ParaNorman review

As an adult, looking back on my childhood, the cinematic moments that tend to stick with me the most are the ones in which I remember feeling scared, uneasy or melancholy. Emotional responses, not unlike our sense of smell, tend to stick with us longer than anything. That is why the best children’s movies tap into the same fascination with thrill-seeking that adults crave with hard-edged thrillers and horror films. While we might try and protect our children from anything too evocative, kids kind of like to be scared. With this in mind, Focus Features has utilized their animation department for the sole purpose of making horror movies for minors, like “Coraline”, “9”, and this year’s “ParaNorman”.

                “ParaNorman” is a strange film that celebrates the underdog and those of us who grew up feeling outcast by our peers. The story follows the misadventures of Norman, a grade-school boy in a small town, who likes to stay up late watching schlocky B-movies and whose only friends happen to be dead. As you would expect, his family doesn’t understand him and his classmates don’t like him.  However, Neil, an overweight and easily excitable loner, is looking for someone else like him, who isn’t well liked. What brings them together is an omen of doom, a puritan-zombie outbreak and a witch’s curse, brought about by the dark secrets hidden in the town’s history.

                Like “Coraline” and “Corps Bride”, this movie is filmed in the classic stop-motion animation, with some necessary scenes accented with CGI. Unlike the usual digital animation, stop-motion is a great technique for darker stories because it brings a weight and uncanny quality to the plastic realities created. The characters are all physically exaggerated and the sets are also made to looks angular and otherworldly. When CGI does creep into the movie, it is integrated so gracefully that you barely think about it, which is a good thing.

                The scares in “ParaNorman” aren’t as sharp as they were in “Coraline” and the production design isn’t as innovative as it was in “9” but this movie still successfully lulls you its own unique kind of charm. Though the plot is simple and suspiciously similar to “The Sixth Sense”, even that seems to become a non-issue once you begin to swing into the rhythm of the narrative and the secondary characters begin to take center-stage. These characters, voiced by impressive young talent like Kody Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Casey Affleck, are all well intentionally cast, somewhat working against their typical on-screen type. 

                Though this movie isn’t going to win over everyone, the most interesting movies usually don’t. Without a doubt, it will resonate with the kinds of kids who can identify with the lonely perspective of the titular character. Many aspects of this movie are geared toward the outsider and will therefore turn off those who feel more comfortable in traditional animation. The design is stark and sometimes hostile, the reveals are genuinely disturbing and the humor is oftentimes dark and sophisticated. For me, these are all good things that work in the movie’s favor. Though I would have liked to seen this released in October and while it might take a few years to catch on, I would not be at all surprised to see “ParaNorman” become a Halloween perennial, in the same way “The Nightmare before Christmas” or “Hocus Pocus” has for some.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug-2012

Hope Springs review

Hey, are you over 32 years of age? Do you only go to the movies between the months of October and February because you’re tired of seeing the same movies about a superhero fighting an exploding robot? Do you like to read occasionally, and do you still have a hard time setting your Tivo?  If you answered yes to most of these questions, then chances are “Hope Springs”, a late summer romantic-dramedy starring Meryl Streep and Tommy-Lee Jones, might surprise you just as much as it did me.

“Hope Springs” details the lukewarm affections between Kay (Streep) and Arnold (Jones). After decades of a passive but somewhat comfortable marriage, the physical component of their union has seemed to run dry. Kay works at department store, where she can occasionally get away from the house and Arnold works as an accountant in an office, where he seems perfectly satisfied with being the breadwinner and nothing more. Not only are they no longer sharing a bed, they have been sleeping in separate rooms for a number of years. One night, after unsuccessfully trying to seduce her husband, Kay discovers an intensive weekend marriage-counseling retreat in Maine. Spending much of the film’s running time in couple’s therapy, Dr. Feld (Steve Carell) digs deep within their relationship and encourages them to reconnect, both emotionally and physically.

While the summer theaters are full of science fiction shoot-em-ups, there is a great chance that you had no interest in seeing this movie, for possibly three reasons; one, it’s about old people doing it, two, it’s directed by the guy who made “Marley and Me” and three, it could easily drift off into the same broad, sit-com waters that too many other romantic comedies fall prey to. I am here to tell you that while yes, it is a movie about old people doing it and it is directed by David Frankel—a director who has had a hot and cold record with his other comedies—that you should not be dismayed by the poor advertising. “Hope Springs” is a wise and tender movie about what it is to be complacent in a passionless marriage and how the road back to the bedroom can be a painful and awkward journey.

This is a wordy movie and if you don’t have the patience for dialogue driven drama, then this film may leave you cold. I myself found the long therapy scenes to be just as captivating as any of the action scenes I have seen all summer. This is because of the intensity of repressed emotion exposed by the two leads. Being character focused, the entire film lives and dies on its actors and luckily, with the trifecta of Jones, Streep and Carell, we are in very good hands. You may think that casting a comedian like Steve Carell would invite a distracting, comedic portrayal as a wacky and unorthodox counselor, but surprisingly Carell works only to support Streep and Jones and gives a completely straight-faced and understated performance, using his sharp comedic timing as a holstered pistol—only flashing it when he needs to.

While this PG-13 movie isn’t exactly “Fifty Shades of Grey Hair”, the content of “Hope Springs” is inherently adult-oriented and sexual. It should be noted that it may surprise some viewers by how unafraid and unapologetically it approaches the subject matter at hand. Though the movie unfortunately wimps out towards the end, when it has to conveniently resolve everything, it rarely goes for cheap laughs and the warmth and forgiveness it shows towards its characters is refreshing to see in such mainstream fare.  

Grade: B

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug-2012

Total Recall

The end of the summer always brings up the blockbuster backwash; movies that the major studios don’t want to compete with their tallest of the tent-poles, but something showy enough to keep people spending their money, looking to stay out of the heat. Sometimes we get surprises like last year’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” but this year we will have to slum it for another week with “Total Recall”.

“Total Recall” is yet another gritty remake of a campy cult-movie from yesteryear. The 1990 original was directed by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoven, a man whose cinematic tastes have brought us satirical action movies like “Robocop” and “Starship Troopers”. This remake is helmed by Len Wiseman, the director of the first two “Underworld” movies.  Both versions are based on the short story  “We Can Remember it For You Wholesale” by Phillip K. Dick, a dark, cerebral writer who has provided the source material for other science-fiction films like “Blade Runner”, “Minority Report” and “The Adjustment Bureau”. 

For the most part, the plot of this remake basically follows that of the original, with the exception that Mars is no longer set as a key location. Colin Farrell plays Douglas Quaid, a middle class factory worker, who literally dreams for a better, more exciting life as a secret agent. In the movie’s futuristic setting, a company called Recall offers a special service to give people the memories and fantasies they desire. After being strapped in for a mind-ride, it’s discovered that he might actually be a spy after all. What’s more is everyone in his new life, including his spouse (Kate Beckinsale) might be in on an elaborate ruse to keep the memory of his heroic past repressed.  While on the run from the government, he is picked up and protected by Melina (Jessica Biel), a freedom fighter from a lower-class colony located in what is now Australia.

So what is there to say about this “Total Recall”? If you have seen the trailer, then you know exactly what you’re getting.  Like Wiseman’s “Underworld” movies it’s a rainy, melancholy action film, made for those who are too young to remember movies before “The Matrix”.  Stylistically this “Total Recall” owes a big debt to many other films before it. The production design seemed to be patched together from the other aforementioned PK. Dick adaptations, as well as countless other sci-fi films like “Dark City” and “Inception”. The pacing and direction of the action scenes, shot around a series of long running-and-chasing set-pieces, seemed to greatly resemble the Bourn trilogy as well. What Wiseman can do skillfully is almost make you forget that everything you are watching is something someone else has already done better.

So how does this version hold up against the original? Well, unlike Wiseman, who seems to be more interested in the dress and sets of his movies, Paul Verhoven is a strange kind of Hollywood auteur director who knows how to bring a sense of humor and purpose to his science-fiction, oftentimes making broad critiques of America’s consumer culture and militaristic complexes. Even if his movies tend to date themselves with time, as the original “Total Recall”--which mistakenly had cast Schwarzenegger in the lead--certainly does, what his version had that the new one doesn’t is personality. Despite being full of bad one-liners and now-cheesy special effects, Verhoven’s vision of this story was a funny and sleazy sort of genre film that surprisingly had a lot to say about identity, masculine fantasy and dream-logic. What this new one brings to the table is a consistent and competent action ride that will entertain you for the moment you watching it, but will eventually be erased from your memory.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug-2012

Step-Up Revolution review

             Why is 80’s nostalgia so in vogue right now? Lady Gaga, neon color schemes and shutter shades all harken back to maybe a simpler, if not more outrageous time. What’s stranger, is that this grasp for the past is celebrated by an entire generation who wasn’t even born in the 80’s , or were at least too young to really remember it.

I have a theory. The 80’s was a stylistically overindulgent time of excess but done so with a certain amount of naivety. Because of that innocence, it appears like everyone was having ridiculous fun and didn’t care if they looked stupid. Unfortunately, now, in the post-modern world we live in, we aren’t allowed to have that kind of fun anymore. Everything has to be ironic, sarcastic, cross advertised and fed back into the mainstream, only to reexamined, parodied and uploaded to youtube hours later.  Maybe this is why, against my better judgment, I just can’t hate the Step Up movies. Sure, they’re not “good” but they are what too many movies don’t try to be anymore, innocent fun.

“Step Up Revolution” is now the fourth in this long standing series. Starting with mild ambitions, the first “Step Up” was a small unassuming genre film and it wasn’t bad or good. “Step Up 2: The Streets”—perhaps the best name for a sequel since “Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo”—brought in the young director Jon M. Chu, who infused this franchise with a Pop-Rocks and Coke sugar-high sensibility that reinvigorated the dance movie genre. In “Step Up 3D” Chu did his thing yet again and has made maybe the best argument for 3D films, with what I regard as the strongest movie of the four.

                This time the movie takes us to a beach community in Miami. Sean (Ryan Guzman) and Eddy (Misha Gabriel Hamilton) are best friends who work part time at a hotel, but moonlight as the leaders of a secret dance group called The Mob, who hijack public settings to perform their tightly choreographed dance numbers, in hopes of making money from a youtube contest.  There, Sean meets Emily (Kathryn McCormick), the daughter of the hotel owner (Peter Gallagher) who plans on constructing a new resort location, forcing all of the local businesses to close down or move. Emily Joins The Mob and declares “Enough with performance art, it’s time for protest art.” 

                Okay, so how does this one step up to its predecessors? Well, Jon M. Chu, has stepped down from the directing seat and you can really notice it. The dance sequences are edited a bit choppier and the energy between those numbers is not as vibrant or well-paced. Also, this story is weirdly trying to be a little too political and socially relevant for its own good.  What we have here is an occupy-era movie that is masquerading as a Florida beach, dance-flick—or perhaps the other way around. That would be interesting if “Magic Mike” hadn’t already done that a few months ago and did it a lot better.

                With all of that said, did I hate “Step Up Revolution”? Absolutely not. Sure, the performances were laughably weak, the love story doesn’t work at all and it’s too slow in spots, but that stuff isn’t the reason we go to see these movies. The dancing is still very impressive, the staunchly dubstep soundtrack is entrancing, and the cinematography is very nice to look at. These movies are doing over-produced cinematic trash better than anyone else and for that they will always get have my money. I had fun and I was still able to enjoy my guilty pleasure, even if this one is definitely no “Step Up 3D”.

Grade: C+

Originally Published in The Idaho State Journal/Aug-2012

Savages review

               Oliver Stone is a director who is known by most to be a “serious” filmmaker. His movies are usually heavy loaded with social and political messaging and his style is usually dower and nose thumbing. However, from time to time we can get a different Oliver Stone who just enjoys his popcorn and explosions as much as any other dude. This would be the Oliver Stone who wrote the “Scarface” remake and who directed movies like “Natural Born Killers” and “Any Given Sunday”. I like that Oliver Stone but it’s been a while since we have seen him do any work, since he has been too busy doing failed attempts at politically important pictures like “World Trade Center” and “W”. So with the opening of “Savages” this weekend—a violent drug-dealing thriller—It seems like maybe he could cleanse his pallet away from Oscar-bait and remember how to entertain people again.

             “Savages” is based on a popular pulp novel of the same name and stars a cast of young new hopefuls, as well as established Hollywood veterans.   The story follows Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson who play Ben and Chon, two So-Cal burnouts who have manufactured the best weed ever produced in the west-coast and who find themselves at odds with the Mexican cartel, who wants a cut of their success. Ben’s a peaceful hemp-wearing Phish enthusiast, whereas Chon is an emotionally wounded Iraq vet with a short fuse. Ben wants to make peace and give up but Chon insists that he call his sniper palls and start an all-out war for their turf.  Midway through the film, Blake Lively’s character Ophelia—joint girlfriend to both dealers--is kidnapped by the cartel and Ben and Chon have to figure out how get her back and split the country before they get killed.

             One of the major problems with this film is that Blake Lively as Ophelia is the focus character throughout duration of the story.  She narrates much of the first and second acts and we see everything through her perspective. Unfortunately she is the least interesting person on screen and her stilted narration is laughably bad. Aaron Johnson, known to most people still as “Kick-Ass”, is unrecognizable in this role and has a lot of charisma that hints at a bigger career in the future. After seeing Taylor Kitsch fumble his way through “John Carter” and “Battleship” earlier this year, I wonder why and how he has managed to find his way into movies he has no business being in. Unfortunately he is equally less appealing in this film. However, when the grown-ups get to play and we see Selma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro chewing it up as the blood thirsty drug lords and John Travolta as a double-crossing DEA agent, the movie kicks into a much more comfortable mode of B-movie hysteria that reminded me of the kind of fun in Stone’s other desert noirs like “Natural Born Killers” and “U-Turn”.

            Though it would be easy to say that “Savages” isn’t a good movie, it’s certainly an entertaining one. Having recent television shows like “Weeds” and “Breaking Bad” treading this territory with more gravitas and success, what you have instead is a fast-paced genre exercise with some fun editing and cheesy performances. Even though so much of this screenplay is unbelievably dopey and the choose-your-own-adventure ending is downright frustrating, I can’t hate this movie because it gave so much visceral joy. What’s more, “Savages” is a hard-R rated movie released in the middle of June and it doesn’t have any robots or superheroes in it and we should to support more diverse programming like this.

           Full of hammy acting and ridiculous dialogue, this A-budget exploitation thriller keeps things moving and bleeding along, even if your eyes will be tired from rolling by the time it's over. Oliver Stone does everything he can to keep you entertained with style and ultra-violence, and usually he is doing his job, but the pointless voice-over and the befuddling ending(s) keeps me from fully recommending this sometimes fun, sometimes infuriating piece of summer sleaze. But this is what DVD rentals are made for.

Grade: C+

Originally published in The Basic Alternative/Aug-2012