Tag Archives: Film Review

Review: The Boxtrolls

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I’ve come to feel that stop-motion animated films need to be graded on their own scale, separate both from films in general but particularly from computer animated movies.  Partly that’s due to the simple fact that so few stop-motion films are released anymore; The Boxtrolls is the only one due in 2014, while there are at least 10 major studio computer animated movies set to come out this year.  In fact, while seemingly every studio is eager for a computer animated hit, there are very few sources of stop-motion animation, mainly consisting of Laika and Aardman Animations (with an occasional film from Tim Burton when he feels like it).  In the last five years and despite producing only three films, Laika has set itself apart as a film studio with a vision, making interesting, unique films like Coraline and ParaNorman.  With The Boxtrolls, it has solidified its place with the likes of Pixar as a studio that makes movies of the highest quality and vision which demand to be seen, and whose involvement with a film is more important than voice casts, writers or directors in attracting my interest.

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Review: The Hundred-Foot Journey

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Sometimes when you go out to a nice restaurant you want the newest, most exciting thing on the menu.  You want something that will challenge your taste buds, something surprising and original, which gives you unique ingredients in unforeseen combinations, blowing your mind with its creativity.  Other times you want something intimately familiar, a favorite dish you’ve ordered countless times before.  It may familiar and routine, but while the mind craves the new sometimes the heart longs for the familiar.  The same could be said for film.  In The Hundred-Foot Journey, the characters spend their days trying to reconcile the new and creative with the old and familiar.  As for the movie itself there’s little new to shock and surprise, but in its familiarity the film feels intimate and reassuring, hitting all of the familiar beats of a dish that we may know very well yet is still wonderfully crafted and a joy to eat.

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Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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I was a huge Ninja Turtles fan growing up.  I had all of the toys, watched the cartoon show every day, dressed as a Ninja Turtle for two different Halloweens (Michelangelo and Donatello), and the first time I went to New York City I pointed to a manhole cover and asked my mom if that was where the Ninja Turtles lived.  I even repeatedly watched the video of the musical stage show.  In fact, the only aspect of the Turtles that I was never interested in as a kid were the comics.  But more than anything, I watched the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie over and over again.  It was the first film that I ever completely memorized, and I wore that VHS out.  I was originally supportive of resurrecting the Turtles for the big screen, as I feel like they fill a niche that most other comic book superhero movies seem to miss.  However, the end result fails to capture what made the Turtles special to begin with and is nothing more than a watered-down shadow of the well know characters, too eager to be “cool” to be of much interest.

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Review: Into the Storm

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It’s inevitable, if unfair, that Into the Storm is doomed to be compared to Twister.  Twister, despite having its fair share of detractors, has become the default tornado movie, so well and widely known that almost everyone is familiar with it, perhaps because it is shown with surprising regularity on various cable channels.  It’s also a film that I deeply love and I think is an unappreciated masterpiece, none of which could bode well for Into the Storm.  But I’ve long believed that familiar stories are worth retelling, and a new take on something old can still have value, so I went into the movie somewhat dubious, but hopeful that it might hold its own.  Unfortunately, the only conclusion I could draw by the end also happens to be an unfortunate and overused pun that I nevertheless feel compelled to make: it sucked.

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Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

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Story is made up of much more than plot. I’ve often seen movies with original or unique plots praised for having a great “story,” while other movies get criticized for a dull “story” when in actuality they mean a predictable plot. To me, I envision the term “story” to be the equivalent of everyone sitting around a campfire listening to someone spin a tale. I’d much rather hear a familiar yarn interestingly told, by someone who knows the best way to engage those of us around the fire, read the audience and hit our emotions, rather than someone who tells a completely unique series of events but does so in a flat monotone, convinced that their plot is interesting enough to excuse them from doing the hard work required to make the story engaging. Why do I bring this up? It’s because Guardians of the Galaxy has a plot that is derivative and predictable, but it is so wonderfully, cleverly and creatively told that as a “story” it is one of the most unique and unpredictable I’ve watched in a long time.

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Review: Earth to Echo

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Nostalgia can be dangerous, especially when it comes to the film industry.  Nostalgia is what gives us endless remakes, reboots and sequels to what’s come before, in the place of more original fare.  It seems like most people would choose to go to a film based on something that they’re familiar with than take a chance on something new, and the studios know this.  Nostalgia is often served up as a method of forging an emotional connection with an audience, in place of real emotion in the story.  But nostalgia can be dangerous from the other side of things too, when it prevents us from giving a film a chance simply because it looks similar to something we’ve seen and loved before.  (I recently had a long argument with a coworker over whether movies released today will still be watched in 50 years as movies from the 1960’s are still watched today, with the twist being that he doesn’t see modern movies because he doesn’t think they can possibly compare to the films of his youth.)  I think Earth to Echo has become a victim to nostalgia.

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Review: Edge of Tomorrow

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After Oblivion opened last year and was greeted with a general shrug, people started asking all sorts of questions.  Had Tom Cruise’s box office clout finally faded, leaving him nothing more than an aging star doomed to appear in endless Mission Impossible sequels instead of more interesting fare?  Did Oblivion‘s failure combined with that of After Earth signal the end of the days when a big name actor like Cruise or Will Smith could draw audiences to the theater by the strength of their name alone?  Are original science fiction films dead altogether, leaving us nothing but sequels, remakes and reboots?  Edge of Tomorrow (and its box office performance) doesn’t exactly answer any of those questions, despite being a fun and entertaining movie, but it perhaps postpones the day when both science fiction films and the concept of the box office star are declared dead.

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Review: How to Train Your Dragon 2

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Four years ago, the first How to Train Your Dragon film was something of a surprise success.  Very loosely based on the children’s book series by Cressida Cowell (and I’m serious about “very loosely;” I almost had a fit when I saw the initial trailers and dragons were the enemy and Toothless was big enough to ride), the first film used its unique setting and tone, along with some brilliant storycrafting and a solid voice cast to stand out from its competition, winning over critics and audiences alike.  It was a story full of heart and humor, with the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless at the center, as they fight to change the traditions and prejudices of their land.  We return once again to the Viking village of Berk in How to Train Your Dragon 2, a sequel that is bigger in nearly every way, but which perhaps is not the better for it.

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Movie Review: The Fault in Our Stars

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Adapting a beloved novel for the big screen is often an enormous challenge, even with books written with cinema in mind.  Most stories don’t automatically come with a two hour screenplay attached, and the process of fitting that story into a film can be troublesome for the filmmakers and heartbreaking for fans.  Some things will naturally have to be cut in order to fit into the running time, while others will have to be changed or rewritten in order to work on the screen (and heaven forbid the filmmakers add something that was never in the book).  Then there’s the struggle to find the right tone and perspective, where humor and pathos have to be transitioned to the screen but also balanced in the right mix to feel true to the author’s intent.  If you’re too faithful to the novel you might alienate viewers who are unfamiliar with the source, but if you go too broad then you might risk diluting what made the story so special in the first place.  So it’s a pleasant surprise that the film version of The Fault in Our Stars is such a success.

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Review: Maleficent

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Maleficent tries to do for Sleeping Beauty what Wicked did for The Wizard of Oz.  It strives to take a villain and reexamine her life, giving us context and an explanation for her actions and making us question our preconceptions.  Yet it lacks the grace and power of Wicked.  Maleficent is occasionally shockingly old-fashioned, it has a mediocre script and an inconsistent tone, and it trades one shallow villain for another while leaving few of the characters with any depth.  Yet Maleficent shines in spite of all that, defying expectations and rising above the things that might hold it back.  It’s truly more than the sum of its parts, and it owes any success it finds to its two charismatic lead actresses.

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