Finding Dory Movie Review

The Pixar Animation Studio has been a little hit or miss with their sequels. The two Toy Story follow-ups are stellar, but Cars 2 doesn’t even measure up to its predecessor, which wasn’t great to begin with. Monsters University carried on the story in a really interesting way, going back to show us how Mike and sully got where they were. It enriches Monsters, Inc. So who knew what to expect with Finding Dory? The biggest error of Cars 2 was the belief that a great supporting character could be the centerpiece of a movie. Dory Added so much to Finding Nemo and she was the most beloved character there. But could her short term memory loss affliction carry an entire movie?

2015 Oscar-nominated Documentary Short Films Review

Documentarians who make feature-length films have become incredibly savvy when it comes to what makes documentaries sell. Many of them nowadays weave a narrative from the material they gather. What was once a rather dry art form used strictly for information dissemination has now become full-fledged entertainment in many of the same ways fictional films are. They have characters and there’s a plot and story arc. The short-form documentary doesn’t really have the time to do all that so we’re left with a purer form of art, used by filmmakers to call attention to a problem, a hero, an artist, or another work of art that maybe we don’t think about often enough. With the program of Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, you get five films that are straight-forward and to the point of their subject matter.

First up is Body Team 12, the shortest of the lot at only twelve minutes. It has little time to do much other than spend a few minutes in the horrors of the job of a team from the Liberian Red Cross whose duties involved collecting the bodies of Ebola victims during the deadly outbreak last year. They gear up with full body coverings, multiple pairs of gloves, and goggles. They go in, take blood samples, and then remove the corpse to a crematorium. One team member follows with an anti-bacterial spray to douse the site where the body was and to rinse his team members’ protective gear as they remove it. The risk of infection is terrifying enough and it’s hard not to conjure memories of the 1995 film Outbreak in which a small breach in the armor led to death. But sometimes the most dangerous part of the job is trying to convince family members to take away their loved ones’ bodies without a burial and gravesite. One group of angry men threaten to burn their car with them inside it. David Darg’s film is a harrowing look at grief that accompanies tragedy and at the unsung heroes who helped avert further spread of the disease as much personal risk to themselves.

Inside Out Movie Review

Pixar’s latest execution of brilliance is Inside Out. It’s getting more than its fair share of praise and accolades, most of which is justified. Is it their best film since Up, as many have deemed it? Probably, but then we’re really only talking about a stretch of two films in that time, both of which were very good even if they aren’t up to the excellent standard Pixar is renowned for. This feat of genuine creativity and acrobatic storytelling concerns the machinations (both literal and figurative) of Riley, who winds up being a secondary character in the story of her own mind. She is subordinate to, and to some extent controlled by the anthropomorphic representations of emotions in her head.

Classic Movie Review: Lady and the Tramp

One of the Disney animated classics that I fondly remember from childhood is Lady and the Tramp. It ws re-released to theaters when I was a kid (before widespread home video releases and before Disney put them out on VHS). It felt more monumental to me then than it does now. At only 76 minutes, it is briskly paced and spare. There’s really not much story to tell and the big romance between Lady (voiced by Barbara Luddy) and the street mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts) is developed in one brief sequence when Lady is lost away from home and Tramp saves her from some unsavory dogs and takes her on a date to an Italian restaurant for the iconic spaghetti-eating scene, which is now one of the most indelibly romantic moments in cinema history.

Modern Classic Movie Review: Aladdin

It had been a very long time since I’d last seen Disney’s Aladdin. I was inspired to take another look at it because of the tragically too soon death of Robin Williams a few months ago. I’m not sure there’s any other Disney animated film that leans so heavily on the voice talent of one particular actor the way Aladdin does. That’s not to say it has nothing else going for it, but Williams’ voice work as the genie is so memorable, it’s hard not to think of the film as a Robin Williams vehicle rather than one in  long and proud tradition of animated feature films.

Short Cut Movie Review: Despicable Me 2

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Following the surprise hit Despicable Me from 2010 comes its sequel, which successfully accomplishes the feat of finding new things for old characters to do in a new movie without repeating a formula. Gru (Steve Carell) is now a retired master villain trying to raise three little girls he adopted at the end of the last movie.

Short Cut Movie Review: Ernest & Célestine

The moment I start watching a foreign animated film, I realize how generic the American studio animation is. True, Pixar has been the gold standard for animated features, especially in terms of story and characterization. And theirs are among the few animated films where the director’s hand can be felt. But when it comes down to it, there’s an almost level uniformity to the projects coming out of Pixaar, Disney, Dreamworks, and Warner Bros. So to watch something like the French film Ernest & Célestine is to be reminded taht artistry, style, and uniqueness of visión can all be worked into animation. Also, the story can be based on a children’s book without pandering to children.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Croods

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I can’t figure out how The Croods, an animated film from Dreamworks, was nominated for the Oscar for Animated Feature over a couple of other options that were demonstrably better movies.

Emma Stone voices Eep, a typical American teenager in most respects excepting the fact that she lives in prehistoric caveman days. She whines and complains about not being able to leave the cave at night, her family is a real drag, and she goes bonkers over some new shoes. Her dad, Grug (Nicolas Cage) is an excessive worrier. Ugga (Catherine Keener) is the mom who goes along to get alone. Cloris Leachman is Gran, the hanger-on in the family, and Clark Duke is the dim-witted son, Thunk.

Short Cut Movie Review: Despicable Me

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I’m a little angry at myself for skipping Despicable Me in 2010 which meant I skipped its sequel last year. Despicable Me is a charming and oftentimes very funny little animated comedy written by Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio, and Sergio Pablos, about a nefarious world villain named Gru, whose lifelong goal is to steal the moon. He’s a little upset that someone recently stunned the world by stealing one of the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Short Cut Movie Review: A Letter to Momo

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Before Hayao Miyazaki was introduced to the United States, the majority of the best known animation from Japan was action-oriented anime involving monsters, robots, words, guns, and superhero-like costumes. Miyazaki’s worlds centered on mystery, fantasy, mythical creatures, and the imagination of childhood. Now he has a list of former apprentices, protégés, and imitators who continue to produce interesting animated stories following his tradition. A Letter to Momo, from writer-director Hiroyuki Okiura, is like a tame version of a Miyazaki fantasy.

Epic Movie Review

One of the better (as in just above average) offerings in this last weak year for American animated features is Epic. It’s a largely derivative eco-conscious storyline that brings to mind Avatar by way of Ferngully with a touch of Alice in Wonderland. The characters aren’t entirely memorable, but there’s enough here that’s commendable that it’s not worth dismissing. How’s that for faint praise?

Short Cut Movie Review: Frozen

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Disney’s Frozen is a loose (very loose) adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale The Snow Queen. As an example of classic Disney animation, it succeeds wonderfully. This is gorgeously rendered computer animation. The palette is beautiful icy blues blended with crystalline whites with lots of shine and sparkle. The story, by Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, and Shane Morris is at least more contemporary in theme than Disney’s princess movies have typically been, by which I mean this isn’t strictly about a young woman desperate to meet a man to marry. Buck and Lee directed the film.

Elsa is the young woman with the often uncontrollable power to turn the world around her to ice. She’s spent the majority of her youth and first years of adulthood locked away from the world. Her sister Anna has no memory of what she can do. Both women want the best for each other and their primary goals are, in the case of Elsa, to avoid hurting her sister, and for Anna, to have a normal life with access to and a relationship with Elsa.

Unable to resist the temptation to include adorable non-human characters, there is a snowman come to life named Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad), who has the best musical number in the movie in which he sings about his desire to experience summer and warm sunshine. There’s also an interesting colony of little trolls with the film’s second best number. Unfortunately, the rest of the songs are close to dreadful. They capture little of the classical style Disney used to do best. The music by Robert Lopez sounds like contemporary pop rock: the same spiritless, over-produced music for mass consumption that we get from any of the TV talent contest shows. Kristen Anderson-Lopez’s lyrics often don’t help, performing the function that too many modern musicals utilize which is to have dialogue and narration sung rather than spoken. Songs in musicals should express ideas and emotions rather than actions and instructions. Incidentally, the singing by Kristen Bell as Anna and Idina Menzel as Elsa veers into ear-splitting awfulness. When Menzel strikes the high notes in her big song, I literally cringed and winced at the piercing shriek. But this is what passes for good singing today – the tightly strained and forced cries that would never pass muster outside popular opinion. It would have been much better movie without the songs.

Monsters University Movie Review

Someone suggested that a more fitting title for Monsters University, the prequel to Pixar’s hit Monsters, Inc., would have been When Mike Met Sulley. Not only do you get the Sully/Sally pun, but of course Mike is voiced by Billy Crystal, who played Harry, the man who met Sally. That’s neither here nor there, having little to do with the movie itself. It’s just an observation, but essentially Monsters University is the story of how Mike Wazowski, the irrepressible and energetic little walking eyeball became best buds with Sully, the big pastel-hewed fierce and furry “scarer” voiced by John Goodman. This is the story of how they came to be the powerful team that generates innumerable canisters of screams to power the Monster city.

Oscar-nominated Animated Short Films

These are the five films nominated this year for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar. To see them back-to- back is to have the experience of being tugged in several directions in a short period of time. There is no unifying theme between them, as there shouldn’t be. Here are my brief reactions to them in my rough order of preference.

Fresh Guacamole

This may be my favorite of the five for its sheer simplicity. There’s no story here, just an animated throwback to what early cinema pioneers used the medium for. At the birth of cinema filmmakers captured brief actions – a kiss; a running horse; a person jumping. This two minute animated film is a colorful stop-motion animation using mostly household objects to make a bowl of the avocado dip. Hand grenades for the whole fruit, baseballs for onions, a Christmas tree light bulb for a jalapeño, Monopoly houses when it’s chopped. This is what cinema sometimes does best.

Frankenweenie Movie Review

Tim Burton has spent his entire filmmaking career searching for the magic of those old science fiction and horror films of the 1950s and 1960s. That’s the stuff he grew up on and it obviously touched him on a personal level because almost everything he does pays homage in some way to them. Ed Wood is both biography and homage to the director of the cheapest “so bad it’s good” B-movies. His latest film, and first stop-motion animation as director, is Frankenweenie, which happens also to be a remake of an early short film he made in 1984, before he ever stepped behind the camera for a full-length feature. The original short film runs 25 minutes and stars Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall as the parents of a boy who loves his dog, Sparky, and directing cheap 8mm films in the back yard (like Burton did as a boy). After the dog dies in an accident, the boy uses science to reignite life in his dead beloved, much to the dismay of the townspeople, who, in the spirit of Frankenstein, burn down an old windmill in an attempt to destroy the grotesquery of resurrected death.

ParaNorman Movie Review

Laika Entertainment is filling the niche of animated features intended for children who are a little more grown up. Their first two films, Corpse Bride and Coraline, are darker and more macabre than the fare churned out by the other big animation studios (although Dreamworks, Disney, and Pixar produce some fantastic animated films). Laika’s third feature, released earlier this year and just recently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, is ParaNorman, an equally light macabre story that is great family fun if you leave it the youngest and most impressionable members of your clan unless they can handle ghost, zombies and scary witches.

Wreck-It Ralph Movie Review

Wreck-It Ralph feels like it should have been a Pixar Animation Studios project. The premise is exactly the kind of clever idea they latch onto and develop into viable material for an animated feature film. The screenplay by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee is from a story by Johnston, Rich Moore, and Jim Reardon. Moore, who learned his animation directing chops on “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” – where he likely learned a great deal about handling culturally relevant material – directed. It concerns a video game villain, the titular Ralph, who has grown weary of destroying a building, doing it well, and then looking on as the game’s hero is rewarded with medal upon medal. Thirty years of the same actions over and over will do that to a guy. He desires the chance to be the hero for once, but his Bad-Anon support group (featuring one of the Pac Man ghosts and King Kroopa from Mario Bros.) tell him he can’t change who he is. You see one of the film’s object lessons in the works from here.

Pixar's Brave Movie Review

Feature animation princess stories have long been the purview of Disney films. Those of us who are weary of the wholesome inoffensive entertainments they have created over the years had Pixar to turn to starting in the mid 90s. Not that Pixar’s films have been so subversive, but their consistently creative writing staff has at least attempted to honestly provide stories that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Their latest effort, Brave, feels more like a Disney animated film than any of Pixar’s previous 12 feature films.

Chico & Rita Movie Review

Chico & Rita is a lovely little tribute to an era in American culture during which a new American genre was born and to a country and its people who helped foment that genre. The genre I speak of is jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the country is Cuba, which lent a great many musicians to the New York music scene, bringing with them their conga drummers and smooth Latin beats to help transmute a the burgeoning new form.

Rio Movie Review

Several studios have tried to horn in on Disney’s virtual monopoly on feature animation, usually by trying to do things that Disney does not do. DreamWorks has created more grown-up oriented fare in the Shrek series and the little remembered Antz while Blue Sky Studios, best known for its Ice Age series, has tried to build its reputation around lovable animal characters. With Rio they’ve tried to branch out a little bit by including several prominent human characters in the story and by giving the film a rollicking musical score by John Powell (who also provided the wonderful score for How to Train Your Dragon) and some big musical numbers featuring singing characters and animated dance sequences.