How to Train Your Dragon (2010) (Monday, February 21, 2011) (183)

It's a sad thing for How to Train Your Dragon that no matter how good a movie it is (it's a good movie) it will never be as beloved as Toy Story 3. I guess that's the luck of the draw for any animated film these days - that the year you are released there's always a chance there's a bigger and glitzier Pixar movie that takes all the attention. Still, Dragon does a wonderful job and is still a very fun and delightful film and deserving of lots of praise and attention.

In the film Hiccup is a weak, dorky boy living in a small island town of vikings (who speak with Scottish accents). His father is the chief of the town and because he's not very strong, Hiccup works as an assistant for the town blacksmith making weapons and swords that the warriors use to fight the dragons that pester the village. He seems totally inept at doing anything physical aside from grinding blades and is a shame to his loving father.

One day, after designing a catapult that shoots dragon traps (he's very clever and is good at engineering), Hiccup catches what turns out to be the notorious Night Fury dragon, the most dangerous beast in the world. When he goes to find the thing, he realizes that it's a very loving creature. He works with it, calling him Toothless, and learns all about dragon ways, figuring out the dragons are not nasty beings but just unhappy with their horrible reptile master and very misunderstood. He then has to prove to his village what he knows - and prove to his father that he is a strong man worthy of respect.

I watched this film on DVD and not in the theater in 3D format. I'm sure this affected my overall experience, but I still think it was a visual masterpiece. One scene in particular, where Hiccup finally has a breakthrough in training with Toothless and they go for an elaborate flight, is absolutely magnificent even in standard 2D - and I imagine it would be even more spectacular in 3D! This is one of the first times I've found animators use the 3D format to truly bring you inside the picture rather than just showing off with elaborate gimmicks.

The story is nice for kids and for adults and very funny and well written. I like that the vikings are all Scots and that details like the score are done with rather celtic-inspired themes. There's a rather poignant bit at the end of the film where Hiccup is injured in the ultimate battle and comes away missing a foot, as if he was an injured war veteran. This is done very well, not fetishized and could easily be understood by kids that war has real consequences, even for the victors. At the same time we are not beaten over the head with the emotional ramifications of this (Hiccup gets back on his dragon and flies away).

This might not be as fancy and elite a film as Toy Story 3, but it is a very good film and well worth watching - even in 2D!

Stars: 3 of 4

The Illusionist (2010) (Thursday, January 20, 2011) (179)

The Illusionist is a very charming and lovely animated feature that is based on an unfinished Jacques Tati screenplay that was never produced. It is made by Sylvain Chomet, the animator/writer/director behind The Triplets of Belleville, which was a very Tati-esque movie in its own right.

In the film there is an old magician traveling around France and Britain performing shows in the 1950s. As he goes to theater after theater, his audiences get smaller and smaller as the rock 'n' roll boom is just picking up at the same time. He ends up in the Hebrides, or some very remote and northern islands in Scotland, and there meets a young girl who is fascinated by his tricks. She doesn't understand the illusions he's performing and honestly thinks he's doing real magic and conjuring. Totally mystified and in love with the idea of what he does, she follows him when he leaves her village to take a gig in Edinburgh. There she is a small-town girl in the big city and the illusionist has to look after her as he tries to make a living from his tricks.

There is a wonderful joy and simplicity to this film that is rarely seen anymore. There is almost no dialogue at all throughout the film. The man speaks in simple French sentences whenever he does speak. The girl chips away in gibberish, or Scots-Gallic, perhaps, and nobody can understand what she's saying. Most of the time there's melancholy music and noise from the outside world. This brings a very cozy and sweet tone to the whole film that is really wonderful.

This film has been nominated for the Best Animated Film by the Oscars and it has no chance of winning, but it's totally deserving of the nomination. It's been 50-some years since Tati was last nominated for a significant award and this work is as much his as it is Chomet's.

Stars: 3 of 4

Summer Wars (2010) (Sunday, January 9, 2011) (173)

Summer Wars is a good, but not great, anime movie about how the wold is in danger because of social media networks. In the film, there is a computer system called Oz (subtle) that seems to control everyone. It's like Facebook on crack. Everything you do is documented there and government stuff is run through there as well. Everyone in the world has an animated avatar that lives in Oz and interacts inside that world.

One day, Kenji, a dorky computer nerd who is a student but works for Oz doing some sort of policing, is asked by his female friend Natsuki to accompany her to her grandmother's house to pretend to be her fiance. Natsuki has a big family and her brother is apparently some legendary Oz gamer. While the whole family is there, Natsuki's uncle, Wabisuke, returns after years of living in America (boo!). It seems he left the family a long time ago after selling some of their land in a terrible deal. The family is not happy about his arrival.

But they don't have a chance to worry about him because as this is happening, Oz is taken over by some mysterious villain avatar called Love Machine (it's ironic) that eats code and other avatars and tries to take over the world via Oz. Kenji, Natsuki, her brother and the family have to get on their computers to fight Love Machine, lest he bomb Japan.

There is a very nice look to the animation here and lots of the shots of Oz are totally inspired by the art work of Takashi Murakami. I like this a lot. I also like that Kenji is a reluctant hero and that it's dorks and geeks who save the world, rather than supermen and strong guys. This is a nice change, though, I'm sure it's more common than I know in anime.

I think there is a bit too much that happens here, and the movie plays a bit too long for me. It's drags a lot in the third act and sorta loses its way a bit. The subplot of Wabisuke is nice for the family story, but feels like a hat on a hat when it comes to this program that's going to destroy the world. I get the idea that families need to stick together and that only together can we conquer tough things, but the story would have essentially be there without this character.

This is a fun movie, but nothing brilliant. It has some lovely visual elements in it and I liked the animation a lot.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Toy Story 3 (Sunday, June 20, 2010) (56)

I am a fan of the Toy Story movies. I liked the first one and loved the second one. For me they are fantastic buddy movies that smartly pull from film history to make wonderful, contemporary stories. There is a ton of John Wayne and Dean Martin from Rio Bravo in them (they are basically Westerns) and I love that.

Toy Story 3 fits in beautifully with tho previous two. This film is funny, sad, poignant, scary and exciting. I was surprised by how frank and adult some of the characters are and how death and loss was dealt with.

Since the last time we saw Woody and Buzz, Andy, their kid owner has grown up and stopped playing with them as much. He is now about to go off to college, but his mother makes him clean his room before he goes. Most of his toys are put in a box to be donated to the local preschool and once they get there, they think they're in toy heaven with tons of kids looking for hours of playtime all day long. There are hundreds of toys there, all happy to have this second-life as toys for new youngsters.

It turns out the preschool is run by a mad purple bear, Lotso, who is bitter because his owner abandoned him. He takes out his rage on the toys he doesn't like, forcing them to work the room with the very young kids who play rough. Lotso has a posse of enforcers, including Ken (Barbie's boyfriend), Big Baby (a big baby doll), Twitch (a big Alien insect) and Chunk (a rocky tough). They reset Buzz's memory so he becomes one of them and forgets his friends from Andy's house. It then becomes clear that the group has to escape, but to where? Andy has given them away and they have no other home.

Like the ones before, this is a very funny and fresh film with some great jokes that work for adults as well as kids. There's a whole love story between Ken and Barbie, suggesting that Ken is a clothes horse and rather vein. There are several great action/escape sequences that keep you on the edge of your seat.

One thing that was a big surprising to me was how Lotso is a very dark, angry character with almost nothing good going for him. He comes off as gregarious and bright at the beginning, opening his school to the new arrivals. But this is an act - and he is really an unfriendly, unloving character. I think this would be hard for kids to understand or deal with, especially because he comes off as a friend to begin with and then turns bad. Beyond this, his meanness seems to come from deep down inside him and he is unable to grow or change - even when it means the imminent deaths of the gang of friends. I guess he gets his just desserts in the end, but I'm not sure his punishment (which is basically a life of torture... also sorta dark, by the way) fits his crimes.

There are a few moments that seem more like a kids movie than an adult movie (like how Andy drives himself to college, which I don't buy considering his mother is so over-protective), but overall this is a sweet and fun movie, good for basically all ages.

I liked it a bit more than the first one and a bit less than the second one, but it was great overall. I did not see it in 3D, because I don't like the format very much and didn't want my feelings about that hurt my enjoyment of the film. Regardless, it worked well in a "2D" version, nonetheless. I guess there's a chance for a 4th one in the franchise... and I'm sure that one will be wonderful too.

Stars: 3 of 4

The Princess and the Frog (Tuesday, December 22, 2009) (203)

As a tribute to their classic 2D animation history, Disney made The Princess and the Frog, its first animated film to focus positively on primarily African-American characters (no comment on Song of the South here). The style is indeed reminiscent of classic Disney films, like Cinderella, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, however this one lacks almost all of the charm and magic of those.

Tiana is a poor daughter of a New Orleans seamstress who dreams of opening a Cajun restaurant when she grows up. Her friend is Charlotte, the white daughter of the richest man in town (I'll clearly ignore the racial undertones here). Prince Naveen, a mysterious dark Europeanish royal, comes to town and meets with a voodoo witchdoctor who swindles him, turning him into a frog. Tiana meets the frog and is convinced that if she kisses him, he will become a prince again, but instead she is also turned into a frog - voodoo's a bitch, ain't it! The two frogs have to go into the woods to find another voodoo witchdoctor lady to turn them back to their human forms.

Typical of Disney animated features, the film has a bunch of music and songs in it (composed and written by Disney mainstay Randy Newman). Sadly none of these songs are memorable at all, even though there is a nice effort to include New Orleans styles of zydeco, jazz and blues. As I watched these songs, I think I mostly felt that they were a nice efforts, but just not as good as recent Disney fare (Under the Sea, Be Our Guest, Hakuna Matata).

Mostly, the story is pretty dull and stretched out way too far. Froggy Naveen and Froggy Tiana spend close to half the movie in the woods on the way to the good voodoo lady with almost nothing important happening. There is so much set-up to the story (Tiana's dream of a restaurant, Charlotte's greedy family, Naveen being swindled) that when the story finally kicks off, it's almost over.

There's another thing here, which is a bit more sensitive, which is the fact that it is the first major feature that Disney has done with primarily African-American characters. To me, it rides the delicate edge of being rather culturally insensitive too closely. That Tiana has to be the poor daughter of a domestic and that her best friend is rich and white might be historically accurate, but feels rather racist considering in a Disney fantasy world people of any color can be anything - why does the one black movie have to be so tied to historic Southern culture?

That the film takes place in New Orleans and features voodoo so prominently is also a bit too much, I think. Again, why can't black people live in a wonderful dream world of castles with good witches and bad witches? I think in an effort to combine political correctness with real-world based fantasy, Disney went a bit too far - or not far enough. I don't know why, after so much success with Brothers-Grimm-esque fairy tales Disney had to turn a story on its head and divert from the traditional Frog Prince story.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Avatar- IMAX 3D (Monday, December 21, 2009) (202)

Avatar is the story of Lieutenant John Dunbar who moves to the Dakota Territory during the Civil War and becomes friends with the Native American tribe in the area. He ultimately marries the daughter of the tribe's chief and leads his tribe to a small victory in a battle against the American Army. Wait - that's not it... Oh, right - it's the story of Marlow, a sailor who is asked by his country to go up the Congo River to look into the actions of a crazy man named Kurtz. Wait - again, that's not it. Oh golly - oh right! It's the story of a hacker named Neo who goes into the Matrix, a reality below our own reality, and becomes *The One* for the people who live inside of it. They seem to be unable to take care of themselves, and despite talking like a surfer moron, he helps to liberate the people. Shoot - that's still not it.

OK - it is actually the story of how in the year 2154, there is a planet somewhere in the universe called Pandora where there is a special metal called 'unobtanium'. In order to mine it, a private contractor enlists the the U.S. Marines to secure the land from the thousands crazy alien animals that might come out to hurt the operation. Ex-marine Jake Sully is put into a scientific unit who is trying to help and learn from the giant blue humanoid people on this planet called the Na'vi. He is paralyzed from the waist down, but when he gets into a pod, he becomes an avatar - a Na'vi look-alike that can move in this world easier than a human can.

At some point he gets lost on a scientific mission and finds himself in the Na'vi world. He soon begins living with them and dating Neytiri, the daughter of the chief, who becomes his tutor for all things Na'vi. After some time, the mining operation wants to relocate, so it moves into the area where the Na'vi live. The natives, with the help of Jake, fight the humans in an effort to save their way of life.

This is one of the most over-hyped, over-reviewed worst movies of the year. There is basically nothing good about the film. The story is totally dumb and recycled, the writing is terrible with laughable dialogue. Lead actor Sam Worthington, as Jake, is a joke as an actor. The special effects of the film and the CGI settings of almost the whole thing are terrible - and the film looks worse than many other recent films (that were made for a much smaller budget).

It's been 12 years since writer/director James Cameron made Titanic - and I was under the impression that he had been working on this script for a long, long time. But what we get is a total rip-off of Dances with Wolves, Heart of Darkness and/or The Matrix. There is absolutely nothing new here plot-wise and nothing that is better than the originals it rips off. Every idea here is tired and every twist is predictable and visible from miles away. I mean, not to spoil the ending, but there is a Return of the Jedi-style Yub-Jub song and dance at the end.

Sam Worthington is terrible, clearly cast for his physical looks and muscle rather than his acting. He plays a dumb marine who doesn't know much when he arrives and doesn't grow all that much mentally throughout the story. Listening to him speak, it is hard not to laugh at how bad he is. (Also, curiously, in the second act, his looped-in voice over suddenly changes accents from American to Australian. Why this couldn't have been corrected is bizarre to me.)

Sigourney Weaver is much too overdone and comes off as too much of a bitch at the beginning of the film (she also asks for a cigarette in her first appearance... aren't we beyond that, James?). She seems basically unnecessary in the story as the scientific research she does seems to go out the window after the first sequence. Considering Jake had a better rapport with the Na'vi, it is unclear why she moves into their camp with him. (My favorite thing about her character is that in the avatar world, she wears a Stanford tank-top, as if the Na'vi would respect her more because of her top-level degree.)

At no point in the film did I think that I was in the world I was seeing onscreen - or that that world actually existed. It looks like a big animated world - not all that dissimilar from bad CGI one can find on many Saturday morning cartoons. The Na'vi look entirely animated - not even as good as Pixar toys or cars. This is a big problem as it was a constant cause of separation between the story and me. The Na'vi never felt like real things that I could sympathize with. They always looked to be animated, in a world filled with a few real-world things like humans and helicopters. I am told that this film cost several hundred million dollars to make - and that that money went into the technology and animation. But I don't see the results. To me it looks like any old CGI movie that could have been made 10 years ago. I don't get it.

On top of that, seeing it in 3D was frustrating because when you're wearing the glasses, you have to look exactly straight ahead or the picture will be out of focus. You cannot turn your head slightly and look out of the corner of your eye, for instance. In addition, you have to look at exactly what the filmmakers want you to look at. If they are focusing on something in the bottom right corner of the screen, but you are looking at the top center, what you are looking at is out of focus. I don't know why these faults are not getting more attention, but it was super frustrating for me. I think the 3D technology is not totally up to par yet. I also don't think it's worth the extra $3 to watch in 3D as I think the movie would have been just as good standard.

The most frustrating and insulting thing about the story is the tired suggestion that because they Na'vi are closer to the earth and more 'native' than we are, they are better. This is hackneyed and dumb. It's the old idea that Native Americans respect the land so they are better people or how Africans are more connected to the spiritual world. The Na'vi are all played by African-American actors, yet they seem rather Native American in their dress and ways. Of course, after telling us that more simple and spiritual is better, we then see the Na'vi using modern head-sets to communicated and machine guns to fire - because I guess human culture does have some good uses. Ugh.

This is really a total joke of a movie. Again - the ore they are trying to mind is called *unobtanium*. That's so beyond stupid it's insulting. This is a terrible script, it does not look half as good as it should and it absolutely 100% not fresh. What a waste!

Stars: .5 of 4

A Town Called Panic (Saturday, December 19, 2009) (196)

What's more snobby in the world of animation than claymation? French claymation, of course - and with subtitles! Actually, this is a cute, film along the lines of a gonzo SpongeBob SquarePants about a small village where toy humans and toy animals live and get into all sorts of hijinks.

For Horse's birthday, his roommates Cowboy and Indian (you see, in French, you can say things like 'Indian' and just be cute and foreign and not culturally insensitive! Bonus!) decide to build him a barbecue pit. They order bricks online, but when the delivery arrives, they realize they have way too many. They stack the thousands of bricks on top of the house, leading, of course, to a gigantic mess when the roof collapses and bricks go everywhere. This is just the opening to a bunch of wild and crazy things that ensue.

The style throughout it playful and funny. The characters move like toys rather than articulated characters typical in most animated films (like the Fantastic Mr. Fox), and the high-pitched voices are hilarious, even if you don't understand the French. We never know what to expect around the next corner - and directors Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier do a clever job throwing a few curve-balls at us.

The biggest problem with the film is that it's not totally a single storyline throughout. It is adapted from a television show where the scenes are each about five-minutes long. As a result, it's feels like a soup in a can, rather than something totally homemade. That is, the story goes in such bizarre directions (funny but weird) that it is easy to lose track of the thread and get a bit bored. I am not sure if the script was written as one story arc, or if this is just an amalgamation of a bunch of shorts (I could see it either way). In the end it feels like something that would work better as a bunch of shorts - even a few 15-minute shorts, rather than a feature. Still, it's silly and fun all around.

Stars: 2 of 4

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Sunday, November 22, 2009) (167)

Continuing in the rash of ultra-hip young directors who make movies about long-loved kids books, Wes Anderson comes out with this film, based on the classic Roald Dahl book. There has been some press over the past few weeks about how Anderson didn't really *direct* this film in the way an animation director normally does - rather, he instructed deputies about his general will for tone and look and left the details to them. However it was done, though, this is a fun, funny and charming movie.

In the film, Mr. Fox, voiced by George Clooney, is a devoted family man who has a passion for bird and cider robbing from the poultry and apple farms near his house. He gets into a war with the three farmers nearby over his penchant for elaborate heist schemes. When they kidnap his tail, he enlists the help of friends and family (of the animal kingdom, of course) to exact revenge.

There is a lot to love in this movie, but the best part is its stop-motion animation and wonderful texture of the characters. It feels like a warm animated show that one might have seen in the 1970s or 1980s - before stupid, and ubiquitous CGI animation took over. There is a lot more warmth to the footage here and a lot more interesting details than in computer animations. In the close-up shots of Mr. Fox and the other characters, the individual hairs on his face blow in the wind. It is wonderful to look at it and think that you can reach out and touch the characters and settings. Of course, everything looks very much like a Wes Anderson movie - all super-stylized and packed with kitschy specifics. It works here (better, I think than in much of his live-action films), as this feels fresh and new and furry (the stop motion is not just clay, but little hairy dolls).

The script is very good (adapted by Anderson and Noah Baumbach of The Squid and the Whale) - and the dialogue is very snappy and funny. The voice acting, especially by Clooney and Jason Schwartzman (as Fox's son, Ash) is rather matter-of-fact, smart and full of irony (for the adult viewers). However it is recorded, it sounds very much like I remember stop-motion films sounding in the past - like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Almost like the sound is put on top of the images in little drops, rather than being mixed in with the pictures to create a real-ish atmosphere. This is a nice effect. I guess it might be lost on kids, but it worked well to make me feel nostalgic and warm.

It's hard for me to figure out if I liked this movie more simply because it was charming and well done, or because it felt like a Wes Anderson movie without too much Wes Anderson in it. I am pretty tired of his shtick and this felt like a taste of his stuff without being too strong with his style. At the end of the day, it feels like a fun animated film that might be an allusion to Anderson's oeuvre, but not an Anderson film per se. It borrows strongly from Wallace and Gromit, but only in a good way. It is original, keen and very entertaining.

Stars: 3 of 4