A pig goes to town and Dorothy goes back to Oz.
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We know your watching time is limited. And the amount of things available to watch … is not. Looking for a movie? Nearly any movie ever made? It's probably streaming somewhere. That's a lot of movies. |
Below, we're suggesting two of them, the latest of our weekly double-feature recommendations. We think the movies will pair well — with each other and with you. |
Your weekly double feature: Dark children's fantasies |
 | | The titular pig looks on in a scene from "Babe: Pig in the City."Mill Film/Universal City Studios |
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'Babe: Pig in the City' and 'Return to Oz' |
In 1995, audiences responded warmly to "Babe," a charming storybook fantasy about an orphaned piglet whose sweetness and naïveté wins over every living thing at an idyllic family farm — including Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell), who presents him as a champion sheepherding pig. When it came time to make the sequel, the film's producer and co-writer George Miller took over as director. The same George Miller who directed the "Mad Max" trilogy. He had different ideas about where to take the franchise. |
Leaving HBO Max at the end of August, Miller's "Babe: Pig in the City" (1998) shocked audiences at the time by departing the farm for the confusing, hostile Everycity, where Mrs. Hoggett (Magda Szubanski) hopes to cash in on Babe's sheepherding celebrity. Miller exploits his sweet hero's separation anxiety, first at the airport, when Mrs. Hoggett is interrogated by security, and later when Babe gets abducted by a clown (Mickey Rooney). Then there's the savage bull terrier who believes it his "official obligation" to give chase. The film's intensity is counterbalanced by its astonishingly beautiful urban landscape, however, and the trials Babe faces help underscore his courage and moral integrity. That'll do, pig. |
For high-octane nightmare fuel, however, nothing beats "Return to Oz" (1985), a bizarre and truly scarring follow-up to "The Wizard of Oz" that opens as Auntie Em takes Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) to an asylum for shock treatments. It gets more disturbing from there. When Dorothy and Toto make their way back to Oz, she is stunned to find the Emerald City in ruins, with her old friends turned to stone and the grounds patrolled by terrifying human-bicycle hybrids known as the Wheelers. In his first (and only) film as director, Walter Murch, the editor of films like "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse Now," stays close to the spirit of L. Frank Baum's Oz novels, which allowed for a darkness that 1980s audiences weren't used to experiencing. For the right kind of cult viewer, it's a trip. SCOTT TOBIAS |
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