Movies

The Hateful Eight Review

/ skoce / 1 Comment

th8

The Hateful Eight might be one of the meanest, darkest movies I’ve ever watched. Still, I would also call it one of the most enjoyable. Despite its overwhelming bleakness it is never difficult to watch. The Hateful Eight has a running time of very close to three hours, but you never feel a moment of that running time. The film is mesmerizing, disgusting and utterly entrancing.

Tarantino masterfully builds the bleakness of this film into every part. Starting with the beautiful landscape shots, showing snow covered mountains and forests barren of life, other than the stagecoach carrying some of movie’s travelers. The snow covers all life; nothing in this mountain wilderness is alive. Into this world is where our characters enter, with Samuel L Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren appears as if from nowhere, blocking the way of a stagecoach carrying bounty hunter John Ruth and his bounty Daisy. They are soon joined by another lost traveler, supposed Sheriff Chris Mannix. The four of them travel for some time, treating viewers to one of Tarantino’s trademark conversation scenes. Each one of these characters is horrible in their own way. Mannix is a former confederate raider, a man with who feels no shame about his racism. Daisy shows herself to be simply vile, being as awful as possible at every opportunity. The apparent heroes of the piece, Ruth and Warren, are only marginally better. Ruth quickly proves himself to be both violent and a fool. Warren is accused by Mannix of brutalities during the war, acts not confined to his enemies and he doesn’t even bother to deny the accusations. None of these are good people.

When they reach their stopping point, a small respite named Minnie’s Haberdashery; the other four appear, other travelers waiting out the coming blizzard but not the people they were expecting. Warren is suspicious and Ruth suspects at least one of them is there to free Daisy. This is when the film switches to it true story, which is a murder mystery with eight (it actually isn’t eight, I can’t think of a way to count those in the cabin that doesn’t equal nine) terrible people trapped in the same place, all distrustful of the others, each with secrets. They are violent people trapped in close proximity until violence erupts.

And things do get violent. As secrets are uncovered and violence is done, each character ends up looking worse and worse. Warren might be on the side of good, but his methods are anything but. He is the hero, but still manages to gloat over how much he loves to kill white people. Ruth may be admirable in many ways, but he is still a fool that when enraged beats a captive woman bloody. Daisy is awful enough that the audience cheered her beating. Still, by the end there is almost a bit of hope among all the blood and death. There is common ground found between two very different men. It maybe doesn’t matter, it isn’t likely to change their fate, but it is something.

Watching a Tarantino movie is something like seeing Rembrandt do superhero comics. It is an unquestioned master working in a medium that gets little respect. Tarantino can set a scene and build tension like no one else, but he works exclusively in the lowest, most pulpy of genres. I wouldn’t want him to change for anything. He gets great performance out of great actors; there really isn’t a weak link among them, though the best are Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue and Walton Goggins as Mannix. Who is to say that spaghetti westerns or martial arts revenge movies aren’t deserving of true masterpieces. That is what The Hateful Eight, like Django Unchained and Inglorious Basterds before it, is: a masterpiece.

*****

What I Watched in December 2015

/ skoce / Leave a comment

Movies

  • The Master – This is a case of a movie that is clearly excellent, but somehow I didn’t end up liking it.  Part of that is due to how good some of the performances are.  Joaquin Phoenix does an outstanding job, but his character is too convincing at being off-putting and uncomfortable.  He is hard to watch.  He is also the center of this film, Hoffman’s turn as the titular Master notwithstanding.  Having a character that makes everyone, the viewer included uncomfortable makes for a hard movie to watch. ****
  • Forgetting Sarah Marshall – This wasn’t anything outstanding, but it was a funny movie full of generally funny people.  I just think it hovered between trying to have some kind of real heart and being really funny, without committing fully to either idea.  The result is pleasantly enjoyable, but not outstanding.  ***
  • Punch Drunk Love – I started to watch The Ridiculous 6, but after a few excruciating minutes I switched over to this. I doubt any would call this Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film, but it is likely Sandler’s.  He plays a business owner, henpecked by his numerous elder sisters who occasionally have violent outbursts.  He meets a woman, finds a harmonium and makes a call to a phone sex line.  While his relationship with the woman deepens, he has to deal with blackmail attempts. It is a strange, off kilter romance that is highly enjoyable.  ****
  • In the Heart of the Sea – see review here.  **1/2
  • Star Wars: The Force Awakens – see review here.  ****1/2
  • Kill Me Three Times – This movie really wants to be some kind of Tarantino, or at least Guy Ritchie, crime movie, but it just isn’t that good.  That is not to say there is nothing to like in what is mostly a limp, mean effort.  Simon Pegg is clearly having a lot of fun playing the villain and the way everything twists around to everything together. Still, too much of it is just poorly explained.  It isn’t a good movie, but there is some enjoyment to be gleaned from it. **1/2
  • Mission Impossible Rogue Nation – Just as good on DVD as it was this summer.  It is certainly better than the limp Bond offering from this year. ****
  • Whisper of the Heart – A Ghibli movie that had slipped by me until my brother got it for Christmas.  This movie is amazing, a perfect expression of the yearning and dreams of childhood.  One of Ghibli’s best, and that is saying something.  *****
  • High Road to China – This is something of a bone thrown to Selleck after he was forced to pass on Raiders of the Lost Arc, and while it does have some superficial similarities to Indy’s first outing, it is something else entirely.  While it is an adventure movie, it is not much of an action movie.  It does feature some great biplane action, I guess.  I think it is telling that at the end it is not Selleck’s O’Malley that gets the triumph, but his love interest.  Still, it is a fine, unfairly forgotten film. ***1/2
  • Quigley Down Under – Tom Selleck plays a cowboy in Australia, first hired then hunted by Alan Rickman’s villain.  It is a well-done western that somewhat updates the formula, if only by setting it in Australia rather than actually in the west.  Rickman’s villain is a conscious lover of the west, but Quigley shows him that all his aping of cowboys doesn’t make him one.  It also allows the main character to call out the racism of the west without actually doing so.  It is not a great movie, but I would definitely call it a good one. ***1/2
  • Electric Boogaloo – I was not super knowledgeable about Cannon Films going in, but this documentary was great.  It perfectly shows what made them interesting even if it didn’t make their movies any good. They churn out schlock, desperate to make it in Hollywood.  Their occasional hits seem to be more the result of just how much they throw against the wall than any sort of plan, but they did have them.  Still, I think the film world was better off with them churning out schlock than without them.    ****

TV

  • Daredevil – As with Jessica Jones, there is a sense of diminishing returns with Daredevil.  There is a lot of really good show here, but I can’t help but think it would be better if it was ten episodes instead of thirteen.  I’m not sure Daredevil really uses its running time wisely, since despite all the buildup they had for the Kingpin, he falls rather easily.  The second half never touches the heights of the beginning, but it is never really bad.
  • Poirot S3 & 4 – I really like this show, even though it can be slow and dry.  They are well done adaptations of Christie’s stories, with little frills or flash.  Suchet does a great job as Poirot, and most of these are really good stories.  Solid is, I guess, the best way to describe this show.
  • Fargo S2 – This is the best show on Television, even with its all too frequent references to Coen Brothers films, not just Fargo.  This season jumps back to the early eighties, and has a hapless couple accidentally pitting a local crime family against a big one from KC.  It nails pretty much every character and story beat perfectly.  The show is just great.
  • Supergirl – There are still flashes of greatness here, especially Melissa Benoist in the lead role, but it still hasn’t managed to pull all of its various characters and setting into a cohesive whole.  It is getting closer, though, and the good has always outweighed the bad.  Hopefully the second half of the season brings it all together.
  • Flash & Arrow – I’m putting these two together because the big episodes for each in December were the crossover episodes.  And man, what a crossover that was.  The Flash still manages to delight at every turn, and Arrow has been much better this season that last.  I’m not sure how much I like Hawkman and Hawkgirl, but still, seeing both gangs together to fight Vandal Savage was great.

In the Heart of the Sea

/ skoce / 1 Comment

heart-sea-movie-poster

In a lot of ways, In the Heart of the Sea is a well-made, but it also sprawls in too many directions for any of it to really land.  The underlying quality of the craftsmanship still makes it thoroughly enjoyable, but it doesn’t quite stack up with Ron Howard’s better films.

In the Heart of the Sea starts with Herman Melville visiting the only remaining survivor of the Essex, a whaling ship that was lost in the Pacific Ocean.  That survivor, cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, then recounts the story of the Essex’s last fateful voyage.  It starts with Owen Chase, played by Chris Hemsworth, being passed over for a promised promotion to Captain for the son from an well-known whaling family.  That starts a rivalry for the more experiences Chase having to answer to the inexperienced and haughty captain.  The movie spends a lot of time setting up the two as rivals, and positions Chase as the man for viewers to root for, but as the movie goes on the whole rivalry angle is kind of lost.

Their voyage is not successful, starting with a near disaster with a storm and then months without seeing a whale.  The lack of success makes them desperate, so they venture into distant waters to find the whales and tragedy strikes.  A rogue whale rams the Essex, sinking it and leaving the crew on the whaling boats 2000 miles from land.  Now the movie shifts from to a survival tale.

Both halves of the movie are effective, but they don’t quite fit together cohesively.  For instance, when they land on a small island, which does not contain enough food or water to support them, Chase and second mate Matthew Joy reveal that they are close as brothers and he tearfully leaves him behind.  While they had showed some familiarity in the earlier parts of the film, that closeness was never mentioned until that point.  These sorts of little hiccups are all over the movie.

As an aside, I looked up the story of the Essex after seeing this movie, and I am confused about why some things were changed.  The basics are still the same, and I understand some changes to the family stuff back on shore, but other changes, which I won’t detail, are simply not as good as the truth.  I okay with some dramatic license, but why change things in a way that makes it less interesting?

Where the film succeeds is in its imagery.  This is a beautiful film.  Every shot is gorgeous.  The ship and its cramped inner working looks amazing. Then there are the incomparable shots of the Essex on the sea, with contrast between the sky and the murky depths of the ocean. It just looks amazing. There are also some very good performances by the cast, with Cillian Murphy being the obvious stand out.  To the film’s credit, it eventually gives a nuanced look at the power dynamics between the two leads.  Less successful are the cutaways to Melville and the elderly Nickerson, which seem only to detract from the parts people actually want to see.

In the Heart of the Sea is a good story told somewhat badly, but shot wonderfully.  Despite its subject matter, it is an easy movie to watch.  The sailing shots alone make this movie worth watching.  The rest isn’t really bad, but it feels like a lot of different stories haphazardly strapped together.  When things do come together, like in the whaling scenes, it is wonderful, but other times is just sort of muddles through. Still, it is worth watching.

**1/2

Jupiter Ascending

/ skoce / 3 Comments

ja

Like the disappointing Seventh Son, Jupiter Ascending looked like it could have been just the sort of movie I love: cheesy, fun impossible adventure. It seemed to fit right into the mold of beloved (at least by me) films like Star Wars, Flash Gordon and John Carter. In some ways it is. In the moments when Jupiter Ascending shines it does so with a brilliance that is hard to match. No idea seems to have been excised. Space battles, palaces on gas giants, immortal humans and genetic farms; everything is thrown in in a jumble. It makes for a movie that is occasionally beautiful, occasionally terrific and almost always a little muddled.

While the Wachowski’s certainly deserve their reputation for making stylish movies with deeper themes than your average blockbuster, I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed more than one of their films before this. I liked the original Matrix; it is amazing. However, its sequels, Reloaded and Rejected Revolutions, left me cold. Hell, not just cold, angry. They are among the worst movies I’ve ever paid money to see in a theater. After V for Vendetta was simply not for me I kind of checked out on them. (I really should see both Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer at some point) Still, even in the movies I didn’t like their actions scenes were entertaining and coherent. Plus, that engaging style had clearly not abandoned them. Despite my misgivings, I was plenty excited for Jupiter Ascending. It just looked so weird, so out there that couldn’t help but be intrigued.

In many ways it lives up to that. It follows poor Russian immigrant Jupiter Jones who finds out that she shares her genetic code with a Space Queen of some sort and finds herself entangled with the murderous heirs of a space empire and protected only by Kaine, a former soldier with some dog DNA spliced in with his. She must navigate complicated family drama and figure out how to save Earth, which it turns out is little more than a gene farm.

The action scenes are great, kinetic but also highly readable. The numerous weird and wonderful things put on the screen are beautiful, reminiscent of Star Wars in their variety and imaginativeness. Channing Tatum’s Kaine is an excellent hero, and Sean Bean is fun as the conflicted Stinger. The highlight is Eddie Redmayne as the villain Balem, who seems almost perpetually overcome with ennui, except for when he bursts out with uncontrollable rage. He makes for an enjoyably hateable villain. Mila Kunis, while adding almost nothing to the action parts, is largely enjoyable as Jupiter, who despite being the focus of the plot is shockingly passive. Like the viewer, she is given no clue as to what is really going on and spends her time listening to other people explain things or being saved by Kaine. I really did by the romance between those two characters, but otherwise she is given little to do.

Really, that lack of explanation is the real flaw here. Some details are eventually eked out, but for most of the movies runtime what exactly is going on is hidden from the viewer. Titus, one of the fighting Abraxas siblings, apparently plans to marry then murder Jupiter. Why is never made a particularly clear. Exactly how power family Abraxas is is never made clear. How the government of this space empire is set up is not clear. Nothing, outside of the two brothers wanting Jupiter dead because she is messing up their inheritance is made clear. While the everything else is beautiful in its excess, the plot lacks the clear through line of something like Flash Gordon or Star Wars. It doesn’t help that movie spends a lot of time on asides that don’t seem to add anything at all. There is a Gilliam-esque scene dealing with space bureaucracy that, while amusing, seems to be from another movie entirely.

As unfortunate as some of Jupiter Ascending’s missteps are, though, I can’t bring myself to dislike it. Seeing Tatum fight a space dragon while flying around on rocket boots is just too entertaining. Or watching Redmayne pulled along on a chariot with a living woman’s torso for a masthead. Or seeing Mila Kunis fall from so many high places, only to be saved at the last minute. It is highly entertaining, but the plot is way too overstuffed to be called genuinely good. Jupiter Ascending is full of great ideas, but they do not come together to form a cohesive whole.

**1/2

Seventh Son Review

/ skoce / 1 Comment

7smp

I grew up on fantasy movies. Movies like Legend, Willow, Conan the Barbarian or The Princess Bride. Not all of them are great, or even good movies, but I loved them all the same. Swords and sorcery was my jam. When I see something like Seventh Son in theaters, something that appears to be something of a throwback, I can’t help but get a little excited. Even though I had no expectation that Seventh Son would be a good movie, I did hope it would be a fun one. Even that hope was dashed. Seventh Son hovers uncomfortable between misplaced gravitas and campy fun. Its humorlessness and weightlessness dim its slight charms. Still, just enough fun shines through that I can’t be disappointed to have seen it.

The movie opens with Sir Gregory trapping a woman, Mother Malkin the witch, down a hole, then her escaping when the moon turns red. When Gregory, the Spook, a man who hunts witches and other such beings, loses his apprentice in another confrontation with her, he must seek out another one. Since only the seventh son of a seventh son can become a Spook, his options are limited. And he must train this new apprentice fast, since if they can’t defeat Mother Malkin before the Blood Moon is full then she will conquer the land. It should be a simple quest, but it gets rather muddled.

The sole reason to watch this film is Jeff Bridges. His Sir Gregory manages to be both off putting and charming, some ungodly mix of Gandalf and The Dude that sounds like Sean Connery. He drinks and struts and quips his way through every scene, while leading man Ben Barnes’ Tom takes everything so seriously. Really, his over serious romance with the ambiguously allied Alice is the unbeating heart at the center of this movie. Julianne Moore comes close to matching Bridges weird energy, but her underbaked but interestingly designed allies don’t have much to work with.

The real problem with Seventh Son is that no matter what fantastic thing is happening on screen, it manages to make it feel dull. One can becomes deadened to CGI effects, but Seventh Son’s are more than fine. But the fight scenes lack rhythm and weight. They just sort of happen. When a fight scene bogs down, then a convenient cliff is found for everyone to leap or fall off of, though this rarely results in any great harm. Moments that should be full of emotion are instead completely devoid of it. When a character’s loved one dies, you expect an emotional reaction, not just a cold acceptance of the fact of their death. Discovering a betrayal results in a few seconds of confusion. Somehow it makes an aerial battle between two dragons boring.

The film also lacks a comprehensible sense of geography. The bulk of the action takes place in misty green mountains, on the rocky crags and mirrored lakes. But they visit a city that is emebeded into the wall of a desert mesa. Yet this city seems to somehow be the one closest to the rest of the action. They ride horse a lot, but never seen to actually go anywhere. There is no progression to their travels.

Despite all the problems, Bridges almost carries Seventh Son to being worth watching. He clashes with everyone else in the movie, save Moore, but his take is much more entertaining than theirs. If his oddball charm had been complimented by something, anything exciting then I think I could recommend this as a piece of entertaining trash, something like Dragonheart’s enjoyable badness. There just isn’t enough joy to be had here. It squanders whatever charms it might have had and results in a movie that, while not as brain dead stupid as many blockbusters, is unfortunately dull.

**

American Sniper Review

/ skoce / 1 Comment

308555id1i_TheJudge_FinalRated_27x40_1Sheet.indd

Clint Eastwood has possibly his biggest hit as a director with American Sniper, though its quality is of much debate.  After seeing it, I find the debate around it baffling and full of what must be deliberate misunderstanding of the content of the film.  American Sniper is not Eastwood’s best, it is flawed but still provoking.  It shows that Eastwood is still great at what Eastwood does, which is still that kind of old west masculinity and its cost.

American Sniper is a character study, all about Chris Kyle and what made him who he was.  It is a film about a man who feels forced to terrible things to protect the people he loves.  He is not interested in examining the truth of that belief; to him it merely is.  His motivations are illustrated but not questioned.  Chris Kyle is not in the least bit introspective; he is not about to reevaluate his choices.  His at least somewhat broken moral code was drilled into him since he was a child from his father, who reduces people to sheep, wolves and sheep dogs and tells is son not to start fights, but to finish them.  Chris is so caught up in this that he feels he has to keep going back to Iraq to finish the fight.  No matter the toll it takes on him or the people he loves, he must continue to do what he does.  Even when present with out and out proof of problems, he can only ignore them.  His brother comes back from the war disgusted he can only stand in confusion.  Chris Kyle (just to be clear this is the movie character not the person, they are distinct) can only push away everything that does fit into his worldview.

American Sniper is told along two threads.  There is the war movie, with Chris in Iraq hunting down a fictional al-Qaida enforcer known as The Butcher while constantly running afoul of an enemy sniper known as Mustafa.  The heart of the movie, though, are the scenes at home, as Chris tries to reacclimatize himself to being home.  The war parts range from deeply affecting to somewhat hokey.  They can be highly effective, moments such as those when Chris is staring through his scope at questionable targets, like women and children, are impossible to look away from.  Near the end he ends up in a firefight during a sandstorm, which despite the complete lack of visibility was clearly shot and legible. It is really just a masterwork of effective direction.  On the opposite end of the spectrum is the comically overdone shot when he finally gets a bead on Mustafa. What before had attempted realism switches to a slow motion shot of the bullet as it streaks from Chris’ gun.  It looks ridiculous and simply destroys the film’s illusion of reality.

Back home, Chris deals with his wife and family.   While he will not admit to any post-traumatic stress, its effects on him are easily apparent.  Like with the war scenes, the great shots are interspersed with the terrible ones.  Chris driving his wife to the doctor shot as a chase scene is a highlight, or Chris’ encounter with a man he saved as he stares uncomfortably anywhere but at the other soldier. His wife is desperate to understand him, but he is so caught up in his role as protector that he isn’t really a part of his family.  Then there are the shots of him holding the obviously fake baby that is supposed to be his child. The times when the movie is bad are so bad I don’t understand how they are in the same film as the great shots.

Despite the inherit propaganda of the title “American Sniper” I find the explosive discussion of this film as pro war propaganda to be slightly ludicrous.  I don’t see how someone leaves the theater thinking this film was pro-war, let alone that it exists just to push that agenda.  American Sniper is not interested in the morality of the war in Iraq, or America’s justification for being there or its effects on the Iraqis; it is merely about Chris Kyle.  All else is ignored.  But it does not show work to be anything other than horrific, leaving the participants dead or broken, either physically or mentally. The war that American Sniper shows is harrowing, regardless of whether that war is just or not.  The only part of the movie that comes close to propaganda is the very end.  That part is so blatantly manipulative that it makes the movie worse for its existence.  That is much like the rest of the movie.  A mix of good and bad, where the sum total of the good vastly outweighs the bad, but the bad is so bad you can’t ignore it.

****1/2

Rating the Disney Canon Part 2 (of 5)

/ skoce / Leave a comment

Time for the second part of my take on the Disney Animated Canon.  But first I’d like to take a little detour and discuss my ten favorite Disney heroes. Just the fellows today, tomorrow I will have my list of heroines. So I’m going to list the characters, the movie they are from and a quick little bit about why I like them.

10: Milo Atlantis The Lost Empire  He is a different sort of hero, a man who gets by with his brains rather than brawn.  Plus, Michael J Fox voices him perfectly.

9: Prince Philip Sleeping Beauty I’ll be honest, he’s mostly on here for that fight with Dragon Maleficent.  That scene is great.

8: Basil The Great Mouse Detective Yes, he’s just Sherlock Holmes as a mouse, but Sherlock Holmes is awesome.

7: Wart The Sword in the Stone  He is mostly just learning at the feet of Merlin, but there is something completely endearing about his unending eagerness.

6: Tarzan Tarzan He wrestles a leopard.  Do I need to say more?

5: Robin Hood Robin Hood He is possibly the best take on this character to ever appear in a film, apologies to Errol Flynn and Cary Elwes.

4: Ralph Wreck it Ralph  His search for recognition and how to be a hero is one of the best arcs in a Disney film.

3: Hercules Hercules  He is the greatest hero ever created. Disney’s version is pretty great.

2: Simba The Lion King Cat Hamlet’s journey from a somewhat selfish kid to a worthy king is a good one.

1: Aladdin Aladdin He’s really just the best. He’s as dashing as Robin Hood, but with a better character arc.  He’s charming and easy to root for, but also flawed.  Just a great character.

This list skews heavily to established heroes that have a Disney version.  I guess Disney does better with villains than it does with heroes.  Actually, many of their character’s share the protagonist role and kind of get lost in the ensemble.  Some, like Beast, are good characters to watch but not really good people. He’s not the protagonist and he’s definitely not a hero.

On with the countdown. Continue reading →

Rating the Disney Animated Canon, Part 1 (of 5)

/ skoce / 7 Comments

So a couple of weeks ago, flush with time if not with sense, I got the bright idea to watch all of the Disney animated films.  The real ones, not including any of the crappy sequels that no one wanted or liked; I’m not stupid.  My plan was to rank them, with some thoughts on each one.  I figured that I could get a week’s worth of blog posts out of it.  First I checked my usual movie places:Netflix, my Mom’s DVD collection, my brother’s family’s DVDs (he’s got young children), my copy of Wreck-it-Ralph, to see what I had access to. It turns out that nearly the whole of the Disney Canon was right at my fingertips.

There were some films I couldn’t watch. The war films, the package films, whatever you want to call them I didn’t have them and didn’t know anyone who did.  So I decided to skip them.  Maybe I missed out on some of the best that Disney has to offer, but their reputation suggests that I didn’t.  Of course, as I found while watching these, sometimes the general consensus on these movies is just flat wrong.  So I didn’t watch Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time or The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.  I also haven’t yet seen Frozen. That should be rectified shortly.  I figure I’ll just slot it in where it goes, assuming its as good as everyone says.

Today, I will be starting with the bottom of this 46 (or 47 pending Frozen) film list, the bottom 10 Disney movies.  This will be the only entry that has movies that I consider outright bad on it.  For the most part these are all really good films.  Let’s begin.

46: Chicken Little.   I have difficulty expressing in words just how much I disliked this movie. It is bad in every conceivable way.  It looks terrible.  It’s not funny.  It isn’t entertaining at all.  I can’t think of one redeeming feature of this movie. It is wretched.  I don’t think I’ve seen a movie with less appealing characters.  They are all ugly as sin.  I’m done talking about this movie.  I hate it.

45: Home on the Range.  This is a movie I probably should have watched again, as I last saw it in the theater as a “reward” for doing well on my end of year tests in High School.  But there is nothing in my memory that suggests that this movie is worth revisiting.  It is just kind of a mess.  Like Chicken Little, it is another failed comedy that is just not funny.  I don’t remember it being anywhere near as ugly as Chicken Little, though.

44: The Rescuers.  This is the first entry that is I’ve got significantly different that most.  I don’t like the Rescuers.  It is just unbearably dull.   The mouse heroes are vaguely interesting, but not enough to prop up the rest of the film.  The little kidnapped girl is a void. The villain is a bad retread of Cruella de Vil. Also, there aren’t any worthwhile songs.  It is just a slog of a film.

43: Dinosaur.  This is a movie made to show off their new 3D technology, but thirteen years later it doesn’t hold up.  Too bad they didn’t put much of a story in there to back up the visuals.  Other than some unnecessary and unfunny lemurs, there is nothing really bad about the plot and characters, its just bog standard stuff.  It is the same basic story as The Land Before Time, only not quite as good.

42: Pocahontas.  Apparently I’m not the only one that thinks this move is terrible.  Unlike the previous entries on the list, this is at least well animated.  But the story is wretched.  It is preachy, but still manages to work in some magical natives.  It has mostly forgettable songs, though the good ones are standouts, and some terrible comic relief characters.  This movie seems to exist as an attempt to smother the Renaissance in its crib.

41: Meet the Robinsons.  While not a good movie, Robinsons is a drastic step up from their previous 3D attempt (see the top of the list).  It looks fine, occasionally good, and there is glimmer of something fun in the story.  It is still quite messy at times, though.  It is heavily flawed, but often entertaining.

40:  Oliver and Company.  Were it not for the Billy Joel sung “Why should I worry?”, this would probably drop three or four spots on this list.  It is a compromised take on Oliver Twist starring animals.  Like the real Oliver Twist, the main character is mostly a spectator in his own story, only here the other characters can’t pick up the slack.  This does seem like a dry run for the ideas that made the Renaissance successful, but its not quite up there.

39: The Aristocats.  There are some mildly amusing bits her with Tom O’Malley the alley cat, but otherwise this is just a lesser version of 101 Dalmatians.  The songs are also quite catchy, but that still doesn’t distract from the fact that the villain’s plan is stupid and Disney already did this story better.

38: Cinderella.  I know this is one of the widely considered classics from Disney, I don’t care.  It is a turd.  Cinderella gets little to do in the movie, it is mostly about some intolerable animals and their sub-Looney Tunes (note: I have no problems with Looney Tunes, but what happens here is no where near that good, though it has a similar tone) quality hijinks.  Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is a fine musical number, but the rest I didn’t care for.  This is the weakest of the films that Walt Disney himself worked on. Even for a Disney brand fairy tale, the story is regrettable pap.  Cinderella does little for herself and pins her hopes on the idea that the Prince will save her.  At least most of the other Disney Princess have something else going for them.

37: Brother Bear:  This is a much better film than Pocahontas, at least. Actually, there are quite a few things I liked about this movie. The most notable is the aspect and tone switch after Kenai turns into a bear.  It is a cool little switch.  But there just wasn’t enough going on to move this one up higher in the line.  Were it not for Home on the Range, this would have made a suitable send off for Disney’s traditionally animated features.


That’s it for today.  Tomorrow I should have the next ten ready to go, though I don’t think there are any great surprises in that part of the list.

Muppets Most Wanted

/ skoce / Leave a comment

mmw

2011’s The Muppets was a welcome return for that delightful crew.  It was a joy just to see Kermit and the gang after such a long absence.  While I found that movie to be “reverent” of the Muppets, they really weren’t the stars of the movie.  Instead, the stars were Jason Segel, Amy Adams and new Muppet Walter.  The Muppets was a movie about the Muppets, not starring them.

Muppets Most Wanted is a movie starring the Muppets.  Non-Muppet characters are secondary, other than the villains.  This gives the individual Muppets more of a chance to shine, including some that got short shrift in the previous movie.  Here the Muppets and their idiosyncrasies are in the spotlight.  It makes for a stronger film, a funnier film.  Muppets Most Wanted is one of the best family comedies I’ve seen in a long time.

Fresh off their reunion on the last movie, the Muppets have to decide what to do with the show next.  The meet with an agent, Dominic Badguy (pronounced Bad-gee) who advises a European tour.  At the same time, Constantine, a highly dangerous frog escapes from a Russian Gulag.  While Kermit tries to book small venues and goad his compatriots into smaller, better know acts, at least while they are still getting their feet under themselves after a long hiatus, Dominic pushes for bigger venues and more elaborate shows.  In Germany, while taking a walk in the fog along a deserted canal at Dominic’s behest, Kermit is switched with Constantine.  He and Dominic are working together to steal the British Crown Jewels.  So the Muppets act quickly runs out of control without Kermit’s steadying influence.  Kermit ends up stuck in the gulag, matching wits with Tina Fey’s guard Nadya.  Eventually, Kermit is rescued and Constantine and Dominic are thwarted.

The humor comes from the Muppets usual mix of slapstick, puns and absurdity.  It is silly, but most of the material works.  Constantine’s difficulty with English and his lack of effort to try and act like Kermit are pretty constant source of amusement.  And there are songs, of course.  There is no song in this film to match “Man or Muppet” from the last movie, but overall the songs are better.

Muppets Most Wanted it a better example of what makes the Muppets great than 2011’s reverent but distant movie.  You get to see more of Gonzo’s weirdness and Miss Piggy’s vanity and Animal’s wildness.  The star, as usual, is Kermit.  He is the center that keeps the show going. Without Kermit the rest of the crew natural tendencies run wild, with the show becoming an overlong mess of absurdity and nearly killed guests.  Still, in the movie it gets great reviews from everyone but Statler and Waldorf.  Of course, those reviews turn out to be bought and paid for by Dominic. (Fozzie’s reaction to this revelation is gold. “Why didn’t we ever think of that?”)  Of course, by letting the characters run wild the viewer gets a better example of what makes each of them interesting.  I am still unsure if what I think of Walter.  He serves as a straight man, a position largely unneeded when Kermit is around.  He does have the outsiders perspective going for him, but the longer her is around the less that works.  So I guess I’m fine with his rather prominent role in this movie, but I hope he finds a niche or is scaled back in the future.

The Muppets was already a greatly enjoyable film and Muppets Most Wanted improves on it in many respects. In a time when even children’s entertainment tends toward the cynical, it is refreshing to encounter something as earnest as Muppets Most Wanted.  It is silly and straightforward and I love it for it.

Brick by Brick

/ skoce / Leave a comment

From Wikipedia

The Lego Movie shouldn’t work. The build it yourself toy is not really a product that cries for a movie version; it is the least necessary movie adaptation to come out of Hollywood, trumping even Battleship. Yet somehow, The Lego Movie manages to be pretty gosh darn entertaining. It fails to find any emotional center, but it is funny and brisk enough to make up for it.
The movie stars the completely average lego man Emmett, who after falling down a hole at the construction site where he works is assumed to be the “special,” a master builder prophesied to save Lego World from the evil President Lord Business. He is joined by the mysterious pink and blue haired Wyldstyle and the wise-ish sage Vitruvius as they try to thwart Lord Business’ plan to glue all the bricks of Lego World in place on Taco Tuesday. Eventually they are joined by a handful of Lego heroes, such as Batman and Benny the Astronaut. While Emmett is apparently the “special” his defining feature is being as average and nondescript as possible. He has bought wholeheartedly into President Business’s conformist propaganda and seems incapable of the original thought necessary to build anything. Being a children’s movie, the usual sort of lessons are learned, lessons about teamwork and being yourself. Aside from a brief flirtation with a concept somewhat interesting and original near the end, a something that also manages to kill all the narrative momentum, it plays out pretty much how one would expect.

While The Lego Movie isn’t groundbreaking, it is smart and well made. Its humor manages to amuse both kids and adults. Its throwing references upon references to all the various media franchises that have been turned into Lego tends to be the weakest part. Sometimes it works, mostly when the appearance is actually integrated into the movie. Batman plays a significant role as part of the good guys team. When they show up for a quick joke, like the brief appearance of some Star Wars characters, it jars the viewer out of the movie. Mostly, it is just characters acting silly, like the spirit of a deceased character making “spooky” ghost noises when he returns to impart some important information on Emmet. It never manages to rise above being very good, but it rarely falls much below that.
The best part of the film is how the whole world is constructed out of Lego. When Emmett showers, the water is clear Lego bricks. When something is on fire, it is Lego fire. The movie really sells it with a charming stop-motion aesthetic. While it never feels like a commercial for the toys, it acts perfectly as one. It is hard to watch this movie and not want to at least dig out the Lego you had as a kid and build something. The look probably goes the furthest in sparking that desire.

While I am still not convinced of the necessity of a Lego movie, The Lego Movie is better than anyone should have expected. Like playing with Lego, it is sometimes messy and cobbled together but is simply plain old fun.