"Cruella"

 

We took ourselves down to the local Cinemark yesterday and caught up with "Cruella" from the folks at Disney.  This is the "origin story" for one of Disney's all-time odious villains, Cruella De Vil of the 1961 animated feature, "101 Dalmatians."  This live action feature tells the story about how young orphan girl Estella, while serving as a worker drone in the 1970's era London fashion salon of fashionista  Baroness von Hellman came to become the evil Cruella De Vil.    It was a fun and entertaining romp of a movie, and Marilyn and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The costumes were amazing and I imagine the budget for these alone exceeded the GNP of many Third World countries.  I also loved the music soundtrack that was used throughout, mostly 1970's era rock and pop numbers.  The best part of the movie, though, was the performances of the two Emmas  - Stone as Estella/Cruella and Thompson as the Baroness, two Oscar winners who seemed to take great joy in playing off of each other.    Emma Stone  (who defines the word "cute", in my opinion) was delightful as the spunky Estella-turned-Cruella, and Emma Thompson chewed scenery with a gusto that was a joy to watch.

"The Emmas"

Thompson and Stone

I'm not going to spend anymore time on this one other to say that it was entertaining, pretty to look at, and two cool performances by the leads, and you should enjoy it.  

I will elaborate a bit further, though, with a bit of a conundrum that was rolling around in my mind as I watched.  Full disclosure:  I have never seen the original animated movie "101 Dalmatians", so I can claim only a rudimentary knowledge of the story line.  What I did know, however, was that Cruella De Vil was the "bad guy" in it.  So here we have a movie where the heroine is the downtrodden Estella, and the Baroness is the evil one.  So in "Cruella", we are actually rooting for a person who will one day become a villain.  Huh?

I did a little research on this when I got home from the movies yesterday, and I came across a review on rogerebert.com wherein the critic, Matt Zoller Seitz, brought up this very point.  Seitz went on and on....and on....about this point, and became very critical of Disney for even considering it.  After reading his unending paragraphs dissecting this point, I wanted to scream at Mr. Seitz...."Hey, it's only a movie." (A quote attributed to Alfred Hitchcock when one of his actors was disputing points of one of his films with him.)  I mean, really, sometimes critics can take themselves way too seriously.

"Cruella" is only a movie, but a pretty entertaining and fun one at that.  The Grandstander gives it Three Stars.

Stone as "Estella"

Movie Review: "Saving Mr. Banks" and Other Thoughts

The first Grandstander post of 2014 actually should have been written last night, but what the heck.  

Marilyn and I fulfilled our New Year's Eve tradition of attending a movie and dining on Kentucky Fried Chicken afterwards.  You just can't top some traditions!  This custom was started, by the way, back on New Year's Eve, 1990 when we both got home from work early, and decided to take in a movie, "Home Alone".  Since then, that has been the drill.  Wish I could remember what each of those 24 movies has been.  I know that they included such flicks as "Titanic", "Silver Linings Playbook", and "True Grit".  I know that there have been more memorable ones among the list, but I'm drawing a blank for now.

Anyway, last night's offering was "Saving Mr. Banks", the story of the difficult road traveled by Walt Disney and his movie studio in dealing with author P.L. Travers as they were trying to make the classic movie "Mary Poppins".  While I had read the reviews and had an idea what it was about, I didn't expect the emotional wallop that this movie would deliver.  Very good to excellent movie, and Tom Hanks as Disney and Emma Thompson as Travers were, as always, terrific in their roles. How great is Tom Hanks? Surely one of the best actors of his generation.  And for good measure, throw in Paul Giamatti, also one of the greats of his generation, in a wonderful supporting role.

I suppose that now I will have to see "Mary Poppins", which, believe it or not, I have never seen.

While New Year's Eve has passed, if you are looking for a movie with a New Year's Eve theme, it's still not too late to watch one of the following (see, I told you this post should have been written yesterday)......

• "Ocean's Eleven", the original one with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack.  The gang plans a heist of five Las Vegas casinos on New Year's Eve.
• "Radio Days".  Woody Allen's terrific memoir of old time radio and growing up in Brooklyn concludes with a New Year's Eve scene.
• "Sunset Boulevard", Billy Wilder's great movie about Hollywood contains a pivotal scene involving a New Year's Eve party planned by Norma Desmond.

Of course, these are all great movies to see, no matter what time of the year you might watch them.

Have a great 2014, everyone, and start it off by seeing "Saving Mr. Banks".