The Long Walk (2025)

I'm not saying I'm ancient, but I'm old enough to have read The Bachman Books before Rage was excluded from the collection by Stephen King. It was a pretty great read. Four novellas written by Stephen King, under the name Richard Bachman, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The highlight was The Long Walk though, and it's something that fans of King's work wanted to see turned into a movie for decades. Here we are then, but is it any good?

The short answer to that is yes.

The premise is simple enough. America seems to have slid into some kind of horrible totalitarianism, with culture and free thought frowned upon as everyone struggles to make ends meet. This leaves many desperate enough to nominate themselves for a place in the annual event known as The Long Walk. The participants are all teenage boys, one from each state. All they have to do is walk at a constant speed of at least 3 miles per hour. That may sound okay to you, but they get three warnings if they fall below that speed, and then a bullet. There are no toilet breaks, no rest periods, no relief from pain, just walking. Always walking. Until there's only one left. The winner, who will receive a huge sum of money and one wish granted. Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) thinks he has a chance, and knows exactly what he wants his one wish to be. Peter McVries (David Jonsson) seems to be a good ally during the contest, but both young men need to remember that only one can survive to the end. Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) remembers this, and tries to goad others into wasting some of their energy, Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) looks like a very strong contender, and others trying to stay on their feet include Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Hank Olson (Ben Wang), Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), and Thomas Curley (Roman Griffin Davis). 

Adapted from page to screen by JT Mollner, The Long Walk is directed well by Francis Lawrence (best known for helming a number of other movies about a deadly competition, a note that everyone is obliged to mention in any review of this film). There's only so much you can really do with the premise though. This is a film with a lot of conversations happening between people who are walking. It's punctuated by some sudden deaths, and those are sometimes delivered with maximum impact, but it's essentially a lot of walking and talking. Not great cinema, but still a great story nonetheless.

Lawrence has done himself a big favour with his casting. Hoffman does a fantastic job in his lead role, and Jonsson is almost equally good (if slightly hampered by the accent and occasional phrases that make him feel like he's mired in the bog of eternal King-isms). Plummer is even more hampered, but does well, and Wareing, Nyuot, Wang, and co. all do good work, especially when their full journey is shown via stages of physical and mental deterioration. Judy Greer has a couple of scenes that have her fretting over her son (Hoffman), something she does really well, and Mark Hamill is brilliantly cold and jingoistic as The Major, the military figurehead of The Long Walk and the one who will deliver the final shot before the winner is celebrated. 

I did really like this, and it's been good to see many others reacting positively to it, but I can't judge it on purely technical aspects. I think at least some of my reaction stems from finally seeing ANY adaptation of the story in film form. The material is strong enough to make up for any minor failings, and maybe the fact that it is here for us in 2025 will help us avoid making a reality that comes all too close to this kind of fiction. Or maybe we're all just too tired and befuddled to do anything other than keep walking toward a depressingly bleak future. 

8/10

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The Life Of Chuck (2025)

Based on a short story by Stephen King, The Life Of Chuck is adapted into screenplay form and directed by Mike Flanagan. For those expecting horror, however, you should be warned. As made clear by the marketing, this is actually one of the non-horror treats from King, and Flanagan has taken the opportunity to revel in an onscreen world full of optimism and, well, love.

Things work backwards, chronologically, but the main thing to know is that, as the title suggests, this is all about Charles 'Chuck' Franz (played at various points in his life by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak, Jacob Tremblay, and Tom Hiddleston). Chuck grew up with his grandparents (played by Mia Sara and Mark Hamill), likes dancing, and eventually gets used to the comforting idea that we each contain multitudes. We are the sum of everyone and everything we've ever experienced, even if it can seem as if we haven't done very much with our lives.

It's hard to hate The Life Of Chuck, and it could be argued that this is the kind of fantastical escapism that people need right now (considering the state of things here in 2025 . . . note to any time travellers reading this, SEND HELP). I was surprised to not really love it though. The first act leads up to an obvious enough reveal, even for those who haven't read the source material, and it was a mistake to try to play things off like a big mystery.

Narration from Nick Offerman helps a lot, and his voice is as wonderful as ever, but the rest of the cast is quite a mixed bag, aside from everyone playing Chuck (standouts being Pajak and Hiddleston). Chiwetel Ejiofor is wonderful as a teacher, Marty Anderson, but Karen Gillan isn't so good as his ex-wife, a nurse named Felicia Gordon. Mia Sara is lovely as the grandmother, Hamill overdoes things slightly as grandpa. Then you have many others who are just sorely underused, including Rahul Kohli, Matthew Lillard, and Annalise Basso. There's time for some superb drumming from The Pocket Queen AKA Taylor Gordon though, and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss is a winning presence to convincingly motivate our lead to keep enjoying his talent for dance.

One big set-piece at the halfway point is what you're ultimately left with here. The messaging of the movie is very good, but it's a fortune cookie homily that is somehow paradoxically given too much of the screentime and yet not enough of it. That one set-piece ties everything together so beautifully that it still works though, and thinking of that moment should make most viewers smile and appreciate the beauty and connections of life. It's just not quite enough. Reminding us that we contain multitudes should be done with much more of an emphasis on the multitudes. The Life Of Chuck tries to tell be grandiose and intimate at the same time, which leads to it feeling caught in between the two, and not being as successful in either approach as it could have been if Flanagan had figured out another way to present the material.

I enjoyed this while it was on. I would probably rewatch it. I didn't love it though, although it seems to have worked much better for a lot of other film fans. Maybe it will grow on me whenever I do end up giving it a rewatch.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Machine (2023)

A star vehicle for Bert "The Machine" Kreischer, this comedy may be appreciated more by people who were aware of Kreischer's existence before watching it. I am not one of those people. To be fair, an opening sequence sets up both the character and the details that will set the main events in motion, but your reaction to it will still mainly depend on your reaction to Kreischer, who plays a fictional version of himself onscreen.

Having some problems with his family, largely stemming from a night when he got his daughter into some big trouble and live-streamed the whole thing, Bert is at a point when he knows that he needs to calm things down a bit. He needs to leave his past fully behind him, which makes the timing all the worse when his past, in the shape of a dangerous Russian named Irina (Iva Babic), comes to bite him on the ass. Whisked away, with his ever-critical father (Albert, played by Mark Hamill) also caught up in the mess, Bert has to delve into some hazy memories to find a way to make things up to some people he wronged twenty years ago. Are they right to feel wronged though, or has Bert just been exaggerating and lying about some of his drunken exploits for the sake of entertaining the crowds who enjoy his comedy?

I'm not sure how much faint praise I can keep laying on this before it collapses under the weight of it all, but The Machine was perfectly fine. It was better than I expected it to be, but I also know that I'll have forgotten all about it by the time the year ends. It works best when putting Bert and his father in serious trouble (there's a pretty great gag about an accidental gunshot that takes out numerous enemies), but it fails to maintain any consistent momentum, and 112 minutes is far too long for something built on so slight a conceit.

Director Peter Atencio has some great stuff tucked away in his body of work, and he's done action comedy material before with a great bias towards the comedy, but it seems as if everyone here is slightly hampered by having to keep everything on-brand for Kreischer. There's also attempts to have moments that are slightly more serious and heart-felt, which is all well-intentioned stuff, but doesn't work as it unbalances the movie even further away from the lighter tone it should have throughout. Writers Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes pack in a lot of unnecessary extra flashbacks (at least allowing Jimmy Tatro to have fun as a younger incarnation of Bert), but these mis-steps would have been easier to forgive if there had just been more big laughs.

Kreischer is fine in the main role, shoe-horning his persona into something made to accommodate him, and Hamill has a few really good moments, although they are too few and far between, but it's Babic and Robert Maaser, as well as Martyn Ford, who end up being more memorable. They're enjoyably ridiculous villains written in a way that feels amusingly old-fashioned and over the top, as if we're being told this story, yet again, from someone who is keen to exaggerate the details and turn it from something major into something epic. Tatro is someone I like seeing appear in anything (I've been a big fan since his turn in American Vandal) and his inclusion here, despite being part of the extraneous scenes that strip away the ambiguity of just what happened on that big drunken night, is another plus point. Stephanie Kurtzuba does a good eye-roll as the long-suffering partner, LeeAnn, and Jess Gabor follows suit as the older daughter, Sasha, who has had her life negatively impacted by the antics of her father.

Fitfully amusing, helped by the fact that Kreischer is self-aware to know what people like about his persona, and what can be twisted as he moves towards some kind of redemption, The Machine will never be a top viewing choice for anyone, but I am sure there are some fans out there who will enjoy it a hell of a lot more than I did. The rest of us can forget all about it and focus on the many better comedies available to take up 90-120 minutes of our time.

4/10

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The Wild Robot (2024)

I wasn't sure why I wasn't keen to make time for The Wild Robot, but the opening titles reminded me of my reasoning. This was a Dreamworks animation. As much as I enjoy a lot of their work, and I really love some of their stuff, they often feel like the kind of thing I have to be in the mood to watch. I assume that there will be lots of good gags, a certain visual style, and characters that will sell bucket-loads of merchandise for them. When I think of Dreamworks I think of Shrek, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda. They're all fun, and that doesn't begin to cover the range of Dreanworks Animation productions that you can, and should, check out, but I tend to know what I am going to get from them. I figured The Wild Robot would be the same, but then I started hearing more and more praise being heaped upon it. This is definitely not the same as many other films from Dreamworks, and I am already sorry that I didn't get to it even sooner.

A robot lands on a planet uninhabited by humans. That's how The Wild Robot begins. Wanting to be assigned a task, the robot (a ROZZUM Unit 7134, AKA Roz) tries to communicate with the many animals nearby, all of whom seem afraid of the thing that looks like it's been sent to kill them. Roz goes into a low power mode, listening to the many sounds around her and learning the languages of the many different animal species. Those language skills come in very handy when she ends up destroying a nest and then being imprinted on by a very cute, but also very vulnerable, little gosling. Roz gets advice from a fox, although whether or not she can trust this advice is another matter, and she ends up helping a lot of the animals around her as she aims to get her surrogate child ready to fly away before the weather becomes too inhospitable for the goose population. At least she won't have those pesky human feelings of loss and regret when her "child" leaves. Hmmmmmmm.

Based on a book by Peter Brown, this is written and directed by Chris Sanders, a man also responsible for helping to serve up three other animated movies I have loved (Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon, and The Croods). If I had put two and two together sooner, and had a better memory for names, I would have had another bit of motivation to get to this before now. I really need to see his live-action feature, The Call Of The Wild, because Sanders is on 100% success rate with me so far.

The voice cast is worth mentioning now, before I get myself distracted by discussing the visual style, the music, and the ability this film has to reduce me to a blubbering wreck. Lupita Nyong'o is a fantastic fit for Roz, keeping her tone well-moderated throughout, with only the slightest inflections hinting at any possible changes in the way Roz views the world. Kit Connor is the goose who grows from the gosling, Brightbill, Pedro Pascal is the aptly-named Fink, the fox, and there is also some great additional work from Bill Nighy, Catherine O'Hara, Mark Hamill, Ving Rhames, Matt Berry, and Stephanie Hsu, as well as many others who aren't immediately familiar to me. 

Now I can once again allow myself to go on about the lovely visual style of the whole thing, the beautiful score from Kris Bowers, and the knack that Sanders has for pushing a button that seems to be directly attached to some tiny being that lives in my chest and is subsequently ordered to pluck my heartstrings like an expert harpist. I expect such emotional manipulation by the third act of many family films, but I was unprepared to be so fragile even before the halfway point. And once I'd been turned into a leaky-faced wreck, well, it was difficult to get through the rest of the runtime without at least feeling my lower lip quivering as I tried to keep myself composed.

I've used a lot of words here to praise this, and I am happy that I've now managed to compose my thoughts in a way that should be calm and understandable for all. This is beautiful, sweet, moving, and an essential new favourite for those seeking an evergreen family viewing choice. It's one of my favourites from 2024, and one of my new favourite animated movies of all time.

9/10

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Child's Play (2019)

Much like the killer doll at the centre of it all, there's something about Child's Play that is just a bit off from the very first scenes. I am never automatically against remakes, but this one just seemed like a pretty bad idea, and one that was being churned out for the wrong reasons. Whether you like them or not, the original movie series was still growing under the watchful eye of Don Mancini. All seems to be going ahead with the TV show idea, which I hope comes out soon enough for me to be able to forget all about this attempt to reboot a fresh money-maker.

As you may have already surmised, I didn't like Child's Play. It's a film that doesn't ever make the right decisions at any point, treating viewers as if they will all be situated perfectly within the teen age bracket that it is aiming for (and I know some teens who won't be impressed either).

It all starts with a disgruntled factory worker removing safety protocols from a toy doll before then committing suicide. One thing leads to another, and that doll (a Buddi who decides to name himself Chucky, voiced by Mark Hamill) ends up being owned by young Andy Barclay (Gabriel Bateman). Andy lives with his mother (Karen, played by Aubrey Plaza), it's a new home for them, there's a man on the scene, there's a police detective who is often in the building as he visits his mother, and a few other characters that are supposed to be worth watching. Chucky starts killing, all for the sake of his friendship with Andy, and his ability to be linked to various apps makes him a lot more dangerous.

I am not familiar with the previous film by director Lars Klevberg, or writer Tyler Burton Smith, but it seems, rightly or wrongly, that they were picked here as a couple of people who would toe the line and give the studio what was expected. I am assuming an awful lot here, and may be being very unfair, but it's hard to see anything here that represents a unique vision or talent. If that was the case, it would be easier to believe that Klevberg and/or Smith were chosen because someone had seen something prominent in their work that they thought could work well with the  Child's Play concept.

Here are the things that work in this movie. The music, another great bit of work by Bear McCreary (who has been on top form recently). The casting of Mark Hamill in the vital voice role of Chucky. The first major human murder scene.

Almost everything else fails. Take, for example, the fact that a character is slightly hearing-impaired. This is all well and good if it is for representation. It isn't though. It's mentioned once or twice in a way that makes us think it will be very important later in the movie, and then isn't used in any way that feels necessary. Take a scene in which Chucky uses an app to terrorise and kill someone. Except he doesn't. The big set-piece ends with our knife-wielding doll . . . wielding a knife. One death scene has a character jumping up to stand on a desk that has a bloody circular saw on it. The relationship between mother and son never feels real, unlike the original film, there aren't any actual scares (although, to be fair, the film does provide a couple of amusing moments, which prove that it occasionally works as the black comedy it is trying to be), and the third act staggers from one horribly ill-conceived moment to the next.

Bateman is okay as Andy, Plaza is as underused as she so often is in more mainstream fare, and Smith is the best character in the movie. Nobody stinks up the place, not even the other younger cast members who work alongside Bateman in the strand of the film that plays out a scenario building up the whole "the kids will save everyone" vibe, but there's also nobody good enough to help distract from the many shortcomings of the film.

Horror movies can be fun, they can be dumb, they can be sheer entertainment without having to be anything else. But there have to be certain things done right to allow film-makers to get away with that. It can be hard to put a finger on the things that have the opposite effect, sometimes it's just an overwhelming feeling of laziness, sometimes it's a lack of logic that breaks the rules set out within the movie universe, but this film has enough of them to spoil your enjoyment. Well, it has enough to spoil my enjoyment. Others have had fun with it.

4/10

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Americans can buy it here.

Mubi Monday: Village Of The Damned (1995)

The second reworking of classic sci-fi horror material by director John Carpenter, this is much less successful than his previous attempt. Perhaps it's because the original was already a pretty perfect adaptation of the John Wyndham novel, "The Midwich Cuckoos", or perhaps it was just too lacklustre in all departments, from cast to cinematography, through to score and direction.

You will probably already know the plot. A small village is temporarily knocked out. Completely. Everyone just passes out, and anyone trying to enter just passes out as soon as they step within a certain radius of the location. Then everyone wakes up, and nothing seems different. It becomes clear, however, that all of the females who can bear children have become pregnant. And when those children are born they are all very similar in their physical characteristics. And they share the ability to read the minds of the people around them. Not only that, they can influence people to do things, even if that leads to self-harm or death for the person being controlled. Someone has to stop them, but it may already be too late.

Village Of The Damned is not a BAD film, not exactly. It's certainly not the worst from Carpenter, but the titles in his filmography that rank below this at least had some interesting ideas and imagination, even if the execution of the material was flawed. This is just a film that feels exactly like what it was, a contractual obligation. It's hard to think of a better way to update this material but I am sure there is one. There has to be a better approach than just taking the main plot points and including some moments of unimpressive violence and death.

I always enjoy seeing Christopher Reeve onscreen (this was the last film he completed before the horse riding accident that left him paralysed) and this is another role that makes use of his stoic nature and dependability. He's really the only lead character who remains interesting throughout, with anyone else - Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, Mark Hamill, etc - either hampered by the script or their unsuitability to the roles assigned to them. Thankfully, there's a great little turn from the legend that is George 'Buck' Flower and the kids are all easy enough to dislike, even if they often emanate an air of irritability rather than pure evil.

This is TV movie stuff when it should have been much better. It's not as if Carpenter wouldn't be a fan of this kind of material, making it all the more surprising that he didn't try to put more of a stamp on the script, credited to David Himmelstein, and either update the material in a much smarter way or use the central idea as a springboard for something that diverted further from the source novel.

It's not a painful viewing experience, but that's really the best thing I can say about it. It's arguably the worst film in Carpenter's filmography, because at least the other films that could be nominated for that title had some imagination and atmosphere to them. They felt like John Carpenter films, even as they started to fall apart. This doesn't.

4/10

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The Last Jedi (2017)

It's the same old story when it comes to beloved film franchise instalments. Fans complain if something feels too beholden to everything that has come before it and then you also get an outcry if they think something has made too many changes to the characters or material they have grown with over a number of years.

I can just imagine writer/director Rian Johnson rubbing his hands together in glee as he clicked everything into place for this film, undoubtedly under the watchful eyes of many people with a vested interest in what is probably the most profitable moneymakers in cinema history, in terms of combined box office and merchandising. This is a film that manages to emulate the feeling of devastation and insurmountable odds that featured in The Empire Strikes Back while also still managing to do enough to stand out as something surprisingly unique.

A lot of that comes from the visual design, with a number of set-pieces making the most of the colour red, either alone or as it contrasts with the environment (in much the same way that gunfights and swordfights can be elevated when blood is spattering on to crisp, white snow). More of that unique feeling comes from the ways in which the main characters are shown to have been transformed by their experiences, be they recent or years in the past. Luke is very different from when we last saw him (something that Mark Hamill famously, initially, disagreed with Johnson on). Leia is even more of a military leader than ever before. Kylo Ren continues to try to find a way forward that will give him both notoriety and some personal satisfaction, Rey may or may not be destined to be a Jedi, and heroic pilot Poe Dameron may have to accept the fact that his rash actions are costing too many lives for him to keep careening forward without enough consideration of the risks and reward.

I guess I should mention the plot, although I feel like I already have. Sort of. The Last Jedi is a character piece, it's a war film, it's a sci-fi epic showing entertaining fights that also manages to show people starting to fully realise the consequences of their actions, be they small or huge. That's what it's all about, and the various twists and turns of the plot are largely redundant "filler", in some ways, if you consider how the whole thing begins and ends (wait and see).

Most of the main players from The Force Awakens return, and they're all still very good in their roles. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega remain two sides of a coin depicting unlikely heroes, with the former wondering if she can ever learn to use the force and the latter doing whatever he can physically to give allies time and space. Oscar Isaac continues to be a hugely likable presence as Dameron, which is more essential this time as his character makes a couple of dubious judgment calls. Hamill is very good, darker than we've ever seen him before, Fisher gets a fitting final turn as Leia, and both Adam Driver and Domnhall Gleeson are as entertaining in their evil roles as they were the first time around. Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern are two of the main newcomers, both do well but it's Dern who is given the better character.

You also get to see BB-8 again, Kelly Marie Tan (another newcomer) is pretty great as Rose Tico, someone else willing to keep doing their part for the war even as the odds become more and more overwhelming, there's a small amount of screentime for Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), Andy Serkis portrays the mysterious Snoke, there's a near-overdose of cuteness in the shape of little creatures called porgs, a near-overdose of CGI in a completely superfluous chase sequence reminiscent of the overstuffed prequel trilogy, plenty of cameo appearances (both obvious and really not so obvious - hard to see faces under those trooper helmets), and another fantastic score from John Williams.

Some will hate it, some will love it. I love it, and I hope that eventually even those who were so up in arms about the decisions made will recognise that Johnson did what needed to be done in order to keep the franchise from fading out before this new story arc was completed.

8/10

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The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Anyone who complains about the Star Wars prequels ruining their childhood, and the franchise, has obviously never seen this infamous holiday special, made with as little money and care as possible (or so it would seem). While not directly about Christmas, it IS about a major holiday and was first shown in November of 1978 in America, which certainly gives it a prime holiday spot, on the run up to both Thanksgiving and Christmas. And when I mention when it was first shown I should also mention that it has never been shown again. If George Lucas could nuke the entire planet from orbit just to ensure that this would be wiped from existence ("it's the only way to be sure") then I suspect he would.

The slim plot concerns Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew back in the Wookiee costume) trying to get back to his family in order to celebrate a major holiday, Life Day. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is helping him. That's really all you need to know. Oh, well, I guess I should also mention that Chewbacca's family (wife Malla, father Itchy and son Lumpy) are somehow nightmare creations compared to good ol' Chewie, and guest stars make an appearance (Art Carney, Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur) in between small moments that feature Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), C3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2D2 (Kenny Baker).

I don't know where to begin when it comes to expressing my reaction to this. Imagine that you saw Star Wars at the age of 8. But you saw it while ill, and under the influence of too much cough medicine. And there was also a strange music video featuring Diahann Carroll spliced in. Then hit yourself over the head 50 times with an old VHS BIG box of either of the Ewoks movies. Watch some episodes of The Golden Girls. And repeat. If you can still tell fantasy from reality then perhaps use some intense hallucinogenics. You'll be close.

Everyone involved looks embarrassed, and rightfully so, and for a holiday special this certainly isn't any fun. Director Steve Binder seems to have no idea what he's doing, despite (or perhaps because of) the input from 5 different writers. The only legitimate point of interest here, aside from the warped comedy value of watching a young Harrison Ford die a little every time the camera points at him while a young Mark Hamill continues to act beautifully naive throughout the whole experience, is the first appearance, in cartoon form, of Boba Fett, bounty hunter extraordinaire.

Honestly, however bizarre you might think this will be . . . . . . . . . . . . it's a LOT worse. The fact that nobody ever considered stopping this before it was transmitted is perhaps the most damning evidence available to prove just how many drugs were still being hoovered up by folks in showbusiness at the end of the 1970s.

3/10

I will leave you to find this "special" by your own means. And wash the taste out with this - http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Complete-Episodes-Blu-ray/dp/B003ZSJ212/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417892643&sr=8-1&keywords=star+wars

Wizards (1977)

Ralph Bakshi. If you haven't heard his name before then the chances are that you're not a fan of Fritz The Cat or The Lord Of The Rings (both movies that he directed). I've yet to see the former movie but I remember seeing the latter film when I was young and being very impressed by it, even though it had an experimental quality to it at times, mainly due to the rotoscoped elements, and was actually an unfinished adaptation of the epic tale. His work may not be entirely successful but it's almost interesting.

Wizards is a tale of magic and machinery and war and death and more. It focuses on two brothers, the good Avatar (Bob Holt) and the very bad Blackwolf (Steve Gravers). Blackwolf wants to rule many lands and sends his army further afield to achieve this while Avatar travels to take a stand and put a stop to the destructive force that his brother has become.

Wizards isn't a complete success, and it's certainly not as good as the other Bakshi movies that I know of, but it doesn't lack conviction and is a unique attempt to blend numerous ideas and styles into one grand comment on the damage caused by war and the power of propaganda. Moments of madcap humour sit alongside moments of wartime atrocities which sit alongside standard sword and sorcery fare. There are moments of almost Monty Python-esque absurdity that serve as a reminder that war is horrific and fatal and yet also absolutely ridiculous as a means to an end.

The film could have just as easily been called "Soldiers" but then I'm not sure that it would have worked so well. The fantasy element and the far-fetched premise allows Bakshi in his writer-director role to hammer home a number of pertinent observations that don't always sit well with viewers when shown in an unfussy, realistic context.

I liked Wizards, there were moments in it that I loved, but I wouldn't rush to rewatch it. The energy and creativity onscreen come at a price - a lack of cohesion, a rambling sense of ADD throughout and also the constant feeling while watching the movie that you should maybe be ingesting the same substances the makers of the film seemed to enjoy so much.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wizards-Blu-ray-Mark-Hamill-voice/dp/B003FISFSI/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1342217511&sr=1-2