2 Best Releases From BS11 Network

A project that director/co-writer Barry Levinson had been working on for over a decade before it emerged in theaters in 1992—at one point, it had been planned as his directorial debut before he turned to Diner (1982) instead—Toys offered viewers a mélange of holiday sentiment, strident anti-war satire and the sometimes-unholy combination of schmaltz and schtick that marked the typical Robin Williams performance of the time, all produced on a budget high enough to outstrip the GNP of actual countries. There's no reason on Earth to think that such a bizarre combination would have worked, and Toys' eventual critical and commercial failure would seemingly confirm that it didn't. And yet, while I concede that the film as a whole is a mess—it is an undeniably intriguing mess with just enough moments of genuine brilliance to help get through the rougher and clumsier passages, of which there are more than a few.  Continue Reading →

Although his name and efforts are often diminished or ignored by many histories of 1970s American cinema, Ralph Bakshi was one of the most audacious filmmakers of the era. Not only did his films tackle issues regarding race, sex, and class in graphic and sometimes profane ways, he did so within the framework of feature animation—a format that many, particularly in the U.S., equated almost entirely with family entertainment.   Continue Reading →