Photo © Sony Pictures
Here film still
Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in ‘Here’
“Captain Planet: The Complete Franchise”
(Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment DVD)
“Captain Planet” was a children’s animated series that was never screened in Sarah Palin’s household. The Ted Turner-created kids show featured five ethnically diverse teenage eco-warriors, each representing one of the elements (wind, fire, etc.). When combining their powers against a snickeringly nasty oil company exec in episode one, they conjured up a superhero called Captain Planet.
The original series and its sequel have been collected onto a massive DVD set with all 113 episodes. In episode one (1990), the spirt of the Earth, Gaia, awakens to find a landscape devastated by human greed. She summons five children from varied regions and provides them with magic rings (J.R.R. Tolkien?). One of the teens is a wise-cracking lad from North America, but he’s accompanied by boys from South America and Africa, an Asian girl and a girl from the Soviet Union (this was the glasnost era).
Plenty of colorful action will follow, along with post-episode tips on turning out the lights and urging parents to carpool. Ed Asner, Jeff Goldblum and Meg Ryan were among the prominent voice artists. And of course, there was a theme song: “Captain Planet, he’s our hero, Gonna take pollution down to zero.” (David Luhrssen)
Here
(In Theaters Nov. 1)
Using a concept based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, director Robert Zemeckis employs a static camera, placed in what becomes a large living room, to depict 104 minutes of action occurring over thousands of years. The majority of the effort centers upon 60 or so years with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright playing Richard and Margaret. We see them as high school sweethearts through old age. For the film’s first half, A.I.-generated special effects replace the pair’s middle-aged faces with those from their youth. The imperfect technology yields skin-crawling results when their movements and expressions feel wrong.
It all takes place in their living room, a conceit that sometimes makes events seem out of place. Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly and Michelle Dockery appear in notable supporting roles. Time gaps are filled in with views of the swampland, forest or grass lands, and attendant life forms, once existing where the living room is located. Zemeckis’ vision prevents painting it in all but the broadest strokes. His high concept brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. The entirety of that film also occurs in a living room. It’s a murder mystery, starring Jimmy Stewart, that was shot in just seven takes, each one spanning the full length of a 10-minute film reel. By unfolding in real time, and sticking to a manageable concept, Rope remains gripping throughout. The same can’t be said for Here, which receives a mere 25% approval rating due to its lackluster storytelling and underdeveloped characters. (Lisa Miller)
Hitpig!
(In Theaters Nov. 1)
Published in 2008, Pete and Pickles, a children’s book by Berkeley Breathed, became a New York Times bestseller. Charming watercolor, cartoonish illustrations, flesh out an odd-couple story that finds a curmudgeonly, practical pig accepting the friendship of a circus elephant named Pickles.
Adapted for the screen, the animated HitPig! continues the pig and elephant pairing, yet changes practically everything else. The pig becomes a bounty hunter going by Hitpig (voice Jason Sudeikis). He is hired, for an unbelievable million bucks, to find a dancing elephant named Pickles (Lilly Singh). She belongs to a maniacal Vegas showman (Rainn Wilson) whose intentions aren’t nice. Hitpig is joined on the hunt for Pickles by a Brazilian animal liberator (Anitta), a wisecracking, flatulent polecat (RuPaul), an ultra-strong koala (Hannah Gadsby) and a film star rooster superhero (Charlie Adler).
During this 86-minute, globe-trotting adventure, Hitpig discovers that friendship and comradery is more valuable than huge sums of money. The action is pure kid-bait, such as when Hitpig and Pickles bounce, a half dozen times, from the top of one hot air balloon to the next, at several thousand feet up. (Lisa Miller)
