Tag: movies

Tarzan

A tie with Greystoke as best adaptation of Tarzan yet although the two films are at the opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Where Greystoke is a bleak, tragic tale of loss Disney’s Tarzan is an uplifting fun romantic adventure.

Of course as with any Tarzan story there has to be the dark events of his parent’s deaths, but it is handled extremely well here it happens off-screen and in a change to the book is carried out by Sabor the Leopard.

The voice acting is superb. Glenn close excels as Kala, Tarzan’s ape mother. Minnie Driver is an intelligent and feisty Jane Porter and Brian Blessed lends his wonderful baritone to the human villain of the piece Clayton.

The animation is brilliant and the backgrounds stunningly beautiful. There will probably be no other adaptation that will be able to portray how at ease Tarzan is at moving through the tree tops of the jungle.

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes

This 1983 film takes a radically different approach to most previous movies of the legendary character of Tarzan and in many ways is far closer to the original story Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Here we see an intelligent man who despite being away from human contact from infancy is able to as a grown man learn two languages and speak if with a light French accent English eloquently. The story here is not of a rollicking jungle-set adventure but instead focuses on his growing up amongst the apes and then as an adult his struggle to adjust to his “rightful place” amongst British high society as a Greystoke.

This is ultimately a tragic telling of the Tarzan story as John Clayton realises that he can never truly be at home in either environment.
Although he is able to pass within society as a civilized individual, he prefers to “strip off the thin veneer of civilization,” as Burroughs puts it.

State of Play

In the Loop

The Godfather Part 2

Shown as part of the VW Superior Sequels season.

Gran Torino

Watchmen

The Young Victoria