Fountain of Youth springs eternal in Youth and Zootopia

The fountain of youth can be a powerful theme in the movies, especially as we get a little older and more aware of the swift mortality that is our lives.

This fact makes the Michael Caine-Harvey Keitel vehicle, entitled Youth, a spellbinding work. While it's difficult to take one's eyes off the movie, it's not for want of trying. Youth is slow, with a barrage of cliche lines (that mostly somehow work well), and often seems it would be best suited for the stage. It's also a little disorienting, perhaps intentionally, as for most of the film the two lead actors seem to be at a strange home for rich people (young and old) who have fallen on difficult times. But it turns out are were only vacationing at a resort in the Swiss Alps.

At the 2015 European Awards, it took home best movie, best lead actor for Caine, and best director for Italian Paolo Sorrentino. And the content about losing once greatness or even ability to show talent (see the stunning depiction of once-masterful soccer star Diego Maradona) is intriguing, as are the many strange fantastical sequences with the lead characters looking back at various aspects of their lives.

On the most primal level, I could watch anything with Caine and be at least somewhat entertained.

But much more uplifting is a film for the youth, Zootopia, which I finally got around to seeing. The animals zoom around the big city in a quest to eradicate stereotyping, police profiling, and racism. It's a pretty great message to be teaching our kids at this point (or really any point) in history. And Disney has once again mastered the art of entertaining both children and adults with a raft of double meanings throughout.

Youth: 3 out of 5 stars
Zootopia: 4 out of 5 stars

Pop-Culture Catch Up: Rum Diary, Enough Said, and Frozen

I'm not going to lie. Having two kids is often more difficult than having one. By the end of so many days, I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to read one magazine article, let alone devour something of pop-culture value and then report its worth back to you, my fine and faithful readers.

That said, it's time to catch up with a few artifacts I've explored over the past weeks. And, I'll try to start blogging more regularly again after a pretty unimpressive summer collection of quantity and quality.

The Rum Diary is the first Hunter S. Thompson I've read since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas back in college. The "long lost novel" was apparently written in the 1960s and not published until 1998. It is basically the tale of Hunter himself (under the name Paul) going from New York to live and work at a newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

He carouses with the lowlifes who work at the paper and risks life daily drinking and fighting and romancing in a foreign land. It's the epitome of gonzo journalistic writing and serves as an underrated highlight of Thompson's prodigious career. Johnny Depp found the manuscript and had it published, then starred in the movie, which I should now go see for the first time.

**** out of ***** stars

Enough Said is a small rom-com that gains weight by the very fact that it was about the last thing James Gandolfini filmed before his death. Julia Louis-Dreyfus seems a little less great than usual in the film, despite very positive reviews.

The couple wins me over by the end as they suffer a series of setbacks while firing up an unlikely romance, but I still was a little disappointed and not that impressed with the overall story, general awkwardness, and pacing of this film.

*** out of ***** stars

Frozen is of course all the rage with the youngsters, but I was bored silly, wishing I could rematch The Lego Movie, The Jungle Book, Snow White, or any other kid movie.

Tip of the hat to Disney for making it about the importance of family instead of the usual fare of the importance of the prince. But if I have to hear someone else humming or singing "Let It Go" again, who knows what I'll do. Bad music in a hack of a story. It doesn't help that I don't particularly like any of the actors behind the voices.

Way overrated and hopefully will lose some of its runaway-hit momentum as soon as some better Disney films are released.

** out of ***** stars

Ratatouille Makes Me Want to Eat Food Cooked By Rats

The filmmakers at Disney have always been brilliant, but they outdid themselves with 2007's Ratatouille, which I thought I had seen long ago, but realized I hadn't upon starting it with Jackson last night.

Its "universal acclaim" status with critics makes total sense since the prototypical Disney evil villain is the food critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole). 

The hilarious script and excellent plot is such a relief in this day-and-age of maximum-overdrive stimulation with most things animated. The film is gorgeous but also simple and elegant.

Remy is a rat with a heightened sense of smell and taste who learns how to cook by watching the most famous chef in Paris on TV and reading his cookbook. He and his rat friends end up engineering the rare feet of pleasing critic Ego with a dish of "peasant food" ratatouille. Linguini and Colette are the chefs who give the film its human elements.

Also quite a feat: Even as I ate dinner while watching, all the rats in Ratatouille didn't ruin my appetite.

***** out of ***** stars