The Black Stallion (1979) and Walking with Dinosaurs (2013)

The perfect examples of the most polar of children’s films. The best. The worst.

The Francis Ford Coppola-produced “The Black Stallion” is one of my absolute favorite films to watch, it’s cinematography unparalleled, and I knew that awe even as a child, although I had no idea about cameras or light or imagery. It was instinct. I knew I was watching something special. 

This is an emotionally-charged and assured film so confident in its story, human and animal actors, and visuals that an entire 30 minute section plays with do dialogue, only music (by Carmine, Francis’ father) and sound effects as a young boy (Kelly Reno) lost on an island befriends a rampaging horse, the Black, after the two are thrown from a sinking ship. 

No movie would do that now. The trust in children to *get* emotion and relationship, no explanation needed, is gone. (Just wait a few paragraphs to see.)

Also gone: The nerve to have a child onscreen breakdown, as Reno’s boy tells his mother (Teri Garr) months after the fact of his father’s death on that sinking ship, and that he did not save the horse’s life, but it saved his life. That scene wrecks me still, and I’m 40. 

Reno, by the way, gives one of the great child performances of any film, much of his performance relying on eyes or body language, his interaction with the horse. A long, wide shot – uncut – of Reno offering the horse seaweed to eat is stunning, visually and through acting and framing. 

And patience. That’s a compliment. We watch the relationship between the boy and horse birth and grow. A lesser film would have cut, moved on. 

Yes, the story goes to the races, literally, with Mickey Rooney (God, he’s so grand here) as a trainer, but so what? This is pure adventure, beautifully told by director Carroll Ballard and photographed by Caleb Deschanel. (They later made the equally smart, deeply emotional “Fly Away Home.”) 

Now, the recent BBC-made “Walking with the Dinosaurs” is the full opposite, poison to a child’s mind as “Black” is a gift. In short, I hated this film like no other that I have since 2004’s “Phantom of the Opera” or 1997’s “Batman and Robin,” films that have nothing but visuals fireworks and effects endlessly vomited on screen as painfully inept dialogue and pop-music music hammer constantly and ceaselessly at any sensible person’s ears and soul. 

(It doesn’t help that I watch these films back-to-back.) 

We open in present day as a sullen teenager –- we know he’s awful because he wears a hoodie, instant fashion accessory for human scum I suppose –- talks in movie character exposition to his best pal via cell phone about being stuck with his uncle and sister on a dinosaur dig. Yes, really. Stuck. 

No worries, though, as a talking bird – voiced John Leguizamo – soon lands and tells teen boy about the winders of the dinosaurs. Here we flash back millions of years to a dino family of father, mother, and new hatchlings, including runt of litter Patchi (Justin Long) as their dino heard makes eats, travels in season, and avoids hunting beasts. So, nothing happens. “Land Before Time” was better.

The story is abysmal and simple-minded, jumping to jokes about poop showers after another dinosaur defecates on baby Patchi. More pop and shit jokes follow. Really, if you want your child to repeat “poop shower” on end, this is your bag. Of shit. That Patchi is a moronic child is of no help. 

Leguizamo narrates in a cringing, whining voice every pierce of action as if we cannot see it, and throws out witty sayings such as, “Don’t get too attached, this place will be an oil field one day.” He says, “whatever!” a lot. He makes pop culture jokes that fall flat. 

The voice actors talking for the dinosaurs re-explain everything going on, for the really stupid audience. When the father dies on screen, we are told he is dying on screen. “Stallion” uses silence to tell its story. “Dinosaurs” won’t shut up. 

The talking is ceaseless and grating, and when it pauses, light FM music that could lead to elevator suicides, pops in. 

There is always noise. Constant noise. Every time a new beast appears, the film stops dead so a random girl can repeat the name of the beast and spell it out. I cringed every time. None of the character’s mouth’s move, so we’re led to believe all the talk to telepathic or the animators could not swing mouthing. 

At one point this movie was to be a near-silent film, only a small bit of narration. The studio -– 20^th Century Fox -– got scared, and brought in the voice “talent” and the poop jokes because they think children are stupid or trusted to pick up on story beats. Every frame is a condescending slap to any girl or boy who enjoys learning.

“See and feel what it was like when dinosaurs ruled the earth,” the tagline promises. No. Dinosaurs didn’t laugh. Dinosaurs didn’t make movie references, or jump in rivers to save their girlfriend. Dinosaurs didn’t make poop shower jokes. Nor did any dinosaur ever bet money on another set of dinosaurs fighting. Nor did ninjas exist back then. 

I’ve read suggestions to watch the movie with the sound off. That won’t help.

Black: A+

Dinosaurs: F- (I have not given a film this grade in a decade. A regular F will not do.)

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Remember Ben Stiller who made “Reality Bites”? A sharp comedy/ drama that made you pay attention, and plan to immediately buy the soundtrack? He’s been gone for years, stuck in a loop of juvenile fare. Behold, a near miracle. Stiller takes the 1947 Danny Kaye hit “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and turns it on its heads with a fully new spin about a day-dreaming man who became lost on his way to adulthood after the death of his father. Here, Walter cares for his mother, pays his bills, and works at “Life” magazine, but he’s watching life. Not living it. He hasn’t put himself first. Then the loss of a key photograph under his care sends Walter on a worldwide trip to find its creator, Sean Penn, in a very Sean Penn role. “Mitty” is epic in every sense of the word. Romantic, too. And vibrating with great music. As Walter’s daydreams give way to real adventure, the film soars, never grander than when our hero rides a skateboard. It may cross the line into obviousness (the “Life” motto pounces loud like scripture), but the Stiller has re-found his path. The cinematography astounds. Shirley MacLaine as the mom sparkles. B+

End of Watch (2012)

A heap of movie critics (even Ebert) are throwing praise on “End of Watch” -– a visceral, bloody, gut-punch police drama/thriller than goes against the endless grain of cops as corrupt, greedy, psychotic thugs -- as one of the best films of the year. It could have been. Damn it comes close, often with pitch-perfect dialogue, and harshly with haunting violence. But gimmicks from 1999 abound with shaky-cam overload -- times 10.

Dig it James Ellroy style: Jake Gyllenhaal gives his career-best showing (and he’s been good for years, especially in “Jarhead”) as Brian Taylor, a veteran Marine now working a black-and-white on Los Angeles’ toughest streets, South Central, a land of shit streets, crap homes, and closed businesses plagued by poverty, drugs, guns, and the growing power of Mexican drug cartels that know no border. It’s a near Third World, except the bad guys carry gold-plated AK-47s in some sick “Scarface” fantasy world come true. 

Taylor’s partner is Mike Zavala, a Hispanic-American with a wife and 3.5 children, played by Michael Pena. The men are brothers. Not by blood. But the job. Each will take a bullet or more for one another. No questions asked. The men bullshit banter in the squad car in the best movie back-and-forth since “Pulp Fiction,” but when the hammer drops, they are stone silent and careful, especially when they stumble upon a massive crime spree of human-trafficking and other horrors all right under their noses. They also “fight” the “parents,” that is, the Sarge and all the powers-that-be at work, but playfully. Zavala is the settled one, smart and cautious, Taylor is gung-ho and first out of the car.

The film, written and directed by David Ayer (he wrote Training Day”) drops us in this L.A. Story with no escape, and he shows the ugliest scenes –- ghastly murders, grpahic assaults, endless deaths, and child abuse -– with no let up. The settings never smack of a film set, or some obvious stand-in. I have never been to South Central L.A., but this feels real, down to the litter and alleys and bars on house windows. 

But damn it, where Ayer goes maddeningly wrong is in a ridiculous decade-old plot contrivance that has Taylor touting around digital cameras 24/7 to film his life on the job for an art class. (We never see the guy in class, despite his wanting to earn a law degree.) For all the on-the-street realism Ayers constantly pushes, I call “bullshit” on any relatively intelligent officer anywhere in the world, much less South Central L.A., that would enter potential hot spots and crime scenes carrying a freakin’ camera in one mitt and one-handing his side arm in the other. Especially for a Marine such as Taylor. 

Even what little I know as an ex-crime reporter, when entering an unknown location, searching room by room, any police officer keeps his hands, both hands, on his or her weapon because that weapon will save his or her life. Nothing. Else. Matters. Disagree? Ask a cop. Ask a soldier, for that matter. (If your partner chooses a Sony over a Glock, seriously, trade the hell up.) Call it a movie, sure. I get it, fantasy. But, guess what? The soulless gang members also happen to carry around cameras to share their exploits. For art class, too? YouTube? All this “Blair Witch” shaky-cam crap is mixed in with normal cinema capture, from the sky, floor, whatever, after Taylor’s camera is down. 

I dig and appreciate Ayer’s attempts at showing what policemen and women face each day, the gallows humor they (absolutely true) employ to stay sane, and a refusal to show every cop as worse than the bad guys (I’m look at you “Freelancers” and “Safe” and 1,005 other films), but he should have stuffed the gimmicks and played the film straight. This seriously could have been well atop my Top 10 List of the year. But for the gimmicks.

 God bless Pena. A consistently great actor in “Crash” and “The Lincoln Lawyer” and a few dozen other films, he gives an amazingly tough, smart, funny, and humane performance here. His officer is a full human being, jumping off the page. Watch his horrified silent reaction as he comes across a squalid dungeon full of Mexicans held as drug-runner slaves, and, damn, the man deserves an Oscar nomination. And leading man status on par with Gyllenhaal and any other actor out there. B

The Fall (2008) and Mirror, Mirror (2012)

Indian-born director Tarsem Singh’s gift of visual story-telling is near unsurpassed. He goes bolder and bigger than most filmmakers dare dream. Yet, his movies mostly are cinematic affairs for the eyes, with the brain left to defend for itself. “Cell” (2000) and “Immortals” (2011) fall in those categories. So goes it with two other of his films I watched back-to-back: “Mirror, Mirror,” a new take on “Snow White,” and “The Fall,” a fairy tale possibly aimed at adults who prefer movies weird and wireder.

“Mirror” only pretends to be a subversive take on the famous Grimm Fairytale as the opening minutes has Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen going all snarky on her Fairest of Them All step-daughter (Lily Collins), during a voice-over with some wildly cool stop-motion animation. I thought we were in for a dark cinematic upside-down cake treat: The story of a misunderstood queen about a poison-apple princess brat. But, no. It’s the same story told by Walt Disney and onward, but made so bright and fluffy, and with such movie set fakery, it smells of some flippant meta-movie joke against ticket-buying parents.

Only one scene involving marionette assassins after Snow and her dwarves hypes eye-popping Tarsem magic. The rest of the running time is dull as slush. Yes, Roberts has a hoot dishing one-lines and cruel judgments with a wide smile, but she’s never playing anything else than some inner-joke take on her apparent prima-donna spoiled movie star self. I can only guess her direction likely consisted of, “Just be yourself! But more!” 

Collins is drab, and -– cruel to say, I know -– not a bit fair. When she’s onscreen, the film dives, even during an early ball scene where Collins wears a white goose dress that strangely echoes Bjork’s Oscar outfit from 2000. Did Robert stipulate in her contact that she had to be the fairest and best-dressed on the set? One wonders. 

As the Prince, Armie Hammer (“SocialNetwork”) throws himself forehead deep into the role of a buffoon. At one point, he plays puppy love. Literally. Barking, panting and whining. I felt bad for him. C-

“Fall” is a fairytale adventure set inside the unlimited mind of an imaginative, wildly curious 6-year-old girl. It’s lovely to look at, a film unlike any that I have ever seen. Yet, that’s the kicker of this epic in-every-sense-of-the-word story. Director/co-writer Tarsem spent four years in two dozen countries making his film and every bit of work is onscreen. It’s all and only visual. It’s a shame “Fall” is not a solid film to put all the senses to work. 

The setup: Circa 1914, a movie stuntman (Lee Pace) lays bedridden at a Los Angeles sanitarium, injured after an onset incident has left him unable to walk. Riddled with anger, and heartbreak because his Hollywood girlfriend has left him for another man, Roy decides on suicide. He befriends a young girl (Catinca Untaru), herself recovering from a broken arm, and tells her a long, twisting tale about four adventurers (Pace among them, as The Masked Bandit) each seeking a kill-or-be-killed revenge vendetta against an evil king (Daniel Caltagirone, also playing the “another man.”) 

Untaru’s youngster listens, and we see the visuals inside her head played out on screen, including her mistaken rendering of an “Indian” as a warrior from India, not Roy’s intended stereotype of a Native American. There’s action, adventure, kidnapping, sword-fights, swimming elephants, an assassinated monkey, castles, desert landscapes, and lush jungles, all peopled by workers and residents surrounding the girl at the hospital. There’s Charles Darwin, too, a swashbuckling hero. Less-than-honest Roy has a hidden motive as spins his tale: He wants his young friend to bring him morphine pills from the supply closet. That’s his path to suicide bliss. 

It all mostly sounds very similar to a children’s film, certainly the plot is childlike, but the graphic violence is tough, and the film takes a hard-to-swallow tearjerker finale far too dark and violent for anyone younger than, say, 14. Who knows who Tarsem is targeting with all this doom and gloom, and redemption, and irony of life, and celebration of silent film. Not children. Not art house adults who would snicker at the heroics. My only guess, this is a film by Tarsem for Tarsem, and we are the incidental audience. 

Watch it for images, the dance sequences, the roving, flowing camerawork. Every shot is worthy of a picture frame. Just don’t expect a “Tree of Life” life-altering experience. Cool bonus points: Most of the scenes between Pace (poor sap starred in “Marmaduke”) and the adorably hard-to-understand Untaru are improvised, the actor playing quick off her rambling talk and mistaken readings that only a child can provide, unscripted. It works beautifully up into the film’s tone goes crocodile tears. Bravo beautiful effort, though. B-