I love Dragonslayer and Tremors! Dragonslayer has one of my favourite dragons in cinema, and it is where the go-motion technique was perfected.
And Tremors is just so much fun. It is a horror-light film. It also contains one of my favourite camera tricks:
It goes by so fast, your eyes don't even register it as a camera trick. That's a whip pan from live action to a miniature, to make it seem like the actors and the miniature are in the same room.
Indeed. Plus that comedic pan to the gun rack is one of my favorite visual gags in a movie. When you see this movie for the first time, you are lead to believe that Burt and his wife are done for. But as soon as they reveal the huge rack full of guns, the tone of the scene, and the expected outcome, change instantly. It is just a wonderful example of subvertion of expectation in a movie. It really is quite clever.
You owe it to yourself to watch the original. The CGI may be a bit dated now, but it is a fantastic movie. Robin Williams is great in it, and the movie has a lot of heart.
Thing is, that'd mean watching Robin Williams for an hour and a half, and he's one actor who - on screen* - has just never appealed to me in the least for whatever reason.
* - off-screen, as the voice of the genie in Aladdin, he was great.
Thing is, that'd mean watching Robin Williams for an hour and a half, and he's one actor who - on screen* - has just never appealed to me in the least for whatever reason.
* - off-screen, as the voice of the genie in Aladdin, he was great.
Jumanji is one of the movies where he shows a lot more of his range as an actor. The movie is grounded by his performance. Amongst all the crazyness, he lends a more serious tone in several key scenes.
Jumanji is one of the movies where he shows a lot more of his range as an actor. The movie is grounded by his performance. Amongst all the crazyness, he lends a more serious tone in several key scenes.
Well, to be more specific. I think he really shows some of his acting chops in the following scenes. Spoilers for those who haven't seen Jumanji.
When he explains to the kids the horrors that the game contains, and warns them not to take it lightly.
When he finds out his father loved him very much, and ran his own business into the ground trying to find his son.
Especially in the latter scene he gives a powerful performance.
I also like his work in What Dreams May Come, which is a polarizing movie that a lot of people seem to have very strong opinions about.
He's also great in Mrs Doubtfire, another movie that deserves special mention for being a lot better than it should be. You see, my parents had a divorce shortly before Mrs Doubtfire came out. As a young kid it is very difficult to understand why your parents can't be together any more. But Mrs Doubtfire is able to be honest about it, and explain it in a beautiful way, without a cliché Hollywood ending. At the end of the movie, the divorced parents don't get back together. And that's often how it goes in real life.
In one of the final scenes of the movie, Robin Williams basically directly addresses kids watching the movie, and it is so well written.
It's a shame that arguably one of the best acted scenes in the movie was cut:
To any kid who has ever experienced their parents going through a divorce, this is exactly what it is like. Both actors deliver a fantastic performance here. And I also love how the scene is directed, starting from the point of view of the kids, then to a view down the stairs, and then a close up. It really is a shame we lost Robin Williams so early, since he was a lot more than just a comedian, as this scene shows.
