THE VHS SHELF

Year: 1995  Director: Alfonso Cuarón Nostalgia Meter: 1.75/5 Most recent watch: Very long ago.  A Little Princess is a movie that I remember, but just barely. I happened to stumble across it on Netflix, and thought it'd be fun to rewatch something that I don't have much nostalgia for at all. So, what did I remember about A Little Princess ? Not much besides the plot being about a little girl and her dad and India (for some reason). While she's at a horrible boarding school, he goes to war and ends up blind. He forgets she exists, but somehow ends up remembering her and then they're reunited and happy.  At the time when I last saw A Little Princess , my knowledge of WWI probably went as far as knowing that it was the one without Nazis. It is no longer so mysterious that Sara's father goes blind and forgets her. I guess as a kid I thought he just went blind from stress or something. I didn't understand that it was from being exposed to mustard gas. I al

Year: 1995, Director: Simon Wells, Nostalgia Score: 3.5/5, Most Recent Watch: Probably sometime in the early 2000's. Fun Fact: According to Wikipedia , director Simon Wells is the great-grandson of H. G. Wells. Unlike the first three movies I watched for this project, I hadn't seen Balto since I was a kid. I did like the movie, and I watched it pretty often. I just haven't watched it since for whatever reason. Between Balto and the live-action movie Iron Will , I did have a brief interest in dog sledding which looked to me like a really badass adventure where you also got to hang out with dogs. Anyway, Balto still holds up as a children's film, but it didn't keep my attention the same way it did when I was younger. The animation is good and the plot is perfectly okay, but the story and characters seemed sort of flat. First off, there are a couple distinct things I remember about watching Balto as a kid. I was under the very firm impression that the

Year: 1982, Director: Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bass, Nostalgia Score: 5/5, Most recent watch: Several times as an adult. Best quote: "There are no happy endings because nothing ends." You know, for a movie with a G rating, The Last Unicorn covers some fairly adult themes, like mortality, regret, and trees with giant boobs. I've also seen this movie on several Internet lists with titles like, "10 Most Violent Children's Movies" and "15 Unintentionally Terrifying Kid's Films." And, honestly, it is pretty intense for something that's supposedly appropriate for toddlers. It also seems like the novel the movie is based on is not a children's or young adult book, as I had originally assumed. So, that may also go a ways towards explaining why it's so dark. To be sure, the list of potentially frightening or age inappropriate content in The Last Unicorn is pretty long, but I don't remember ever finding it upsetting wh

Year: 1986,   Director: Don Bluth,   Nostalgia Score: 4/5, Most Recent Watch: As an adult, but only a few times. Best Quote: "There are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese." There are an inexplicable number of kids' movies featuring talking mice and many of them are actually quite good. Off the top of my head, I can think of An American Tail , but also The Secret of NIMH and the two Rescuers movies. One at a time though. This week, I specifically watched An American Tail and, let me tell you, I had much difference experiences watching this movie as a child and as an adult. As a kid, all of the historical context went straight over my head and I never really got emotional while watching. As an adult, I'm much more aware of just how dark and sad some parts of this movie actually are. But no matter how much my perception of the story has changed, the beautiful animation has not. I remember liking An American Tail (and other movies fro

Year: 1982, Directors: Jim Henson & Frank Oz, Nostalgia Score: 5/5, Most Recent Watch: At least once a year, for as long as I can remember.  It's hard for me to express how much I love The Dark Crystal . It has been one of my favorite movies for as long as I can remember, and I think it's an absolute masterpiece. When I sit down and hear the opening musical score it immediately brings a smile to face. Admittedly, the plot and dialogue are nothing special, but I don't really think The Dark Crystal is about narrative anyway. It's about building and exploring another world. There's just so much creative talent packed into every little on-screen detail, it's mind-boggling. My primary emotion while watching this movie is utter delight, and if my memory serves me correctly, that was pretty much always the case. It's not just that everything looks cool. It's knowing that people intentionally designed and made all of these cool looking t