Star Wars: The Force Awakens

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.  -- I Corinthians, 13:11

I was 9 or 10 when Star Wars came out.  Like everyone else I knew at that age, I saw the movie multiple times, wore the t-shirt, had the lunchbox, etc.  

But, hey, I grew out of it.  I didn't make a point of showing the movies to my kids, though I did make the 'Clone Wars' cartoons available and even TiVo'd the first few episodes of 'Star Wars: Rebels.'  Star Wars was just another property in the entertainment marketplace.

Walking out of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, then, I was a happy guy.  The movie offered an enjoyable time in the theater with my wife and kids.  It featured a more interesting and entertaining villain's arc than all three prequels put together.  It had lightsaber duels, space-fighters, yet another exploding Death Star, and even a nu-Yoda there at the end.  I didn't expect The Force Awakens to change my life, so I was happy simply to enjoy a derivative, yet entertaining, science fantasy / space opera.

Did it capture my imagination for more than a few minutes after leaving the theater?  No, but that's ok.  I'm a man now.  My children liked, and that's who Stars Wars has always been for, all along.

The Adventures of TinTin

The Adventures of TinTin is a wonderful movie.

This animated adventure, filmed with a motion capture technique that keeps us just this side of the uncanny valley, features ‘splosions, chases, floods, storms at sea, pirates, more ‘splosions, elaborate and exhilarating chases, a massive flood, a great mystery, and gun battles in which all of TinTin’s adversaries seem to forget how to aim at just the right moment..  What more do you want?

Here’s the setup: TinTin, an investigative reporter, finds himself in the middle of a mystery.  He has, unwittingly, purchased that most dangerous of all objects: a Maguffin.  Problem is, he’s unsure exactly what the Maguffin is and why anyone would want it, much less kill for it. 

The Maguffin, of course, is just a reason to get TinTin on the road to adventure, just as Maguffins have in the past and, one assumes, they will again.  The joy of TinTin lies in the road itself, in the delightfully idiosyncratic characters our protagonist meets there, and in the flawless execution of the film’s elaborate set pieces. 

Though created with 3D in mind, the film looks beautiful on an iPad, its voice acting is first rate, and its story blends just the right amounts of danger and levity.  I can’t wait for the sequel.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a film about the roots of the Great Ape Revolution, is something of a misnomer.  Earth is already the planet of the apes, since we humans fall into that category.  Perhaps a better name might be Rise of the Planet of the Rest of the Apes.

Nevertheless, Rise of the Planet of the Apes does the impossible.  During the film’s climactic man-ape battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, we viewers know that mankind’s only hope is the complete destruction of the apes fighting to get across that bridge.  Nevertheless, we root for the chimps and gorillas and orangutans.  We, the audience, root for the success of our enslavers.

Wow.

Rise does this not only by anthropomorphizing a chimpanzee, but by making the anthropomorphization of said chimpanzee the actual subject of the film’s narrative.  We begin in an African jungle.  The chimp’s mother is captured, dragged away from her tribe, and injected with some kind of super chimp serum.  Later, when the mama chimp gives birth, we bond with her cute li’l offspring.  So does James Franco, who plays a scientist who adopts the infant and raises it like an odd cross between a child and a dog.  As the chimp will soon learn, however, Franco’s family represents the sum total of nice people in the entire universe. 

Here’s the problem: chimps don’t stay cuddly forever.  When they grow up and they get angry, they can kill people.  After our hero chimp, named Caesar (modeled by the talented Andy Serkis), attacks the Francos’ mean neighbor, he’s packed off to a facility for primates (No, not a hockey arena.  This is a facility for higher primates.).  The facility, more prison than sanctuary, becomes Caesar’s crucible: the place where he grows out of his trust for humans and into his role as leader of the ape revolution.  By the time he leads his comrades across that bridge, we’ve seen him endure so much cruelty at the hands of humankind that we really do root for him.  We want him and his comrades to find a better life, to find a way out from under the thumb of their enslavers.  What a wonderful exercise in cognitive dissonance!

The film couldn’t pull this off without selling us on its world, and Rise succeeds through smart casting, brilliant animation, and solid scoring.  The Franco family includes the likeable Franco himself, the also likeable John Lithgow, and the luminous Freida Pinto (of Slumdog Millionaire).  Brian Cox leads Team Evil, with help from Tom Felton and David Hewlett, and all three sell their villainy with gusto.  (They also all happen to be English, which calls into question the seriousness of the flag-less ape threat.)  {Note: If I were a better writer, I could have come up with a better Eddie Izzard callback.  We do what we can with what we’ve got.}  The animation, well, it’s wonderful.  We believe in these apes.  We believe in their weight and momentum and the emotions on their faces.  The music, well, I’m a Patrick Doyle fan and I have been since Henry V.  His score builds the world and fills in emotional beats that animated apes may not have been able to convey on their own. 

In short, not only does Rise of the Planet of the Apes work, it works wonderfully.  This ape found himself rooting for the competition against his better judgment, and he never thought that would happen.

Flushed Away

Poor Hugh Jackman. The guy's trying to be a movie star: he really is. He made a romantic comedy with Meg Ryan, an action movie with Stephen Sommers, even a prestige picture with Christopher Nolan. What does he have to show for it? More flops than a skid row hotel. FLUSHED AWAY, with Jackman voicing the lead, was another in the long list of studio loss-makers. Check off "kid's film," Hugh. Perhaps you'll have better luck in a zombie movie.

FLUSHED AWAY looks like a successful kid's movie. It's structured like one, with all the beats, gags, and character moments we'd expect, and it's a perfectly fine entry in the genre. It's lacking something, however - that heart, that hook, that special something that makes it the kind of picture you don't mind seeing again and again. Here's the setup: Roddy (our hapless Hugh) lives the sweet life in Kensington, which, I infer, is a posh London borough. He's a housepet, and a happy one, until circumstance conspires against him and he's literally flushed away into the London sewers. There, he discovers Rat Culture, finds a place in it, and even defeats the evil Mr. Toad (whose toadies include Le Frog, whose henchmen respond to the command, "Fight like Frenchmen!" by raising their hands in surrender).

The movie's visually rich, it has gags galore, it features character design in the beloved Aardman style, and it feels like the kind of thing that went through committee after committee until every cog in a soulles creative machine was happy with the output, right down to the musical number that closed things out. There's no "there" there and, compared with a masterpiece like RATATOUILLE, FLUSHED AWAY is merely a trifle, something to sedate the kids while you mow the lawn.

Better luck next time, Hugh. And really, think about that zombie movie. It might finally put you over the top.

King Kong (2005)

Jackon's KONG summoned my inner carnie: "See the Amazing Shiksa! Her ligaments are made of industrial-grade rubber! Her spine is of pure titanium! She can run for miles without breaking a sweat; she doesn't bruise; and she's impervious to cold!" I'm all for suspending my disbelief, but KING KONG wanted me to believe that Anne Darrow was a frakking cylon, for Pete's sake.

The other elements of the movie didn't fare much better. Rather than capture my imagination, Skull Island made me wonder how a necrocentric civilization could possibly sustain an economy sufficientely vibrant to support all those major construction projects. The CGI had me wishing for more practical effects. The carnage reduced the sense of fun while drawing a sharp distinction between redshirts and stars. The whole long mess had me looking at my watch time and time again.

What a colossal disappointment.