When the last eagle flies...

Over the last crumbling mountain...

This review is for Amberlicious.

If you haven't guessed by now, this review will be about The Last Unicorn.

The Last Unicorn came out in 1982, based on the book of the same name. It's a Rankin/Bass joint. Right there should be enough to tell you it's high quality. We're talking about the same production company that brought you The Hobbit and Thundercats. (Ho!)

They stuck pretty close to the story. A unicorn (Mia Farrow) over hears some hunters talking in the woods about the lack of unicorns in the world. She decides to go on a quest to find them all. Along the way she is captured by Mommy Fortuna, a witch with a traveling side show of mythical beasts. But almost all the beasts are not really mythical. They are ordinary animals with magic spells on them to make them look different. Only the unicorn and the harpy are real.

The unicorn is freed by a Schmendrick (Alan Arkin), a small time magician. The unicorn learns that King Haggard has had his red bull capture all of the unicorns and that she is the last of her kind. Some more stuff happens along the way before she is finally confronted by the red bull. Schmendrick turns her into a woman so the red bull will leave her alone. Once a woman (her human name is Lady Amalthea), the King's son, Prince Lir, falls in love with her.



Anyway, she ends up defeating the red bull, saving her unicorn brethren, and turning back into a unicorn. So it's a really cool story. But they did it in a way that both kids and adults can enjoy. I find that characteristic with all great fantasy movies. I also find that all great fantasy movies were made before 1990, barring 3 exceptions. (I bet you can guess those). They really knew how to make classic movies back then.

The voice acting is great. I can't say a bad thing about it. I really loved Alan Arkin. He was my favorite actor in the movie. Mia Farrow, Christopher Lee, Jeff Bridges, and Tammy Grimes were all great as well.

I love this style of animation. It's like a cross between the animation from The Hobbit and Thundercats. And the sound track...well you really can't beat it. When you have America record your movie's music, there's no way it won't be kick ass.

There is something hard to describe about this movie and how it makes me feel, and many other's in the genre that came out around the same time. Being a child of the 80's, it brings back feelings from my childhood both good and bad. Mostly good. There are 3 other fantasy movies that do the same thing for me: Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and Legend. And like those 3 movies, this is one of the all time greatest fantasy movies. Top 10 for sure.

9 out of 10...I'm Alive!!!

Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies

I normally don't do this but here we go. My top 10 sci-fi movies baby! I didn't include horror sci-fi such as Alien. Or fantasy as in Lord of the Rings.

10. Donnie Darko - When you want to watch a movie over and over again to understand it, you know you're cooking with gas. Jake Gyllenhaal's best performance to date.

9. 12 Monkeys - Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt = rock solid. Another one of those movies that is hard to follow at first. Time travel can be hard on a person.

8. The Fifth Element - My favorite Bruce Willis movie. If I ever make a movie, Gary Oldman must be the villian.

7. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai - I'm sure I'm going to get some shit for this one. But come on, Peter Weller as a surgeon/scientist/rock star/samurai? You can't go wrong.

6. Highlander - Another one people might be questioning. I can't help but love it. Sword fighting immortals fighting to Queen music for the ultimate prize.

5. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan - Even numbered Trek movies don't suck...and this is the best of them. I actually love 2, 4, 5, and 6. But 2 carries the series on its shoulders.

4. Star Wars: A New Hope - The movie that revolutionized sci-fi. It set the standard for all things to come. But not the best in the franchise...

3. The Matrix - Again, another movie that revolutionized the genre. The original is the best. Should have never made the sequels.

2. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - I love it. The bad guys win and Han Solo's best lines are in this one:

Officer: Your taun taun will freeze before you reach the first marker.
Han: Then I'll see you in hell!

1. Bladerunner - Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Ridley Scott all on one track baby! Its atmosphere, its story, most of its acting, and the effects. The Final Cut is delightful. Everyone must own it. Resistance is futile.

Many point out one omission from this list: Jedi. I have a one word reply...Ewoks. Done.

Why didn't they turn on the light first?

Our trilogy finally comes to an end. We all new it would end with Ridley's best...Alien. What else is there to say but...In space, no one can hear you scream. In 1988, Nightmare on Elm Street got me interested in horror. But it was Alien, 5 years later, that got me hooked.

The story: A mining crew picks up a distress signal from a near uncharted planet. A few of the crew go down and check it out. They find a field of huge eggs. One opens and the infamous face-hugger attacks. From there, everything spirals out of control. The face-hugger implants an alien embryo into the hosts chest. At this point in the movie, we don't know that yet. The face-hugger is still attached to Kane's face with its fingers/legs wrapped around his head, its tail around his throat, and its vagina against his mouth. Seriously that opening of the face-hugger looks like a really messed up vagina. Anyway, it finally falls off his face and dies. He awakens dazed and with a mighty hunger. He's got to feed that baby alien you know. The next major scene is what Alien is known for. All the crew is eating their last meal before hyper-sleep and Kane gets some serious indigestion. This scene always reminds me of the parody from Spaceballs. "Water my ass, bring this guy some pepto bismal!" The Alien bursts out of his chest, escapes, and goes on a murdering rampage.

The Characters: Kane, the host. Dallas, the captain. Lambert, the annoying crybaby. Ash, the vicious android. Parker and Brett, a couple of lazy bums. And Ripley, the most ass kickingest lady in the universe. The last character, one of the best antagonists of all time, the Alien.

Really only 2 of these characters are worth talking about in depth: Riply and the Alien. In fact, those are really the only 2 characters that matter in all 4 of the Alien movies, everything else is secondary. The way Weaver plays Ripley is great, and she actually evolves the character through out the quadrilogy. But in this movie she likes to play everything by the book. The reason she survives is she uses common sense and is smarter than everyone else. It's actually very rare in horror movies. She is definitely the best heroine in any movie ever. Done.

Earlier I said the Alien is one of the best antagonists of all time. There are many reasons for this. It doesn't have any emotions, just the instinct to kill mercilessly and further it's species. It doesn't make mistakes, it doesn't discriminate. It's just an effecient killing machine. One aspesct I always thought that made it even better was its growth rate. It went from tiny, adorable alien pal, to furocious killer in a few hours. I've never understood how though. Does it eat a lot? Actually, what the hell does it eat. We never see it eat. I would guess that it could eat some of the people it kills but I'm not sure. And who doesn't love that little mouth that comes out of it's big mouth. How awesome is that!?!? The Alien design is just amazing. Of course anything HR Giger makes is pretty damn cool.

One thing I recently read was a book full of interviews with David Cronenberg. He was talking about how people compare Alien to his movie Shivers. I've never heard or even thought of that. Sure, they both feature a little monster inside people. But the Alien bursts out of its host, killing that person. The Shivers' slugs stay inside their hosts controlling them (and making them really horny). So I understand the comparison to the foreign entity inside a human, but to me they are still extremely different movies. Cronenberg was a little bit arrogant about this comparison. He accused Ridley of stealing the idea from him. It kind of pissed me off at Cronenberg, and I love Cronenberg.

But one of the very best things about the movie Alien is its mood/atmosphere. This is RS's forte. It's tense, scary, and gloomy. What's not to love right? The combination of the atmosphere, the Alien, and Sigourney make this the best Ridley Scott movie ever and one of the top 5 horror/sci-fi movies of all time.

10 out of 10! Perfect!...Almost. Turn the damn lights on in a room before you search it for aliens or monsters!