I'm Back... And So Is Disney!

I'm not going to declare a Disney Renaissance just yet. One movie just isn't enough. But! Disney's Frozen is a step in the right direction at last. I'll try to stay spoiler free in this review, but I can't make any promises. It's an incredible film that's deserving of all the praise its received so far, and this is coming from someone who saw the trailers and said “Oh. Disney's doing a Christmas movie.”

Frozen is a love story, but it's not a love story about a princess and a prince. It's the tragic love story of a sister suffering from oppressive fear and anxiety and her younger sister desperately trying to reach out to her to comfort her and help her through her illness. The movie builds this up in a number of striking images. The opening sequence during the parents funeral, where Elsa has hidden herself away in her room demonstrates a character afraid to face the world outside her room. The mantra that becomes a bit of a motif in the first two acts of the movie “conceal, don't feel” is a concept any sufferer from anxiety or depression, myself included, would be familiar with. The idea of hiding your emotions, bottling up what you're feeling so that other people aren't worried, is clearly something Elsa builds up for herself as a defence against the destructive potential of magical powers. This is aided by the connection between her magic and her emotions. When she's happy or feeling strong positive emotions, her magic is creative and even beautiful, as seen in the very famous “Let it Go” scene where she builds her ice palace, and the scene in the very beginning of the film where Elsa and Ana are playing, as well as in the very last scene, where Elsa builds an impromptu skating rink complete with beautiful ice sculptures in the fountains, in contrast to the wicked and twisted fountain she creates when she's first outed as a sorceress.

The movie plays a lot with typical Disney conventions, but never once feels hateful or disparaging of Disney in the way that Shrek did, and also manages to continue feeling like a Disney film. Although I have heard at least one reviewer criticize the animation, saying at times the main female characters felt too “doll-like” for him, I have to say that the animation in this film is incredible. The faces of Ana and Elsa are extremely expressive and engrossing. The men have less expressive faces, but as the main focus of the action is on Ana and Elsa I rarely noticed. The expressiveness of the two main character's faces really helps you to feel for the characters and helps you feel their ups and downs. In particular, Elsa's expressions demonstrate pain and fear extremely well, allowing for subtlety that's so rare in animated films. I also have to commend the animators on the way fabric and hair moves in this film. The dresses and capes let the movie feel dynamic and lively, and they flow realistically. In particular, the image where Elsa is feeling across the swiftly freezing fjord is striking and gorgeous, aiding in the over all epic feel of the film.

A large part of this emotional draw however comes from the cast. Olaf, voiced by Josh Gad, is a character I thought I was going to loathe but never quite gets to a point where he's annoying and instead manages to actually serve a purpose in the movie. Rather than using screaming and over-the-top wonky-bonkers comedy, he uses a quiet voice for his best lines. Kristen Bell brings an energy and a youthfulness to Ana, while still being a loveable and relatable character, a beautiful contrast to Idina Menzel's reserved, regal, and suffering Elsa. Kristoff, voiced by Jonathan Groff who is another alumni of Glee, does a good job as Kristoff, and has excellent comedic timing and plays off of Kristen Bell well.

That said, the film is by no means perfect. The first moment that I really disliked was the song “Fixer Upper” sung by the trolls. Unlike most of the songs, it does little to movie the story forward and feels largely like filler. While the scene itself serves some purpose, the role of the trolls feels like it either really needed to be condensed or expanded. For the most part they serve as McGuffin's to explain how Elsa's magic works, and the song felt pretty useless except for a few lines that could have also been delivered well in simple dialogue. This marks the beginning of what is largely a weak third act. There is one twist in this scene that I felt was pretty ridiculous and unearned. At this point, if you don't want spoilers, please turn away now.

Are the “no spoilers, plz” people gone? Good.

Prince Hans, it turns out, is evil. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it becomes necessary as part of the set up for the second big twist, but at the same time it felt unearned. The third act desperately tries to set up its climax, and that's where most of the weakness comes from. To quote Eudora Welty “The hardest thing ... is getting people in and out of rooms.” In this case, instead of getting people in and out of rooms, its getting them all onto the frozen fjord. But the pay off makes it all worth it, and the climax contains easily one of the most powerful images I have ever seen in an animated film, and a striking testament to the strength of love. Not romantic love, but the love of family and of siblings.

Frozen is a powerful movie, with gorgeous imagery, a strong moral that everyone can agree on that still manages to be delivered in a powerful way. 

Machete directed by Robert Rodriguez

This movie is FANTASTIC. It gets a lot of flack for a lot of stupid reasons - it's goofy plotline, it's supposed political motivations (HAH!), it's grindhouse tone and the nudity (which isn't bad compared to most hollywood blockbusters), but for what it is, Machete is simply AMAZING.

Conceived originally as a joke trailer for the Grindhouse double feature (Death Proof and Planet Terror), it keeps up this tone and gives us a movie that is cheesy, violent, sexy and all around bad-ass. Danny Trejo commands the screen in this film, and every moment with him in it is fantastic. He fits the film's tone perfectly, and he immerses you into the genre immediately. The film's violence is so completely over the top (at one point, Machete spins in a circle and decapitates six people) that even my normally-squeamish wife was laughing along side my at the computer generated blood spurts and the decapitations.

This is definitely not a movie for small children, but it IS a movie that taps into the man-child inside all of us. Don't go in expecting some deep Quentin Tarantino film that's secretly some loaded political message. This is schlock for the sake of being schlock. It's the kind of movie that you just have to separate yourself from the stupidity of it, and just enjoy the ride.

Oblivion by Joseph Kosinkski

Yeah, I was pretty surprised when I found that out. After the way he butchered my favourite television franchise, I kind of lost a lot of respect for him as a director. And this is coming from someone who really enjoyed Lady In The Water, if only because the characters were so memorable.

Oblivion is not a bad movie. It's not a good movie, but it isn't bad either. I have to side more with Rotten Tomatoes, who gives it a 53% with 215 reviews. Bafflingly, IMDb gives it a 7/10 with over 150 thousand votes.

 I want to say it was 'visually stunning', but it really wasn't. It felt flat, sterile, and without much character to it, and the same can be said for Tom Cruise in this film, who seems to be riding the crazy-train in this movie. At least he's enjoying himself. The acting is well done, which is unsurprising since it's a cast populated by Hollywood A-Listers, but the same can't be said for the story or characters, who are all bog-standard sci-fi tropes. Which can be the most I can say about this film. It's a bog-standard sci-fi action film. Pretty typical summer fare, designed to cash in at the box office.

The "big twist" in this film isn't actually all that jarring, and is well integrated into the plot, although it does leave a weird after-taste in your mouth at the film's conclusion.

Overall, I'd have to say that this film commits the worst crime of all: It bored me. Not that the pacing was bad, the pacing was fine. It was just that the film is so typical sci-fi fare, that it just fell flat. The best sci-fi should say something about the human condition, but the message this film sends is so dull and trite, and the characters so uninteresting and unengaging, that we don't connect with them enough for the ending to have any impact.

Boogiepop and Others by Ryu Kaneda

What was I thinking when I rented this from the library?

It looked fascinating, and it most certainly was, but it was borderline culturally impenetrable from a western standpoint.

For those who don't know, Boogiepop is a series of Japanese Light Novels (a genre very similar to our Young Adult Fantasy genre) about a girl who turns into a Shinigami, a Japanese Angel of Death, who is bafflingly named Boogiepop for no adequately explained reason, at least within the confines of the film.

Note that I will be approaching this film review with the film as a standalone object.

Boogiepop and Others is a fascinating film, with some very interesting cuts in it. These cuts come off as a very jarring, as the soundtrack doesn't even fade out. The film opens with a series of short vignettes that give us a brief introduction to the various storylines we see later in the film.

Each storyline builds on the last, giving us a different piece of the picture of the various high school students attending the school that the movie centres around. The central conflict is that there are girls going missing, one girl named Nagi is being blamed for them and accused of being Boogiepop, when in fact it's a completely different girl who is Boogiepop. It's all very confusing.

And that's perhaps the worst crime of this movie is that you spend half of it with no idea what's going on, and when you finally do find out and everything makes sense, it's just not super-rewarding. That said, the movie does a great job developing it's more realistic characters. Unfortunately, this just makes the fantastical characters seem more unreal, with the notable exception of The Manticore and her boyfriend. Those two were freaking fantastic for the short time they were in the film. I've never seen such a deranged and yet believable couple in my life.

All in all, if you're a fan of Japanese stuff you'll probably love this movie. Otherwise, probably not worth your time.

The Twilight Saga: Twilight

Okay, this is it everybody. It's time.

I just finished watching Twilight with my wife. Full disclosure, I've read all of the Twilight books and enjoyed them for what they were, a vapid romance about teenagers and one of them happens to be a vampire. I've only ever seen the first movie before now, so partly out of curiosity, and partly because I figured it'd be fun to do a review of all the movies, I've finally decided I'm going to sit down and try to watch all of the Twilight films.

Now, I could repeat the same arguments about how terrible this movie is that you've all heard a thousand times, but that would be easy and I hate life so instead I'm going to do something different. Taking a nod from Maven of the Eventide, I'm going to try and find some good in this movie. Why? Because if you want to have people rip on twilight, you can go just about anywhere. I mean, it's a bad movie. There's no disputing that, but given what they had to work with it's not surprising. The books were bad even though they were an easy read, so the actors, screenwriter, and director only had so much they could do to try and salvage it. Although, the more I keep hearing about the original twilight adaptation the more I wish I had been sitting there watching that movie instead of what we got.

Still, there were a few good points in this movie. I really thought the music was done well in this film, and there are definitely some points in the score that I really enjoy, even if the Muse song in the baseball scene is kind of annoying. I also thought the few moments where the character Alice, played by Ashley Greene, was on screen were always fun. Particularly, I enjoyed the scene in the ballet studio where Alice gets some of Bella's blood on her hands and she has a little moment where she looks like she's about to chow down for some cardboard stew. There's a reason why Alice is listed as one of Maven's best female vampires, and that little character moment is one of them. Alice is one of my favorite characters in the books, so I'm looking forward to where they take her.

But lets be honest. Did I enjoy this movie?

Well, yeah. It's silly, and there's some utterly ridiculous moments in it. It's good for a lark, and is a bit of silly fun. The only thing that really pains me about it is that there was some real potential for some wonderful subplots that get ignored. I'd love to see how Bella's relationship with her father develops, or see more Alice. Actually, I'd take more Alice just for anything. She's a blast, and one of the only characters who has any real depth to her, despite having almost no screen time in this first film.

Anyways, tune in next time for New Moon!