The Nut Job

Review by Pete Roche

I’m one of those people who always hated working in groups in classrooms and at the office.  Even in grad school I found myself surrounded by lazy ne’er-do-wells who wouldn’t carry their weight, but would happily take co-credit for my labor.  I still prefer autonomy.  But even mavericks and lone wolves need a helping hand (or paw) every once in a while.  Sometimes we might have to spread the wealth or forgo credit entirely in order to benefit greater numbers or even just to keep our own moral compasses aligned.

A disenfranchised squirrel learns this hard the hard way in Toonbox Entertainment’s THE NUT JOB, whose title alludes to the rogue protagonist’s mental state as well as the similarly complicated heists perpetrated in crime movies THE ITALIAN JOB and THE BANK JOB.

Walking With Dinosaurs

Review by Pete Roche

We were supposed to catch WALKING WITH DINOSAURS a couple weeks back, but an electronic throttle control problem with our Jeep conspired with a Saturday morning snowstorm to prevent our trek to the Richmond screening.  My son and I were finally able to catch a weekend matinee at Crocker while his sister checked out another title with her friends.  By the time this review posts, chances are WALKING will have vanished from theatres, not unlike the mass disappearance of the big lizards all those epochs ago. 

But hey, better late….

Produced in part by BBC Earth (who created a similarly-titled documentary miniseries back in 1999) WALKING is the computer-animated tale of three dinos and their winged companion / mouthpiece struggling to survive over 70 million years ago in the wilderness that would become Alaska.

Mitsy's Magnificent Makeover (now on video)

[MITSY'S MAGNIFICENT MAKEOVER is now available on home video.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Why does the Cleveland Movie Blog, our tastes leaning a bit Ghoulardiward at all times, take note of a minor-key kiddie direct-to-video babysitter like MITSY'S MAGNIFICENT MAKEOVER? Does it represent the final, unreleased masterwork of Lucio Fulci? Does it include the famously censored decapitation scenes, finally discovered on Hong Kong laserdisc? Does it get away from the campy, silly Mitsy of the 1960s and back to the original, dark, brooding psychotic Mitsy of the 1930s and 40s?

No, the deal is that this all-CGI semi-musical children's short feature (or long short subject) is that it represents yet another step forward for true "desktop filmmaking." Francis Ford Coppola, if my memory serves me right, prophesied that, with the advent of digital film and computer-editing suites affordable to the masses, someday the next CITIZEN KANE would not hail from a mighty Hollywood soundstage but rather from the bedroom of some adolescent Jewish girl in Cleveland.