It’s hard not to be impressed by Selick’s visual style and the overall exclusivity of the world he creates. Maltin’s hyperbolic “best 3-D movie I’ve ever seen” claim isn’t really all that far from the truth, but the trailers preceding the film bely its status as merely the tip of the iceberg: Every animated film made by a major studio between now and the end of time will likely be in 3-D. (Hint: He’ll probably upgrade his opinion in the very near future, which sort of sullies the sentiment; There really ain’t much for him to compare it to. Kudos for the quasi-subversive nudge in the resolution of the film, wherein Coraline – subjected to parental neglect – learns to appreciate her parents and not the other way around.
The melody of the natural exchanges is more charming than it has any right to be - with Phoenix eccentric, but not canned eccentric - and the oddball embrace of a series of selfish, consumed decisions makes nearly every step of this film feel RIGHT. I can't wait to see it again.
I can't imagine much appeal outside the 3-D. It shuts as mundanely as it opens, with insecure character becoming secure by recognizing her own potential (albeit in a gigantic body). Andre Wescott used to say that it had all been done. His taxonomy of popular genres always listed both Monster and Alien movies. This feels like a cheap attempt to overcome convention via The Crossover. Disguised as a kids movie. Wrapped up in the Cinema of the Attractions latest pirate-proof technology. Yawn.
Where Michael Clayton had a straight face, Duplicity keeps its tongue firmly cheek'd, coasting on rapid-fire dialogue - much of which is a true delight to listen to - and undending twists (two or three to many for my taste, but no bother). While the love story isn't really all that palettable, the poison of their alliance - and the nth power of mistrust that follows - makes for a deeply cynical underpinning. I'm not going out on a limb here. I'm not going to say its subversive - it's not. The real news, though, is this: Gilroy seems to be able to bend an otherwise conventional film to his will (even if he doesn't succeed 100% of the time). To me, this is exciting. I have a soft spot for directors who can take questionable material and bring out its most interesting version. And why I'm so enamored of Denis O'Hare I couldn't say (he played the seemingly unrelated dude who hits a jogger with his Jaguar in the opening reel of Michael Clayton), but he has an even larger role here and he's dynamite (see sequence where he and Rick Worthy mock Clive Owen's delivery of "I Own You"). Much of the supporting cast - Wayne Duvall and Carrie Preston, in particular - is terrific, with both Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti doing SO MUCH with their very small roles, particularly in the opening sequence which is ecstatic and bracing all at the same time. And awesome.
With broad strokes and questionable ethics, Taken falls somewhere between the laughable political subtext of Rambo and I-will-kick-everyone's-head-in verve of The Transporter in overall Vigilante Porn integrity. Generally, I made a choice early on the film to take it as a near-brazen casting choice and ride that train through the film's plothole minefield. For the most part - and, again, we've made a choice here - it works gangbusters. Neeson never stops the cartoonish thuds, transforming odds like five-against-one into a series of absurdly simple tasks, all of which are gunning on the fuel of Sweet Majestic Anger. While its attitude is suspiciously (nay, overtly) conservative, its trashy STV template never gives one any great pause for activism, let alone consideration. By the time we get around to wondering about great pieces of the narrative that seem unexplained or missing, we are, instead, chuckling to ourselves for the fifteenth time: Why would anyone want to fuck with Liam Neeson?
Expertly fractured, The Girlfriend Experience is straight-up Soderbergh from top to toe, exploiting the telling parallels of an escort mapping out her fiscal future amidst the dramatic economic bottom-drop 'round the 08 election. The time stamp makes the film seem more savvy than it actually is - the center ring narrative wrongheadedly relegates Chris Santos to Grand Foil while his contributions in the image sales category are left to wither down to somewhere below inconsequential. Clearly, the film was birthed on the editing deck and The Film that takes precedence has a sense of documentary-style voyeurism into an otherwise tittilating world we're meant to recoil at. With this contradiction in tow - key scene being One For The Message Boards With (gasp) Glenn Kenny - the film seems to nod, full circle, too the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too spirit that ushered the current recession into our respective spheres of interaction. In effect, buying an experience only reveals the greater hypothetical. Its a well-honed conclusion - hence the toppish grade for a film with a glaring concern front and center - and its sold, quite effectively, by Sasha Grey. Playing the high priced call girl, she nails the smokescreen of ambition and the harrowing self denial that allows her to play the role. Having been a porn star couldn't have hurt.
Never not gripping and, often, insanely tense; Zonka's command of the medium is so full-force and Swinton's TDF performance of, just, mass amounts of recklessness, is so deeply felt, its completely baffling to me that he hasn't released a film in ten years and she won the Oscar two years too early. First half's Mementoesque cuts from action to next morning bleed their frentic stylings into a second half that seems to move and sway completely apart from any other kidnap drama I've ever seen. Big bonus points for Saul Rubinek (who I love). Best film of the year so far.
Most of it is, at its best, commendable (and at the very worst, merely intellectually stimulating), but Up's first ten minutes (i.e. - Carl's backstory) weren't just more samples of genuine emotional crescendo - like, for example, Ego's first bite of the title dish in Ratatouille - but resound as the highest point yet reached by those eggheads down at the Pixar Lab. These ten precious moments of screen time not only encapsulate every tingling intangible associated with the dynamic of the sexes - in courtship, in marriage, in ambition, in mourning - they take place so early in the film, that they transcend something more profound than any second and third act could hope to convey. And while its landscape and lessons have a strangely unsophisticated bent to them (my perception may be faulty as I spent a great deal of the running time laughing at, um, self-conscious talking dogs), it hardly matters: Docter has this uncanny predilection for successfully creating warm, funny films from wacky premises that seem cobbled together of arbitrary ideas (in Monsters, Inc., for example, the town runs on the energy of children's screams spawned from scare sessions with hired monsters who work in that warehouse with that M.C. Escher meets Rube Goldberg door system).
It achieves in its final scene what the whole movie seems contextual fodder for, namely, The Pleasant Freedom of Youthful Abandon Feeling which no grown ups can seem to glean from THE HOUSE. That first thirty minutes left me wondering why all the worth was on things and, while the movie does little to dispel the creeping conclusions we're drawing about these people, what follows actually seems to echo the sentiment of universal nook and cranny appreciation. I'm not sure if I credit Assayas with minor independent successes or fault him for plopping them into a decidedly minor coming-of-age tale (of which he plans to trilogize). That last scene, though, is classic example of Robert McKee's great advice to Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. ("Wow them in the end and you got a hit".)
Even its great, long formless section at the start has Bigelow's macho histrionics - she should really trademark it - and The Hurt Locker, taking a page out of United 93's book, is a magnificently exciting genre film. Renner's William James casts a huge matinee idoldom-brand shadow - he's the wild man, by the way - but seems a bit disingenuous amidst The DVD Moppet and that snarky sideplot, but none of that even remotely matters. Imagine if Black Hawk Down's Hoot was the main character in an action film.
Recalls the slapdash speed and unabashed appeal I remember feeling the first time I saw The Office, only in a profane movie world of nonstop one-liners. Like The Hurt Locker, it hardly matters that its topical - it just so happens by chance to be one of the funniest movies in years.
Its coherence is the biggest (and best) surprise, but it was still directed by Zak Snyder. This cheapens its exhaustive take on the unmatched genius of the graphic novel with digi everything.
Why was it such a chore to cast this film? Kristen Stewart? Ryan Reynolds? A flimsy, quintessentially indie take on The Post College Tumult? A soundtrack that almost makes it all bearable? I just can't see any of these people trafficking in being cool, in being sexually vulnerable or, you know, in any measure of profundity.