader was a forceful and scary villain; simply due to familiarity, he could never manage this again. Star Wars is exciting and beautiful and opens up alien worlds and a galaxy far, far away. It could only be done once, and once is enough.

Lists, Thoughts

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Dec 192017

Following the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rey (Daisy Ridley) has found broken and depressed Jedi Master Luke (Mark Hamill), and wants him to return to civilization to bring hope to the rebellion. Personally, she wants him to train her in the use of the force so that she can find her place—neither of these requests is of much interest to him. Meanwhile, The Resistance, led by Leia (Carrie Fisher), has been caught in the middle of the evacuation of their main base by the forces of The First Order, led by General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). When Vice Admiral Holdo’s (Laura Dern) plan strikes hotshot pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) as foolish, he, Finn (John Boyega), and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) come up with their own plan that involves the latter two going off to a not-cloud-city to get help from a mysterious stranger.

As The Force Awakens was a remake of Star Wars (A New Hope), The Last Jedi is a remake of The Empire Strikes Back. Once again it is a bridge film, that has no beginning and no end and is incomplete on its own. Once again we have the rebels evacuating and getting caught. Once again our heroes split up, the young Jedi-to-be going off to a weird outback to work with a grumpy, odd master and that training plan not working out as hoped. Once again the most rebellious of rebels strike out on their own and… OK, I’d get deep into spoiler territory if I spelled it all out so I’ll say there are similar captures, similar escapes, similar threats, similar realizations, similar confrontations, similarly laid out battles and so on. Nearly beat for beat this is The Empire Strikes Back. It reached a point that I found it ridiculous that they’d given this film a new name. It’s a remake.

But, it is a cleverly made, artistically constructed, updated and upgraded remake. The Force Awakens seemed to me to be less of a movie and more an amalgamation of parts from the previous Star Wars episodes. The Last Jedi is a remake done right. Yes, we get all the old notes, but some are sung differently and we get a few melodies we didn’t before. The old themes are on display, be we get some new ones too. It is shocking how the same this movie is while managing to feel really different. Better still, it knows its place. It understand that it is a remake and plays with that fact, twisting here and there, playing a game of oneupmanship with Star Wars V. The meta-message is clear: This is the new version of the old, made by new filmmakers who must deal with what the old ones did, about new characters who dwell excessively on the old characters and events of the old films. It plays with nostalgia, but it also is yelling, “Get over yourself.”

Which means this film is surprisingly good. The acting is solid (always a sore point with the original trilogy), with all of the young kids shining and Mark Hamill proving that all he needed was a little experience and a good director. Carry Fisher is fine and it is a nice sendoff for her, but she isn’t the standout that Hamill is. Better are the characters. Everyone introduced in The Force Awakens is improved upon. Rey, Poe, and Finn have previously hidden depth. And Kylo Ren is significantly less annoying, no longer appearing to be whining Anaken 2.0. Rose is a nice addition who lets us look at who the true enemies of freedom are in the Star Wars universe, and in our own, and aids is stepping us away from the elite nobles and special chosen ones that have infested the franchise for too long. And Luke is treated best of all. In The Force Awakens, Han seemed a bit silly, acting just as he had nearly forty years ago. It was unnatural and off-putting. Luke isn’t the twenty-year-old kid with a hooked-on gray beard. He’s aged. He’s a man twisted by the tragedies of life and by self-doubt. And it makes sense that he went off to play hermit (I always had some doubts on if our previous two Jedi hermits really would have done that). If you were going to bring back a classic character, this was the way to do it.

You already know the action is good. It is a Star Wars film—the action is going to be good. And the special effects are amazing. I watched Justice League a week ago, but these two films look like they were made decades apart. Technology is on the side of Lucusfilm. I cannot help but imagine the team at ILM going to an afternoon screening of JL just to laugh.

The Last Jedi also has humor without ever getting campy or inappropriate. It has plenty of cute critters without getting on my nerves (like Ewoks…). And damn is it pretty. There are some sets (the throne room) and some shots (overhead of the speeders on the salt planet) that are magnificent.

No, it isn’t all brilliant. It is a bridge film, so we do not get a full story and nothing is finished. We spend a bit too much time on side projects and at least one new character should have been cut from the script. Plus a few characters make decisions that are hard to fathom and take a bit too long to make obvious ones. We have some good duels, but none to compete with the best of the past—though it does have some fabulous moments. But the flaws don’t stop The Last Jedi from being rip-roaring entertainment. And it is also smart. Star Wars was never the place to go for layers, but The Last Jedi changes that. You want to think about social issues? It’s got you covered. Gender issues? Yup. Fan culture and nostalgia? Plenty there. The meaning of heroism? Sure. Animal rights? Yes. Personal identity and finding your way in life? Yeah.

There’s been grumbling from some fanboys, but ignore that as their upset has nothing to do with the quality of the film. It’s a combination of nostalgia-kids who wanted exactly the same thing with exactly the same characters acting in exactly the same way and are unhappy that some things (mainly Luke) have changed, and Doomsphere residents who are angry that there are as many lead female characters as male ones and both a Black man and an Asian woman have prominent roles. Assuming you aren’t joining a men’s rights group, ethno-nationalists, or the Sad Puppies, you can ignore the frothing negative comments on Reddit.

The Last Jedi is a solid action film and one of the better entries in the franchise. See it.

Reviews, Science Fiction, Space Opera Tagged with: Four Reels

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Dec 172017

Four stereotypical teenagers, the nerdy weakling, the smart overly serious girl, the popular girl, and the football player, get detention in stereotypical ways and find the Jumanji video game. The game sucks them into a jungle world where they take the forms of the avatars they had chosen: the powerful guy (Dwayne Johnson), the combat girl (Karen Gillan), the scholarly guy (Jack Black), and Kevin Hart (Kevin Hart). In order to return to the real world, they must finish the game by saving the world in a way that doesn’t really matter. Along the way they meet Alex Vreeke (Nick Jonas) who entered the game twenty years ago and is their missing fifth player.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is somewhere between a sequel and a remake of the 1995 Robin Williams kid’s flick that people remember as better than it was. Really. Sit down and watch it. Not that good, but not that bad. As such, this sequel doesn’t have any real legacy to besmirch, and as it dumps the oddly self-serious tone of the first, is a mild improvement. It also has a tenuous attachment to the original and given an hour or two at the script stage, could have been made completely stand-alone. But the connection doesn’t hurt anything.

Welcome to the Jungle is a by-the-numbers action-comedy. Nothing is earnest for more than a minute and I never worried about what’s going to happen next. That’s just as well because the basic flow of the film is weak and there’s some hard-to-fathom decisions that still have me shaking my head: If everyone else in Jumanji is an NPC, why do we spend time away from our heroes with the evil guy?

The body-swapping gags get old fast (and the poorly thought-out messages about being a teen are horrible from the start), with the shocking exception of Jack Black’s gender swap. I went in with the assumption Black’s take on being an obnoxious, phone-obsessed Millennial would land as unfunny approaching offensive, but it is both humorous and sympathetic.

In fact, Black is good overall and this is where my review switches gears as he and Karen Gillan are the MVPs, always fun and engaging. The Rock is fine, as he usually is, and has plenty of jokes that land. Kevin Hart just plays Kavin Hart, so you’ll like or hate him depending on how you’ve felt about him in…everything else he’s ever been in. But Black and Gillian are worth your matinée bucks. I can’t tell if it is good dialog or just the actors elevating the material, but either way, there are a lot of laughs here. A scene in which Black teaches Gillian how to flirt could so easily have been mocking and mean-spirited, but it sidesteps that and works, as does the follow-up “dance fight.” Gillan, after her time on Doctor Who and in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, is proving herself to be the next kick-ass superstar.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle isn’t deep or thoughtful and I doubt it will be remembered in twenty years, but it’s a good-time, lightweight family film.

Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The Best Films of Ronald Colman

Dec 172017

December 17, 2017

RonaldColman The best film stars are defined by their voices and none had a finer voice than Ronald Colman; I would bet it has been imitated more often than any other. His good looks got him parts in silent cinema, but when the talkies came along, he really bloomed—the man with the mellifluous voice. But even with that liquid gold voice, great parts were few and far between, and even this list of his best films gets a bit weak toward the end.

Before his top eight, an honorable mention to Raffles (1930), which defined the “gentleman thief” in film.

#8 – Lost Horizon (1937) — It’s a bit long, and has a dim philosophy, but it also has some nice adventure moments and no doubt felt like the answer to all things for people in the Great Depression.

#7 – My Life With Caroline (1941) — A wild farce with a basic premise that would be hard to believe if the film cared about you believing it. Every few years his wife takes up with a new man, forgetting she’d done it before, and he must persuade her to return.

#6 – Random Harvest (1942) — Colman is a war vet with amnesia who falls in love, gets married, then gets amnesia again and wanders off. It’s a weepy melodrama, but a well-made one.

#5 – A Tale of Two Cities (1935) — It does a passable job of translating a great novel for the screen, and while the directing is mediocre and several actors fail, Colman is excellent; it is one of his best performances. [Also on the Basil Rathbone list]

#4 – Kismet (1944) — A non-musical version of my favorite musical. It’s Arabian fantasy with all sorts of dashing about and romance and swordplay.

#3 – If I Were King (1938) — A witty costume comedy/drama that is really a series of brilliant conversations between Colman (as a roguish poet) and Basil Rathbone (as the king). [Also on the Basil Rathbone list]

#2 – Champagne for Caesar (1950) — In this zany comedy, Colman plays a brilliant man who decides to bankrupt an arrogant businessman by winning a quiz show. Vincent Price is the businessman. [Also on the Vincent Price list]

#1 – The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) — A magnificent Swashbuckler, easily intertwining romance, humor, and heroics. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., playing one of the great cinematic villains, almost steals the show… Almost.

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Justice League (2017)

Dec 152017

An autistic speedster (Ezra Miller), the mighty bro-dude who has some unimportant water powers (Jason Momoa), a bland self-doubting millionaire (Ben Affleck) with his sharp-tongued servant (Jeremy Irons), a magic tech man (Ray Fisher), and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) must band together to battle a giant CGI guy who is after three “destroy the world” MacGuffin boxes. Alone they are not enough, so they need to resurrect the lovable boy scout (Henry Cavill).

Well, it’s better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It’s much better. It’s not good, but it is better. BvS was created by an artist—a terrible, terrible artist. Justice League appears to have been made by an artistically-devoid, amateur committee. BvS attempted to say stupid things it shouldn’t have and did so poorly. Justice League doesn’t say anything at all. BvS is passionately hated by those with taste and passionately defended by those with no taste (it’s not clear if they love it, only that they are defending it). Justice League is not a film to elicit passion in anyone.

The troubled production of Justice League is well known. For anyone who has missed the last few years, this is the fifth film in the DC Extended Universe. Man of Steel was a critical mess as was Suicide Squad. BvS was despised by many, including me, and underperformed at the box office by at least 200 million dollars. Wonder Woman was a critical and financial hit, but it had a very different tone from the others. Justice League started as two films and then it was reduced to one. The studio pushed for a change in direction once they saw the swamp crud that was BvS, and again when Wonder Woman hit the right notes. Director Zack Snyder had to step away due to a personal tragedy, so Joss Whedon stepped in for reshoots that added up to a quarter of the movie and yet another change in direction. The studio (smartly) demanded an under two hour runtime, even though Snyder’s material required two and half to three hours. And Henry Cavill had grown a mustache for his role in the next Mission Impossible film and was not allowed to shave it, so his face needed to be CGI’d in the reshoots. All of that is visible in the finished product. It looks like it was edited by a high school AV club, but under the circumstances, perhaps no one could have put the pieces together successfully. For the first two-thirds, it is less of a coherent film, and more just a series of scenes plopped one after the other with no flow. The tone shifts from scene to scene and sometimes in a single scene. The messages of Man of Steel and BvS are ignored or contradicted and continuity is in shambles. Yes, Superman did die in the earlier film, but now he was always loved by all—a beacon of hope to the world. He’d been happy and comfortable as a hero and Wonder Woman knew him well. (Oh, and remember Bruce Wayne’s future dream of the parademons? The filmmakers don’t.) Well, I can’t argue with ignoring BvS.

It is harder to explain why the CGI is so poor. Cavill’s face looks weird from time to time, but that’s nowhere as distracting as the horrible work in the fight scenes where the actors are clearly replaced by cartoons. And every time Steppenwolf appears I was ripped out of the film. He is the worst superhero film villain in conception and execution in the last thirty years, and that’s including Apocalypse, Malekith, and the Enchantress. He has no personality, no back-story, and no motivation, and looks worse than Parallax from Green Lantern. I could defend such shoddy work in a SyFy channel movie, but this project cost 250-350 million dollars. Where did it go? Yeah, I’m sure it cost big bucks to recolor the film from dark and dreary to cheesy, plus that whole mustache thing apparently cost enough to feed a small city for a year, but there’s still a good $100 million lost somewhere.

We get very little character development, no arcs, and not nearly enough material to care about any of these heroes. The actors do the best they can. Gal Godot continues to be the MVP and is still charismatic, which is a trick considering her part is underwritten with an unnecessary faux-feud with Batman. Affleck manages a mildly amusing Batman (do we want an amusing Batman?) but I swear I saw him looking for the exits to the franchise. I’ve seen worse Batmen. The others don’t come off as well. Miller is comic relief, and I can see how, with better direction, he might have been funny, but his jokes don’t land. And I’m pretty certain that every single line he had was an attempted-joke. Momoa’s bro-dude shtick should have been entertaining or annoying, but it doesn’t have the energy to be either, and I’m afraid I’ve lost any enthusiasm for the upcoming Aquaman film. Fisher is just tech-magic guy. He doesn’t do anything and it looks like he had a character arc that was cut. Cavill…well…he’s more complicated. His take on Superman (call it Snyder’s take) has been terrible. And when he is in scenes clearly shot by Snyder, he keeps his scowl. But the later Whedon shots are another matter. The acting isn’t stunning, but Cavill can be fun when he smiles and his rendition of the boy scout Superman in the later parts of the film is pretty good (And no, at this point, Superman being in the film is not a spoiler).

The plot isn’t much of anything, but with some good character interaction, a solid villain, and some nice fights, the slight plot would have served well enough. But as is, it is another hole in the film. Nothing has weight. Nothing matters. which is another reason the fights don’t work. The CGI is bad and combat is just jumping around, but it is the lack of and weight to the plot and characters that makes the fights nothing but pointless dances.

The closest comparison I can think of is the original 1967 Casio Royale that fell apart in production and a film-of-sorts was constructed from the pieces as best they could. And like that film, there’s some fun moments and some pleasant quips in Justice League, but the whole doesn’t work. It never had a chance. They had some kind of garbage pile, so they constructed a film not to be good, but to avoid being a disaster. So, win one for Warner Bros. It isn’t a disaster, and that should be its tag line.

Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: Two Reels

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Dec 152017

Following immediately after Dawn of the Planet of the Apes such that a recent viewing of the previous entry is required to understand this one, Caesar (motion-captured Andy Serkis) leads a band of apes that are being hunted by fanatical humans under the command of the deranged Colonel (Woody Harrelson). An attack by The Colonel kills Caesar’s wife and child, so Caesar sends his followers to what he thinks is a safe place while he and three other apes set out to find The Colonel. Along the way they meet a mute human girl (Amiah Miller) and a circus chimp who goes by “Bad Ape.” Things do not go well for anyone.

War for the Planet of the Apes is a technological wonder. Perhaps you want to start a film discussion somewhere else, maybe with story or character, but any discussion of this Ape series, and particularly this film, has to begin with the special effects because they are like nothing before. Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy have great motion-capture characters, but not this good. Previously, films have gotten away with their so-close effects because there’s a degree of unreality built in. But War for the Planet of the Apes is shooting for the real world, one that happens to have talking chimps. And it succeeds. They couldn’t have done better if they’d genetically engineered super apes and given them the roles.

The third part of the Ape trilogy (and it is a third part) goes epic in its world building, but small in its story. This is all character. What The Colonel describes as THE most important conflict in history isn’t between armies (though there are some small armies), but between personalities. And due to the previously mentioned technological advancement, there’s tons of personality on display. A couple humans get time to emote (so much emoting), but primarily it is apes. And it pulls you in; well, it pulled me in. By the end I cared about Caesar and Maurice and Cornelia and Luca and token Nova. And this is a full tragedy, in the theatrical meaning of the term. We have a great man (well, ape), with a tragic flaw, which will doom him. It is his fate. And as that fate is expressed primarily in discussions rather than actions, this really is Planet of the Apes as Shakespeare would have written it. Well… Almost.

You see, War for the Planet of the Apes suffers from the RESPECT problem. It so respects the material, and so wants you to respect it, that it forgets that you should be entertained by it. It is a mistake often made with Shakespeare adaptations, but never made by Shakespeare himself. He knew that in a truly dark tale, such as Macbeth, you need a few clowns, a few moments of levity, and maybe a few of excitement to get the blood flowing. But such moments are in scarce supply here. War for the Planet of the Apes is suffocating in its grimness. It never changes in tone. The characters—those that speak—speak every line with the same, slow intensity. It’s two hours of simmering. A score that wasn’t the musical equivalent of grief would have helped. This is a serious film. A very serious film, and you better know it. Every scene, ever decision, is to make it clear to the audience that this is the most serious film they’ve ever seen. Logan? Oh yeah, that’s serious, but not this serious. You think aging, mental deterioration, death, and loss are serious? Hold my beer! We are an hour and 49 minutes in before the movie cracks its one joke—that apes throw poo. The film manages an exciting climax, but it is too late by then.

War even tries to be respectful with its fan service. They’d have been better off avoiding that altogether and just going their own way, but I know, as did the filmmakers, that the series exists because of fan service. So the nods to the original five films continue as the child is named Nova (“Hey, did you see the original Plane of the Apes? It had a Nova in it too. Isn’t that cool!”).

So a movie that clamors for my respect, get it. I respect War For the Planet of the Apes; I just don’t like it very much.

The previous films in the trilogy are Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014). The original series consisted of Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). The first film was remade as Planet of the Apes (2001)

Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: Three Reels

The Best Films of Basil Rathbone

Dec 142017

December 14, 2017

basilrathbone An actor with both one of the most distinctive profiles and most distinctive voices in Hollywood, Basil Rathbone became identified with Sherlock Holmes to his dismay. He should have taken more joy in the connection as few of his other lead roles have been remembered. He was in a large number of classic films, but, except for Son of Frankenstein, always as a supporting player and usually as a villain. It’s lucky for viewers that he made a superb villain. He was in some of the very best films ever made as the antagonist.

But before getting to those masterpieces, some honorable mentions—far more than normal if I counted separately some movies I’ve grouped together. First, a few cases where he excels but the film does not: Rathbone’s pre-code charmer in Sin Takes a Holiday (1930), his most psychotic villain in A Night of Terror (1937), and his comedic pick-pocket instructor in Heartbeat (1946). Then an honorable mention for the comedy Tovarich (1937), where Rathbone has only a small part. And a big honorable mention to his 14 Sherlock Holmes films, particularly The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939). And finally an honorable mention to The Court Jester (1955), a rollicking Swashbuckling comedy starring Danny Kaye. and #9 on the list below if the list went to 9.

#8 – A Tale of Two Cities (1935) — It does a passable job of translating a great novel for the screen, and while the directing is mediocre and several actors fail, Ronald Colman is excellent. Rathbone is very good in a small role. [Also on the Ronald Colman list]

#7 – If I Were King (1938) — A witty costume comedy/drama that is really a series of brilliant conversations between Ronald Colman (as a roguish poet) and Rathbone (as the king). [Also on the Ronald Colman list]

#6 – Son of Frankenstein (1939) A surprisingly good third entry in the franchise. It is seeped in German expressionism. Karloff gets a reduced role; Rathbone is the lead, but Bela Lugosi steals the film in what is probably his best performance. (My Review) [Also on the Bela Lugosi list and the Boris Karloff list]

#5 – The Dawn Patrol (1938) — One of the finest war pictures, with Rathbone, David Niven, and Errol Flynn as WWI pilots in horrible situations, having heroism forced upon them. [Also on the Errol Flynn list]

#4 – We’re No Angels (1955) — Humphrey Bogart’s last great performance, with Rathbone as the villain. It is a Christmas comedy and absolutely lovely. (Full Review) [Also on the Humphrey Bogart list]

#3 – Captain Blood (1935) — The first of the three great Errol Flynn Swashbucklers. Rathbone plays a pirate who ends up on the wrong side of Peter Blood. (Full Critique) [Also on the Errol Flynn list and the Olivia de Havilland list]

#2 – The Mark of Zorro (1940) — No Swashbuckler is more fun. Tyrone Power is the masked swordsman who pretends to be a fop. Rathbone is a ruthless general. (Full Critique)

#1 – The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) — The best classic Swashbuckler and one of the Best films ever made. It also contains the finest cinematic sword-fight of all time between Errol Flynn and Rathbone. (Full Critique) [Also on the Errol Flynn list and the Olivia de Havilland list]

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The Best Films of Ginger Rogers

Dec 122017

December 12, 2017

gingerrogers Ginger Rogers will forever be known as the dancing partner of Fred Astaire; they fit together. Together they made some of the greatest film musicals of all time. She could manage the steps, as well as both the sophisticated and common attitudes needed for the comedy and romance. Astaire danced with others who were technically better, but no one who was such a perfect partner. Apart from Astaire she strove to have a “serious” career (after a group of “let’s put on a Broadway show” films) that led to a string of turgid melodramas that she could never pull off—not that anyone could have made Kitty Foyle watchable. Her best “solo” works were comedies.

An honorable mention goes to the anthology film, Tales of Manhattan (1942) simply for the large number of golden age stars in it.

#8 – The Major and the Minor (1942) — 31-year-old Rogers pretends to be a child to get a half price train ticket and ends up with Ray Milland at a military school. As this is a romantic comedy, they’d never make it today. [Also on the Ray Milland list]

#7 – Carefree (1938) — A lesser Astaire/Rogers film which is more of a screwball comedy than their typical musicals.

#6 – Star of Midnight (1935) — A ripoff of the Thin Man series; if I can’t get another real one, close is good enough. William Powell is a gentleman detective—this time a lawyer—and Rogers is the girl who wants to marry him.

#5 – Flying Down to Rio (1933) — The first pairing of Astaire and Rogers, though not as the leads. It was intended as a vehicle for breathtaking Mexican actress Dolores del Rio and she’s good, but the pair steal the film. Beyond the music, there’s the exquisite and totally unreal world. Brazil never looked like this but I wish it did. This is a pre-code film; jokes about rounded heels (look it up) and what South American women have that’s better below the equator would have been censored a few years later. Likewise the transparent tops of the female wing-walkers. [Also on the Fred Astaire list]

#4 – Swing Time (1936) – The 6th Astaire/Rogers film, it has some of the best dance numbers, but with a weaker script than their earlier films. The humor fails and the world is not as magical, none of which matters when Astaire sings “The Way You Look Tonight.” [Also on the Fred Astaire list]

#3 – Shall We Dance (1937) – Another Astaire/Rogers, with another assist from the always good Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore. I find this to be the funniest Astaire film with Astaire playing a jazz dancer who has made it in ballet so must put on a persona of an arrogant Russian. The songs are solid, with “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” the standout. [Also on the Fred Astaire list]

#2 – The Gay Divorcee (1934) – The 2nd Astaire/Rogers film, and the first with them as leads, this one has Rogers attempting to get a divorce from her absent husband and mistaking Astaire as the gigolo she planned to use for cause. Horton and Blore appear again. [Also on the Fred Astaire list]

#1 – Top Hat (1935) – The 4th Astaire/Rogers picture and they’d perfected the routine. The jokes are solid and the fantasy world of shining marble is wondrous and where I want to live (much less depression era audiences). And of course the dance numbers are fantastic. Rogers falls for a very forward Astaire until she incorrectly deduces that he’s the husband of her good friend. Horton, Blore, and Helen Broderick add to the comedy. [Also on the Fred Astaire list]

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The Best Films of Ray Milland

Nov 282017

November 28, 2017

RayMilland Handsome and debonair, Milland’s early career was mainly in romantic comedies and light action films. His big break came with The Jungle Princess (1936), which made Dorothy Lamour a star as The Sarong Girl. His reputation changed with The Lost Weekend (1945) which won multiple Oscars, but is hard to view as anything other than suffering-porn now—it lacks a plot and an ending. It was no doubt important for people who never realized that alcoholism was bad. But this did alert Hollywood to his skill as a serious actor.

An honorable mention for The Thing With Two Heads (1972), which is terrible, but hey, it is called The Thing With Two Heads. Also an Honorable mention to the sappy, but surprisingly moving Love Story (1970). And a big honorable mention for his portrayal of Mephistopheles in Alias Nick Beal (1949). And another for Irene (1944), a breezy music comedy with little music.

Now for his eight best:

8 – The Lady Has Plans (1942) — A spy comedy as light as fluff. With Paulette Goddard, Milland’s frequent co-star.

7 – The Major and the Minor (1942) — 31-year-old Ginger Rogers pretends to be a child to get a half price train ticket and ends up with Milland at a military school. As this is a romantic comedy, they’d never make it today. [Also on the Ginger Rogers list]

6 – Ministry of Fear (1944) — A light thriller with Milland just out of an asylum facing Nazis. It screams Hitchcock.

5 – Easy Living (1937) — A Preston Sturges penned romantic comedy entwined with the misunderstandings of the very rich.

4 – Dial M for Murder (1954) — Milland plots to murder Grace Kelly. This one is Hitchcock.

3 – The Big Clock (1948) — One of the great Film Noirs as Milland is placed in charge of an investigation to find a man who turns out to be himself. Remade in ’87 as No Way Out with Kevin Costner. (Full Critique)

2 – Beau Geste (1939) — The definitive Foreign Legion film, with Milland one of three brothers who run off for the sake of honor.

1 – The Uninvited (1944) — The greatest ghost film, and the mold for most of those that have followed. Milland and his sister buy a house which turns out to be haunted. (Full Review)

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King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

Nov 222017

Uther (Eric Bana) is usurped by his brother Vortigern (Jude Law) with the help of dark magic, but Vortigern fails to kill Uther’s son Arthur or acquire the sword Excalibur. After being raised in a brothel, Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) becomes an underworld boss. When Excalibur resurfaces in a stone, Arthur and his criminal friends (Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell) team up with resistance fighters (Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Craig McGinlay) and a mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) to kill Vortigern.

It is refreshing to see a different take on the King Arthur legend. We certainly didn’t need another generic version and this isn’t generic Arthur. So if you are a purist, looking for a retelling of the old story with all the pieces in their predetermined places, you are going to be angry. If on the other hand, you are a fan of Guy Ritchie and his street punk, speed-up, slow down, jump randomly style, then you are going to be… Well, you aren’t going to be pleased exactly. Maybe…interested.

I haven’t seen this much Guy Ritchieism in a Guy Ritchie film since Snatch. Thugs mumble incoherently or speak too quickly to be understood. Everyone is a smart ass. No one runs more than ten feet without slipping into slow-mo or having an edit move him ahead three steps. No sword swing can finish its arc without three time shifts. Is this good or bad? Well, it’s a style. It’s a bit odd when stuck in a fantasy story, but I’m amused by the anachronism of it.

So, if you can get past, or even enjoy, Guy Ritchie’s style, then you have yourself a clever film, with an engaging story, good characters, a world worth spending time in, idiosyncratic dialog, lots of action, and some fascinating, if not attractive, cinematography. And with all that, it is unsatisfying. The problem is that is doesn’t feel like a movie. This is a eight part TV series with large chunks missing. You can see the episode breaks:

Ep 1: The Fall of Uther
Ep 2: Young Arthur in the brothel
Ep 3: Arthur, criminal boss
Ep 4: Arthur on the run
Ep 5: Arthur meets the resistance

We needed four or five more scenes of Vortigern using his increasing magical powers. There should have been another half hour of Arthur dealing with street crime. We should have seen several more raids by Arthur and his outlaw team. The dojo master and his martial artists should have had another fight or three, or been removed entirely. The structure and pacing is wrong for a feature. There is a vision quest segment, but it means nothing as is. It is shown as a montage and we are not given the information or enough of what this means to Arthur for it matter. It needed to be cut, or enlarged. For a feature, there needed to be more focus. But if it wasn’t a feature, I’d have loved to see bro-Arthur and his entourage carrying off a few medieval heists.

The look and special effects don’t belong in a feature either. They spent $175,000 and I’ve no idea where half that money went. For a TV series, it looks great. For a blockbuster, it looks cheap. Much of the CGI screams CGI. The exception is the gigantic mammoths, which look fantastic, but they are only onscreen for a few minutes and then we rarely see full body shots (which is the way you would construct the scenes for a show trying to keep under budget).

Guy Ritchie’s first cut was rumored to be three hours long, which I’m betting fixed some of the problems, but not nearly enough, and would be a bit numbing. No, this needed eight hours with snack breaks.

Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Ranking the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes Films

Nov 212017

November 21, 2017

Basilrathboneholmes Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes in 14 films, with Nigel Bruce as a blustering, foolish Doctor Watson. When I watched these as a child—broadcast one each week by a local TV station—I treated them like a TV show, with all of the movies being approximately the same. They aren’t.

The first two were made for 20th Century Fox with a reasonable budget. Then Universal pictures took over, shrinking the budget and updating the story to 1940s wartime. Stopping Nazis was the goal and Holmes was more spy than detective. As the war wound down, the films took on more of a Gothic feeling, with crumbling castles and frightened peasants. The setting was still “current” times, but with locations in Scottish villages and cutoff manor houses to decrease the effects of modern technology. A few were standard mystery films (no Gothic mansions), but while the 1940s were more visible than in the more Gothic ones, these mystery films could have been transported to the 1880s with few changes.

Ranking the Rathbone/Holmes films is pretty straightforward. The Fox films are best, followed by the Gothic Universals. Standard mysteries slot in next, with the later films (where Rathbone was tired of playing the role—and being quite vocal about it) and the spy films vie for worst. Starting with the best:

#1. The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1939) — The first of the Fox films and the most famous Holmes tale. Rathbone never had a chance to stretch as much again. This Holmes has a sense of humor. (My review)

#2. The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (1939) — The second Fox film and the last one set in the proper decade. This is the defining Sherlock Holmes movie. George Zucco, one of the great character actors, takes a turn as Moriarty.

#3. The House Of Fear (1945) — This one is fully Gothic and all the better for it. At a seaside estate, the members of a club are being murdered one by one after receiving an envelope containing orange seeds. It feels nearly like a horror movie, which is a genre Universal was skilled with. (My review)

#4. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943) — The first of the Gothic films, breaking away from the three propaganda ones before it. It is a dark house mystery, with Holmes trying to find the murderer of the head of a rich and old family among the strange characters staying at the house. (My review)

#5. The Scarlet Claw (1944) — Holmes verses a supposed marsh monster in Canada. The setting is a strangely isolated (since it is 12 miles form a major city), tiny village cloaked in fog and surrounded by marshland. The superstitious dread of the people gives it a nice tone, but side characters (and villain) lack needed personality.

#6. Terror By Night (1946) — Holmes plays in Agatha Christie’s realm as he investigates a murder on a train. The train car is filled with a number of unusual characters, any one of whom might be the killer.

#7. The Pearl Of Death (1944) — Another criminal mastermind is in London along with his massive brute of a killer. He stole a pearl but had to hide it. Holmes races to find it, deducing that a series of murders is related. This is one of the standard mystery films.

#8. The Spider Woman (1944) — Important men are being driven to suicide for their insurance. Holmes knows the villain is a woman since it is a cruel and controlling crime. Yeah, Holmes being sexist isn’t a shocker. Gale Sondergaard is a lot of fun as the Spider Woman, but the story is weak.

#9. Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon (1942) — Holmes must stop a bomb site from falling into Nazi hands. It’s WWII spies again, but at least with a mystery. Moriarity (this time played by the always reliable Lionel Atwill) feels like an odd villain to drop into this war pic that would have been better served by a SS officer.

#10. Dressed To Kill (1946) — The final film has criminals missing the auction of three music boxes that contain a musical code, so Holmes races to find them first. The mystery is both overly simple and unsolvable for the audience, but if feels like a good old Holmes and Watson case and Patricia Morison makes a memorable villain.

#11. Pursuit To Algiers (1945) — This 12th entry takes us back to spies. Holmes acts as escort (wouldn’t a few armed guards be better for that purpose?) for the heir to the throne of Rovinia. It’s a fun film, but isn’t a Holmes film—it feels more like something by Agatha Christie. There’s a group of peculiar characters with secrets, cut off from the outside (this time on a ship), and the constant threat of murder. I like it, but would like it better without Holmes.

#12. The Woman In Green (1945) — Young women are being gruesomely murdered around town and Holmes disagrees with Scotland Yard that it is the work of a madman. He knows it to be Moriarty, this time played by Henry Daniell. This is one of the normal “case” type films, though a bit darker, but it doesn’t come together very well.

#13. Sherlock Holmes In Washington (1943) — Not a mystery at all, but a spy caper where everything is known. It feels like an old time serial, with shootouts and secret lairs as Holmes must retrieve a secret document and rescue a girl from evil Nazi agents. It’s nice to see both George Zucco and Henry Daniell as villains (neither playing Moriarty as they both did in other films), though neither have much to do.

#14. Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (1942) — The first and the most over-the-top of the WWII spy films has our hero trying to stop a stream of disasters that are first predicted in a Nazi radio broadcast. It ends with Holmes giving a propaganda speech that would have been too much even in 1942.

Lists, Thoughts

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