Word: jafar
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...stepmom in Cinderella), you'll even get deviant sexuality (we all know Ursula was a drag queen...) The cliche holds true for these female villains - evil really does have many faces. The male villains, in contrast, are have the same unexplained, thuddingly banal goal - world domination. But what about Jafar and Scar, you say? Phluueeaassse. Both of them are excruciatingly effeminate, especially Scar. Their menace comes from their skeeziness. So back to my hypothesis - why are Disney films not as memorable these days? Because we haven't had a female villain since The Little Mermaid in '88. And just look...
...when he finds himself in a plane cockpit during the climactic battle (he could be a kid sneaking a drive in his dad's Lamborghini), yet we know that the budding hero will later be a super-villain, as if Aladdin were to grow up to be Jafar...
...Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musicalized in 1951 and filmed with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner five years later. So who needs another King and I movie? Kids, apparently. So here is an animated feature that expands and dumbs down the story. There's some kung fu, a Jafar-style villain with satanic powers, a cartoon menagerie (funny monkey, majestic leopard, etc.), and lame comedy with a crudely drawn, Buddha-shaped fall guy. It's all needless--and harmless. But even with pretty, painterly backgrounds and the eternal lilt of the songs, this film has a limited target audience...
...today's one great national cinema. Not since the Czech New Wave of the mid-'60s has a country made such a lovely noise at the big festivals and in Western capitals where the term foreign film doesn't evoke a yawn. Directors Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry), Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon) and Samira's father Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh) are as revered in the world film community as they are anonymous at American 'plexes...
...Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon, a fable of a five-year-old trying to retrieve lost money, was an art-house hit. Panahi's superb new film sends another little girl (Mina Mohammad Khani) on a quest through the streets of Tehran: her mother has not come to pick her up after school, so she figures she'll get home on her own. Mina has star quality to burn. Turns out she also has a star's attitude. Halfway through, she shouts, "I'm not acting anymore!" and storms off. The Mirror, broken in two, now becomes a little...