The Films of Robert Stevenson
Tudor Rose
The Man Who Changed His Mind
King Solomon's Mines
Non-Stop New York
Owd Bob
The Ware Case
Young Man's Fancy
Return to Yesterday
Tom Brown's School Days
Back Street
Joan of Paris
Jane Eyre
Dishonored Lady
To the Ends of the Earth
The Woman on Pier 13
Walk Softly, Stranger
My Forbidden Past
The Las Vegas Story
Johnny Tremain
Old Yeller
Darby O'Gill and the Little People (June 17/07)
Though Darby O'Gill and the Little People is saddled with premise that's almost egregiously lightweight, the film does manage to win the viewer over with its myriad of small charms - with Sean Connery's small supporting role certainly one of the more overt examples of this. The story follows a genial Scot (Albert Sharpe's Darby O'Gill) as he instigates a minor war with the King of the Leprechauns (Jimmy O'Dea); Janet Munro co-stars as Katie, Darby's long-suffering daughter, while Connery pops up as potential love interest Michael McBride. It's the subplot revolving around Katie and Michael's tentative romance that initially keeps things interesting, as there's really not a whole lot within the central storyline to hold the viewer's attention; this is in spite of a lively, exuberant performance by Sharpe that almost makes up for the surprisingly lackluster opening hour, which is seemingly devoted entirely to sequences in which Darby sings and dances. The dark and genuinely creepy third act leaves Darby O'Gill and the Little People on a far more positive note than one might've expected, and there's no denying that the film is ultimately an entertaining (if all-too-slight) piece of work.
out of
Kidnapped
The Absent-Minded Professor
In Search of the Castaways
Son of Flubber
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones
Mary Poppins
The Monkey's Uncle
That Darn Cat!
The Gnome-Mobile
Blackbeard's Ghost
The Love Bug
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (July 31/15)
Bedknobs and Broomsticks follows Angela Lansbury's Miss Price, an apprentice witch, as she and her three charges (Cindy O'Callaghan's Carrie, Roy Snart's Paul, and Ian Weighill's Charlie) embark on a quest for a missing component to a magical spell, with the journey bringing the four characters into contact with a wide variety of wacky people and places - including a shifty con man (David Tomlinson's Emelius) and an animated land ruled over by a tempestuous lion. There is, as becomes increasingly clear, little within Bedknobs and Broomsticks that wholeheartedly works, as the movie, which runs a punishing 139 minutes (!!!), never entirely takes off and generally lurches from one far-from-memorable musical number to the next. (It's clear, too, that many such moments outstay their welcome to an almost absurd degree, with the best and most tedious example of this a seemingly endless song-and-dance sequence on the streets of London.) The passable performances and somewhat grungy visuals perpetuate Bedknobs and Broomsticks' atmosphere of mediocrity, with the movie crossing into all-out disaster territory as it follows the characters' journey into the aforementioned animated landscape (ie it's just excessively silly). By the time the action-packed yet rather interminable final stretch rolls around, Bedknobs and Broomsticks has firmly established itself as a painfully overlong and often tedious misfire from the creative team behind (the far superior) Mary Poppins.
out of
Herbie Rides Again
The Island at the Top of the World
One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing
The Shaggy D.A.