Quick Takes: "Fantastic Mr. Fox", "Sword in the Stone", "Dr. Strangelove"

"Fantastic Mr. Fox"

Directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson is one of those directors who appeals to the quirkier side of film direction, which is an area that quite often feels rather stilted and passionless to me. All that said, there is something about that style that translates rather well to animation, and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is such a pleasant surprise because of that. Filled to the brim with gleeful pointlessness, Anderson fills in the holes in the plot with some hilariously tucked human commentary. True, there are still scenes that ring not just utterly ridiculous, but have no purpose to actual film. That glaring fact that this is an artificial construct can be rather distracting at times, but Wes is just having so much fun with this new toy of stop-motion that you just get taken in with his exuberance about it.

"The Sword in the Stone"

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

It's rather dismaying to revisit childhood films and find that they're rather massively lacking in story, character, and style. My memories of this film had been fond, until I started watching it again, at which point it paled to playing out not just predictably, but with no passion whatsoever. From the first moment, it feels like everything's already happened. You're generally familiar with the story, know what's happening, and the film doesn't even create any tension in that respect. Neither does it create characters that are at all endearing. Merlin is rather pathetically silly and pointless, and Arthur is just plain, dull, and rather pathetic. The film's a catalyst to turn people into animals, and not in a particularly interesting way. It's all to easy, and there's really no joy there.

THE LISTS: Ranking Stanley Kubrick

Before anyone else even has the chance to chastise me, I'll beat you to it. How the hell have I gone through nineteen years of my life without being touched once by the genius of Stanley Kubrick? How did I get by this long without seeing his influence in my rear-view? In a word, barely. In the first sixteen years of my life, I'd describe myself as a complete and total idiot. By eighteen, still painfully limited. By nineteen, a point of confidence and individuality, but still not quite complete. I have made more headway towards becoming the sort of influential filmmaker that I want to be most in the past week and a half than I have in almost my entire life.

To say that Stanley Kubrick has had a great deal of influence on several high profile filmmakers is an understatement. The man practically defined perfection in cinema at a time when it was still searching for a definitive form. Not to say that his films are the absolute, unequivocal best, and that no other film could top his #1. I think that'd be just far too insane and geekish a statement for everyone. Still, there is no other filmmaker who has taken up the task of perfection in medium quite as much or as sincerely as Kubrick. If you've not seen and loved a film of his, you are of a dead nature to me, and I'm afraid there's no hope for you.

The moment I'd made my way through two of his films, I knew that I couldn't stop until I was done. And with Halloween just waiting around the corner, and me not quite willing or prepared to make a list of the top horror films this year, I felt this was the perfect opportunity for a list. After all, you can find sinister undertones permeating through most of his films, outside his sole horror venture. There are very few that don't have that touch. Though I must say that I couldn't include all of Kubrick's films. There were some that just didn't match up. "Killer's Kiss" was too banal a piece, and though "Lolita" had a characteristically strong start, I couldn't make it out of that first hour without feeling uninterested. So it's with the utmost of honor that I run down the ranking of Kubrick's ten other features, after the jump.