DVD

AFTER wreaking big destruction in films such as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla, director Roland Emmerich's biggest disaster epic plays on the paranoia that results from the end of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012. It's debatable whether the ancient Mayans explicitly pencilled in this date to denote the end of the world, but the conspicuous absence of a Dec. 22, 2012 in the ancient Mayan day-planner has been interpreted in some quarters as an expiry date for Planet Earth.

Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the chief science adviser to U.S. President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) learns the Earth's core is threatening to boil over as a result of "mutating neutrinos."

The prospect of doom is downright frightening for Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a failed novelist/husband/father with two young children he feels compelled to protect. Curtis is visiting Yellowstone National Park with his younglings when seemingly mad prophet (Woody Harrelson) tells him the end is near and that the upper echelons of government have an escape plan. That story starts to look pretty credible when the entire state of California starts convulsing like an overdosing rock star.

From this point, the movie warp-drives through every disaster movie trope in the book as Curtis shanghais his kids, ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and her new dentist hubby (Tom McCarthy) to a possible safe haven in the remote mountains of Asia, evading massive earthquakes, super volcanoes, and Everest-sized tsunamis.

As if to offset anyone's serious concerns about the implications of a huge global disaster, the movie's tone is almost giddy, it's so silly.

Consume accordingly. 'Ö'Ö'Ö

Where the Wild Things Are

MAURICE Sendak's 1963 book Where the Wild Things Are is a children's classic. But Spike Jonze's film adaptation of Sendak's slim volume is not really a children's movie.

Jonze co-adapted the book with author Dave Eggers (Away We Go) with a mission to expand the story by expanding the psychological profile of its hero Max (Max Records).

As in the book, Max dons a wolf suit and turns wild thing, yelling at his mom (Catherine Keener): "I'll eat you up!"

Instead of being exiled to the famous bedroom, where "a forest grew... and grew," Max opts to take a convenient rowboat to set sail for the island where the wild things are.

To Max's surprise, "wild" does not equal simple. The island's alpha-thing is Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), a brooding horned beast upset at the departure of his friend KW (Lauren Ambrose).

Perhaps the creatures are manifestations of Max's family, or maybe they're all manifestations of Max's maturing consciousness.

I found the movie's ambiguities intriguing and the film's esthetic delightful. But Jonze blithely ignores the task of accounting for juveniles in the audience unaccustomed to narrative ambiguity.

Where the Wild Things Are is really more appropriate for teens than it is for the little kids who have made the book a staple bedtime story. 'Ö'Ö'Ö1/2

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Ponyo

THIS is a grand, sunny reworking of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid. This film from Japanese director-animator Hayao Miyazaki presents juvenile-targeted stories with gorgeous, painterly animation and a sense of benign surrealism.

The five-year-old magical fish-girl of the title (voiced by Miley's little sis Noah Cyrus) defies her misanthropic wizard father (voiced by Liam Neeson) and seeks friendship with the five-year-old landlubber Sosuke (Frankie Jonas).

Sosuke's mom (Tina Fey) is wonderfully blasé about Ponyo's appearance at her home, given her fish-to-girl transformations and her ability to power electric light bulbs. But then, this is the kind of can-do mom who thinks nothing of racing a car up a mountain while a tsunami climbs up her rear bumper.

Ponyo displays all the weird dream logic we've come to expect from Miyazaki. But his imagery, including eyed wave creatures and a beautiful sea goddess (voiced by Cate Blanchett), isn't anywhere near as menacing as those ghostly apparitions that haunted the otherworldly environs of Spirited Away. Where that film might have given nightmares to five-year-olds, Ponyo appears to be aimed squarely at that demographic with its subtle eco-friendly message and its chirpy-happy tone. 'Ö'Ö'Ö

Disney presents new special editions of other Studio Ghibli imports concurrent with Ponyo, including Castle in the Sky. Watch especially for:

Kiki's Delivery Service (Special Edition)

PREDATING Harry Potter, this tale of a teenage witch is my personal favourite Miyazaki film, set in a unique yet wholly familiar coastal town where 13-year-old Kiki must make her way in the world, even as her magic powers start to fail her. The sequence in which she regains the power of flight on a pushbroom is one of my favourite animated scenes. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö

My Neighbor Totoro (Special Edition)

WEIRD creatures are the coin of the realm of Japanese animated films, but Miyazaki excels at presenting them with a sense of their own absurdity. This is especially evident in this 1988 film about two young sisters who find a friend in a huge, roly-poly forest spirit while anxiously awaiting to hear the fate of their hospitalized mother. 'Ö'Ö'Ö'Ö

Top 10 DVD Rentals

1. Law Abiding Citizen

2. The Informant

3. The Box

4. Couples Retreat

5. The Time Traveler's Wife

6. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

7. Zombieland

8. The Hurt Locker

9. Surrogates

10. Love Happens

-- Rogers Video, week ending Feb. 28

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 4, 2010 E4