Inside Out review

With the release of Pixar’s latest film “Inside Out,” there’s been a lot of discussion by critics and fans about where the film stands among the best and worst within the studio’s animated catalog. Usually this only happens if they release something remarkable on either side of the quality binary. Luckily for us, and the Disney affiliate, this is a near-perfect movie and faith restorer for those who felt something lacking from their last three efforts; “Cars 2,” “Brave,” and “Monsters University.”

It seems redundant to call a movie about the inner workings of human emotions emotional, but director/co-writer Pete Doctor—the same guy who ripped our hearts out with his 2009 feature “Up”—knows a thing or two about how to cut to core of the human experience through the whimsical mechanics of animated fantasy. 

The fantastic world of “Inside Out” takes place within the mind of a 12 year old girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) who is struggling to adjust to new conditions when her parents move her from her friends and her hockey team in Minnesota into a cramped townhouse in San Francisco. Insider her head are five distinct emotions, Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and then there’s Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who’s often misunderstood and ostracized from the group. When Sadness accidentally changes the emotional make-up of one of Riley’s core memories, she and Joy must travel to the farthest reaches of memory storage to fix the problem before their host becomes chronically depressed and makes a bad decision.

What strikes me most about this charming and vulnerable film is how sophisticated and complex the plot is without ever losing sight of the characters’ personal story. When it comes to explaining how memories are formed and stored, the roles and duties of each emotion, the infrastructure of Riley’s personality traits, and the rules of how this world functions, the movie never loses sight of the emotional arch that bonds all of these screenwriting chutes and ladders. Never mind the fact that there’s essentially two different stories going on simultaneously that are interconnected and effected by these rules.  A lesser filmmaker with a weaker vision could have let all this exposition and world-building overwhelm the characters and freeze out any chance for the audience to connect.  The fact that Doctor managed to make all of it work without the movie feeling muddled or labored makes this a truly special achievement.

Thematically, like “Up,” “Inside Out” is interested in exploring the difficult truths of accepting pain and loss and how these feelings are inexorably linked with the joyful highlights of our development. Opposites create opposites and each emotion has a function that keeps us balanced and grounded, even if they don’t always feel good when we’re feeling them. Again, these themes may seem broad and obvious when you state them out loud, but when they’re manifested as actual characters with their own goals to achieve within the plot, the allegorical nature of the story has a lot of work to do to make it seem as effortless as it does.  Much of this is achieved through the bright and breezy animated style of the film.

Compared to the ocean vistas of “Finding Nemo” or the vast, post-apocalyptic ruins of “Wall-E,” some might find this cartoony, Care-Bear-ish aesthetic visually less ambitious, and it is, but had the animation been overly textured or severely detailed it might have added more weight to what was already a tonally and structurally heavy film.  

Like all of the best Pixar features, “Inside Out” bridges the parent-child viewing experience in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re throwing a bone to the adults who’re forced to bring their kids to the multiplex. It’s funny, tender, imaginative, painfully true, and it’s likely to remain one of the best films of the year.

Grade: A+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2015

Jurassic World review

Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” is a monument in populist filmmaking, executed by a guy who’s made a few of those in his career. Released in 1993, it was one of the first landmarks of computer animation and one of the last in robotic puppetry, and on both accounts it still looks more convincing than almost anything before or after it's release. It might not be the most thematically heavy or ‘important’ movie that Spielberg ever made—it’s easy to forget that “Schindler’s List” came out the same year, winning best picture—but it may very well be the most satisfying and tightly constructed effects movie within his catalog.

The damn thing came out 22 years ago and it still holds up! In fact, it’s so good that no amount of mediocre or unnecessary sequels has seemed to damage its reputation, which is a relief since “Jurassic World” is the worst and certainly most expensive offender.

While “Jurassic Park” was adapted from a slab of airport fiction by writer Michael Crichton, “Jurassic World” just seems to be an adaption of “Jurassic Park.” In the first film Sam Neil was forced to deal with his fear of raising children by having to save the lives of the park owner’s grandchildren. Here, Bryce Dallas Howard plays Claire, an aloof, child-phobic careerist, working for a now rebooted and revamped park that’s totally open to the public. She’s then forced to deal with her priorities when one of the genetically-enhanced super-dinos escapes from its enclosure with her neglected nephews (Nick Robertson, Ty Simpkin) lost in the park. Chris Pratt plays Owen, a big-hearted, hard-headed Velociraptor trainer who volunteers to help Claire find the kids before they’re turned into lunch. Pratt’s doing his best to choke down some exceedingly bad dialogue, with his tongue firmly pressed against his cheek, but it’s hard to ignore that his paper-thin character is essentially a combination of Jeff Goldblum’s flirty, rock-star scientist character Ian Malcolm and the somewhat underwritten Australian raptor specialist from the first film.

These similarities and call-backs are played all throughout the movie in way that feels less like loving homage and more like a shrewdly devised appeal to nostalgia, and it's a serious problem when a movie spends more time on fan service than it does telling its own story. Jake Johnson playing  a handsome but useless nerd wearing the old logo on his T-Shirt in the park’s control room is a reasonable wink, but the complete restaging of the first's film's rainy Jeep scene, with the new kids now attacked in a Plexiglas, motorized ball, comes off as desperate and irritating. these echos go on and on. Instead of slowing down the plot to inspect a sick triceratops we now have an injured (fake looking) longneck of some sort; Vincent D'onofrio plays the new greedy industrialist who’s looking to exploit the dinosaurs, and we’re even given another chaos-theory speech.

Making matters worse, the film is constantly alluding to its own themes by employing the most on-the-nose references, where characters actually ask out-loud why kids these days can’t be entertained by regular, cataloged dinosaurs. Part of the plot deals with corporations that engineer their own breeds of designer dinosaurs so that they can own a piece of park though sponsorship, and the film has the gall to portray this as soulless cynicism while bombarding us with vulgar product placement--never mind the fact that the movie itself was made by a studio owned by a massive media corporation (NBC/Universal).

It could be argued that the film’s subtext was supposed to be read as cleverly-coded commentary on the studio system by an indie filmmaker (“Safety Not Guaranteed” director Colin Trevorrow),  giving the middle finger to the ‘man’ from within, if it weren’t so bloody obvious, hypocritical and trite in it's execution.

The best moments of “Jurassic World” are the ones that require no attachment to the characters--as they barely exist—and instead lean on the campy joy of mid-level monster animation. When pterodactyls are released from their aviary and start to swarm on crowds of tourists, the movie almost resembles the no-plot-no-consequence joy of Syfy Channel mock-busters like “Birdemic” and “Sharknado.” At its worst, it’s lazily written, blandly acted, tonally confused, and achingly mercenary.

Grade - D+

Originally Published in the idaho State Journal/May-2015

Spy review

Melissa McCarthy stars in Paul Feig’s new action-comedy “Spy” and unbelievably they turn out one of their strongest collaborations yet. I say unbelievable because McCarthy’s post “Bridesmaids” career has been a bit hit or miss with successes like Feig’s cop-comedy follow-up “The Heat” and commercial and critical flops like last year’s “Tammy,” an awkwardly pitched passion project co-written by the actress and her husband.  But what makes “Spy” mostly work is that it knows that McCarthy is an actor’s booster-pack. Having worked for years on television’s “Gilmore Girls” she understands scene dynamics and how to play off of her costars in a way that makes her look good and them look better.

McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, the eyes and ears of a suave CIA operative named Bradley Fine (Jude Law). While he’s sneaking around undercover, Susan, who secretly carries a school-girl crush on the agent, tells him how to get in and out of sticky situations via headphone microphone on her computer screen, miles away in a safe rodent-infested office. After Fine is taken out of commission and it is revealed that his killer Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) is hunting other known operatives, Susan’s inconspicuous demeanor and her lack of field experiences makes her the ideal candidate to track down the whereabouts of a dangerous arms dealer named Sergio De Luca (Bobby Cannavalle).

Though McCarthy is the only actor featured on all the posters and the marketing materials mostly show her undercover as an elderly woman in a curly wig and giant glasses, this is not a “Big Mamas House” styled, lazy, costume-comedy. The scenes of her in frump-drag are minimal and the comedy generally comes from the conversational, matter-of-fact riffing performed by the eclectic cast. Jason Statham does his best work in years playing against his own stereotype as a hard-ass killer, delivering some of the strongest and funniest dialogue in the movie. Likewise, the catty exchanges between McCarthy and Byrne are bound to become meme-ready in the coming months, with a crop of shareable Youtube clips.  Allison Janney is reliable as ever as their stone-faced superior and British actress Miranda Hart is entertaining in small doses, until they begins to overuse her.

The film is quite funny, and it knows that it is, and sometimes the problem with self-referential comedies is that they can become too enamored by their own appeal. Unfortunately “Spy” sometimes suffers from the over-exploiting its best jokes. Peter Serafinowicz' horny Italian spy character who can’t keep his hands off of the annoyed protagonist is a cheap gag that never works and almost never ends as soon as it’s introduced.

Sometimes the film can’t decide when to make McCarthy the strong, capable action hero or the bumbling, flakey butt of the joke. McCarthy is game to do either to the best of her abilities, but nobody behind the camera seemed aware that these portrayals clang against each other in the context of the story.  After we’ve seen her help Jude Law through very difficult situations, later in the film there are other moments where she makes the most bone-headed choices for no discernible reason other than to activate a joke.

Nevertheless, even though “Spy” stumbles occasionally, it always managed to surprise me with sharp dialogue, great performances and a real commitment to its filmic references.

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2015

Tomorrowland review

Disney’s “Tomorrowland” is the type of failure of a movie that leaves me more disappointed than angry. The potential was there; great cast, great director, and a fairly interesting set-up, but the screenplay by “Prometheus” scribe Damon Lindelof is so disoriented and terribly organized that it often blocked the narrative flow with a series of long, ponderous scenes that have almost no impact on the story that director Brad Bird is struggling to move along. That said, Lindelof cannot take the soul blame, despite being a multiple offender on this account.

Having established his name in animation with “The Iron Giant” and Pixar favorites like “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles,”and having proven that he can transfer his visual storytelling skills to live action with the surprisingly entertaining “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” Brad Bird’s staggering ineptitude to keep this story on its tracks is depressing, even when there’s occasional fun to be had along the way.

The movie begins in the past and the future simultaneously, as George Clooney’s character Frank Walker introduces his bright-eyed childhood self; a would-be inventor who’s trying to get his homemade rocket pack into an exhibit at the World’s Fair. This is where Bird introduces us to the magic world of “Tomorrowland,” as little Frank stows away into a secret portal within Disney’s It’s a Small World ride. We then flash forward to the present day, where our world is rife with war, hunger, political stress, global-warming and other depressing realities, but Casey Newton (Britt Robertson)  is a high-school tech nerd who’s trying to stay positive even as her own father—a NASA engineer—is struggling to keep his job. After being let out of jail for tampering with a government rocket launch, she’s invited by the mysterious elite to visit “Tomorrowland” via a magic pin. Casey must find the now-disgruntled and paranoid Frank Walker to get there and to convince him that the world is worth saving.

We get a glimpse of the utopian tech universe of “Tomorrowland” through flashes and flash-back, but it takes nearly 90 minutes to get there with our characters. Lindelof spends so much time front-loading the script with exposition and backstory that the plot becomes lop-sided, saving the most valuable information for the end of the movie, after things have already shifted into auto-pilot for a special-effects climax.  The production design and the architecture of the action sequences speaks to the raw talent Bird has to keep things alive and full of wonder, but when the story breaks to a near halt every twenty minutes to explain a piece of technology or to deviate into strange asides about Clooney’s prickly relationship with an android girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy), the direction of the narrative becomes encumbered with needless obstructions.

Despite sporadic moments of exuberance and creativity, the movie is undercut by the fast-slow-fast pacing and the multiple time-line editing. It has some interesting things to say about humanity’s cognitive dissonance when it comes to our unbelievable technological achievements and our absolute ignorance when it comes to maintaining our planet, but the themes drive the story in a way that feels preachy and reductive. Clooney and Robertson have good chemistry and in theory a road movie between the two should have been a lot of fun; it’s only a shame that “Tomorrowland” neither commits to the purposeful episodic structure of a yellow-brick-road narrative or at least something streamlined enough to keep my attention.

Grade: C-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015