The Aristocats - 52 Years in 52 Weeks

The Aristocats (1970)

Welcome back to 52 Years in 52 Weeks. Each week in 2021 we’ll watch a film I’ve never seen before starting in 1969 moving one year forward every week.

This week, I watched The Aristocats from 1970. Wolfgang Reitherman directed this feline family adventure from Disney. Reitherman is also (at least partly) behind other Disney classics like 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, and 1970’s The Rescuers, which I believed to be connected to The Aristocats because the mice looked similar in my mind. But I guess that just makes me the racist equivalent for rodents. But I’ll leave the racial stereotyping to the experts over at Disney. More on that later. Reitherman co-directed these films but he’s arguably best known for 1973s Robin Hood and 1967’s The Jungle Book. All the films mentioned are available for streaming on Disney+. What the service might lack in original new programming it inarguably makes up with its rather impressive backlog

Phil Harris, who voices Baloo and Little John in Jungle Book and Robin Hood respectively, does the voice for the most memorable character from the Aristocats. O’Malley. It’s impressive how creepy yet still charming Harris manages to be as the stray cat that helps The Duchess and her three kittens on her way back to their wealthy home.

The plot is fairly simple. When Adelaide Bonfamille leaves all her liquidities to her cats, her butler decides to get rid of them in an effort to inherit his employer's money that he believes to deserve. Funnily enough, Edgar is too dense to realize that he would still get all the money as cats...can’t...spend...money. I know. Mind. blown. But that rather simple world-view runs through the entire plot of The Aristocats. Intense over the top action chase scenes and the occasional song is all we get from the movie. It never tries to be more than a simple - ignore the partly intended terrible pun - cat and mouse game. 

I personally found most jokes to be more miss than hit. For example, the geese characters feel particularly random and unnecessary. Maybe it’s because I just can’t stand the upper-class way of talking from the 40s-70s. Particularly the Duchess is a great example of that. I just can’t stand the way she talks. Perhaps that’s just a ‘me thing’ but I find it distracting. In the context of the story, it makes sense to have an upper-class cat speak in an upper-class manner. It’s just so annoying. But honestly, Thomas O’Malley’s constant ‘baby’ is equally irritating and predatory, to be frank. 

The Aristocats is a movie that’s supposed to be light-hearted. With Thomas O’Malley strolling along the riverside taking the family on an adventure. I just don’t connect as well with movies that I feel like don’t have a purpose or reason to exist. This might be cynical but I dislike cookie-cutter versions of stories that are way too familiar without adding much to anything. You could argue that the purpose of a movie like this is simply to entertain and I’d have to agree. Lots of studio films exist purely for that reason and don’t need any themes on top of that. But I wasn’t even entertained by anything happening in the plot. As you’d expect from a family film, its conclusion is predictable and the moments in between, at least to me, are not charming or memorable enough to leave a good impression. 

And what’s worse than a truly bad movie? A mediocre, boring one. And that’s what The Aristocats is. 

Also giving a cat with Asian features chopsticks to play the piano is at most unexpected but not really funny. In the overall context, that scene simply serves as a colorful, musical pitstop halfway through the movie before they ultimately assimilate to the aristocratic lifestyle at the mercy of an old, white woman.

Maybe I’m reading into this too much but there is that disclaimer at the start of the film that Disney puts in front of some of their older releases deemed controversial. 

Ultimately The Aristocats is a rather weak entry in the long list of animated Disney classics. But at least it’s better than all of the recent ‘live-action’ remakes, but from the recent trend of Disney redoing literally their entire 90s golden age of films, it’s only a matter of time until they’ll produce the inevitable remake for this one.

Next week we’ll watch Spielberg’s feature-length debut Duel.

Just Mercy

Your life is still meaningful,
and I’m going to do everything I can
to keep them from taking it.
— Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy tells the powerful story of Bryan Stevenson, played by Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Creed), a young lawyer set out to represent the ones that cannot afford it. Instead of money, he fights for justice for the wrongly condemned prisoners on Death Row. The Harvard graduate moves to Alabama, which has a prison with a track record of never releasing a convicted felon from its facility before execution. Water McMillian (Jamie Foxx - Baby Driver, Django Unchained) is one of those innocent prisoners sentenced to die on the electric chair for supposedly killing an 18-year-old girl. But a closer look at the evidence makes it obvious that the single witness testimony - given by a convicted felon with a motive to lie is incorrect. What follows is an exploration into the many injustices that the lower class has to face with a corrupt and racist government.

The extended cast included Brie Larson (Captain Marvel, Room) as Eva Ansley, who supports Bryan Stevenson (Jordan) in his endeavor. Something that never gets explored or explained in the film is how they afford to work for their clients free of charge even as their company grows. While this doesn’t affect the story that we focus on, but it was something I was personally interested in. Rob Morgan (Mudbound) as Herbert Richardson and O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) as Anthony Ray Hinton are the two prisoners on death row that share the neighboring cells with McMillian.

The story is based on true events and therefore covers quite a bit of historical ground throughout its runtime. We get introduced to the character McMillian in Alabama in 1987. A few years later Stevenson and McMillian’s paths cross for the first time as Steveson takes on the task of helping prisoners on death row.

Micheal B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson and Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillian

Just Mercy is another one of these films based on a true story that has a wide range of interesting characters to pull from in its over two-hour-long runtime. But somehow still leaves so much untold. I mean that in a positive way. There is more to these characters than what we see on screen because it would not fit into a film narrative like this. The death penalty is certainly a controversial topic that is relevant to this day, as the US stills legalize the death penalty in over half of its 52 states. Including Alabama.

What could have easily been a preachy, pandering movie about prisoners on death row surprised me with the nuance and moral ambiguity it was able to illustrate. A major weak point was, however, a few moments on unconvincing performances that felt like actors reading their lines instead of them playing their characters. But the positives outweigh the negatives here, especially because Jamie Foxx is great in every scene he’s in. Brie Larson’s southern accent is one of the few humorous things coming out of this rather serious historic drama.

If you’ve been holding off on seeing films in 2020, this is the first one (not counting Swiss release dates for Knives Out and Little Women) that I can whole-heartedly recommend to pretty much anyone. Even though the runtime is well over two hours it doesn’t feel long due to the great pacing that knows when to linger and when to move on. Another standout is the cinematography by Brett Pawlak which puts you right into the scene with these characters, walking that fine line of connecting us with the characters without presenting information in a polarizing way.

I recommend the book written by Stevenson himself of the same name, Just Mercy, which chronicles McMillain’s as well as many other cases.

★★★★☆

Just Mercy is a solid film with heartfelt moments that you will connect with when you least expect it.

Micheal B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson and Brie Larson as Eva Ansley

Swiss Release Date: 27.02.20

Australian Release Date: 23.01.20

Film Data: Director: Destin Daniel Cretton - Writer: Destin Daniel Cretton, Bryan Stevenson, Andre Lanham - Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Rafe Spall, Rob Morgan

Photo and Video: © 2020 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved.

Queen & Slim

Think you’ve been on a bad tinder date? Well, think again, because Queen & Slim has come to change your mind.

We meet Queen and Slim, an African-American couple, having their first date at a cheap diner. It does not go very well, so they decide to leave and Slim offers to give Queen a ride home. The two aren’t getting along very well and it’s clear that they won’t see each other again. Until a police officer pulls them over. We, as viewers and the duo are then confronted with an agitated police officer, who isn’t calming down. After an altercation, the police officer takes a shot at Queen, grazing her leg, and Slim shoots the police officer in self-defense. 

What do you do? Stay and possibly spend a lifetime in prison? Or do you run and risk everything for the slight possibility of fleeing successfully?

Queen, a criminal defense attorney, decides that in this case, it’s better to run.

Queen & Slim marks the directorial feature debut of Melina Matsoukas, who is best known for working with pop stars such as Beyoncé, Rihanna and Lady Gaga on some of their most influential music videos, such as Just Dance, We Found Love, Pretty Hurts, Formation and many others. It’s clear that Matsoukas is excellent at making music videos, but features? Not as much.

The film certainly opens strongly and gives the viewer a promise of a great story. In fact, the first 15 minutes might even be the best part. Instead of living up to this promise, the whole story feels like a veeeery long short film, which is stuck in a timeless continuum. The last 15 minutes of the story managed to pick up my interest again for a great finale, even though it felt a bit cliché, to say the least.

Matsoukas definitely knows how to make a film look beautiful. It has some great shots and is visually appealing, but feels all together very dreamy and unrealistic, which isn’t exactly what the story intends to go for, at least at the beginning. All in all, one could say that the story is mediocre. The execution doesn’t lack in spectacle, but the film is so set on making Queen and Slim icons of the Black Lives Matter movement and all of it so deep, that it just feels forced and overdone. Combine this with bizarre choices in sound editing and the climax pun and it just doesn’t really seem to work. (You’ll know what I mean once you’ve seen it)

Finally, the story all just feels very lucky and unrealistic. The characters never seem to run out of luck. The collaboration of Matsoukas’ directing and the writing by James Frey and Lena Waither just doesn’t mesh well. Matsoukas’ intention is to create an everlasting story, which clearly attempts to become an icon for the Black Lives Matter movement but instead, it just overdoes it and bores. Again, not the first and last 15 minutes though! 

What I personally was able to enjoy most, was the cast. Daniel Kaluuya doesn’t have to prove himself anymore, we all know that he’s a great actor and together with Jodie Turner-Smith the two make a great duo. Also noteworthy are Chloë Sevigny and Indya Moore, the latter giving us some much needed queer representation.

In conclusion, Queen & Slim is a good movie, but it feels more like a stretched out short film. 

★★★⋆☆

Also, next time, consider Canada instead of Cuba. Your chances might be better.

Release date (Switzerland): 09.01.2020

Release date (USA): 27.11.2019

Film data: Director: Melina Matsoukas - Screenplay: Lena Waither - Story: James Frey and Lena Waithe - Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine, Chloë Sevigny, Flea, Sturgill Simpson, Indya Moore, Benito Martinez - 131’ - USA - 2019 - Universal Pictures

Photo and Video Source: © Universal Pictures International Switzerland. All Rights Reserved.