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May 2009
Look, ‘Up’ on the screen: Another Pixar masterpiece
If Up isn’t Pixar’s best film (and it might be), it’s certainly the one that got me to cry the fastest.
Up tells the story of Carl Fredricksen (Edward Asner) who mourns the death of his beloved wife, Ellie. What’s left of his life is dull and desolate. An ugly incident forces the authorities to order Carl to leave the home they made together. Instead, Carl ties a ton of balloons to his house and points it to South America, where he and his wife had always dreamed of going.
In what may be the greatest scene in any Pixar movie, Up tells Carl and Ellie’s story, from their marriage to her passing, in a sequence played out in pantomime. It had me in tears before the movie was 10 minutes old. It’s this sequence that gives Up its powerful heartbeat.
Once he starts his journey, Carl discovers an overeager wilderness explorer named Russell (Jordan Nagai) has inadvertently stowed away - and then the story really gets going.
While last year’s WALL-E filled me with a kind of supercharged happiness, Up made me feel more reflective. I had to drive home from the theater for an hour, but instead of listening to music as I normally would, I turned the radio off, thinking about how this wondrous movie made me feel. WALL-E coursed through my memory like an electric charge, but Up felt more like a bracing, cool breeze.
And then it hit me. So much of the film is … me.
I may not be a dour old man like Carl, and unlike Russell, I’m not much for the great outdoors. But like Carl, I’ve coped with loneliness in my life recently, only to find solace in new friends. Up’s producer, Jonas Rivera, describes Russell as “the last kid picked for baseball,“ and I can relate to that too. I knew these guys. I am these guys. And I suspect I’m not alone. This movie ought to appeal to all kinds of people, whether they’re as young as Russell or as old as Carl.
Aside from how much I personally identified with the film, Up works because it showcases some of Pixar’s savviest storytelling. It bears many of Pixar’s hallmarks, but at the same time, it feels unlike anything the studio has ever made.
Written by Bob Peterson and directed by Pete Docter (Monsters Inc.) the movie encompasses so many different genres and styles, from romance to adventure, and even a little science fiction — yet it holds together beautifully.
In addition to the pathos of Carl, Ellie and Russell, there is the hilarity of Kevin the flightless bird and Dug the talking dog (wonderfully voiced by Peterson), the two funniest sidekicks Pixar has ever created. Visually, the film is gorgeous, particularly when depicting the lush jungles of South America - and that comes through, 3D or no 3D. The movie runs the emotional gamut, and hits every note just right.
By now, I’ve come to expect greatness from every Pixar movie - and yet the studio keeps surprising me at just how great they can be. This is not just the film of the year so far. It may well end up being the film of the year period.
GRADE: A+
(A note about the 3D: I have seen the film in both versions. The 3D is, exactly as producer Jonas Rivera told me, a “cherry on top.” In other words, it’s not essential to see Up in 3D, but if you have the money and it’s available, I say, why not? It literally adds depth to the experience without ever being showy in and of itself.)
Read (and watch) my interview with Up’s director and producer
See how I rank all the Pixar movies, including Up.
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My interview with the director/producer of Pixar’s ‘Up’
Pixar Week continues on the blog, with the complete text of my interview with Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera, the director and producer, respectively of Pixar’s new film Up, opening Friday. The film tells the story of a man, Carl Fredricksen, who ties several balloons to his house to fly to South America, where he and his beloved late wife Ellie had always dreamed of going - but Carl picks up an accidental stowaway, a wilderness explorer named Russell.
Docter, who also directed Monsters Inc., and Rivera came to the University of Cincinnati last week for a press tour, and I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down wih them and talk about how Up came to be. You can watch an online video of some of my session, but here I present the complete, unabridged interview.
Robinette: I know the journey to this film started with the drawing of the balloons and the house. But where did that come from?
Docter: Bob Peterson, the co-director and writer of the show and I were sitting in a room just making drawings and all sorts of ideas. We started, actually, from an even more bizarre idea, of two brothers that lived in this floating city. And it was kind of like some weird other world. It was really intriguing but kind of so far out it didn’t have any grounding, so we kind of realized that the thing that was appealing about it was the idea of escaping. You can’t escape from everybody else if you’re up there with everybody in a city, so we shrunk it down to a house. And that doesn’t sound all that interesting, does it?
Rivera: I think it’s good.
Docter: You do?
Robinette: It’ll work. One thing I liked about the film when I saw it the other day was how it took so many left turns and always stayed on course. It’s almost like a bunch of different films crammed into one. You’ve got the sweet love story on the one hand. And it takes a detour into an almost sci-fi realm … tell me about some of the particular challenges you had getting this story together.
Docter: It did start with a little bit of our favorite things all glommed together, and we got a lot of criticism early on, as we showed it to (Pixar colleagues) Brad Bird and John Lasseter and everybody, that it felt a little too hodgepodge, and we really worked to unify it, to find a real reason for every element to relate to some other element, and that way weave the whole story together. It took some doing.
Rivera: It took three years or even longer, of workshopping and re-workshopping it.
Docter: Of the five years of production, it’s like three and a half years of just story, and then you get into production the last two. Sort of overlaps a little bit.
Robinette: One thing I noticed when I was taking it in, was, everybody in the film had a story. Everybody had a reason for doing what they were doing. With Russell, he’s not merely a wilderness explorer looking for his badge. He’s got an underlying motivation. Tell me how you weaved that in there to solve the story problems.
Docter: That’s part of the joy of working with a smaller cast. And that was really intentional from the get-go. Let’s do a film that doesn’t have so many characters we have to keep track of. Then we can plumb the depths a little bit more. Like you say, no character is there just as a prop. They all have needs and wants, and we really tried to unify them all in their being outcasts. Dug (a talking dog who befriends Russell and Carl) is the nerd of the pack. You get the sense that Russell’s not exactly Mr. Popularity. Carl is relegated to the outskirts of society, yet the story is about all these oddballs kind of coming together. Each character is able to provide something to the other characters. They each have a hole the other can help fill.
Robinette: They make each other whole.
Rivera: They first described Russell to me as “He’s the kid who gets picked last for baseball.”
Robinette: Ah, I can relate to that. Early in the film there is this terrific sequence which takes care of a lot of the backstory, basically played in pantomime, that tells Carl and his wife Ellie’s story, basically from when they get married to up until the end for them, and darn it, you guys had me in tears before the film was 10 minutes old. (Docter makes “thumbs up” motion). So how did you arrive at doing the sequence that way?
Docter: We kind of went backwards into that. We started with the idea of this guy floating his house off, and we thought “Why is he doing that?” We came up with this idea that he had some unfulfilled business We went back and created this whole story with the relationship, the loss there, and that’s what propels the whole story. So it’s really on those fumes of that sequence that the rest of the story has drive, we hope.
Robinette: What made it stand out was this was the story of yours that seemed to be most purely driven by the notion of romantic love. How do you guys think it’s unique in the Pixar canon?
Rivera: When Pete first pitched me the idea, I’d never heard anything like it. And this was without any visuals. And I just fell in love with the idea of that emotional core fueling this whole thing, where houses fly through the air, and lost worlds are found with exotic, flightless birds. I go to the movies to go places I’ve never been with characters I’ve never met. I want to see something new. And this just felt, even in its description, unlike anything.
Even the title of the film I liked early on because it didn’t tell me what it was. All of our films are either proper names, or you kind of know what they are. I liked that I had to go “What? What is this? That’s cool.” I just feel like even in its inception it was different than anything we’d ever done. And I hope that’s what’s fun for the audience as well.
(More after the jump)
Robinette: Tell me about how you arrived at the visual look of this. I noticed this kind of stylized way everybody appeared - almost comic strip in a sense but there’s a reality to these people that makes them very identifiable. How did you balance that?
Docter: That was one of the fun but challenging aspects of the film. We really tried to push the envelope. The computer has this ability to capture texture and lighting in this incredible, realistic-looking way. There are so many other directions you can go with animation as a medium. It’s just limitless. We were really trying to be more stylized to simplify shape. A lot of people were kind of suspicious of it, especially because we did have these emotional moments, and are you really going to feel for this character (Carl) who has a big box for a head? But I think it works, maybe even because of that. Because you’re kind of abstracting things a little bit, the audience is able to project more of themselves. I just had a real strong sense that this is what the story needed, this sense of style and whimsy. We need a world where it’s possible this house could float up in the air with balloons, If you tried to do that outside in reality, the audience would be going, “Really? I don’t know.”
Rivera: We did the math once to figure out how many balloons it would take, it was like 26 million balloons. Visually what we needed was to make it the canopy to the house, the same proportion as a hot air balloon because that’s what looked right. If you saw that in real life, you would go “It looks fake.” But in the context of our movie, with these kinds of shapes and colors it feels believable, we hope.
Docter: When you draw it, you can get away with even less balloons. As a drawing, the more abstract it gets, the more you’re able to forgive. We need to lay off a bit on the realism and yet have enough clues that really take you there so you can feel the wind in your face as you’re standing looking out into the South American jungles and all that.
Robinette: One of the things that’s being highlighted about this film is the fact that it’s in 3D. I saw the flat version of it, but I didn’t feel like I lost anything. So I have a feeling it works both ways. How do you make it do that?
Rivera: That was our goal. We knew not everyone would be able to see it in 3D ,but we didn’t want the 2D version to suffer. We didn’t change the way we worked. We laid the film out, we composed the shots. We cut the film as we always have, driven by the story and the characters. We used 3D to enhance it so it’s like a cherry on top if you get to see it. Philosophically what we do is we inversed 3D, really. We treated the screen like a window looking in … that felt right for this picture. It just felt like you were looking into a diorama. It’s more subtle.
Robinette: What do you want to give people with this film? When they’re coming out of their seats and heading out into the wide world after seeing this, what do you hope is floating through their heads?
Docter: First of all, hopefully they just had a great time at the theater, They had a great action ride and a lot of jokes and so on. But then at the root of it, I think what the film is really about is kind of redefining what’s important in life. A lot of times we have these great dreams of someday owning a business or running a marathon - these sort of lists of things we want to do, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But along the way - I know this is true of me - I very easily stop paying attention to how incredibly lucky I am to have my amazing kids around me, and spending time with my wife, and looking forward to other stuff. Just stopping and paying attention to what we have around us right now - the little seemingly boring things in life, that’s what life is all about, and that’s what this film is about.
Robinette: When did the genesis for this film first start?
Docter: I was looking at some notes from spring of ‘04 and that was kind of the first inklings of what it was - about five years ago.
Robinette: So from spring of ‘04 to when you wrapped, how did this change you guys? What did you take away from it?
Docter: Hm, that’s a good question. It’s sort of undefinable exactly how this changed me but a bunch of us went down to South America to do research. It took us three days to get to this place way down in the jungles of South America. We hiked away from a little village up to this mountain and camped up there for three days, did a lot of drawings and really tried to study the terrain to capture for this film. In doing that, we sort of experience what Carl experiences in the film. We got to see what it’s like to be away from the rest of the world. That’s a really unique thing, It’s very seldom that we get away from civilization like that. It just made me appreciate how tentative everything is. One of the guys up there started to get sick. We weren’t sure whether it was altitude or what and you start to realize, boy, all of life is a lot more precarious and maybe we take it for granted.
Robinette: A lot of people talk about how you guys have the best track record of anybody in Hollywood, animated or otherwise. How do you guys deal with that?
Docter: We deal with it like this: (Puts fingers in ears) La-la-la-la-la!
Rivera: It’s a great problem to have. Pixar has been really successful. We’re very lucky and fortunate. We work really hard. We’re more self-competitive then we are competitive with anything out in the world. We just want to make the best films we can make. John Lasseter gives us one rule, which is, make a film you’d be proud to show your family. Make a film you’d be proud to see. That’s what we do. To some extent we do have to shut our ears and shut that off because it’ll make you go crazy if you start second-guessing yourself. You don’t want to do that. You just want to trust your gut, make the film you can make. We have a great infrastructure of support. No one - Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, Brenda Chapman - no one’s going to let any one of us release a film that’s not up to par. We’re going to pound on each other until we get it where we want it.
Robinette: One thing I’ve liked about watching the making of materials of your various movies is, it’s always struck me how collaborative you guys are. There may be a person who sort of runs the ship but that person isn’t necessarily the be all and end all. It seems like good ideas come from everywhere in the company. Tell me how that informed Up.
Docter: The director is in charge of making the movie in terms of the creative decisions but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers. We have all these amazing people at every stage of the production - lighting, special effects, story for sure, animation - everybody has these amazing ideas they bring to the table. So my job is to provide them with enough context so that they know what is needed for what they’re doing. And then they bring the specific ideas. So instead of me saying “All right on frame 12 I want his arm here, and on frame 47 it should be here,” I’d say, “He’s just run a marathon, he’s exhausted, he wants that drink of water more than anything.”
Robinette: So what’s next in the pipeline for you guys in particular?
Docter: Sleep.
Rivera: Sleep. Chili dogs. We have a lot of work to get this film out, we go around the world, we’re going to follow it around and help it’s release and we’re going to go back into development. Hopefully Pete’s got a few up his sleeve and we’ll figure out how to get it going.
Robinette: Wonder if he can make something out of chili dogs or not?
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How I rank the Pixar movies
It’s Pixar week here in Sir Critic land, commemorating the release of their 10th film, Up, this Friday. All the posts this week will be Pixar themed, and will include my Q&A with Up’s director and producer, Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera (uncut and commercial free), and of course, my review of the new film.
I’ll start today with that ever-popular comment generator, a list. I’m going to rank Pixar’s 10 movies. Granted, all their movies have been great to one degree or another. Yes, even Cars. But I love some more than I love others, and this list will reflect that.
The top three, especially are in flux, but here’s how I’d rank them today, at any rate.
1) Toy Story 2 - I’ve never quite bought the line that Godfather Part II is better than the original, or that The Empire Strikes Back is better than Star Wars. But there is absolutely no question in my mind that this Toy Story tops the original. The “When She Loved Me” scene always makes me cry, no matter how many times I see it.
2) WALL-E: It’s partly its mastery of pantomime comedy. It’s partly the amazing camerawork reminiscent of a dusty sci-fi movie from the 70s. But it’s mostly the fact that WALL-E reminds me of me: the lonely romantic.
3) Up: Yup, it’s that great. More later.
4) The Incredibles: The best superhero movie, animated or otherwise, except for MAYBE The Dark Knight. Don’t waste your comment arguing with me. You won’t convince me.
5) Monsters Inc.: I was never too afraid of the monster under my bed, but the premise of this movie is absolutely ingenious. And I MUST go on the Monsters Inc. roller-coaster based on the elevator room scene that will be built someday.
6) Ratatouille: Only Pixar could take an idea like a rat that wants to be a great French chef and make it work brilliantly. I would also point out that even though he’s the villain, the ciritc gets the best speech in the film.
7) Toy Story: Still tremendous fun. Even though the animation is obviously a bit primitive by today’s standards, the movie still feels fresh.
8) Finding Nemo - A lot of people would rate this as their favorite - it was the most financially successful. I adore it, but not as much as everyone else does, maybe because I don’t have kids yet. But I will say this is Pixar’s loveliest film visually.
9) a bug’s life: I don’t revisit this one that much, but whenever I do, I always have a great time with it, particularly the scenes with the “attack bird.”
10) Cars: It’s the only Pixar film so far not to make my 10 best list. It’s the only one I feel has unnecessary padding. And yet those who say this is a “bad” movie are choking on exhaust fumes. Making Larry the Cable Guy funny and lovable was a minor miracle.
Your ranking?
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What movie most says “Memorial Day” to you?
As Memorial Day weekend arrives, the film that best captures the spirit of the day for me is an easy choice. I don’t debate it for a second. I choose William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives.
This drama was very much of its time. For one reason or another, whether it was dealing with artificial limbs, discovering your wife no longer loved you, or simply readjusting to civilian life, coming home from Word War II was no easy task, no matter how much the soldiers had longed for it. If I could go back in the past and see how a movie played when it originally came out, it would be The Best Years of Our Lives. It still amazes me that it accomplished all this coming out in 1946, only a year after the war ended.
What makes the film all the more remarkable is that the themes in it are so universal, they still resonate today.
What movies will you watch this Memorial Day weekend? And which best sum up that holiday?
PS If you’re looking for my Terminator Salvation review, that’s here.
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Not enough Salvation for new Terminator movie
Terminator Salvation just isn’t quite … human enough.
That may seem like a strange criticism for a movie with a lot of robots in it, but in the previous Terminator movies, I rooted for the humans - or the robots when they were on the right side. I wanted them to win, even when that seemed impossible.
Watching Terminator Salvation, I only cared about the humans sporadically. Most of them simply aren’t that interesting - not even John Connor. And in a Terminator movie with Christian Bale playing the lead, that’s a problem.
Set in 2018, the film shows the war against the machines is in full swing. Connor is close to finding a way to defeat the enemy Skynet, only to be faced with two problems - people in the resistance who doubt his authority, and the emergence of a mysterious new character, an ex-con named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who harbors a secret even he does not know.
To its great credit, Terminator Salvation is a much better movie than I feared it would be. I never thought I would type these words, but here goes: it’s well-directed by McG.
McG’s gimmicky name cast fear into my heart when I heard he was helming this movie. I still feel the painful aftershocks of one of the worst sequels ever made, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, almost six years after seeing it. But I will give credit where it’s due. McG has redeemed himself.
Not only could I tell what was going on most of the time, but I found most of the action scenes exciting and even imaginative sometimes. Hiring editor Conrad Buff, who also worked on Terminator 2, was a very wise move. As an action movie, Terminator Salvation works well, if not spectacularly.
If only it had a script to match its camerawork, this film might have measured up to the earlier ones. The screenplay was written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who also penned Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. (Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote The Dark Knight with brother Christopher, reportedly did an uncredited polish.) Unfortunately, their story focuses too heavily on hardware and not enough on heart. For all of McG’s efforts, Terminator Salvation is mostly soulless.
That’s a shame considering some of the talent involved. Bale does what he can with his role, but John Connor in this movie is the sort of sullen and intense hero he could play in his sleep. Bryce Dallas Howard, a gifted actress, is absolutely wasted in the nothing role of John Connor’s wife, played by Claire Danes last time around. I found myself most intrigued by Worthington’s character and wished he were front and center instead. He almost made me care about the movie, but not quite. (And yes, for the record, I missed Arnold.)
I never imagined that Terminator Salvation would have a lot in common with Angels & Demons, which I reviewed last week, but the films are of a piece. Both are decent action movies I sometimes enjoyed, but ultimately rejected. Unfortunately for Terminator Salvation, the devil in me is on a winning streak.
GRADE: C+
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Revisiting the ‘Terminator’ films
I’ll be seeing Terminator Salvation tonight so my review can post Thursday, so now seems like an ideal time to revisit the Terminator films.
The Terminator: Rewatching this the other day, I was struck by just how dated it looks. Its SO mid-1980s, it’s almost cheesy-looking now. What’s not cheesy or dated, however, is director James Cameron’s command of action. This was the film that introduced to the world his brand of “Oh, whew it’s over - oh god it’s not!” sequences. Side note: Everyone quotes “I’ll be back,” but I was always a fan of “Get. Out.” myself. GRADE: A+
Terminator 2: Judgment Day: One of my most vivid moviegoing memories was seeing this with my best friend at the late and lamented Dayton Mall 1 theater (the one with the big screen). He and I worked on a five-star scale at the time, and he asked me how many stars I would give it. I couldn’t talk, so I simply held up five fingers instead. The film continues to packs a wallop today, and even though tthe morphing effects are practically prototypes, they still look great now. Two small liabilities: The father-son relationship between the Terminator and John Connor is a tad hokey, and for a guy who gets quoted so often, Cameron has a tin ear for dialogue: “You have to let me see my son. Please. He’s naked without me.” Gag. GRADE: A
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: No, it’s not up to Cameron’s films, but it’s much, much more effective than most people are willing to concede. The plot strains credibility sometimes, and Nick Stahl is perhaps a little too withdrawn as John Connor, but Jonathan Mostow is strong action director, who also made Breakdown and U-571. When Mostow is at full blast with the action sequences, so is the movie as a whole. GRADE: B+
Your take(s)?
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‘Night at the Museum’ sequel a midnight movie? Really?
Midnight screenings show up all the time during the summer movie season. They’re a great way for audiences to be able to say, “I saw it early” - and for studios to goose their box office numbers a little.
But I was genuinely surprised when I scanned the showtimes for this weekend and found that Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian will get a midnight screening at the Regal Theater in Beavercreek on Thursday going into Friday.
OK, I know the title of the movie is NIGHT at the Museum, and I suppose you could be cute if you wanted and call your screening “Midnight at the Museum” (rim shot). But this is the first time I’ve really scratched my head at a midnight movie selection.
Usually midnight screenings are reserved for movies with heavy fanboy appeal like Wolverine and Terminator Salvation. Even a midnight screening for the new Harry Potter movie would make sense, since that has a large enough fanbase of adults.
But the Night at the Museum sequel? Seriously? I have no doubt the movie will be very popular. It might even beat Terminator Salvation to take the lead at the box office this weekend. However, Night at the Museum appeals mostly to families. What parents are going to take their kids to this screening, especially on a school night?
The only reason I can think of to justify the screening is for Amy Adams fans to get their fix early. Where I get such a notion I have no idea. (Sarcasm off). For the record, I won’t be reviewing that immediately because I’m critiquing Terminator Salvation this week.
As it happens, there’s also a midnight screening of Dance Flick, and I don’t understand that either. Actually, I don’t see why anyone would want to see that period, but that’s just me.
But tell me: What do you think of midnight screenings for movies like Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian or Dance Flick? Have you ever been to a midnight screening? Tell me some anecdotes.
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Today’s DVDs: Mall cop, one-eyed Tom Cruise
Only a DVD selection like the one today could prompt a headline like that.
My Bloody Valentine: Not being much of a horror maven, I skipped this one, but heard it was fairly OK. Question: Is it worth watching flat?
Paul Blart: Mall Cop: THIS made $146 million? Wow. Some people are easy. To give the movie its due, it’s much better than its asinine ads, mainly because it’s pretty well impossible to root against an actor as appealing as Kevin James. He makes the title character very likable, which helps up to a point, but I didn’t laugh much because I could see nine out of 10 gags coming a mile away. I just can’t get into most movies made by Adam Sandler’s company, Happy Madison, AKA Films by and for People Who are Perpetually 12 Years Old. GRADE: C
Valkyrie: People scoffed when they saw Tom Cruise with the eyepatch, but the movie performed better than most expected at the box office, and for good reason: it’s a solid if unexceptional thriller about a real-life inter-Nazi rebellion. Cruise is solid, and the action is well directed by Bryan Singer, who casts a good eye for period detail. However, the screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander is a bit aloof, in that it never delves into the characters enough to make the viewer forget that the conclusion is foregone. GRADE: B
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Jamie Foxx as Sinatra? Real or fake?
And now it’s time to play, Is the Headline Real or Fake!
(insert crowd cheers)
I’m your host, Sir Critic (flashes not-so-pearly whites), and this is the game where YOU get to tell me if an actual headline circulating on the Web is real or fake!
(Insert crowd “Oooohhhh!”)
And I have to tell ya folks, today’s headline is a real humdinger! Here it is: From London’s Daily Telegraph: Jamie Foxx ‘in the running’ to play Frank Sinatra
(Crowd GASPS!)
Yes, folks, the actor who won an Oscar for playing Ray Charles is, IF you believe the Telegraph, in line to play Sinatra in Martin Scorsese’s recently announced biopic. My, Jamie seems to be making his way down the list of legendary departed crooners! There’s no word yet if he’s also playing James Brown or Perry Como, but, hey - with headlines with these, you never can tell!
Then again, this IS the British press quoting “an unnamed source.” And we all know how accurate those kinds of sources are!
Reaction around the Internet is one of general incredulousness, with the Oscar-watching site In Contention responding with the headline: Hahahahahaha.
Here are the questions you must answer:
1) Is the headline real or fake?
2) Could such color-blind casting possibly work for someone as distinct as Sinatra was?
3) Whether it’s fake or not, who should play Sinatra?
Mouse pointers on the Post Your Comment link … ready …. go!
(Infernally catchy theme plays)
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‘Angels & Demons’ wrestles for a critic’s soul
Calling Angels & Demons a better movie than The Da Vinci Code is like saying a paper cut is better than a severed limb. Duh.
If Angels & Demons hadn’t been a better movie than The Da Vinci Code, I don’t know that I’d have the strength to type this. I thought that was a sloppy, leaden, misshapen blob masquerading as a feature film. It was one of the worst movies either Tom Hanks or director Ron Howard had ever touched.
The real question should be: Is Angels & Demons, at the very least, passably entertaining? I had a hard time deciding even that. Then, a curious thing happened.
As I left the theater, an angel who looked like a miniature version of me with a halo appeared on my right shoulder, to the sound of the heavenly choir of “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles. He said, in his sonorous voice:
“You have to admit, Eric, the film was solidly entertaining this time. The Da Vinci Code took its time, but this film moves much faster because the plot requires it. Since Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) has to find an explosive device before it blows up St. Peter’s Square at midnight, the movie has a beat-the-clock story that quickened your pulse. Much more exciting.”
Then, on my left shoulder, a devil appeared in a puff of smoke to the sounds of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” He looked like me too, but with a pitchfork, horns and a tail. Kind of frightening.
“Don’t listen to that pushover!” he rasped. “This movie is the same pseudo-religious claptrap the first one was. It has all this eye-glazing, expositional word salad. It may play great on the page but is lousy in a movie. Go here, go there, find this, find that, yak, yak, yak, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada yada. You’ve said it many times yourself. The movies are visual - show, don’t tell.”
The angel protested, “He is being far too churlish, Eric, as always. Yes, some of it is wordy, but that’s inevitable. It’s the way Dan Brown writes. Howard makes up for it by making the action scenes genuinely exciting, particularly one in which Langdon and a guard are trapped in a room and running out of oxygen. As recently as Frost/Nixon, you said Ron Howard deserves more credit than he gets as a director. There’s even a funny running gag about Langdon continually trashing Vatican treasures. I heard you laughing, Eric, admit it.”
“That was ME laughing, you idiot, at how dopey it all was!” the devil shot back. “Look, there may be some good action scenes here, but what about a compelling story and characters you care about? I didn’t find much of either here. A movie lives or dies by its script, and Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp just about kill it. What about that jerk-you-around climax? One of those stupid, ‘No he did it/no HE did it’ endings? Please! It’s like M. Night Shyamalan ghost-wrote the movie on a bad day. Fah! “
Even the angel was struggling to answer that point. Finally, in desperation, he stammered “What about Hanks? At least he got rid of that silly haircut!”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s the best you can do?” I said. “Spare me. The movie does have some solid thrills, but I still didn’t care about anybody or anything. Angels & Demons is not that bad, but it’s still a misfire. Sorry.” And at that, the mini-mes vanished off my shoulders.
So much for the better angels of my nature.
GRADE: C+
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When did the movies get the books right?
It seems like every time a movie version of a best-seller comes out (such as Angels & Demons, which I will review Friday), people complain about how Hollywood messed it up. And the landscape of book-to-film adaptations is littered with botches.
Once in a while, though, Hollywood does get it right. So today I’m asking you: Which movies got the books right - or at the very least, did them justice? And are there even examples where the movie is BETTER than the book?
Off the top of my head, here are some fine adaptations.
The Grapes of Wrath: No movie can hope to match John Steinbeck’s unique writing style and techniques in this book, but John Ford’s film comes about as close as any film possibly could. A magnetic lead performance from Henry Fonda surely helped.
Misery: When I read Stephen King’s novel, I couldn’t see how a movie could convey all those internal thoughts of the kidnapped writer, but Rob Reiner found a way to do it. Kathy Bates’ Oscar-winning performance surely helped.
The Wizard of Oz: Well, duh. Fun as Baum’s book is, it doesn’t have “Over the Rainbow.”
Spider-Man: Yes, comic books count too. The second movie is easily the best.
So what are your favorite book-to-film adaptations? And just to balance the scales, tell me the absolute WORST adaptations. I vote for a tie: The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Cat in the Hat.
Discuss while I try to purge my memory of those movies, click my heels three times and say “There’s no place like home …”
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Reviewing those free movie sites
My blogging colleague Jill Kelley pointed you to various Web sites where you can watch movies for free. Being the resident movie maven around here, I thought I’d take a look at the sites and offer my perspective on their selection.
SnagFilms: Known as a site for documentaries, this site doesn’t feature a whole lot of A-list titles, although there are some well-known movies like Super Size Me and The Times of Harvey Milk. Still, there’s a wide range of material here that seems fascinating, ranging from a piece on Charlie Chaplin’s “forgotten” years to Girl 27, a fascinating film about about a little known MGM starlet who comes out of hiding to discuss a long-buried scandal.
The Auteurs: You have to go through a sign-up process, and not all films are free, but the selection here is quite impressive. It seems to lean heavily toward documentaries too. Any site that lets you watch movies like Salesman, Harlan County USA, and a film on Idi Amin by Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune) for nothing is OK by me.
Babelgum: A site focusing on international fare. Not a lot of familiar material, but that’s the idea - to give exposure to the less familiar. A fascinating place to explore.
Joost: The site as a whole is very YouTube-ish, but the film section has a lot of great finds, like silent Laurel and Hardy shorts, Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn, and the immortal Attack of the Giant Leeches.
Reel 13: This PBS site looks like it has a thin but choice selection, including the likes of Inherit the Wind and Pat and Mike, but I can’t access the full films there. Maybe I’m missing something?
Crackle: A very decent library of Sony-related movies ranging from Spider-Man 2 to Casualties of War. HOWEVER - like Netflix’s Instant Viewing service, this site shows some titles in the wrong aspect ratio. Casualties of War, for instance, is supposed to be shown at 2.35:1; instead it’s shown at 1.85:1, so it cuts off image on the sides. Unacceptable.
YouTube: The ubiquitous video site has a pretty skimpy selection, but there are good finds like Animal Farm and Fitzcarraldo and the unforgettable Hercules in New York, starring a certain California governor.
Jill also points to the handy search sites Surf the Channel and Jinni.
Check these sites out and tell me what you think.
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Princess and the Frog - offensive?/Up reviews out
Disney/Pixar’s latest movies, Up and The Princess and the Frog, are both making waves around the web, but of a very different sort.
The first reviews for Up are coming in, and not surprisingly, they’re raves. Todd McCarthy of Variety says “Depending on what you think of Cars, Pixar makes it either 9 and a half out of 10 or 10 for 10 with Up, a captivating odd-couple adventure that becomes funnier and more exciting as it flies along.
Later on in the review, he makes an interesting point about this being Pixar’s first 3-D picture. Though he likes the 3D effects, McCarthy thinks seeing it “flat” may be the better way to go.
“Although the cliffhanger effects are augmented by 3-D projection, never do (director Pete) Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and co-director Bob Peterson shove anything in the viewer’s face just because of its 3-D potential. In fact, the film’s overall loveliness presents a conceivable argument in favor of seeing it in 2-D: Even with the strongest possible projector bulbs, the 3-D glasses reduce the image’s brightness by 20%. At the very least, the incentive for seeing Up in 3-D would seem less powerful than it is for other films.”
Roger Ebert (also not a fan of 3D) offers his “unofficial observations” on his blog.
Even more interesting is the reaction to The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s first hand-drawn movie since 2004’s disappointing Home on the Range. Here’s the trailer.
And here’s the poster too (click to enlarge)
Now - I’m going to stay out of this for the moment because people may accuse me of a pro-Disney bent - a bent I hereby acknowledge. So let me ask - do YOU find anything offensive in that trailer?
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Today’s DVDs: Liam Neeson or vampires?
There’s not much new on the DVD shelves this week, although one title in particular is bound to sell and rent well.
That would be Taken, a solid little potboiler about a father (Liam Neeson) who wreaks havoc on his daughter’s kidnappers. I wasn’t quite as enamored of it as some people were; I thought it was the equivalent of a throwaway paperback you’d read on the beach. Like so many action films these days, this movie is a bit too frenzied for its own good, but Neeson’s performance gives the story much-needed gravity - a gravity that, given recent events, seems rather poignant now. GRADE: B
Passengers: One would think a thriller starring Anne Hathaway would get a decent release, but this movie, in which she plays an airline therapist who gets involved with the survivor of a plane crash (Patrick WIlson), never gained altitude. One can only surmise it didn’t deliver as expected.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: As far as second-tier sequels minus their original leads go, I hear this one is actually not bad. Not that the standards are particularly high or anything. Still, it’s gotta look funny for this to appear on Michael Sheen’s resume right after Frost/Nixon.
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Reviewing ALL the Star Trek movies
Star Trek hit warp speed out of the gate, grossing $76.5 million since it opened late Thursday - that’s better than most expected, including myself.
Most everyone I’ve talked to has loved the movie, so my not-so-bold prediction is that Trek will have some legs at the box office. Put another way, I’m thinking Star Trek crosses $200 million easily. Last week’s big opener, Wolverine, will not.
Speaking of legs, Star Trek has developed some in this space as well. I offer my reviews of all the Star Trek movies and offer you the chance to respond.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Picture? Sure. Motion? Not really. I saw it on the big screen again recently, and while it’s visually impressive, the movie takes itself far too seriously and moves way too slowly. It’s watchable enough, but if the new Trek moves at warp speed, this movie moves at one-quarter impulse power. GRADE: B-
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn: I agree with most people who call this the best Trek movie. That ending still packs a wallop. GRADE: A
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: A solid if undistinguished entry. Most everything in the film is good, not great, but Christopher Lloyd’s performance as the Klingon villain throws it off. Lloyd looks even sillier now, since one can’t help but wonder what “Great Scott!” would sound like in Klingon. GRADE: B
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: The highest-grossing of all the Trek movies (for now, anyway), this one about saving the whales so they can save us is even goofier than I remembered, but it’s still great fun. Comedy has rarely been Trek’s strong suit, but it works well here. GRADE: A-
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: The nadir of Trek. Shatner directs about as well as he sings. “Row, row, row your boat” indeed. Ptooey. GRADE: D
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: Very strong entry makes for an exciting and moving farewell to the original crew. Great villainous turn by Christopher Plummer. Only debit: Some fairly lame attempts at comedy. GRADE: A-
The Generations movies and more after the jump.
Star Trek: Generations: A solid if somewhat inauspicious big-screen debut for the Next Generation crew looks great, but the finale with Kirk and Picard is clunky when it should be the best part of the film. GRADE: B
Star Trek: First Contact: This very entertaining and exciting adventure brings in the Borg to samshing effect. This is the only better-than-decent movie the new crew got. Jonathan Frakes (AKA Commander Riker) directs very skillfully. GRADE: A
Star Trek: Insurrection: Frakes goes behind the camera again, but not nearly as successfully, let down by a mediocre script. Good performances make it OK but the complaint that this is a glorified TV show is pretty much correct. GRADE: B-
Star Trek: Nemesis: Not so much a disaster as it is eminently forgettable. I thought it was decent while I watched it and then it evaporated right away. Considering how good the new crew was, it’s a shame they didn’t get better movie scripts. GRADE: C+
Star Trek: Well, I already talked about that back here. GRADE: A
What do you think of the Trek movies? I still welcome comments on the new one.
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‘Star Trek’ set to stun
The new Star Trek movie does not sport a subtitle, but if it did, “Warp Speed” would be fitting.
Since Star Trek: Nemesis came and went in theaters with yawns at best and jeers at worst, the series has been on life support, leaving some people to wonder if Trek could ever come back.
It has - with a vengeance.
From beginning to end, this fantastically entertaining film zooms along as if Scotty had just come through with that desperately needed burst of speed to avert certain doom.
I’m not a “Trekkie” or “Trekker” or whatever fans prefer to call themselves these days, but I have enjoyed most of the movies and TV shows over the decades. Even at its best, however - and I say this with affection - Trek was always kind of staid and pokey. Sure, there were bursts of excitement with a thrilling fight or space battle, but Star Trek never quite had the adrenaline charge of Star Wars. And that was OK. Trek was more interested in being introspective.
J.J. Abrams’ new movie changes all that. Unlike any of the other Treks this one can legitimately be called an action movie. Advance buzz has labeled the film “Not your father’s Star Trek,” and that’s true - up to a point.
For this new Trek to work, it has to please the hardcore fans who have adored the franchise for years, while offering something to those who have never seen Trek before. That’s a fine line, but the movie walks it brilliantly.
Star Trek reboots the series the same way the Batman and James Bond franchises did. Not only does it tell us how the characters became who they are, it also asks us to throw out a lot of what we know, so the movie has a new playing field. We see how Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy, Chekov, Uhura, Sulu and Scotty made their way into Starfleet, but the script changes the history imaginatively. (Time travel is the great rule-bender).
Our villain is a Romulan (Eric Bana) bent on revenge for the destruction of his planet. He sets out to destroy Vulcan, Spock’s home world. It falls to the crew of the Enterprise, commanded by Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to stop him.
I believe longtime fans should be pleased because the story is absolutely true to the original characters, all of whom are very well played. Chris Pine brings a youthful brashness to Kirk, while Karl Urban is delightfully irascible as “Bones.” I wanted to see even more of him. Simon Pegg is a bit more hyper than James Doohan was as Scotty, but that fits the comic actor’s skills. Best of all is Zachary Quinto (Heroes) as Spock, who gives the Vulcan an emotional center that makes his story touching. Quinto’s feat is all the more impressive since one Leonard Nimoy also appears in the film. (It would be cruel if I revealed how).
As the movie opens, it uses sound effects from the original series to make us say, “Ah, I recognize this. Here we go.” Then the action takes off, and this is what non-fans will like. In the original series, the most the camera ever moved was when it zoomed in and out on the red alert light. In the very first scene of this movie, Abrams’ cameras, dart, swoop, pan and tilt with abandon, making the film pulse with energy that ought to carry along the non-fans.
I had such fun with this film that I’m reluctant to bring up flaws, but there are a few minor ones. As welcome as the active camerawork is, sometimes it gets a little too active for its own good. Every once in a while I wanted to give Abrams a Vulcan nerve pinch to calm him down. In addition, some of the scenes showing Kirk and Spock as kids are hokey. I don’t care how hip Abrams is, Star Trek and the Beastie Boys simply do not mix.
Still, you don’t have to take my word for it. I went to the movie with a rabid Trek fan and he essentially agreed with me, saying it was even better than he expected. Paramount has so much faith in the movie, it’s already approved a sequel.
No wonder. I can’t wait to see it.
GRADE: A
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What are the movies that most influenced you?
A few weeks back, I wrote a post about Turner Classic Movies’ list of the 15 most influential movies of all time. I was astonished and delighted at the response. That was a great conversation, and I offer a belated thanks to you all for reading and/or commenting.
Obeying the laws of Hollywood, I have decided a hit demands a sequel, but this time I would like to ask a different question:
What films have influenced you the most personally?
Most everyone has at least one film that had a big impact on their life, whether it made them fall in love with movies, or it gave them a new outlook on life, or whether it introduced them to someone special.
Me being the film nut I am, I have several.
Yellow Submarine: I have pointed out more than once on this blog that this was the first movie I could clearly remember seeing in a theater. It turned me on to the two things that gave me my claims to fame - the Beatles and movies. (In school I was famous for being the Beatlemanaic - so much so I can do things like name the seventh word of the ninth song on the sixth Beatles album - which, for the record, is “story.”)
Also - I first saw the film at the Victoria Theatre, which was then known by the slightly less regal name “Victory.” Note to the programmers of the just-announced classic film series there: I WOULD LOVE IT if you could book the film in your theater some year!
2001/A Clockwork Orange/Taxi Driver/After Hours: I list these all in a group because these were the ones that kicked my interest in movies into high gear in the late 1980s. These were the movies that A) Made me aware of what a director does, and B) Made me recognize different directors’ styles, so I could like at a movie and say “That’s a Scorsese” or “That’s Kubrick.”
The Fisher King: The film itself didn’t influence me per se, but it did give rise to my alias. I was so taken with the movie - one of my favorites of that year - that I wrote my review using ye olde medieval language, on the order of a night. I called myself Sir Phil M. Critic. The name stuck and has been my moniker ever since.
Hercules: Most people don’t rank this 1997 Disney film all that highly, but I do. It brought me to two very special people. When I first saw it, I was absolutely dazzled by the female lead Megara, who had this wonderful, femme fatale voice you normally didn’t hear from a Disney. Here’s the scene that really wowed me:
“Who IS that? I’ve GOT to find out!” I said.
And so I did. Her name is Susan Egan. I got in touch with her, told her how much I loved her work and was lucky enough to get to be friends with her. That’s what she calls me on her Web site. See?
And Hercules’ influence doesn’t stop there. Because I became a fan of Susan, I met fellow fan Angela Allen, who has been a dear and loyal friend for 10 years. You may remember her as the co-author of the review of the American Girl movie. So anybody who cracks on Hercules deals with ME!
I could name many more, but I want to turn this over to you. What films have had the most impact on your life?
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Dom DeLuise,1933-2009
I cannot claim to have been a great fan of Dom DeLuise, but he was one of those performers who tended to make me smile, even when he was in movies that weren’t as funny as he was. David Poland put it best at The Hot Blog:
“It’s been 35 years since Blazing Saddles debuted. Korman, Kahn, Little, and Pickens are all gone. Now DeLuise. Sad. But after a year in which we lost both Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, I guess it’s time for me (and others) to grit my teeth and get used to the idea… younger, older… the losses come… but the work does live on… the pleasure of the work keeps coming…
“Dom DeLuise is dead. And I am smiling, thinking of him.”
Me too.
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Quick Transformers question …
Is anyone else as amused as I am that the abbreviation for the Transformers sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, is ROTF? Here’s what it means, for the acronym challenged.
How apropos! That’s what I usually WOULD be doing at Michael Bay’s movies - if they didn’t give me such headaches.
Disclaimer: I still to go into Transformers with an open mind. I am not prepared to hate it. I hope it’s good. What I hope, and what I except, however, are not one and the same.
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Catching up on DVDs - Ben Button and others
Last week’s summer movie preview pre-empted the DVD coverage, but it returns this week, with reviews of an Oscar favorite (numerically, anyway) and an unassuming but touching romance.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Entertainment Weekly recently described the movie as less a compelling drama than “a two and a half hour magic trick,” and that’s about the size of it. Still, it’s a very impressive magic trick. As ever, director David Fincher’s visual sense is astonishing and even lyrical here, producing many memorable scenes about a man who ages backwards - yet somehow the whole ends up as less than the sum of its parts. It’s a film I greatly admired more than I loved. GRADE: B+
Oh and PS - the griping about this film getting a Criterion DVD can stop right now. If Armageddon can get the Criterion treatment, Benjamin Button jolly well can. End of discussion.
Last Chance Harvey: Sometimes what you see in movies is exactly what you get, and what I saw here was a lovely, low-key charmer of two people (Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson) who are down on their luck but find solace in each other. The story unfolded more or less as I expected, and it runs a touch longer than it should, but it was still a pleasure to watch two consummate, well-matched actors sell a story so gracefully. GRADE: B
Also out now
Bride Wars: From all the evidence I saw, Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson were cashing their checks, pulling each other’s hair, and indulging in material beneath them. I don’t take thee.
Hotel for Dogs: And so another kids vehicle with Emma Roberts comes and goes without much notice. Isn’t she supposed to have a real hit at some point? (Addendum: It seems she rather did. See comments below.)
The Uninvited: I heard it actually wasn’t half bad, at least by the admittedly low standards of PG-13 horror. True?
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‘Ghosts of Girlfriends Past’ fades all too quickly
Usually when camps of people sharply divide on a movie, I find myself caught somewhere in the middle.
And so it goes with Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which is neither the monstrosity many critics describe, nor is is it the “cuuuuuuuute” romantic comedy many women at my screening were fawning over. (They were almost certainly persuaded by certain charms of Matthew McConaughey, to which I am immune.)
Instead. Ghosts is a sometimes pleasant but ultimately ordinary riff on A Christmas Carol (why such a movie was released in May I do not understand, but that’s beside my point.) In the umpteenth 200th version of the story, our “Scrooge” is Connor Mead, a Don Juan of the love-em-and-leave em variety.
The lone exception is Jenny (Jennifer Garner) his childhood friend and the one who got away. Indeed, Connor’s resentment over this is the underlying reason he became a selfish jerk. So when Connor is asked to be best man at his brother’s wedding, he’s haunted by several spirits who try to show him the error of his ways.
It’s actually not a bad idea for a story, but I will charitably say this movie didn’t find the best way to tell it. It’s not just that the screenplay is unrelentingly predictable, it’s also that many of the jokes are horrid. In one scene when it starts to rain, Michael Douglas, playing the Marley equivalent, says “Those are all the lady tears women have shed over you.” Uccch. Whoever came up with that line should never be allowed to hold a pen or touch a keyboard again.
As I expected, the ever-watchable Garner is the best thing about the movie because she’s playing the only real human being in the movie. Everyone else, McConaughey included, is playing a stick-figure. I believed that someone could fall head-over-heels for Garner, and I believed she would be torn apart being rejected by her first love.
A successful romantic comedy, however, needs to make me care about more than one-half of the couple. McConaughey goes to such lengths to be a cad, I didn’t buy his redemption, nor did I believe he really deserved it - something that is required for any Scrooge type.
When the movie ended I found myself saying not “God bless us, everyone.” It was more along the lines of “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.”
GRADE: C
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Prequel dulls Wolverine’s claws
Much ado has been made of the workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine that leaked onto the Net several weeks ago. I’ve seen what is supposed to be the final version, but I could swear the film still isn’t finished.
Meant to be a prequel to the three X-Men movies, Wolverine feels more like the junior league entry in the series. It’s watchable enough, with some good moments, but the movie comes across as undercooked, both narratively and technically.
It starts well enough, with a strong credits sequence explaining how Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and his brother, Victor/Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) have lived through the centuries, fighting in every major war from the Civil War through Vietnam. They run across William Stryker (Danny Huston), a military commando who forms his own strike team of mutants. When their missions begin to turn sinister, Logan balks, much to the dismay of Victor, who becomes increasingly dangerous.
It makes more than enough sense that Wolverine was chosen as the origin story, since the consensus is that he’s the most popular X-Man, and Jackman has more than enough talent to carry the movie. Even so, I felt oddly detached most of the way.
That I knew that Wolverine was going to survive this ordeal shouldn’t have been a problem, but the screenplay by David Benioff and Skip Woods didn’t carry enough emotional heft to make me forget that I knew how it was all going to come out. The story unfolds with such obviousness, I even guessed the “surprise” cameo correctly.
That’s not to say there isn’t good material in Wolverine. It’s no surprise that Jackman’s charisma goes a long way, but Schreiber and Huston are equally strong as the villains. It’s just too bad the everything around them isn’t as compelling as they are. Some of the supporting mutants are downright corny. A guy who throws around deadly playing cards? That’s stupid, even for a comic book movie.
Still, for all the rumblings of director Gavin Hood being inexperienced at action scenes, the movie actually delivers those fairly well. Hood’s no Bryan Singer, who made the first two movies, and I would even argue he’s no Brett Ratner, the director of the third movie - who for all his shortcomings, knows his way around a popcorn flick Still, Hood gets the job done proficiently if unremarkably, with the fight scenes between Wolverine and Sabretooth being especially effective.
However, the action scenes have other shortcomings. The effects work is passable at best, and distractingly fake at worst. If these are the finished shots, I shudder to think how the workprint must have looked.
Wolverine never bored me, exactly. Occasionally I was intrigued and entertained, but ultimately I was indifferent to the movie, whose mutation is the ability to make a carbon copy - something that’s reasonably close to, but not quite as good as the original.
GRADE: C+
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