Wreck-It Ralph

Walt Disney Animation Studios 52^nd feature and my personal favourite for nearly twenty years, Wreck-It Ralph is a love letter to the video game. Expertly combining cutting edge animation with 8-bit, 2D and classic arcade styles, the film is chock full of references and in jokes to the thirty or so years of the video games industry which it celebrates. The film tells the story of an arcade game villain who wants to be liked and leaves his own game, travelling to others in the hope of winning a medal. It’s this medal that he hopes will aid his inclusion with the good guys of his own game, Fix-It Felix, Jr. While outside this game, he enters the candy themed cart game Sugar Rush in which he meets a glitch who has struggles of her own.

Wreck-It Ralph is a sweet and funny film that rewards concentration and multiple watches but doesn’t alienate the casual viewer or gamer. As well as being targeted at those with specific game knowledge, it also features a surprisingly emotional plot and some likeable and well drawn characters. It cleverly appeals to both boys and girls with its combination of gender centric games and characters while mums and dads will get a lot of the references to gaming history that will go over the heads of younger audience members.

Paperman

Paperman is a 2012 animated short and the first Disney animated short film to win an Oscar since 1969. Released alongside the feature length Wreck-It Ralph, it’s a seven minute movie about a chance encounter and longing for love. Set in 1940s New York City, George is waiting for his elevated train to work when a gust of wind throws one of his papers into the face of a pretty girl waiting on the same platform. Her lips leave a lipstick imprint on the paper and the duo laugh coyly at the incident before she gets onto her train. Later the same day, George is thinking about the incident while looking out of his office window when he spots the woman in a room on the other side of the street. In an attempt to draw her attention, he makes paper aeroplanes, launching them towards her open window.

Paperman is beautifully drawn with clean black and white lines and wonderful period detail. It’s reminiscent of the Hollywood Golden Age and features lovely period design. The animation is elegant and very much in keeping with classic Disney. Both central characters appear to have been taken from the stock character cupboard at Disney with Meg taking the form of a Disney Princess in mid century attire and George as the affable and harmless Prince in a suit. Although the animation is very ‘Disney’, it also smacks of realism. The expressions and movement speaks of the animation we all know and love but the background, tone and environment are much more realistic looking than in the cartoons of Disney’s heyday. The use of light is also evocative and adds to the sense of romance that the short exudes throughout. It also helps to capture that Golden Age vibe.

The plot is simple and sweet and something everyone can relate to. It’s based on the idea of a brief connection or spark between two people, something that those of us in large cities must feel often. I think that most people would have spotted a look or glance or caught eyes with a stranger and wondered what they might be like or how you’d get on. This takes that idea and runs with it. Like a lot of recent animated shorts, it’s incredibly simple but brilliantly effective. My only complaint is with the anthropomorphism of the paper in the final moments. It works well but I enjoyed the realism of the earlier stages. Overall though, this is yet another example of the kind of talent and creativity that Disney Animation Studios has to offer and like so many recent shorts, I enjoyed it more than its feature companion.   

9/10 

You may also like

Get a Horse! 2013

The Blue Umbrella 2013 

Wall-E 2008 

 

Juan of the Dead

In early 2012, Juan of the Dead’s UK premier was held at my local art house cinema during their annual Spanish Language Film Festival. I was really annoyed that I couldn’t make the screening as I’d heard a lot of good things about the comedy-horror, the fist Cuban film I’d ever come across. Over a year later, LoveFilm sent me the DVD and I excitedly slid it into my player. Ninety-six minutes later I was a disappointed man. While Juan of the Dead has a lot of things going for it, I didn’t enjoy the broad comedy or unremarkable effects. It does however contain important political subtext which was much more to my liking.

Juan (Alexis Díaz de Villegas) is a middle aged Cuban, used to doing nothing on a regular basis. His wife left him some time ago, taking his daughter with her to Spain. Juan’s friend Lazaro (Jorge Molina) is in a similar situation but at least has his son Vladi (Andros Perugorría) for company. A strange illness begins to infect the people of the Caribbean island and those infected begin marauding through the streets, eating their friends and neighbours who in turn become infected themselves. Dismissed as dissidents, backed by America by the Cuban Government, it soon becomes apparent to Juan that no matter who or what they are, he and his friends have a battle for survival on their hands.

Searching for Sugar Man

A couple of times a year, a documentary feature will break through from the restraints of modern, multiplex, big budget cinema and find a way onto our screens. Generally though, because of availability, documentaries find a home on DVD and this is the medium in which I saw Searching for Sugar Man, the latest documentary to win an Oscar. It was precisely lack of availability which meant I had to wait so long to see the film but now I have, I can join in with the many who rate it so highly. Directed by first timer Malik Bendjelloul and produced by Simon Chinn, the producer of the heart-pounding Man on Wire, Searching for Sugar Man is a seemingly implausible tale of the search for a forgotten musician.

Sixto Rodriguez was a man who released two folk-rock albums in the early 1970s and then disappeared. The albums bombed in the US and Rodriguez’s label estimated, somewhat mean spiritedly, that his records sold around six copies. The rumour was that the singer had committed suicide on stage after the failure of his music career but what he could have never known was that he was huge in Apartheid era South Africa. Although the South Africans knew little to nothing about the singer, to them he was as popular as Elvis or The Beatles and a South African journalist set out in the mid 1990s to discover what exactly did happen to the mysterious singer.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Re-view

Films are released, they are discussed, they are judged and they are revered or forgotten. Occasionally after several years or even decades they are reassessed by fans and critics and their historical placing my rise or fall. I’ve decided to reassess a film myself but it isn’t a film I saw decades or even years ago, it’s a film I saw just four months and nineteen days ago. Like a lot of people who grew up watching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy I couldn’t wait for the release of the first instalment of his second Middle Earth trilogy, The Hobbit and Unexpected Journey. I saw it just before Christmas last year and was hugely disappointed, so much so that I gave the film just 4/10 when I reviewed it. To put that into context, that’s the same rating I gave to Rock of Ages and We Bought a Zoo, two films I never want to see again.

For me the main problem with the movie was that it was ruined by one thing; 3D. I thought the 3D in The Hobbit was pointless (if you’ll excuse the pun). It darkened the screen, hiding the beautiful landscapes and made the scenes set underground as easy to see as a particularly difficult to see thing, being viewed by a blind man, facing the other way. The images were also fuzzy and the motion blur I got from the action scenes meant that I often just gave up and closed my eyes. All in all it was a disaster. So having reviewed the film and received exasperated looks from friends who read it, I vowed to re-view it when it came out on Blu-Ray. So was I right?

Oblivion

I’m a big fan of clever, great looking science fiction but wasn’t really excited by the prospect of the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, Oblivion. The trailer seemed to suggest the great looks but gave little indication of the ideas to back up the visuals. I was wrong. Oblivion is a film which I enjoyed much more than I anticipated and as an overall package is a pretty decent film. It’s 2077 and the Earth has been partially destroyed by a war between humans and an alien force known as Scavengers. Although we won the war, we couldn’t save the planet as the use of atomic weapons left it mostly uninhabitable. With most of humanity relocated to Titan and the rest aboard an orbiting space station awaiting their departure, the last two people on Earth live above the clouds and form a skeleton crew in charge of maintaining drones which protect vital sea based energy converters from the few remaining Scavs.

Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is drone mechanic 49 who spends his days servicing downed drones while dodging the occasional Scav attack. His partner is Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) who monitors Jack from the clouds and she reports back to Control (Melissa Leo) aboard the orbiting space station. Jack finds himself suffering unusual flashbacks to a time before his birth and when a craft crashes into his sector he discovers that its only survivor is the woman from his flashback dreams. As Jack uncovers new and disturbing evidence after an encounter with the Scavs, it appears that all is not what it seems on Earth. Oblivion isn’t a fantastic film but when science fiction blockbusters these days are either comic book based or just loud, shouty, exploding Michael Bay style affairs, Oblivion harks back to the 1970s period of sci-fi about ideas which are set in a fleshed out and realistic world. Oblivion not only looks brilliant but has an engaging plot which is full of surprises.

Magic Mike

When I saw trailers for Magic Mike in early 2012 I thought it looked like the film I was least likely to see, ever. Despite excelling in 21 Jump Street, Channing Tatum was still one of my least favourite actors and I was yet to see Matthew McConaughey’s fantastic turn in Killer Joe so he was still just Mahogany McConaughey to me. Added to that inauspicious line up was Alex Pettyfer who I had only ever seen in Beastly which happens to be one of my least favourite films of all time. So the cast was awful, what about the plot? Male Strippers. Next. So all of that plus fucking Rihanna warbling over the the trailer made Magic Mike a film I felt I had to avoid. But then I started reading snippets of reviews and comments from people who weren’t the typical wet lipped Tatum fans and wondered if it was actually worth checking out.

‘Magic’ Mike Lane (Tatum) has dreams of designing and selling custom made furniture but for now earns a living in a number of ways which include roofing and more lucratively, stripping. On a roofing job he meets Adam (Pettyfer) who Mike introduces to the world of male stripping. Adam, known as ‘the kid’ quickly picks up the trade and brings in much needed money which soon goes to his head. Meanwhile Mike enters into a flirtatious friendship with Adam’s straight laced sister Brooke (Cody Horn) while club owner Dallas (McConaughey) dreams of ruling over an empire of strip clubs and all the women and money that comes with it.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

The apocalypse is just three weeks away, your wife has left you and you regret most of the major decisions you’ve ever made. What do you do? Some people try to fuck everyone they can, others drink to forget. A few carry on as normal and some riot. Dodge Peterson (Steve Carell) decides he’s going to seek out his old High School sweetheart after discovering a letter from her telling him that he was the love of her life. With him he takes his kooky English neighbour Penny (Keira Knightley) who he just met with the promise that he can get her a on a plane to be with her family before the end.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is a sweet indie type of movie with its heart in the right place. It features two watchable leads and a nice story but is short of laughs and far too formulaic. It was a movie that I’d hoped to see in the cinema but my girlfriend’s dislike of Carell and Knightley coupled with a short theatrical run put a stop to that. It is a film which hasn’t enriched my life and won’t stay with me long but was worth the hundred minutes of my life.

Taken 2

Those of you who know me personally will be well aware that 2008’s surprise hit Taken is one of my least favourite films since, well ever. I deeply disliked the casual xenophobia, cartoonish depiction of Yurop (Europe) and all round head kicking dullness. As you can imagine then, the idea of Taken 2 did not excite me and I had no intention of putting myself through another dose of nonsensical, skull crushing chaos. That was until I was on a recent flight with eight hours to kill. Having already seen films I wanted to see on the flight out I was short of things to entertain me so tentatively pressed the Taken 2 button and closed my eyes in shame and fear when I hit ‘play movie’.

The film follows on from the events of Taken which if you don’t know involved the teenage daughter (Maggie Grace) of ex C.I.A. man Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) being ‘taken’, get it? by a group of Albanian people traffickers to be sold into sexual slavery. This all happened in Foreign (France) where everyone is evil and speaks English, not French. So, it’s a few years later and Mills is still overly protective of his teenage daughter, who looks about thirty by the way. He goes to Istanbul for a job and his daughter Kim (Grace) and ex wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) surprises him with a visit. Meanwhile the family of the nondescript but dead Albanians from the first movie are seeking revenge and ‘take’ Bryan and his ex wife.

The Angels' Share

I couldn’t get to a screening of The Angel’s Share south of the border when the film was on general release, despite the critical praise the movie attracted. Today I finally caught up with the film on DVD and I’m glad I did. The Angel’s Share is a typical piece of Social Realism from the man behind the likes of Kes and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. The plot focuses on a young thug called Robbie (Paul Brannigan) from the rough streets of Glasgow’s East End. After narrowly escaping prison following his latest arrest he is given community service under the guidance of Harry (John Henshaw). Harry tries to get his guys back on the straight and narrow and introduces them to the delights of whiskey tasting, something which Robbie picks up very quickly. When the group discover a valuable cask is about to come up for auction they realise they can use it as a means of escaping the gutter.

The Angel’s Share is a beautiful phrase and is used to denote the 2% of whiskey which is evaporated from barrels each year. Later it is given another, equally poignant meaning. The film is equally as darkly comic as it is rough and Glasgow is depicted as the sort of place that you’d never want to visit. It makes Baltimore in The Wire look like Disney Land. Through the poverty and dirt though emerges hope in the form of Robbie, a man on his final chance. He is inches from prison and has a violent gang on his back as well as a new born baby so decides that now is the time to get out of Glasgow and start afresh. The way in which this is attempted is highly original, entertaining and funny.

On the Road

Based on Jack Kerouac’s book of the same name, On the Road is a love letter to the Beat generation of the late 1940’s of which Kerouac himself was a founding member. The plot follows various road trips and eventful days in the lives of several young Americans in the late 1940s as they experiment with drugs and sex and attempt to find meaning in the world and their own lives. The central character Sal Paradise (based on Kerouac – Sam Riley) is a young writer in need of inspiration who meets Dean Moriarty, a wild and carefree man for whom everyone and everything should be explored and or fucked. The two embark on several road trips and meet some strange and interesting people along the way.

Although I initially liked the look of the trailer for On the Road and was aware of the Kerouac novel, it was a film I didn’t get around to seeing in the cinema. Now I’ve seen it I think I made the right choice although overall I’m glad I saw the movie. The film has a terrific atmosphere of youthful energy, opportunity and freedom which is expressed through the music, sex and adventure of its young characters and to be honest I was jealous of their lives. Problems lie in the length of the movie and slow pacing which doesn’t match the exuberance of the plot. The acting is also very mixed but following the film I wanted to discover more about the Beat generation and its characters and beliefs.

A Royal Affair

In Eighteenth Century Denmark a new Queen (Alicia Vikander) arrives from her native England to meet her new King, Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) for the first time. The King instantly fails to live up to his reputation and the Queen is shunned by him and infuriated by his temperament and apparent madness. What’s worse is that Denmark’s outdated censorship bans many of her favourite Enlightenment era books which are returned to England. In a small Danish colony in Germany, two ex Court favourites persuade a local Doctor to apply to be the King’s physician in the hope that they will once again gain favour with the Court. The Doctor (Mads Mikkelsen) is an instant hit with the King but with few others. The Queen slowly learns of their like-mindedness and they begin a slow seizure of power from the lame duck Monarch as well as embarking on a risky sexual affair.

It always annoys me when I miss a critically successful overseas film at the cinema but I simply couldn’t find anywhere showing A Royal Affair on its theatrical release. The film has since been Oscar Nominated and just the other day won a couple of converted Kermode Awards so I was thrilled when my online DVD rental service sent me the film. A Royal Affair is pretty much all I was expecting of it. It’s a lavish and pretty costume drama with a political heart and save for a run time I would happily shorten, I really enjoyed it.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a fantasy drama set in the Louisiana bayou. Five year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) is a young resident of The Bathtub, a small community cut off from the rest of the world by a levee. She lives there with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) a man who is desperately trying to teach his daughter self sufficiency due to the difficult nature of their home and a hidden illness. With a storm approaching The Bathtub many of the residents decide to leave but Hushpuppy and Wink stay to ride it out.

Beasts is a film that I’d heard a lot about and it has garnered several high profile awards and nominations including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Director at the Oscars. I personally think that only the Best Actress nominee is justified but think that Beasts of the Southern Wild is a compelling and interesting film that takes poetic licence with a realistic setting.

Safe House

I don’t know what I was hoping for with Safe House but I certainly wasn’t expecting so little. With films like Taken setting the bar very low these days for the action genre it seems that a whole parade of films are following in its ridiculous wake and Safe House is but one of these movies. Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a CIA Safe House Operative in Cape Town. His role involves waiting around a secure house in case the CIA ever needs to move a criminal, terrorist etc. Twelve months into the posting Matt’s first house guest arrives in the shape of Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) a highly skilled rogue CIA Agent who is being chased by a menagerie of vaguely foreign looking killers. Frost repeatedly ditches Weston but he never stops hunting the rogue agent down and more nonsense I’m bored.

Safe House was more full of holes than holy water from the holy land and had the most obvious twist since Rock ‘n’ Roll. It is such a stupid movie that I can barely bring myself to discuss it. It is never exciting or interesting and beside solid but unspectacular central performances there is literally nothing of merit in the entire 110 minutes.

Top 10 of 2012

January 25^th 2013 marks the one year anniversary of my blog and this felt as good a day as any to publish my Top Ten of 2012. I considered publishing it earlier, to coincide with my Top 10 New to Me Films of 2012, but the extra month gave me a chance to see more of this year’s Oscar frontrunners and also made sense as it brings to a close my first year of blogging. I saw a total of 391 films this year, of which exactly 100 are eligible for last year’s Top 10. To be eligible I had to see it in the cinema sometime between 25/01/12 and 24/01/13. I’m yet to see the likes of Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty so they may be included next year. Also, films such as The Artist and Shame have been discounted as I originally saw them before I started blogging. The ten films are in reverse order and you can click on the title for a full review. After the Top 10 there will also be a list of my girlfriend’s Top 3 and my 5 worst films of 2012 too. Enjoy…

Tabu

In part homage to F. W. Murnau’s film of the same name, Portuguese melodrama Tabu is a film split into two halves which revolve around a Portuguese woman who grew up in Africa and grew old in Lisbon. Shot on actual film and in a narrow 1.37:1 aspect the film exudes an air of the silent era which is doubled with a second act which features no spoken dialogue. Instead of traditional dialogue or even old style intertitles the audience is treated to a narration from an older version of one of the central characters. The second act isn’t totally silent though as background noise of the African bush can be heard while the characters are muted. It is a brave film making decision but works to great effect. Tabu takes some time to get into and will be an instant turn off to many (including me) but once I got into it and especially once I reached Part 2, I was hooked by its enduring story, picturesque setting and exquisite style.

The film opens with an enigmatic prologue set in Africa and telling the story of star crossed lovers. This beautiful opening also introduces a crocodile which goes on to have further significance later on. Unlike the two main sections of the film, this opening could be timeless. There are hints of an early colonial setting but the way it is filmed gives it an eternal feel.

Two Days in New York

The sequel to the 2007 film Two Days in Paris which I never saw, Two Days in New York is a romantic comedy Written, Directed by and starring Julie Delpy. Delpy plays Marion, a middle aged Parisian living in New York City with her boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock) and her little boy and his young daughter. Their life is generally light and fun until Marion’s family comes to stay for the weekend. Franco-American relations are put to the test over the course of a weekend in which there are arrests, lies, confusion, nudity and mischief.

I never saw the original film but it didn’t matter. There was a very brief thirty second synopsis at the beginning but to be honest I wasn’t really paying attention to it and I never felt out of the loop. The film’s great strength lies in its tight and sharp script which is one of the best I’ve seen in a while. It often feels like a cross between Woody Allen at his height and a French Wes Anderson and was right up my street. Coming a close second to the script were the performances which were without exception, superbly judged.

Mirror Mirror

Based on the Grimm fairytale Snow White, Mirror Mirror is an uninspiring and unoriginal 2012 retelling starring Lilly Collins as Snow White and Julie Roberts as the Wicked Queen. The story differs slightly from the original fairytale in that it makes Snow more of a feminist hero in keeping with modern studio tastes. Otherwise it is fairly similar to the story that everyone knows. The film came out just a couple of months before another disastrous retelling of the same story, Snow White and the Huntsman and although I didn’t hate this version as much I certainly didn’t like it.

The best thing that Mirror Mirror has going for it are its lavish costumes and indeed the film has now been nominated for an Academy Award in that category joining the likes of W.E. and Transformers: Dark of the Moon as unlikely and infuriating recent recipients of Oscar nominations in technical categories. Mirror Mirror attempts a lighter tone than Huntsman but the comedy failed to raise a smile from my jaded face. The film is in the end an overly expensive rehashing of a story which has been told better in the past.

W.E.

W.E. or Wallace and Edward or Woefully Excruciating, What Ever, Without Evidence, Worse than Empty, Withering Exacerbation or Wasteful and Erroneous is a film by Madonna that desperately seeks parallels between a modern day love story and that of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII. It’s rubbish, like really rubbish.

In 1998 a lonely wife called Wally (seriously, Wally) (Abbie Cornish) is obsessing over the life of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) the woman behind the sensation of the century who met, fell in love with and married King Edward VIII of England. Simpson was not only a colonial commoner but was also twice divorced and it was inconceivable that a woman of her standing could marry a Royal let alone the man that would become King. This film tracks Wallis and Edwards’s love affair and the controversy it created while drawing comparisons to a modern day tale of love, suffering and redemption. And did I mention it’s rubbish?

Berberian Sound Studio

An homage to Italian giallo horror films and the mechanics of cinema itself, Berberian Sound Studio stars Toby Jones as Gilderoy, a shy Englishman who gets a job as a Foley artist on the 1970s Italian film The Equestrian Vortex, an giallo horror with typical themes of Satanism and extreme violence. Gilderoy, man more at home capturing the sounds of the English countryside, is like a fish out of water and struggles to get to grips with the Italian way of film making as well as the horrific violence on screen. Set inside a claustrophobic sound studio, the film follows Gilderoy as he slowly becomes more and more dishevelled while trying his best to create the sound to accompany the terrifying visuals, none of which are ever seen on screen.

The film reaches a critical point around seventy minutes in from where everything goes a little strange. It can be described as being without plot and its ending is confusing to say the least. The preceding hour though is amongst the best I’ve seen from a 2012 film and up until the final third it was well inside my top 10 of the year. What is good is that prior knowledge of giallo isn’t necessary in order to enjoy it. I’ve only seen one giallo film in the last year, Dario Argento’s Tenebrae, and know very little about the genre but still really liked the film.