Incredibles 2 review

Nearly fifteen years have passed since Disney released Pixar’s "The Incredibles." The movie arrived just as the superhero film boom was heating up and it remains one of the best examples of the genre. Hype for a sequel maintained, even as Pixar further expanded their brand and gave some of their lesser properties multiple sequels of their own. Now with “Incredibles 2” finally here, we are at a different vantage point; the genre clichés and tropes that the first film was poking fun at are now used without irony by every studio who wants to stay competitive. “Incredibles 2,” while perfectly enjoyable and a worthy successor of its original is both too little too late to the party and unfairly judged against a type of filmmaking it helped to foster.

This story picks up minutes from the point where the last film ended. After a battle with a villain called the Underminer, the authorities charge Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and his family with illegally engaging in vigilantism. While away from their home, awaiting legislation, a wealthy philanthropist named Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and his techy sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) approach the family with a proposition. Together, these two mysterious investors plan to reinstitute superhero legality by body-camming Mrs. Incredible/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) and showing the public that she can save lives while keeping collateral damage to a minimum.  With Helen now away fighting for their futures, Bob is stuck at home helping their kids Dash and Violet with their school lives, as well as trying to maintain their unpredictably powerful baby Jack-Jack.

Whereas the first adventure with this family focused on the concept of the retired-superhero as a metaphor for post-war threatened masculinity, this film extends the metaphor now to American men of a certain age coming to terms with the wife working while they stay at home. Writer/Director Brad Bird certainly has his finger on the pulse of these classically American moments in time, as well as a fascination of pulp, science-fiction archetypes from the 50s and 60s, sprinkled with a dash of Ayn Randian objectivism by way of Alan Moore's dystopian deconstruction of the superhero myth within works such as "Watchmen." All of that is very interesting and gives this world a totemic universality that informs the relatable family concerns and the smaller-scale character work.  What's less interesting is the basic mechanics of this adventure when it comes to the nuts and bolts of its storytelling and way that it manages screen-time between the A and B plot

The mystery Helen solves involving a technological terrorist called the Screenslaver is disappointingly easy to solve and a bit tedious to follow as it's telegraphed from beat to beat. While the animation that goes into these high-octane action-sequences is beautifully rendered and the set-pieces themselves are designed with detail and care, it's difficult not to feel that in this go-around action is often supplanting story.  As far as Bob's adventures with the kids goes, the concept is a nice change of pace, but where Bird could have used these moments to deepen the characters and speak more specifically to Bob's frustrations as a sidelined super, we're treated instead to fluffy sit-com set-ups that only connect to the overarching narrative during the final act, when story is almost forced to dovetail.

While I might be a little hard on "Incredibles 2" I'm aware that the demographic for this film is young enough that these nuanced concerns will likely not register.  Plot contrivances aside, I still recommend this sequel for its achievement in action direction, its impressive animation and the characters I still like hanging out with, but when comparing this to the pillars of Pixar's output, including the movie's 2004 predecessor, the grading curve becomes steep--perhaps unfairly so.

Grade: B -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/June-2018

Solo: A Star Wars Story review

There are usually two types of “Star Wars” fans; the people who watch it for Darth Vader and the people who watch it for Han Solo. Nobody watches for Luke Skywalker (Sorry-not-sorry). Because we already have two trilogies essentially devoted to the rise and fall of Darth Vader, it was almost a foregone conclusion that someone would build a story around the cocky flyboy turned space outlaw originally played by Harrison Ford. Ron Howard, who previously worked with George Lucas on the 1988 fantasy film “Willow,” directs “Solo: A Star Wars Story, “a tangential prequel that helps fill the gaps between the larger sagas, primarily focusing on Han as a youthful runaway.

Father and son writers Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan begin this movie showing Han (Alden Ehrenreich) escaping an enemy occupied planet without his lover Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). Proclaiming that he will one day return to save her, Han assumed the moniker Solo and joined the Imperial military to steal something large enough to buy a ship and return to his girl. There he meets up with a group of competing smugglers led by the cynical Beckett (Woody Harrelson). After joining, he makes a deal to help the group steal a volatile weapons payload for a dangerous arms dealer named Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).

 As the film progresses, we get to see the young Solo’s first encounters with the Millennial Falcon, the vein gambler Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and his destined lifelong partner Chewbacca. We should expect the character’s greatest hits and catchphrases within this style of conceptual universe building, but it also smells a lot like fan-service, and as each of these moments pass, you can almost hear Kasdan’s red pencil drag a line through the list of directives ordered down from Mount Disney. That’s why I felt slightly guilty by the big grin that came over my face as the movie plopped these elements into the story like farmer filling the trough for his hungry pigs. I’ll be the first to admit that even as I acknowledge the pandering here, I enjoyed almost all of it.

Howard handles the sci-fi/western themes and the action sequences well. Hints of Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the cult television series “Firefly” feel present here, even as those properties wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the influence of “Star Wars” in the first place—a classic example of the pop culture snake eating its tropes.  Handheld shaky cam obscures some of the ground combat, and the runtime feels about 15 minutes too long, but any motion picture that gives us a train heist, a prison escape and an aerial dogfight all within the same theater experience at least has a good understanding of what populist filmmaking should be.

Is “Solo: A Star Wars Story” essentially Star Wars fan fiction? Yes, but that doesn’t automatically make it bad, even if it doesn’t move the needle very far within the overall mythology. Ehrenreich carries everything adequately, even if his boyish take on the character isn't the spot-on Harrison Ford impression people are expecting. The supporting cast is all given enough to do to keep us invested in their place within the story as well.  There’s almost nothing that’s essential or impactful about this franchise mortar of a movie, but it’s highly entertaining and full of characters (new and old) that we want to spend our time with, which is more than I can for almost half of the other entries in the Star Wars cinematic universe.

Grade: B

Originally published in Idaho State Journal/June-2018

Moana review

Disney’s tradition with the Princess protagonist motif has been a staple of the company’s long-term success.  They’ve returned to that particular wishing-well so many times, in fact, they now have to think of ways to consciously subvert the trope, lest they run the risk appearing out-of-touch or out of ideas—their live-action remakes notwithstanding. “Moana,” the mouse house’s latest animated adventure, tries its best to arrive at a new spin on their girl-with-a-destiny story, using its Pacific Island mythological setting to embellish and disguise many reworked Disney tropes.

This oceanic fairy-tale tells features a young island daughter of a Chief named Moana (Auli’li Cravalho) who is sent on a journey to return a magic stone back to heart of a neighboring island after a darkness creeps onto their land, making it impossible to fish or grow crops. On her way, she finds a Hawaiian demi-god named Maui (Dwayne-The Rock-Johnson) who wants to retrieve his magic hook weapon that allows him to shape-shift into any animal he chooses.  Johnson’s Maui must learn to curb his hubris as he helps the determined ruler to be, and Moana must learn how to believe in herself.

Truth be told, the motivations of the characters are noticeably surface-oriented and most of the movie is driven plot rather than story. Moana is sent on her journey to prove she can be a capable ruler of her people and because her grandmother encourages her from beyond the grave, informing her that she has been chosen by the ocean itself to restore the magic heart of the sea back to its rightful place. What ensues is an episodic odyssey where Moana and Maui encounter multiple challenges on their way to defeat a giant lava creature. Moana herself is somewhat undefined as a protagonist outside of her immediate goals and circumstances, and the film’s aesthetic focus never allows for her to develop past her function in the plot.

On a screenplay level, the story isn’t terribly interesting or dynamic once you strip away the beautifully rendered animation and the catchy musical sequences written by Opetaia Foa’I, Mark Mancina and Lin-Manuel Miranda of Broadway’s hit play “Hamilton.” Like many classic Disney films the soundtrack becomes another character. The musical numbers are placed strategically and each track has a bounce and melodic structure that rings in your head days after your viewing experience. In some regards, this outing seems a little desperate out-Frozen “Frozen,” as far as the catchy radio-ready music is concerned, but these songs will likely be the film’s largest takeaway.

“Moana” is well crafted and enjoyable but it doesn’t reinvent wheel or step too far out of what’s been comfortable and successful for Disney’s animation studio. The film leans of the studio’s greatest hits, including familiar character types and beats from “Aladdin,” “Little Mermaid,” “Mulan,” “Hercules” and others. But while the story doesn’t offer much substance, it’s hard to totally dismiss the movie’s visual flare and infectious positive energy.

Grade: B

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Moana.

Finding Dory review

“Finding Dory” is Pixar’s latest attempt at recapturing the magic of one of their flagship animated films. “Toy Story” managed to go back to the well twice, resulting in satisfying sequels that arguably eclipsed the original. On the other side of the spectrum they have “Cars 2;” a sequel nobody asked for, which managed to annoy non-child audiences even more than its predecessor. “Finding Dory” falls somewhere closer to that, even though, unlike “Cars,” 2003’s “Finding Nemo” was beloved by many and is still quoted and referenced to this day.

Ellen DeGeneres’ Dory, a blue fish with short-term memory-loss, was the quirky comedic relief of the first film and helped to offset the stern and humorless Clown fish Marlon (Albert Brookes) as they searched the ocean for his son Nemo. Here she now takes center-stage after having flashbacks of her childhood, becoming concerned with finding her parents and rediscovering her roots, of which she only has fragmented memories. Marlon reluctantly agrees to help her along the way before the two become separated and Dory is placed in quarantine tank at a California marina. There she meets an octopus named Hank with seven tentacles (Ed O’Neill), a near-sited whale named Caitlin (Kailin Olsen) and a beluga named Bailey with broken sonar (Ty Burrell).

There’s plenty to admire about this production and the animation is more rich and vibrant than we’ve seen from Pixar in a while. The ocean vistas are alive with all kinds of activity in each frame and Dory, along with the new characters in her adventure, are entertaining and humorous, but structurally, this story struggles to find a natural flow, often labored in clunky set-pieces that increasingly dares to break the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Director and co-writer Andrew Stanton find far too many cheats to get their ocean creatures out the water, with Dory spending much of the movie in a coffee bowl while Hank slithers her around their marina enclosure—an enclosure which seems to be fairly easy to escape from and, for some characters, is completely open to the ocean.

Believability aside, the characters suffer from a lack of clarity or specificity. The nature of Dory’s memory-loss, which has now been upgraded from a quirk to a plot-point, is inconsistent and the severity of which is often changed for jokes to land and for action sequences to work, which only undercuts the movie’s emotional themes about overcoming and transcending disability.  Poor Nemo and Marlon are given practically nothing to do in their piddling B-plot, which slogs its way an eventual convergence with Dory’s more-lively, if not somewhat ridiculous, A-plot.

The script feels unfinished and banal and the movie as a whole doesn’t justify its being made—other than Disney’s obvious cash-grabbing opportunity—but “Finding Dory” is still watchable. The voice talent helps to elevate the telegraphed jokes and the eye-rolling call-backs, and the animation, as previously mentioned, is gorgeous to look at. Pixar sets a high bar of excellence that both damns the films in their catalog that are merely mediocre while still shaming most their competitors, but I can’t help but consider this a missed opportunity.

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jun-25

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Finding Dory."

Jungle Book review

Disney’s reboot/remake of their 1967 classic animated film “The Jungle Book” is a rare achievement, in that it pays lip-service to the most iconic beats of the original feature, while still finding a way of presenting the material without becoming all-together tired and superfluous. Jon Favreau, the character actor turned director of such blockbusters as Marvel’s “Iron Man” and the Christmas comedy “Elf,” has taken on the task of putting this digital IKEA piece together, working within an almost entirely animated environment and using hardly any live-action sets or actors.  This working method of course demands a lot of trust with his crew and the post-production effects team to ensure that his vision, whatever it may be, is represented accurately, and with a multi-million-dollar budget and a small army collaborating to make it work, any number of things can snag on the process. Luckily, things seem to have gone well enough here to bring what is essentially a safe and non-offensive retelling of a slightly better movie.

Neel Sethi gives the only live performance as Mowgli, an orphaned human child who was saved at birth by a black panther named Bagheera (Ben Kingsley). The cat then leaves the boy with a pack of wolves to raise as one of their own cubs, which upsets a tyrannical Tiger names Shere Kahn (Idris Elba) who fears the child might serve as a danger to the Jungle and its current political landscape. It becomes apparent that Mowgli is drawing too much unwanted attention to the pack from Kahn and he offers to leave the forest to be with his own kind in a nearby village. On the way, he is separated from his panther chaperone and falls into the easy life with a lazy bear named Baloo (Bill Murray), nearly escapes a slithering soothsayer named Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) and is trapped by a massive orangutan mobster named King Loui (Christopher Walken).  

There aren’t enough risks taken with this project to be proud of its sustainability as a story, but there’s just enough love and passion put into the production effort to accept its purely corporate purpose for existing. The animal animation is convincing and the CGI jungle environments are beautifully rendered. The team involved did a wonderful job creating a digitally sculpted world that has weight and tactility and Sethi is able to interact with it seamlessly. The celebrity voice cast is given updated dialogue to work with and they all fit their parts well. Murray’s Baloo is warm and inviting and Elba’s Kahn is genuinely intimidating—in an age appropriate, Disney sort of way.

The plot is familiar but it’s comfortable in its own skin and moves naturally. Though largely inspired by the 60s animated feature, the few divergences it takes seem to be cued directly from Disney’s other jungle adventure, The Lion King, and the two stories share enough structural similarities to mix without complications. Sometimes the movie is confused as to whether or not it should include the iconic musical sequences of its predecessor, and most of the it doesn’t, which only makes it all the more awkward when a song or two is attempted without the musical foundation to lay them on. Outside of that hang-up “The Jungle Book” plays like a good time a community theater production of your favorite play – it’s doesn’t have the zest or originality of its reference point, but it’s an acceptable and faithful recreation.

Grade - B- 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Jungle Book."

Ant Man review

Marvel’s latest entree “Ant Man” is a curious bobble of a film that dares a non-comic-initiated audience to hold on to the general appeal of charismatic actors bouncing around in CGI environments without the comfort or ease of John Wayne approved heroic posturing to get them through. What I’m trying to say is this movie is unabashedly geeky, in way that Marvel Studios might have underestimated a regular movie going audience to roll with without noticing. And good for it! “Guardians of the Galaxy” was definitely weird—what with talking trees and smart-alecky raccoons and what-not—but it was also nestled in a space-opera/fantasy trope that the average beer-drinking, football-throwing American’s can recognize from their childhoods as far back as “Star Wars.”  “Ant Man,” on the other hand, is a little more niche.

Michael Douglas plays Hank Pym, a scientist who learned how to shrink himself down while still having the ability to fight with the strength of ten men. He was forced to leave his secret government agency, where he fought as a spy, after he learned that the wrong developers wanted to use his tech for dangerous, military purposes. Fast-forward thirty years into the future and a younger protégée of Pym named Darren Cross (“Corey Stoll) has seemed to develop a similar enough technology that Pym feels the need to interject.  Enter a white-caller cat-burgler and hacker named Scott Lange (“Paul Rudd”), who’s trying to get his life and family together after finally being released from prison. He’s tricked by Pym into breaking his parole to steal the Ant Man shrinking suit, and after some light blackmail he  agrees to help the older inventor break into Cross’s facility to destroy the progress of the dangerous Yellowjacket.

Despite scenes of Paul Rudd learning how to telepathically control ants into sugaring his coffee or flying on the back of harnessed insects, this is basically a heist movie at its core, with a mark, a plan of action, and the booty that needs to be retrieved. What director Peyton Reed does well with this material is he brings us into this idiosyncratic world through the eyes of the affable Rudd as he bumbles his way into becoming a passive hero. Though maybe he’s a bit too passive at times - to the point of almost having no agency within the plot. Nevertheless, he’s charming to watch and he knows how to hit the comedic beats that’s laced throughout the narrative.  Moments between him and his street-wise, criminal friends—Michael Pena almost steals the entire movie away with only a handful of scenes—keep you smiling in good spirits, even when you get the feeling that the movie isn’t entirely invested in its own brand.

Things don’t work quite as well when the story shifts into more character driven territories, particularly anything involving the vague sub-plot dealing with Pym and his estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) who is working within the offices of her father’s enemy, while secretly bringing back useful intelligence. When it came to their emotional arc, the revelation of how Pym lost his wife, or even Lang’s difficult relationship with his ex-wife and the daughter he’s barely allowed to visit, I never cared quite as much as the movie wanted me to. It’s clear that the writers wanted to ground the superhero pulp and the comedy with a thematic parallel between Lang and Pym about what it means to be a responsible and present father, but these underwritten moments register more as plot motivators than they do real character builders.

Still, “Ant Man” is a fun and unassuming summer blockbuster that’s refreshingly low-stakes and casual for Marvel action movie. The set pieces are creative and occasionally there’s stylistic flashes of a better movie that might have been possible had the studio let things bake a little longer. As it stands the heist plot could have paid off more satisfyingly and characters could have been more clearly defined, but overall this was a totally inoffensive offering, if not somewhat banal.

Grade: B -

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jul-2015

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

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

Avengers: Age of Ultron review

              Joss Whedon returns with Disney/Marvel’s much-anticipated “Avengers: Age of Ultron”; a bigger, longer, louder sequel to 2012’s successful superhero team-up, “The Avengers.” In what was once seen as the impossible task to bring together five separate movie franchises and support each protagonist under one umbrella universe, this idea is quickly becoming the new normal. With “Terminator,” “Star Wars” and Warner Brothers’ DC Comics properties setting up multiple films and side stories, the term ‘cinematic universe’ has become the new Hollywood buzz-phrase. Rather than waiting every two years for a single sequel to rake in the dough, now studios can expand the universe of an intellectual property and have many characters and plot ideas producing multiple movies at once.

            Of course this has been happening in the world of comic books forever, but the cost to mass produce and sell a 20 page superhero magazine is nothing compared to fortune it takes to pull off something as massive as their cinematic counterparts. Strangely enough, though the risk is higher and the economic stakes are raised to create these movies, their stories sometimes reward less than those provided by pulp they were modeled after.

           Iron Man (Robert Downy Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawk Eye (Jeremy Renner) and The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) return to save the world yet again, and this time the threat is of their own creation—an impossibly smart robot intelligence named Ultron, voiced by James Spader.  After breaking into a soviet compound looking for…something or other, Tony Stark/Iron Man finds a robot technology that would allow him to update his computer A.I. with the ability to make his Iron-Dones smart enough and powerful enough to allow the team to retire. Quickly it grows too smart and develops its own reasons to kill the heroes. Newcomers Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) join the evil robot to avenge their parents and their childhood home, destroyed years ago by Stark’s military weapons.

           The set-up is simple enough, yet somehow the movie fractures into many whirling plot points and set-pieces that never quite harmonize, creating an out-of-breath, jumble of action-spectacle. Whedon is a smart writer and his knack for dialogue and characterization is still intact, but his work as a storyteller seems stifled by Marvel’s bottom-line to set up even more potential properties within their ever-expanding multi-verse. Midway through the film, the threat of Ulron, who’s marvelously introduced with a genuine sense of menace, is diluted by competing plots regarding mystical prophecies about magic gems and otherworldly cosmic dangers. By the end, the movie’s climax is strained to decide which story element needs to pay off. Allegiances change, more new characters are introduced, romances are fulfilled and further franchises are hinted at, at which point Stark’s self-destructive hubris is the thing we’re thinking the least about.

          Joss Whedon’s work as a television show-runner (“Buffy: The Vampire Slayer”, “Firefly”) has earned him a lot of goodwill over the years, but with “Avengers: Age of Ultron” it seems like his talent for telling extended, episodic stories is forcibly compressed into a confused and frustrating mess of a narrative. Some of the action is well-staged and entertaining—the fight between “Iron Man” and “The Hulk” is pretty neat—but most of it, while expensively produced, is ineffectual and weightless.

        The dialogue is quick and funny and these actors are now so comfortable in there theme-park personalities that even the most mindless scenes float along well- enough, but they’re supported by a plot that’s so over-stuffed with things to do, placed to be, and sequels to sell that it tears itself apart before it can naturally develop. 

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015

Cinderella review

                The live-action “Cinderella” is further evidence of the lengths major studios are willing to go to avoid coming up with new ideas and to see how much they can recycle their past before completely losing the good will of the audience. Director Kenneth Branagh, who was once known for his dynamic Shakespeare film adaptions, first collaborated with Disney with their successful adaptation of Marvel’s “Thor,” and when you think about it, Disney’s fairytale princesses relate closely to the iconicism and comfortable familiarity of the comic book superhero genre. With that in mind, and with the relative success of this functional remake, we can expect more of these to come.

               The story here follows most of the beats laid out in the 1950 animated classic. Ella (Lily James) is the warm and forgiving daughter of a wealthy aristocrat and who then is tragically left without a mother and father and forced to live as the servant of her evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and her obnoxious and self-absorbed stepsisters (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger). What comes after? You guessed it; a prince, a ball, a fairy godmother, glass slippers and a pumpkin-shaped stagecoach.

             Chris Weitz’s screenplay front-loads the original fairytale with the backstory of Cinderella’s biological mother and father, their tragic passing and the deteriorating relationship between her and her lawful step-family. Some of this is mildly interesting—one might wonder why Cinderella’s father would ever end up with an evil stepmother in the first place, and Blanchett is given a great screen entrance as the bloodless vamp—but much of this narrative padding is tedious, plot-stalling and treated with too much gauzy romanticism to register as effective tragedy.

                Branagh’s strengths as a storyteller are compromised by the prime objective of this adaptation, as it only exists to conjure the nostalgia of Disney’s once-relevant legacy in animation, and, ironically enough, this film expounds the very reasons why animation is given tonal allowances that simply don’t work in live action. The first problem here is that Cinderella is inherently a boring character and Lily James doesn't do much with the paper-thin persona as written to bring her to life. With catchy songs, talking mice and an exaggerated environment an animated feature can skate by on iconography alone, but once you throw in real actors and close-ups and throw out the musical sequences, the film is forced to create a believable emotional space, and this version of “Cinderella” does not.

                Blanchett eats up the scenery around her and leans into the film’s camp value like a professional, but the romantic scenes between Cinderella and the Prince (Richard Madden) are painfully unsupported and the inclusion of CGI birds and mice distract more than they endear. Occasionally, when Branagh is allowed focus in on a scene without pandering to fan-service and gives his actors some intimacy to express themselves, a hint of depth appears, but these rare moments are squandered on obtrusive special effects and an aesthetic slickness that makes the majority of the film look like an overproduced Tide commercial.
               Young girls are going to enjoy this and no review will stop the monolithic cynicism of these kinds of uninspired remakes.  Unlike Tim Burton’s misbegotten “Alice in Wonderland” or the mish-mash mythology of “Snow White and the Huntsman,” this fairytale retelling refuses to risk alienating audiences with a lofty post-modern interpretation. It’s not a particularly memorable or creative venture but it isn't offensive or challenging either, but what is frustrating is its defiant dedication to triviality. 

Grade: D+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2015

Big Hero Six review

            “Big Hero Six” is the perfect example of a post-modern, post-comic-con style of movie that casts its net wide enough to pull in fans of Pixar's emotional whimsy, tech-heavy Japanese anime and fast-paced, Marvel-esque, action set-pieces.  This makes  a lot of sense, seeing as this film is based on a Marvel comic property, of which Disney now owns the vast majority, and produced by Pixar brain-child John Lasseter—admitted fan and enthusiast of anime legend Hayao Miyazaki. But somewhere in this rowdy pastiche there’s still a focused and poignant coming of age story that grounds the referential spectacle, even when the film seems to be at odds with its more sophisticated leanings.
           We're introduced to the future utopia of Sanfransokyo (a literal cultural melding of east and west) through the lead character Hiro (voiced by Ryan Potter), as he wins big money at underground robot battles, of which his older, more collegiate brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) disapproves. Later, after an exciting tour of his brother’s robotics school, where he meets a like-minded team of four other young inventors, he decides that his best work shouldn’t be displayed in street-level sport. Despite his young age, he applies to join the program by demonstrating his swarm of interlocking mini-bots at a competitive conference, but just after he wins the competition and accepts his admittance at the school, his future goes up in flames when his brother and the college’s lead technician are killed in a terrible explosion. Hiro is then left to mourn his brother through his last invention; an inflatable, non-lethal nursing bot named Baymax (Scott Adsit), who’s determined to lower the child’s stress-level however he can, even if that means helping Hiro and the other students find the masked murderer, who’s now using the mini-bots for wrong-doing.
           What elevates this film past the usual 3D animated fare is the familial warmth for all of these characters injected into the script and the specificity expressed in the world-building. The central relationship between Hiro and the bouncy, Michelin-Man looking Baymax is both funny as the literal-minded robot consistently misunderstands his frustrated, revenge-driven child owner, and overcast with a cloud of melancholy as the story repeatedly draws us back to the themes of personal loss and misdirected grievance. Before the point in which this movie even begins, Hiro and his older brother are established as orphans, raised by their kooky aunt (Maya Rudolf), who runs a street-side bakery to support the two of them. Baymax, though funny in his childlike reaction to new phenomena, is ultimately acting as an emotional Band-Aid for the protagonist and seeks to heal his pain through adventure. Pretty heavy stuff for kids movie, but not unlike the depths Disney or Pixar have previously explored. Where the movie suffers, however, is in its pandering to the blockbuster aesthetic.
           Once Hiro and his friends discover the whereabouts of the movie’s villain the tone shifts dramatically into action-figure ready, comic book popcorn fodder. Whether cleverly commenting on the banality of Marvel’s third-act, superhero destruction-quota, or simply falling prey to it, when the team suddenly builds robotic super-suits that give them all different powers and a large chunk of the movie’s second half is devoted to sequences of flying in between buildings and falling debris, I wondered how much of this was to advance the un-traditional buddy movie so well established in the first act and how much of it is only to serve the dynamic 3D animation. Nevertheless, at its best, “Big Hero Six” is a wonderfully imaginative and tender science-fiction parable and even when it is driving in autopilot, it’s impressively crafted, interesting to look at, and never boring.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014

Captain America: The Winter Soldier review

                  Captain America is a tricky Marvel character to sell to global movie market, despite his recognizable brand and the backing of a powerhouse film production conglomerate. These days people are a little jaded when it comes to national pride and a character that fights for truth, justice and the American way is an increasingly harder pill to swallow, especially when party divisions have dramatically split the country on the specific interpretation of what the “American Way” is even supposed to be. Even when conflict is injected into the character to please those on the homeland, the blatantly patriotic imagery of Cap-Am risks appearing like propaganda to those abroad.

                Though Disney/Marvel Studio’s first attempt to introduce this character in 2011 wasn’t an altogether failure, it really only managed to work as a placeholder for the anticipated Avengers movie being hyped at time.  Now, with the overwhelming success of “The Avengers” in 2012, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is afforded the benefit of doubt by those who may have been skeptical before. Surprisingly, in changing time-period, style, tone and directors, this movie cleverly takes advantage of its second chance and manages to exceed expectations by simultaneously defying and celebrating its genre-conventions.

                Having grown up in the ‘30s and ‘40s, only to be preserved in ice and unfrozen to become a superhero soldier, fighting alongside sci-fi anomalies like Bruce Banner’s Hulk and Tony Stark’s Iron-Man, Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) is now suffering from state of mild temporal dysphoria, with only his work as a SHIELD super-spy to keep him focused and grounded. However, when his boss and mentor, SHIELD’s leader Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is targeted and hunted by his colleagues, Captain America is then forced to go rogue and figure out how high the governmental corruption infiltrates. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and military veteran Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) help Rodgers with his impossible mission, while keeping guard from a mysteriously lethal mercenary known as the Winter Soldier.

                It’s actually difficult to be prepared for just how exceptional this pop-corn thriller is. Not since Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” has a sequel so magnificently improved upon its predecessor in a way that actually fixes some of the problems of the previous film. Rather than the cartoony, gee-golly pulp aesthetic of Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”, Joe and Anthony Russo’s steely, post-Bourn, politically-minded sequel resembles the kind of cool immediacy of Michael Mann’s “Heat”, as well as ‘70s paranoid dramas like “The French Connection" and "All the President's Men."  The tensely-blocked, handheld bursts of action-violence is impactful, the performances are confident--particularly Evans who'd previously appeared a little stiff within the do-gooder limitations of his characters--and unlike even the best films from Marvel’s amoeba-vers, this world feels lived-in and dangerous with a semi-realistic sense of scale and threat. 

                With that said, this is still a comic-book action movie aimed at a young teenage audience, and we're reminded of that whenever the plot makes an illogical leap or when there's an occasional tonal hiccup. This includes some high-concept sci-fi tech that feels out of place compared to the movie's more sober interpretation of the Marvel world, as well as, a sporadic line of Saturday-morning dialogue.  In the third act, as is the demand for any film that costs more than 100 million dollars, the movie eventually devolves into an extended effect-driven sequence, slowly drifting the whole thing away from the refreshing tactility and level-headed sophistication it had built up to that point.

                Flaws and nitpicks aside—though not excused—“Captain America-The Winter Soldier” is still an exciting and daring move forward for the superhero genre, and it at least hints towards a maturity that Marvel Studios hasn’t been as interested in exploring since the Iraq war metaphors of the first “Iron Man."  Here, themes of political unrest and social distrust regarding NSA monitoring and military drone technologies make this sequel not only satisfying as a genre picture, but timely and relevant as well.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2014

Frozen review

               Despite the fact that Disney is still remembered for its quality family entertainment, it has been some time since their primary animation studio has produced anything of lasting relevance. Sure, Pixar, their digital-animation sister company, has occasionally been able to approximate the glory days when  Disney could so perfectly balance sentimentality with  sincerity, in a narratively compelling way, but with the expansion of their ever-splintering markets, the studio’s proper animation department has been on a steady decline for last 20 years.

                “Frozen”, a 3D reworking of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”, cleverly plays on the nostalgia of the classic Disney musical by simulating the Broadway infected melodrama of films like “Beauty and the Beast” and  “The Little Mermaid”, as well as the visual aesthetics of older selections from their repertoire like “Cinderella”.  But does “Frozen” manage to carve out a niche for itself among the pantheon of Disney standards or is it simply an empty pastiche?

                This loose adaptation of Anderson’s fairytale tells the story of two sisters who are emotionally separated after the enchanted snow-bender Elsa (Idina Menzel) almost kills her younger sister Anna (Kristen Bell) in a childhood accident. Years later, after Anna's been healed and her memory of Elsa’s powers have been wiped, they are reunited at Elsa’s coronation. When Anna announces her hasty engagement to the young Hans (Santino Fontana), Elsa again reveals her hidden powers in an argument, causing her to leave the kingdom in embarrassment, unintentionally cursing the land to fall into a summertime snowpocalypse.  With the help of a burly traveler named Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and an enchanted snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad), Anna must find where her sister is hiding and convince her to end the oppressive cold weather and come back home.

                Many elements of the trademarked Disney magic is recognizable in this digitally animated princess story. The characters motivations are clear, the animation is visually impressive but never too busy or over-designed, and the musical numbers, though tinted in modern-pop, occasionally reach the emotional heights of the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman collaborations of the early 90s. Without out a doubt, there is no shortage of charm in this movie.  Where the film does lack is in its plot construction and storytelling.

                Much of movie’s conflict has to do with finding mechanical ways to separate or main characters and bring them back together. Because Elsa isn’t the actual villain in this peace, and her character is as distant to us as she is to her sister, we neither fear her nor strive for Anna’s yearning to reconnect. When the final act starts and the true antagonist is revealed it’s already too little too late to properly build adequate tension into the story. The side characters introduced in the middle of the film are cute enough, fun to watch and they keep things light, but the film could have definitely benefited with a more substantial B-plot following Elsa as she is snowbound in her ice castle, away from everyone else.

                As captured in any of the behind the scenes footage of how the old Disney masterpieces were made, you can see that every screenplay was closely scrutinized and subject to multiple drafts and storyboard sessions before they were approved by Walt or any of his fruitful successors. For all of the nostalgic posturing and magical evocation in “Frozen” it ends up feeling more like Disney’s greatest hits than an original piece unto itself. But that isn’t to say that the experience, as surface-oriented as it may be, isn’t totally enjoyable while you’re in the moment.

                What’s important about the success of this film is that people want to like it even if it isn’t nearly as timeless as the movies it’s trying to be.  Though “Frozen” doesn’t totally put Disney back on track it’s at least an admirable step in the right direction.

               

Grade: B -

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Dec-2013