I freely admit, I was pretty damn worried about this one for a while. Up until a couple weeks ago, I had only seen exactly ten animated movies from 2012, so my list was going to range from the brilliant to utter shit. Thankfully, I saw enough to push all the mediocre ones to the honorable mention list and the outright lousy ones (for the record, they were Madagascar 3 and Hotel Transylvania) into oblivion where they belong. If I do this again next year, I'll be including straight to video movies so I can pad the list with a bunch of superhero movies.
Honorable Mention: The Lorax, From Up On Poppy Hill, Ice Age: Continental Drift
10. The Pirates! Band of Misfits - The latest animated effort from Peter Lord (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run) is not his best work, let's get that on the table right now. What it is is a fairly pleasant story of one of the worst pirates in the world that is desperately trying to win big at the annual pirate awards. It's cheerful and fluffy, and while it doesn't match, say, Chicken Run or Curse of the Were Rabbit, neither of those came out this year so maybe shut up.
9. The Secret World of Arrietty - This was Disney's Studio Ghibli release this year (looking at my list, I see that there are no fewer than four Disney releases on it -- apparently they're a bit of a dominant force in my life), and it trades the wild fantasy style of Hayao Miyazaki's films for what feels more like a simple American 80s cartoon. That's not to say it's a bad movie by any means, it means that the story, about a miniature family of Borrowers living secretly in a human family's home, feels like the sort of film one might have gotten from Disney back in the pre-Little Mermaid days. Sometimes you need a film that doesn't have incredibly high stakes, and is willing to just be charming and fun.
8. Rise of the Guardians - This is the first of the big children's adventure stories to make the list, as Dreamworks gives us a tale of a young Jack Frost being initiated into the Guardians, a superhero group comprised of various modern mythical figures such as Santa Claus (called North here and given a Russian accent for reasons I can only guess at), the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman, as they try to protect the people of the world from the dark menace of Pitch (as in black) and his team of nightmares. It doesn't quite live up to the promise of that rather inspired premise (possibly due to it being based off of a novel), but it is an engaging effort, and much better than the average Dreamworks film.
7. Wreck-It Ralph - While this doesn't rank with their classics, I cannot express how happy I am that, after a decade of making largely mediocre or outright terrible movies (seriously, Chicken Little is the worst film they have ever made), Disney finally seems to have gotten back on track. This one showcases the lives of a group of videogame characters living in an arcade, and much like Brave, focuses on one (Wreck-it Ralph, obviously) who decides to go on a journey to change his fate. Much like actual arcades in the 90s, it gets a bit too bogged down towards the end with fighting and racing, but it's still a largely effective film.
6. Chico & Rita - This is a charming film about the music scene in late 1940s Cuba, and two young musicians who fall in love while trying to make it big. It's a mature, adult effort, and more smoothly animated than several of the bigger name efforts that came out last year. It's rare to see any film that deals as intelligently and honestly with relationships and Cuban/American hostilities as this film does. And yes, I'm well aware that IMDB says it came out originally in 2010, but since I don't live in L.A., Telluride, or Miami, 2012 was when I first had a chance to see it, so suck a dick.
5. The Rabbi's Cat - It's not going to be easy to explain why you should see this, but here goes: this is a French film about a rabbi and his daughter living in Algeria who find their cat has suddenly developed the ability to speak after eating the daughter's parrot. What makes the film so interesting is that, rather than engaging in any wacky animated adventures, the cat instead decides to spend his time debating religion with his owner, even demanding to be converted to Judaism like his master, only to horribly offend the rabbi and be chased away from the synagogue. It's a very laid-back, episodic film, content to meander around and wryly poke and prod at religious institutions (eventually the rabbi, the cat, an Islamic sheikh, a Russian Jew, and a Russian Orthodox Christian decide to go on an adventure into the depths of Africa, apparently because just venturing into a bar together would have been too obvious). It's not going to be a film for everyone, as it's rather slow-paced, and the animation style is rather, shall we say, unorthodox, and some will just be offended by its views on religion, but for those of you that wish to view a smart and funny film, check it out.
4. Brave - Brave doesn't really measure up to some of Pixar's greater achievements like Up or The Incredibles, but it's at least a noticeable step up from their prior effort Cars 2, and let's be honest, even a weak(er) Pixar film is better than most animated films out there. This one offers a bit of a twist on a classic Disney theme, as young Princess Merida finds she hates the idea of marrying a prince and settling down into a royal lifestyle, and so she goes off on a quest to find a way to change her fate. Being Pixar, it takes some strange twists and turns that I was not expecting, making it rather more interesting than the thematically similar Wreck-It Ralph. It should also be noted that this has far and away the best animation of any film this year, because Pixar is boss like that.
3. It's Such a Beautiful Day - I almost feel bad for acknowledging that an hour long cartoon with stick figures wound up being better than most of the more polished films by major studios, but this film (actually a carefully stitched together compilation of three previous shorts by Don Hertzfeldt) is so touching and funny I can't help myself. Hertzfeldt largely created the entire film by himself (a film editing credit for Brian Hamblin is the only sign that he didn't do absolutely everything) as we enjoy the life of Bill, a man who is trying to go through life after a series of strokes leaves his mind and body increasingly fractured. In that regard, it's a bit like the new Michael Haneke film Amour, except it's not a miserable slog through depression and misery.
2. Paranorman - I think everyone by now knows that I'm both an obsessive horror junkie and a complete man child, and as such I have an inordinate fondness for any children's horror movies, and when they just so happen to be as delightful as this one, well, that's just a bonus (this, by the way, is also why I was more upset than I normally would have been at how terrible Hotel transylvania was). I hope this becomes a more universally loved film, because quite frankly, if people are going to be promoting a movie that explains how it's wrong to judge someone for being different, wouldn't you rather it be a film about a boy who talks to ghosts and zombies and saves his town from a witch's curse than some cartoonish drivel like The Breakfast Club?
1. Frankenweenie - Tim Burton directed two films last year. One of them, Dark Shadows, is the worst movie he's made since Planet of the Apes, if not his worst outright. The other, Frankenweenie, is his best since Ed Wood. The story is so simple that I'm frankly a bit surprised I can't think of another example of it, particularly as it's based off of a short film Burton did for Disney back in the mid-80s: a young, present day Victor Frankenstein becomes distraught after the sudden death of his dog, and deals with it in the only way he knows how: by bringing his ass right back to life through mad science. I don't know that anyone who has ever lost a beloved pet won't be able to sympathize, or wish they had the ability to save their loved ones as he does here. Further, Burton's visual flair is particularly suited for animated films (with Corpse Bride being one of his only big directorial highlights of the past decade, I kind of wish he'd do them more often), and as an added bonus, we get the most delightful character find of 2012 in Professor Rzykruski. What more could one ask for?
Anyway, next up on deck is the best comedies of 2012. I actually had a wealth of comedies to choose from, to ensure a healthier list.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Top Ten Animated Films of 2012
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Megamind
So I should probably explain what the hell happened to the blog last week. Basically, I got a new job, and while I’m in training, I have to make a three hour round trip drive to my classes, because why wouldn’t they be on the other end of the state, plus a good hour or so of homework each day. Therefore, until the training is finished, this blog’s going to go from being updated five times a week to once a week. It’s only for the next couple weeks, though, so have no fear. Also, thank you to the guys at Red Letter Media, who seem to give me hundreds of new readers each and every time I mention them. Also, thank you to the makers of Megamind, for making a pretty darn good movie to start the week off right.
The film stars Will Ferrell as Megamind, a brilliant alien supervillain who has had a lifelong rivalry with his heroic counterpart Metro Man (Brad Pitt). After one of his fiendish deathtraps turns out to be unexpectedly successful, he finds himself ruler of Metro City, and has no idea what to do with himself. He finds himself falling for plucky reporter Roxanne Ritchie (Tina Fey), but realizing she’d never go for him as Megamind, disguises himself as a Clark Kent-looking reporter and gets himself in tight as her new partner so that he can better woo her. Of course, his continued villainy seems strangely empty without a hero to challenge himself against, and so he decides to take some shlub (Jonah Hill) and give him all of Metro Man’s powers (begging the question, of course, of why he never used that on himself back when he was regularly fighting Metro Man) to have a new hero to pit himself against. Of course, things turn horribly awry when Hill decides to use his new powers to conquer the city rather than save it, and now it’s up to Megamind and Roxanne to stop him.
This film, by director Tom McGrath (whose previous efforts in the Madagascar films were not half as good as this), is much funnier and more clever than the trailers had made it out to be. There’s a lot of great little bits of humor (such as Megamind crash landing on Earth as an infant in a Prison For the Criminally Gifted, and the warden evidently deciding that he should just remain a prisoner there for no discernable reason), and the voice talents are all wonderful (Ferrell is particularly delightful, and shows that maybe he should be allowed to occasionally play a role where he’s not a complete moron). The visual design isn’t quite on par with Tangled or How to Train Your Dragon, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that by this point every animated movie that comes out of Disney or Dreamworks is going to look pretty darn impressive and colorful.
Now, I know it’s been getting compared a lot with Despicable Me, as it’s one of those awkward coincidences where two movies with similar premises (in this case, an animated film where the protagonist is a super villain) come out within a few months of each other, but the two are fairly different beasts. I mean, granted, they’re both animated, they both star supervillains voiced by famous comedic actors (Steve Carrell in Despicable Me), they both have their villainous leads start to imagine changing their villainous ways due to love of another (Roxanne here, and the three little girls in Despicable), they both dramatically show their villainous leads transforming into heroes by way of having them fight it out with other villains (Jonah Hill as Titan here and Russell Brand as Dr. Nefario there), and they both inexplicably end with everyone dancing, but…seriously, is there some secret website that just comes up with like a half dozen basic templates each year that every movie then gets patterned off of here? It’s ponderous, is what it is.
Still, that’s not to say either one is bad, or even that they necessarily had anything to do with each other (in fact, I‘d say it‘s pretty damn unlikely they were in any way connected). Both are pretty great films, though I’d say this one is the superior film. It’s funnier, more emotionally and intellectually satisfying, and it’s filled with some nice rock music from the likes of AC/DC and Ozzy Osbourne. That Megamind’s got some good taste, yo.
Though, ugh, did they have to end the movie by having everyone dance to Michael Jackson?
Rating: *** ½
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tangled
After a good two weeks of trying, I finally managed to get to the theater to see the latest Disney movie (no, we still aren’t done with them, thank you), and it’s a damn good one. As I said in my Princess & the Frog review, Disney’s been doing great since Pixar took control of their animation department, and if this isn’t quite as good as that previous effort, it’s still a damned impressive outing.
This film actually took roughly a decade to be completed, as its main developer and initial director Glen Keane (who sadly didn’t get to see the film through to completion due to other engagements) had a grand vision for the visual scheme of the movie that the best technology Disney had at the time couldn’t achieve. He basically wanted the film to look like a moving, 3D painting (specifically Fragonard’s “The Swing”), and combine that with his firm belief that all Disney needed to do to reclaim their animation throne from Dreamworks was to get back to basics and tell a simple fairy tale. Well, by the time the film was finally finished, under the joint helm of Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, the idea of getting back to basics had already been co-opted by The Princess & the Frog, which also managed to be a slightly better movie, but this may still be the single most visually incredibly film Disney has ever made. It’s tough to say if Disney will feel that it’s been worth it financially: after such a long development time that was mostly spent on creating new technology, the film ended up costing a crazy $260 million (making it the second most expensive film ever made, behind only Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End at $300 million -- what the hell is up with the rampant spending, Disney?) , which is about how much the film has grossed worldwide so far, so it’s going to take some time on DVD before it can even make back its marketing budget, but at least now Disney has a completely incredible new visual capability that it can use for any of its future films. So I guess it’s all a matter of how many uses the company finds for all its new toys.
The film, for those who’ve managed to miss all the commercials, is based on the story of Rapunzel, and features a girl (Mandy Moore) with magical, ridiculously long hair that must never be cut, who is locked away in a tower deep within the woods by an evil witch (Donna Murphy) that has made Rapunzel believe she’s her mother, and is only keeping her there to help protect her from all the menaces of the outside world. Oh, and also to use her hair’s magical powers to keep restoring her youth, since she’s several hundred years old. Of course, as her 18th birthday approaches, she encounters a dashing young thief named Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi) who invades her tower while trying to hide from some soldiers, and winds up taking her away on a grand adventure, of the kind which her adoptive mother does not approve.
While the film does largely achieve its goal of being a more traditional Disney film (incredible visuals aside), it apparently wasn’t always going to be that way. From what I understand the first draft of the script was very much a product of Disney’s recent obsession with aping Dreamworks, and was filled to the brim with horrid pop culture references and juvenile humor. While these have thankfully mostly been excised from the film, faint traces can still be found, particularly in the opening narration by Flynn which made me more than a little nervous at the film’s start. Another issue I had is that, while there are songs constantly throughout the film (thanks to the musical talents of Alan Menken and the lyrical talents of Glenn Slater), they’re mostly pretty damn bland, with only a couple standouts (namely the two songs by Murphy, where she is just trying to terrify Rapunzel, and the big chorus number in the bar). I don’t really know that any of them will prove as memorable as numbers like “Almost There” or “Friends on the Other Side” from Princess and the Frog, which I don’t mean to keep bringing up, but since it’s the very last Disney film prior to this one, and they both feature brand new Disney princesses (since neither film has really done gangbusters in theaters, I’m going to assume Disney will be backing off from all the princess films for a while after this, though I suspect that in this case it‘s at least somewhat due to the rather ghastly trailer, which can be found below), so it’s kind of hard not to directly compare.
Still, I don’t mean to be so harsh on the film. It’s definitely the best animated film I’ve seen all year (with The Illusionist being the only major effort I haven’t watched yet), and if it loses out on Best Animated Film at the Oscars to something like Toy Story 3 or Shrek Forever After, I will be very surprised. It’s sweet, clever, funny, imaginative, it has an awesome horse, and may very well be the best visual feast you’ll find outside of Avatar. You need to check it out.
Rating: *** ½
Monday, December 20, 2010
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
After a brief hiatus from the Disney love fest (because as we all know, that’s what this blog does best), we return with the very first Disney movie ever made. Released in 1937, it’s a rather uneven affair, showing Walt Disney’s eagerness to push technological boundaries, how much room for improvement there still was in that regard for his future films, and how wildly disparate his attempts at stretching out a story to feature length could be.
Unlike a lot of Disney’s later efforts (including Pinocchio, his very next one), the film of Snow White managed to remain pretty close to the original fairy tale, with most of the story changes either toning down the violence of the original tale (no making the evil queen dance in red hot shoes in this one) or to add a whole lot of “comic” relief in the case of the dwarfs. We still get the standard tale of an evil queen, a magic mirror, the huntsman with a conscience (though strangely, while we still get a huntsman that lets her escape because he can’t bear to kill her, we don’t get the following scene where he kills a deer and cuts out its heart to present to the queen as Snow White’s), the seven dwarfs, the poisoned apple, and the kiss from Prince Charming. It’s almost like a prototype for what would later become the traditional Disney story rather than a finished effort, kept about as basic as Disney possibly could while maintaining an 80 minute running time. Part of that padding came in the form of the musical numbers sprinkled around the film, which were a carry-over from the animated shorts the company had been making up to this point, and which apparently warranted the creation of the first ever soundtrack available in stores. While yay for being such a pioneer, I’m not really certain the songs from this film were really good enough to justify that, with Heigh-Ho and Whistle While You Work being the only ones that are really memorable in any positive way (Bluddle-uddle-um-dum is also rather memorable, though mainly because it’s such a ghastly affair that I’d almost rather rewatch that South Park episode where they showed live footage of sex change surgery).
Technically, the film is both a wonder and an occasional annoyance. It was the first major feature film to be released in modern Technicolor, as well as being the first feature length animated movie in U.S. history, facts that helped make it the highest grossing film ever made to date (outdone a year later by Gone With the Wind), despite having cost so much money that most insiders had expected it to finish the company entirely. On the other hand, it also tried to save time and money by using a process called Rotoscoping, in which they would film live actors and paint the drawings over them, which is why Snow White and Prince Charming look so much more bland and lifeless than the purely animated dwarfs. Disney continued to use the process in limited form in some of his later films (most notably Cinderella), but it’s a process that I’ve found always makes the animation less imaginative than it should be, and is normally only utilized in really cheap efforts like Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. Not to harp on it, but it’s really about the quickest and easiest way to drain the fun out of an animated movie, and it does not help here in any way. And the animators of the film agreed with me, so nyah.
There’s also a pretty massive tonal disconnect between the pure comedy relief of the dwarfs and everything else in the film, which tends to alternate between pure joy at how beautiful and wonderful Snow White is to pure terror at how evil the Queen is. It’s not really a matter of the film blending together a number of different feels, because there is no blending to be had. It just shifts entirely from one to the other, roughly enough to give one whiplash. While each more-or-less works (though the dwarfs somewhat less so for me, as six of the seven seem to have been designed entirely for very young children and possibly mothers, with Grumpy being the only one that gets any kind of real personality), the jarring shifts do detract pretty substantially from the film.
While this was a landmark effort for both Disney and the film industry as a whole, it really doesn’t hold up particularly well today. The sheer basicness of it means that it remains a very generic effort, with as many flaws as benefits. If you have a young daughter, she may enjoy watching it with you (though given the choice she’d probably prefer watching the latest Pixar film), but I think this is mainly for the real Disney diehards and film buffs.
Rating: **
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Fantasia 2000
As much of a classic as the original Fantasia is now considered to be, I have to confess that I find Fantasia 2000 to be superior in virtually every way. There’s more variety to the musical selections, the animation is nicer, the intros to the various numbers are better, it has a shorter running time, and for those that missed it despite the original film being packaged with the sequel, they even included the Sorcerer’s Apprentice from the original in full. Sadly, no Night on Bald Mountain this time, but we play the cards we’re dealt.
Given that these films are vignettes rather than standard narratives, one could actually view this as a continuation of the first film instead of an actual sequel, particularly when one of the hosts mentions that Walt Disney’s initial vision for the original was that it would never be properly finished, but instead would be perpetually re-released with new material replacing some (though not all) of the previous release. Oddly, while I complained yesterday about the overall inconsistent quality of the original film, the quality of this sequel-or-possibly-continuation manages to be much more uniformly good, despite this one having no less than eight different directors, and despite it being less groundbreaking (apparently, to help improve the audience experience, Walt Disney decided to invent surround sound for the original, because that‘s just how he rolled).
Part of that increased quality, it must be said, comes from the improved music, and I’m pretty sure that can be attributed to the use of conductor James Levins and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra doing this film, instead of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, which did the original (aside, of course, from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment, which reuses the original film’s score). Another improvement is the decision to use different celebrity narrators to introduce each segment, rather than the lone narrator from the original (Deems Taylor) talking to us as though Disney had never even entertained the thought that anyone that wasn’t a child would be watching his film. While all of the narrators here give it their all, the obvious standouts here are Steve Martin, who cheerfully claims all credit for the orchestra’s musical ability, and Penn & Teller, who inject some much-needed dismemberment into this Disney film.
Once more they leave the opening segment fairly free form visually, giving us geometric shapes vaguely resembling butterflies flitting about to the tune of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, but the film quickly rebounds with a deft one-two punch containing Respighi’s Pines of Rome, featuring a family of humpback whales that decide to leave the ocean and go swimming around in the sky with the birds, and (easily the high mark of the film) Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, which was a wild, jazzy piano number set in 1930s New York.
The other two big highlights are the all too brief Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals bit, where a flamingo is totally hated on by his brethren for playing around with a yo-yo, and the closer, which gives us part of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite while showing us the trials of a wood sprite as she is attacked by the deadly Firebird as it exits a nearby volcano and lays waste to her forest. The Fantasia series is now batting 1.000 for closing the film out with their darkest number, a trend I am eager to see with Fantasia 2060. Because I plan on still being alive at age 80--err, at age 30 Again. Yes.
I think the 74 minute running time really helped this film, as it ensured that there wouldn’t be any of the padding that riddled the original. While I think that may have hurt the film somewhat at the box office (it made $60 million, not quite making back the $80 million production cost -- I guess these films are still ahead of their time), I doubt the film would have worked nearly as well if it had had the two hour running time its predecessor had. That said though, if they make these more of a regular event (and there is no reason at all to believe that, unfortunately -- I would personally love for this to become one of Disney’s key franchises), I certainly would like to see how they would manage doing a Fantasia based entirely around one long concerto or symphony, or perhaps two mid-length ones. This series, if not quite done perfectly (sorry Disney, but to me the perfect blend of animation and classical music pretty much always involves the likes of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck), is still a rather noble and brilliant use of the art form, and as much of a latecomer to these films as I am, I would love to see them continue further. Come on Disney, you make enough of a profit off of your other ventures, you can afford to lose money on one of these every decade, right?
Rating: *** ½
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Fantasia
Since I’ve been watching a lot of recent Disney efforts lately, I figured I’d head back in time a bit and watch Fantasia for the first time (also, my mom got it for me for my birthday). I’d been curious to see it for some time, as it’s generally considered the most experimental effort Walt Disney ever made, and seems to have been a very love-or-hate type of movie (though audiences in 1940 largely hated it enough that Disney almost went bankrupt). After all, making a two hour long film (to date, the longest animated Disney film) without any proper narrative, merely a series of vignettes that frequently have no semblance of a plot, but exist only in an attempt to marry Disney animation to famous classical music? Well, that does kind of sound like something I‘d want to see.
Unfortunately, its very nature does lend itself to being a pretty inconsistent effort. It gets off to a fairly rocky start, giving us what (in my opinion) is the greatest musical piece in the entire film, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, with fully free form animation -- mostly just vague splashes of color, though it eventually moves on to things like animated strings and bows playing the music. Really kind of disappointing. I know Disney was aiming at creating an entirely new type of art form here, but unfortunately part of taking risks means that you will occasionally fail.
The rest of the film has less flighty animation, giving us such vignettes as the rather charming Dance of the Sugar Plum Faeries during Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite (alright, perhaps it was a bad time to say these were less flighty immediately before praising a segment that’s about faeries literally flying around, but you know what I meant), a rather epic history of the Earth from its formation to the fall of the dinosaurs done to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (complete with a T. Rex totally taking down a stegosaurus), and of course, the famous Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment done to, errm, Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. My favorite, though (as anyone regular reader would have likely guessed) would be the bit with all the ghosts and demons near the end done to Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. It’s got a perfect marriage of one of the best songs in the film and easily the coolest visuals. Yes, because it’s filled with monsters.
Of course, I’m obviously listing all my favorite bits there. There’s quite a few, in this ponderous two hour running time, that don’t work as well. Not being the expert on classical music that I’d like to be, I’m not sure if it’s the particular selection of songs on display in the film, or if it’s more how conductor Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra performed them, but far too many of them sound so light and airy that they’re largely indistinguishable, and aren’t helped by animations that are frequently nothing more than cartoon characters dancing. The introductions to each sequence, by narrator Deems Taylor, also fell flat for me, feeling more like Disney was worried he needed the introductions to ease nervous filmgoers into the underlying concept of the film, rather than being anything truly helpful or necessary. Also, I don’t know if this should be mentioned as an actual criticism or not, but I will say that I was rather amused by how the infamous pickaninny centaur had to get excised from the film due to its horrible racism, and yet they retained some ridiculous Asian caricatures with nobody saying a word about it. Mulan does not excuse this double standard, Disney Corporation!
As I said, this is a tough one to give a proper rating, as parts of it are straight up brilliant, and completely live up to Walt Disney’s lofty goals, while other segments….not so much. I don’t think it’s quite the classic that some people have made it out to be, but I still have to say that I rather prefer it to the two more famous films Disney made immediately following (they would be Dumbo and Bambi). It’s definitely worth a viewing, though you may find you’re fast forwarding a few of the segments.
Rating: ** ½
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Princess and the Frog
The transformation Disney has undergone over the past decade has been nothing short of astonishing. Faced with a combination of lagging creativity in their film department and the first actual animated competition in the form of Dreamworks that the company has ever had, the company spent the bulk of the decade outright panicking, eventually settling on the idea that the key to regaining their old glory was to completely ape Dreamworks. This is the great plan that gave us films like Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons, and worked out so well that when Disney finally purchased Pixar a few years later, it was with the demand that John Lasseter not only retain creative control of Pixar, but that he would also take creative control over all of Disney’s other animated studios. While the lengthy development time of animated films meant that there were still a couple years more of lousy movies, The Princess and the Frog finally arrived last year to show what a traditional Disney animated studio could do with Pixar guiding them along.
And quite a movie it is, too. The company’s first traditionally animated film since 2004’s Home on the Range, this is as visually beautiful as anything Disney has ever made (and looks much better than their ghastly efforts at 3D animation), particularly when the style shifts for the song “Almost There” to a style based off of painter Aaron Douglas (I looked it up, I‘m not that much of an art expert). We also get a great villain in the form of the Shadow Man (Keith David), a voodoo priest visually based off of the voodoo god Baron Samedi. I’m a little disappointed that he only gets one song in the film, though since this is Disney I suppose he’ll have plenty of time for new musical numbers when they start churning out fifty sequels.
But yes, the story: Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is an expert cook/waitress at a New Orleans restaurant who is determinedly trying to save up enough money to buy her own restaurant, when she runs afoul of Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), heir to the throne of Maldonia, who himself has recently run afoul of the Shadow Man, and been transformed into a frog as part of an elaborate plot to give the Shadow Man control of all of New Orleans. Naveen convinces her that all he needs is for her to kiss him like the frog prince in the children’s story and he’ll turn back to human form, but of course the kiss backfires and transforms her into a frog as well. Soon the pair is on the run, from partygoers, the Shadow Man, a pair of hunters, and some alligators out in the bayou (though in keeping with the film’s praise of New Orleans music, they do actually befriend one alligator that wants nothing more than the chance to play his trumpet), and find their chances of being turned back run out at midnight. I’d say things do not look good, except of course that things in this movie in fact look so very, very good.
Honestly, there is nothing not to enjoy about this movie. The music by Randy Newman features some of the catchiest songs Disney’s made in over a decade (seriously, The Lion King is the most recent film I can think of that could match it), and there was a great commitment made to crafting actual interesting, likable characters, eschewing the recent Dreamworks-inspired trend of having characters that mainly exist to spout off horrid pop culture references. It feels like a very intentional effort was made to use this film to get the company back to what it has traditionally done best* (which likely explains why this is the first film since 1998’s Mulan to give us a new Disney princess -- and in a surprise twist, it‘s also the first Disney film since 1946‘s Song of the South to have a black main character, so good on them for diversity), and it succeeds beautifully.
If I don’t quite give this film four stars, that’s only because it’s not quite at the level of the films Disney was routinely putting out in my formative years. It’s not really on the level of an Aladdin or a Little Mermaid or a Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but in all honesty, I’d rather watch it again before I watch a few of the four star films I’ve reviewed here. And not just ones like Sick, either.
Also, don’t go by the star ratings, read the actual reviews.
Rating: *** ½
* You can see some of the overtness involved in that in the trailer below, which goes on about the company’s 75 years of excellence (including a brief clip of Aladdin picking up the lamp), and in the new animated Disney logo of Steamboat Willy at the start of the film.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
A Christmas Carol
Alright, so I can’t completely avoid the proper holiday here, particularly not when my mom keeps getting as many family films as she can fit under her coat. Still, in choosing today’s movie I reasoned that if anything could snap me out of the holiday spirit, it would be Disney’s new version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge and the various ghosts, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has made the curious career decision to stop making any more movies except those that he can film as live action and then cover up with frankly creepy animation (his previous two films, of course, being Beowulf and The Polar Express, and whose next film is another animated effort in the form of a remake of Yellow Submarine, in which the Beatles will no doubt be played by your childhood nightmares).
Of course, that being said, part of what makes Charles Dickens’ novella such a classic is its perfect blend of sentimentality and creeping darkness, so Zemeckis’ new directing style surprisingly works incredibly well with the material. The story, I would hope, is already familiar to everyone: a horrid old miser in 19th century England is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, repents of his wicked ways and becomes a wacky, beloved socialist, and Tiny Tim has God bless us, everyone. Zemeckis adds a few flourishes, such as shrinking Scrooge down to rodent-sized and having him ride an icicle across a rooftop, but these flourishes largely seem less like natural outgrowths of the story and more like an attempt to keep any children in the audience from getting bored by throwing in a few mindless action scenes here and there.
Despite that, the film works surprisingly well, though I doubt it’s the sort of movie children raised on Dreamworks cartoons will enjoy. It’s slow-paced, dark and foreboding; in short, it’s the exact opposite of drivel like Madagascar or Chicken Little (yes, I know that was a Disney movie). It’s also a complete feast for the eyes: the benefit of doing this as animation instead of keeping it in live action, aside from providing a more seamless blend between the actors and the effects, is that each ghost brings with it a new visual style. Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman) glows bright blue and green, looking as though he wouldn’t be out of place in the next Ghostbusters movie, while the Ghost of Christmas Present flings about so much multicolored lights that his segment rather resembles a Skittles commercial, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come gives us more of a Sleepy Hollow-ish nightmare scenario. It’s the rare film that actually makes me feel a little disappointed that I didn’t see it in IMAX 3-D.
One thing that was a little surprising, after Polar Express, was in how hidden Carrey was in the film. While with Polar Express Zemeckis made the animated characters all look like Tom Hanks (he did most of the voices, this wasn’t some crazed Being John Malkovich-type scenario), here Scrooge looks nothing at all like Carrey, aside from a possibly over expressive mouth. With Carrey toning himself down (aside from the ending, at least) heavily while affecting a British accent, it doesn’t even sound like him, to the point where if you took his name off the credits I doubt any of his fans would recognize him. Actually, does Carrey still have fans, at least to anywhere near the extent that he did in the 90s? It seems like the last movie he did that has any kind of following is Eternal Sunshine, and that movie’s fan base mostly showed up years after it died in theaters. I‘m digressing here.
While this may not be quite the Christmas film people would want, I daresay it’s the Christmas film they all need. After all, the original story is largely responsible for Christmas becoming a major holiday again when it was first published (Go Wiki it if you don’t believe me), so it’s only right that it keep getting remade to frighten and delight us all (elsewhere on this blog I also reviewed one from the 1950s with Alistair Sim as Scrooge, though I have to say I prefer this version). This one has the makings of becoming a new permanent holiday fixture.
Rating: *** ½
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
‘Tis the season to be enjoying appropriately seasonal Christmas movies at the Savage household. Unfortunately, I am a sentimental enough person that pretty much every Christmas movie I’ve watched since the beginning of the month (which pretty much constitutes Gremlins and The Nightmare Before Christmas, though expectations are high that I’ll see many more) has warranted a rather glowing four star review. Clearly for this blog’s sake, what was needed was for me to start reviewing movies for other holidays, and what better alternative holiday to celebrate here than that of Halloween and the Great Pumpkin?
Anyway, while this surprisingly wasn’t my favorite Charlie Brown special (that would of course be Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown, which curiously has yet to get a DVD release), it’s a solid entry by director Bill Melendez, who appears to have directed all of the Peanuts specials, or at least all the ones I’m familiar with. The film functions as a series of intercut vignettes, one following Snoopy and his fantasies as a World War I flying ace, one following Linus and Lucy as they wait in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, and one following virtually everyone else as they go trick or treating, mostly dressed as crappy little ghosts. Much like the comic strip it’s based off of, it’s a curious combination of very basic (some would say awful) artwork and surprisingly literate writing, leaving us with a group of children that speak rather like adults, philosophizing about their beliefs and fears in ways that would likely prompt any rational person to kill such children they heard talking like that. It’s a very thin line between the Peanuts gang and Village of the Damned, people.
As it’s not very long (it clocks in at a svelte 25 minutes), it doesn’t go to any great depth, providing a nice, pleasant TV special without requiring us to really ponder, say, what it means to be so devoted as to spend an entire evening in a pumpkin patch for your savior to appear, and deciding to spend the next Halloween in a different patch since he didn’t show up this time. Instead, it‘s much better to focus on things like the trick or treating adventures; I don’t know what it says about me as a person, but I am always happy to watch as Charlie Brown stumbles through his life so poorly, getting rocks at every house instead of candy, that my own screwed up life seems that much better by comparison.
And really, when it comes to it, isn’t that what the holidays are really meant for? Making yourself feel better by hating on others? Just like you can all hate on whoever uploaded the terrible video embedded below. Forrest Gump could have done a better job than that.
Rating: ***
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Toy Story 3
It’s been eleven years since the last Toy Story, and being Pixar’s flagship title (the original Toy Story was their first feature film back in 1995) I guess it was only natural for them to leave it in the hands of Lee Unkrich, in his first solo directorial effort (after co-directing Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo). I assume John Lasseter, who directed the first two in the series, was too busy making Cars 2 to helm this one. What the lack of Lasseter’s hand means is that this is the weakest of the three films, though it must be said that Unkrich still does a good job making this into what is easily the darkest and gloomiest of all of Pixar’s films to date.
See, not only have eleven years passed in the real world between Toy Story 2 and 3, but in the film world itself Andy, the boy who owns all the toys, is now in his late teens and getting ready to go to college. He plans to store away all his old toys (the ones he still has, that is; poor Bo Peep got sold at a yard sale long ago) up in the attic, but due to a misunderstanding between him and his mom, the toys get put out for the trash. Feeling betrayed, the toys take it upon themselves to relocate to a nursery school, where they’ll have a small army of children to play with them. Unfortunately, the toy end of the nursery school is headed by Lotso the Bear (Ned Beatty), a seemingly nice old man that has his own ideas about how they’re all going to fit in there…
One thing I like about Pixar is that they seem to be outright incapable of making a bad movie. I’ve seen every one of their movies except Cars, and A Bug’s Life was the only weak one in the whole bunch (curiously, that was directed by Lasseter). This one may wobble at times, but it’s still pretty clever and touching, capturing the pain of toys who have outlasted their owner’s interest in them, and what kind of life (or lack thereof) that would create. It’s also nice how they managed to retain all the old voice actors: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, even John Morris (Andy) are all back, and joined by Beatty and Michael Keaton (who plays a downright inspired Ken). One of the most important aspects to movies like this is a collection of interesting, likable characters, and Toy Story 3 is packed with them.
Unfortunately, while the film has a good many highlights (Spanish Buzz being the best, though the opening adventure is a close second), the pacing is also pretty off, leaving the film dragging at times. Further, presumably due to the long gap between the films, it also feels the need to play sort of like a greatest hits at times with its characters, trying to get in all of their catchphrases several times (not only do we hear the lines “There’s a snake in my boot!” and “To infinity and beyond!” far too many times, but we even return to the three aliens and their worship of the claw) to try to garner cheap audience applause. Sorry, but unless said catchphrase is either “Cooooobrrraaaaaa!” or “Cobra-Lalalalalalalalalalalala!”, I remain unmoved.
The movie is still good, if rather emotionally draining (we’re essentially dealing with Toy Hell here, or at least Toy Purgatory), it’s just that the shoes it had to fill may have been a little too big (Full disclosure: when I saw Toy Story 2 in the theater, I literally fell out of my chair at one point because I was laughing so hard. This may not have been a normal reaction). It’s a movie well worth seeing, though I do have to say, newer parents may want to keep in mind that it is a little bit darker than one would expect from a G film. Of course, I went to see Gremlins when I was three and loved it, so as long as you haven’t raised your kid to be a total wuss they should still enjoy it. If you don’t know if they can handle it, that’s just all the more reason to make them see it. Frankly, they sound like they need to toughen up a little.
Rating: ***
Sunday, October 31, 2010
How to Train Your Dragon
Here is the latest solid yet unimaginative effort from Dreamworks, made by a directing duo with a pedigree that indicates to me that the lack of inspiration found within is more of a directive from the corporate executives rather than being a result of the talent being unable to reach any farther. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The film stars Jay Baruchel as Hiccup, a young Viking that finds that he completely doesn’t belong in a society that’s based entirely around killing dragons. Going off into the countryside on his own, he accidentally befriends Toothless, a type of ultra-feared dragon that no Viking has ever before seen and survived. With the knowledge that dragons aren’t as dangerous as his people believe them to be, he quickly rises to the top of his class in dragon training, until his father, village chieftain Stoick (Gerard Butler) puts an end to his friendship with the dragons and decides to capture Toothless and use him to lead the village in an assault on the main dragon hive that Hiccup had unwittingly tipped him off to. Of course, the assault all goes horribly wrong, and it’s up to Hiccup, his fellow students, and their new dragon friends to save the day and revolutionize Viking society in the process.
So yeah, an animated story about a societal outcast who constantly butts heads with an authoritarian figure and yet overcomes adversity, revolutionizing his society in the process? Just off the top of my head, that not only describes this plot, but also the plots of Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Pixar’s Monsters Inc. and Ratatouille, and Dreamworks’ own earlier film Antz. Given that I’ve missed a good deal of animated films from the past ten years or so, I can only assume there are several more that I missed. Point is, this is as by-the-numbers a story as an animated film can have without including a young princess, a dashing prince, and an evil witch. The music is fittingly generic, sounding like everything you’ve heard before in such films, to the point where I’m half convinced that composer John Powell just directly took the score from one of his earlier films, rearranged it to fit the new scenes, and called it a day.
Which is all curious, as aside from the script and music, this movie has a good deal to offer. Made by co-writers-and-directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders (whose first film, Lilo & Stitch, was arguably Disney’s best movie of the last decade that wasn’t made by Pixar), it has a great deal of visual flair, frequently looking a good deal darker and more sinister than most children’s movies I’ve seen (the main exceptions being Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, of course). The fight scenes and flying episodes all look really well animated, and show that Dreamworks’ animators are some of the best in the business (though I do take issue with them deciding so many of the dragons should have rounded faces -- I like my dragons Dungeons & Dragons style, filled with angles and sharp edges, not looking like the kraken from the Clash of the Titans remake). They also mostly did a good job in hiring the voice actors: as has become the norm with these kinds of films, they filled up the supporting cast with great comedic talents like Craig Ferguson and Jonah Hill so that there can be a proper amount of unscripted jokes to help improve the film. The pedigree of these people, when combined with Dreamworks’ backlog of animated films like Over the Hedge, Madagascar, Open Season, and Kung Fu Panda, leads me to assume that the seemingly intentional generic story was forced on the filmmakers to try to ensure that the film kept as wide an audience as possible. Given that the film did incredibly well in theaters (making $217 million, which ranks it as currently the eighth highest grossing movie of 2010, right behind Dreamworks’ other big release Shrek Forever After), they may well have been correct to do so.
I don’t want you all to get the wrong impression here. This is indeed an entertaining movie. It’s funny, fast-paced, and frequently rather beautiful. That it’s got a plot you’ve seen enough times that you can probably set your watch to all the story’s turns isn’t likely to matter to your children one bit, assuming of course that you aren’t like me and actually buy children’s movies for your children to watch.
Rating: ***
Saturday, February 28, 2009
City of Rott
Of all the animated films I’ve seen in my day, I think this may even outrank Fist of the North Star as the most over-the-top violent. Also like Fist of the North Star, it starts to wear a little thin after a while. Still, this remains the only zombie cartoon I’ve seen to date and even if it doesn’t have quite enough variety to stand with the best zombie movies out there, it’s still well worth at least a viewing.
The film follows the adventures of an old man named Fred as he bludgeons a small army of zombies to death with his walker, which he also talks to. Apparently the zombie infestation was caused by a new species of worm that got into the water supply and is turning everyone into ravenous zombies, so whenever a person gets bitten, we get to see worms dripping out of the zombies’ mouths into the wounds so as to infect new victims. Being old, Fred’s kind of a prick, and spends his whole time ignoring any fellow survivors he sees in favor of trying to find something to drink that’s not contaminated with worms, and getting some more comfortable slippers so his feet won’t hurt so much. While it’s entertaining seeing him just slaughter zombies nonstop a la Dead Alive, it is nice that right when it gets to be a little too repetitive to continue, writer-director Frank Sudol changes it up by killing him and then starting to follow the adventures of Zombie Fred.
The animation is pretty interesting in a deliberately underdone Aqua Teen kind of way. It’s nice and detailed, so you can see just what body parts are getting ripped out of someone, or what’s left of a zombie’s head after half of it is ripped off with a walker. There’s also some nice bits of humor, as when he walks past a store named Tex’s Chain Saws, or when he meets a girl that’s been bitten, and lies about having a cure so he can get her to brave a zombie-filled mall to get him some slippers. Even at under 80 minutes it goes on a little long, but I think I can say with some assurance that it is still by far the best zombie cartoon ever made, and you should give it a whirl on that alone.
Rating: ***
Friday, April 25, 2008
Hellboy: Blood & Iron
I’m one of those odd few people that became a fan of Hellboy the comic after first seeing the live action film. The live film was good, if not particularly great, though when I finally got around to reading the comics I found them to have a depth, visual flair, and wit that was somewhat lacking from the film. As such, I was curious to see if creator Mike Mignola’s darkly comic style would be a better fit with this animated film than it was live.
Of course, it was, and rather extensively so. There are times when this film pretty much feels as though the comic book itself had been thrown onto the screen and somehow animated. The plot is also better than in the live film, as all the major players in the B.P.R.D. (The Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) head out to investigate a supposedly haunted hotel in Europe at the request of a senator. While there, they discover a plot to resurrect Countess Bathory, a centuries-old vampire who had been killed by the professor decades prior. The evil goddess Hecate gets involved in the plot as well, as does an old werewolf, some harpies, the ghosts of all of the Countess’ young victims, and a seemingly endless army of snakes. Once things start to heat up, obviously, it’s pretty much constant action for the rest of the film, including a massive throwdown with Hecate that closes the film out.
Pretty much everything about the movie works right. The visual tone of the film comes very close to matching that of the comic itself, which is a very good thing if you’ve not read it. The voice acting, with one or two exceptions, is also very good, as producer Guillermo Del Toro managed to get the cast of the live film to voice their characters again. There’s also a good amount of humor to liven the film up, which is nice, considering the general concept of the character. After all, this is a story about a demon from Hell that goes around seeking out dark, Lovecraftian horrors and then punches them to death. If you can’t find some amount of humor in that premise, then you shouldn’t be working on such a project. The film was straight to DVD, so the animation isn’t as fluid as a big budget theatrical film, but that’s really its only flaw. After all, how many movies are out there that will let you see a fish man whipping a harpy with a set of manacles? I watch a lot more movies than is healthy, and I’ve only seen that twice before.
Rating: *** ½
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
The Polar Express
This one came so close to being a fully good movie that at times I could almost see its sweet victory celebration. It doesn’t quite make it, ending up feeling a bit more like a test drive to see how far Robert Zemeckis could push his CG team (in a similar, though superior, manner to Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within), but damn if it doesn’t come close.
As plots go, it aims fairly low, presumably attempting to create the kind of enduring children’s classic that Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph are, light on story and heavy on charm. Basically it can be summed up as “every year on Christmas Eve the children that are starting to disbelieve in Santa are given a ride to the North Pole on the Polar Express so they can retain their fairly pagan belief system. Hijinks ensue.” It’s all pleasant and charming enough, really, feeling at times like a gentler version of Willy Wonka, it’s just that, much like those older Christmas children’s classics, watching it as an adult makes you feel like you’re not really the intended audience. It doesn’t have that extra bit of depth to it that the best children’s movies have, so parents watching with their children can love the movies too.
I mentioned earlier that it felt a bit as though Zemeckis were testing out his new CG technology with this film, and there’s some truth to that. Two years after this, he produced (though didn’t direct) Monster House, which used the same basic technology, and just this past month he released Beowulf, which I haven’t had the chance to see yet, but which he supposedly perfected the CG work for. This may be one of Zemeckis’s weakest films (which, in all honesty, is a testament to him), but it’s good that he was able to build off of it like he has. Just so long as he doesn’t feel the need to use CG for his upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol. I don’t know that it would be a fully natural fit there.
Rating: ** ½
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Simpsons Movie
Well, a great many years in coming, we finally have the Simpsons movie, freshly out on DVD. I missed this back in the theater, as I do most movies because I’m a reclusive shut-in, but having finally seen it in the comfort of my own cavern, I have to say it’s not bad. That’s not to say that it’s as good as it could have, or frankly should have, been though.
The film’s plot, as is the case with about half the episodes of the series, revolves around Homer doing something stupid and reckless, and the fallout that comes from it. In this particular instance, he causes an ecological catastrophe in Springfield Lake, causing the EPA and President Schwarzenegger to seal the town off from the rest of the country. It thankfully doesn’t devolve into preachiness like it easily could have, instead wisely choosing to focus in on showing a No Man’s Land Springfield falling to pieces, and a Simpsons family on the run from the government.
The problem here isn’t with the plot, really, it’s with the overall quality. Had this film been made in 1997, when they first began discussing making it, it probably would have been a great movie. Back then the show was at the height of its powers, and every other episode was an unqualified classic. However, over the years, it just got watered down to the point where a once-great show has become a pretty good show with occasional flashes of greatness. That’s basically what the movie provides. It’s a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half, and there’s several moments of brilliance, enough that at points you almost start to think that the film itself is going to fully turn brilliant, but no. It’s back to Decentville before much longer. It’s almost frustrating, really.
Still, it does function as a perfectly good film upgrade of the show, and you aren’t likely to be disappointed when watching it. It just won’t floor you like you wish it would, like the show itself used to. It is definitely worth watching at least once, though, unlike a lot of the more recent episodes.
Really though, a Titanic reference in 2007? Honestly.
Rating: ***
