Hope and Glory

It's kind of funny how you can read the description of a film, think it sounds completely out of step for a filmmaker's work, and then actually watch it to discover that it ends up fitting perfectly. A slice of life tale of a small boy in the London suburbs during World War II felt…

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The Emerald Forest

John Boorman goes full Luddite. Taking the harrowing real story of a man searching for his son for years after the boy was taken by a rainforest tribe in South America and applying his ever-increasing pessimism about humanity and its relationship to technology, Boorman takes his ideas towards their supposedly inevitable conclusion and embraces the…

Excalibur: A Second Look

It's been obvious that John Boorman had his own little cinematic world. It was less distinct visually than someone like Fellini, especially across the films, but he was operating in a distinctly unique thematic space. In Excalibur, Boorman found the most distinct visual presentation of his style, embracing Romanticism and operatic theatrics to bring the…

Fire and Ice

#3 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. Partnering with Frank Frazetta to create the art design, Ralph Bakshi returned once again to the world of high fantasy with Fire and Ice, a middling effort that brings nothing particularly new to the table while demonstrating that Frazetta's art was best used in the visual art…

Hey Good Lookin’

#9 in my ranking of Ralph Bakshi's filmography. It's really not a surprise that Hey Good Lookin' is a return to the mean of what Ralph Bakshi was making before Wizards since it was sort of made pre-Wizards as a live-action film combined with animation ala Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. However, Warner Bros.…