Musical Movie Review; ****^Anastasia (1997)

This is one of my favorite animated musicals.   This film boasts an all star cast.  Meg Ryan portrays Anastasia, and Kirsten Dunst plays the girl Anastasia.  However they do not provide the singing parts.  Liz Callaway sings for Anastasia.  John Cusack and Kelsey Grammer plan the two who discover her.  Christopher Lloyd plays the evil Rasputin.  Bernadette Peters plays the grandmother's cohort, and Angela Lansbury the Queen mother, or Anastasia's grand mother.  I love the song "Once Upon a December."  "Journey to the Past" is also wonderful.  And the story of finding yourself, and then maybe that is not the thing you really want to do.  I think the Rasputin character may be over done.  He is always falling apart and putting himself back together, and it gets old after a time.

Movie Reviews:****The Journey of Natty Gann

****"The Journey of Natty Gann"   is one of our family's favorite movies, but I couldn't interest anyone else in watching it with me; so watched it alone.  It is an enjoyable movie, with the struggle of  the depression era, the railroad tramps and camps.  Natty's father takes a job, and leaves his daughter behind.  He had no choice, and works in a logging camp.  He returns for his daughter, but she has gone looking for him.  She is presumed dead.  The grief of the father thinking he had lost his daughter, and then the classic restoration at the end.  This movie launched the career of John Cusack as he portrayed a drifter that befriends Natty.  Meredith Salenger stars as Natty Gann and Ray Wise as her father.