My Day with Film (Tuesday, 12/20/16)

Tuesday, 12/20/16


Dear Diary,

I shared my review of PASSENGERS this morning. Spoiler alert - I did not care for it. I think the film releases Wednesday for anybody who is still interested. ASSASSIN'S CREED also comes out this week, so I hope to see it and post a review soon.

While working today, I pulled up the latest Movie Fight from the folks over at Screen Junkies. They don't do this all the time, but Screen Junkies recently started this new approach to Movie Fights by getting contestants drunk while arguing movies. It's great.

Today we got two new stills from ALIEN: COVENANT. The first trailer is imminent, per the folks at TrailerTrack.

We also got a brand new still from JUSTICE LEAGUE. This one features Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, and Ezra Miller as The Flash staring pensively at something in the upper right corner.

We did, however, get the first trailer for THE EMOJI MOVIE. It's presented vertically, which means it is optimized for mobile viewing. Nobody will be surprised if the entire movie is shot that way. It's only a tease, but I think this trailer perfectly captures everyone's thoughts about the prospect of a film based on emoji.

There's also another trailer out now for A CURE FOR WELLNESS, which looks like a more stylized version of SHUDDER ISLAND. I'm excited for this one. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be terrible, but I think there's an interesting story and some insane visuals here. And I love haunted asylum horror/psychological thriller movies. This one is out mid-February.

Lastly, my mother is interested in seeing any and all Christmas movies right now, including KRAMPUS. I promised her we'd watch it tonight. We'll see how that goes.


Until tomorrow,

BC

"Kubo and the Two Strings" Review

Kubo and the Two Strings is the latest stop-motion/CGI hybrid from Laika, the company behind Coraline, Paranorman, and The Boxtrolls. Colorful characters, rich mythology, stunning visuals and a tight narrative easily make Kubo the best animated film of this year.

Kubo (voiced by Art Parkinson) is a master storyteller. Armed with a magic guitar, this young boy regularly captivates the hearts and minds of the local village with his stories of Hanzo, a brave samurai warrior and Kubo's late father. One night, Kubo's mother sends him off on a quest to find Hanzo's suit of armor which will protect him from vengeful spirits from the family's past. Assisting Kubo on this quest are two daring protectors, Monkey (voiced by Charlize Theron) and Beetle (voiced by Matthew McConaughey).

There was a point about halfway through this movie where I feared the narrative might slip into tired "video game" territory. Even though the action is largely stellar, some of the fight scenes play out like our heroes facing different stages in boss battles. However it bounces back through a couple of welcome twists which you'll need to see to appreciate.

Aside from that, everything about this movie could not have been any better. The animation is simply incredible. After just four features, Laika is on-par with the very best of Pixar. Textures are rich and deep which provide a believable sense of place for this mythical story. The characters are all well-developed and show welcome degrees of agency. The three leads are wonderful, but look out for "The Sisters," both voiced by Rooney Mara. They steal the show each time they're on screen.

There's little else to say aside from the words "Go see this movie!" Kubo has something for everyone, and it deserves your support since it's largely outside of the mainstream machine, i.e. Pixar, DreamWorks, the Despicable Me folks, etc.

A

"Sausage Party" Review

Okay, listen. I'm going to try and tell you just enough about this movie Sausage Party for you to decide whether or not you should see it. Honestly, I may not even have to say much at all. This not-so-subtle phallic poster should pretty much spell out precisely what you're in for. Look at the names in the cast there. Would you expect anything less from pretty much all of those people? I'm going to attempt to review this thing for you as best I can without giving anything away, so here goes...

Sausage Party is an animated film featuring the voice talents of Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Kristen Wiig among several others. It's about food and what happens when we purchase food from the grocery store to prepare at home. Oh, did I also mention that this lively cartoon about food pushes the boundaries of an R-rating further than Deadpool? Seriously, I cannot express this in any more dire a fashion - DO NOT bring your children to see this film!!! They will never eat again.

In terms of a story, picture Toy Story 2 and 3 with 500 F-bombs and sex jokes. Honestly though, beneath that veneer of crassness, Sausage Party is an iteration of Homer's "Odyssey" unlike any to come before it.

Frank (Rogen) is a hot dog, and Brenda (Wiig) is a hot dog bun. They are boyfriend and girlfriend and cannot wait for the day that they are removed from their packages and Frank can finally slide all up into Brenda. Yeah. That's this movie. The food at Shopwell's supermarket imagines that, when they are removed from the shelves by shoppers/"the gods," they are being chosen for an eternal life of bliss in the "Great Beyond." When a jar of Honey Mustard (Danny McBride) is purchased and later returned to the shelf, he claims that the "Great Beyond" is actually a living hell full of death and destruction. After the store closes for the night, Frank, Brenda, Lavash (David Krumholtz), Teresa the Taco (Salma Hayek) and Sammy Bagel, Jr. (Edward Norton, doing a decent Woody Allen impression) embark on a quest to discover the truth about their "gods" and what really happens when food leaves the store.

A whole lot of other wild shit happens, and along the way, our heroes meet lots of interesting characters. At it's core, this film tells an odyssey story, but it also explores the folly of both man and religion. I'm not kidding. Sausage Party actually has very worthwhile subtext, all told with food. It pushes boundaries throughout its trim 90-minute run time before finally, irrevocably, overstepping the line with possibly the most gonzo finale to a movie you're likely to ever see. Literally nothing you've seen before can prepare you. You'll have to either take my word for it or see it for yourself. It's just that bonkers.

(I'm not sure what kind of a final grade this movie warrants. It has so many compelling pieces which come together in unique ways, but it's a Seth Rogen comedy about talking food. Let it be known, however, that I will be encouraging grown adults to see this movie. That's endorsement enough.)

"The BFG" Review

From Disney and the creative team behind E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial comes a fun-yet-flawed live-action adaptation of author Roald Dahl's beloved children's novel The BFG. 

Young Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) is a mischievous orphan living in London. One night, she's awakened by strange noises outside her window. Little does she realize that a giant (Mark Rylance) is lurking out in the street. Because he fears that she'll alert the world to his existence, the giant whisks her away to "the land of the giants." There, Sophie discovers that her kidnapper is a warm, cheerful soul who refuses to eat children. For this reason Sophie bestows on him the name "Big Friendly Giant," or "BFG" for short. Meanwhile, the BFG's kindness is mocked by the other, bigger giants living nearby. They oppress and bully him because he is different. To put an end to it, Sophie decides that they must enlist the help of the British Armed Forces; a decision which prompts some the film's most entertaining sequences. All I'll say is that a certain monarch may want to check her shorts...

Few filmmakers have the ability to use the medium to tap into our innate sense of enchantment the way Steven Spielberg does. His version of London feels tangible despite the production design looking like a cross between both the real thing and Harry Potter. The visuals effects are dynamite, from the rendering of the giant's realm itself to Rylance's incredible performance capture. There's also a dazzling sequence at the "tree of dreams" where the BFG and Sophie go to harvest thoughts both good and bad.

While everything looks great and does well to suck us into the fantasy world of the story, The BFG lacks the emotional staying power of, say, E.T. It feels like it all builds to something of a half-climax, one that doesn't necessarily constitute a satisfying conclusion to an entire film. It just ends so matter-of-factly and with such a neat little bow tied around it that you'll probably see it and then forget it even existed by the time it hits Blu-ray this fall. Nothing about it sticks with you. That said, The BFG is excellent summer entertainment for children. It's a beautifully made kid's movie, but as Disney and Pixar have shown us before, the best of the best kid's movies have adult appeal too. Unlike some of Spielberg's previous work, you probably won't see grown men crying over this one at the 30th Anniversary screening one day. All The BFG is is a sweet, harmless little diversion. Maybe that's all it really needed to be. Just take the family, and enjoy the ride while it lasts.

B-

"Finding Dory" Review

Disney and Pixar Animation Studios invite millennials to revisit their childhoods with a sequel that will most assuredly pack theaters with the awkward dichotomy of viewers aged 5 and 25.

Finding Dory lends backstory to everyone's favorite memory-challenged blue tang (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) from Finding Nemo. As a young fish, Dory was separated from her parents and has spent her entire life looking for them. Her search is interrupted when she (literally) bumps into Marlin, (voiced by Albert Brooks) a clownfish searching frantically for his missing son. One year later, Dory starts recalling fragments of her childhood; clues that she's convinced will lead her to her family. Her search leads her to "the Jewel of Morro Bay, California," which turns out to be a marine life institute/eco-park. Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo follow Dory to ensure that she doesn't get too lost. At the institute, Dory meets several new characters including Hank the octopus (voiced by Ed O'Neill), Destiny the whale shark (voiced by Kaitlin Olson), and Bailey the beluga whale (voiced by Ty Burrell). Each has their own set of endearing dysfunctions; Destiny is nearsighted, Bailey's echolocation doesn't work properly, and Hank may be the only sea animal who WANTS to go to the Cleveland aquarium. Despite their flaws, Dory needs all the help she can get if she's going to find her parents and live happily ever after.

Let's be clear. Finding Nemo is still a superior film in every way. Dory suffers from "sequelitis," which means it forfeits some of its charm by repeating too many story beats from Nemo. Many of the newly-imagined plot points hinge on mindless cartoon mayhem rather than a nuanced approach to grown-up themes and a subtle sense of humor - hallmarks of Pixar's best and brightest.

Perhaps controversially, the film still glosses over the thing with the lesbian couple and also seems to poke fun at characters who are different, like Gerald the sea lion, who comes off as a caricature of mental retardation and the brunt of several jokes from new characters Fluke (voiced by Idris Elba) and Rudder (voiced by Dominic West). Depending on how they typically respond to portrayals in movies and television, parents of children with developmental disabilities will walk away either appalled or overjoyed by the way Dory involves a character who overcomes all obstacles either by using her disability to her advantage or with the assistance of a friend.

Potential flaws aside, Dory maintains a fascinating sense of pathos with the main character's backstory, and it's impossible not to fall for some of the new side characters like Destiny and Bailey. It's far from a masterpiece, but this is Pixar's best sequel since Toy Story 3, and it is absolutely a journey worth taking in 3-D.

B+

"Alice: Through the Looking Glass" Review

After Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland adaptation made over $1 billion worldwide in 2010, it was only a matter of time before Disney invested in a sequel. Though Burton has relegated himself to the producer's chair this time around, six years seems to have been long enough to get the ball rolling on Alice: Through the Looking Glass. James Bobin (Muppets Most Wanted) takes over directing duties with another script penned by Disney stalwart Linda Woolverton (Maleficent, The Lion King). Though it features some sharp dialogue and a stronger sense of urgency than its predecessor, the film largely ends up feeling like little more than sensory overload and motion sickness from a big-budget Disneyland ride. "Back to the Future on bath salts," as one fellow patron eloquently put it.

The story here is that Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) is the captain of her late father's merchant sea vessel, the "Wonder." Upon returning home from a voyage to the Far East, Alice is slapped with a proposition from her former betrothed, who now sits on the managing board of the bank: sign over the deed to the "Wonder" and surrender the position of captain lest Alice and her mother wish to have their home repossessed. Following an awkward confrontation at a party, Alice runs and hides in a room where she hears the voice of Absolem, the hookah-smoking caterpillar-turned-butterfly (voiced by Alan Rickman, in his last-ever role). Absolem appears to Alice in the room and flies straight into a mirror as if it were a barrier of water. Alice curiously follows and finds herself back in Underland where she learns that the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) has slipped into depression after discovering what he believes is a sign from his estranged family. Determined to help, Alice steals a device from Father Time (Sacha Baron Cohen) and uses it to travel back in time to save both Hatter and his family. Without this device, however, Time "himself" remains in constant jeopardy, and thus Alice ultimately jeopardizes the existence of time for everyone in Underland. Can she save the Hatter before "Time" literally fizzles out?

As expected, the cast of talented voice actors and character players turn in great performances with Depp standing out more here than he did in the last film. He's given more material to work with and thus crafts a more interesting, more conflicted character at odds with his past. Helena Bonham Carter also returns as the "red queen" Iracebeth and gets a deeper backstory. She's still as over-the-top as ever, and it seems like Bonham Carter is just having fun at this point.

The film suffers mostly from poorly rendered visuals. It looks like it could've been made alongside its predecessor six years (or even longer) ago. Following the mind-blowing realization of Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book, Disney's follow-up is a visual feast that left this reviewer hungry for something more. As Alice zooms across time and half-baked animated environments, it's difficult to avoid feeling like this is a roller coaster that you need to disembark immediately.

The plot moves quickly, barely leaving time to process what's happened up to any given point. That said, the film revels in a small handful of side moments. Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Matt Lucas) are hilarious anytime they're on-screen. There's also a show-stealing scene where Father Time crashes one of Hatter's tea parties in a way that begets a series of riotous quips and sight gags.

Ultimately, Alice: Through the Looking Glass isn't for the faint of heart. It has some decent pieces, but nothing congeals quite how it should. Everything moves too fast to really be taken seriously. Granted it's "Alice in Wonderland," but a tale so classic deserves classic treatment. There's little of that to be had here.

C+

"The Angry Birds Movie" Review

Your favorite smartphone app from 2011 finally has its own feature-length animated movie! And to be honest, it isn't nearly as godawful as expected. It's not great either, but Sony Pictures Animation's The Angry Birds Movie proves to be a colorful, consistently hilarious, early-Summer diversion.

If you're wondering how they ever made a story out of Angry Birds, here's the gist - Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) has problems controlling his temper. After blowing up at a child's birthday party, Judge Peckinpah (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) sentences Red to anger management classes where he meets Chuck (voiced by Josh Gad) and Bomb (voiced by Danny McBride). In the throes of their rehabilitation, the birds' idyllic island is visited by a band of boisterous pigs from across the sea. Led by their king, Leonard (voiced by Bill Hader), the pigs quickly assimilate with the birds. This seems fishy to Red, who stumbles on the pigs' plot to distract the birds and steal their eggs. When an inquiry with the bird hero Mighty Eagle (voiced by Peter Dinklage) proves fruitless, it's up to Red, Chuck, Bomb, and the rest of the birds to hatch a rescue mission to retrieve the eggs from Piggy Island.

I was surprised to find that the film lends more of itself to character development and story than trying to recreate gameplay. Although we get some of that during the gonzo third act, I found myself caring more about Red's redemption and how the filmmakers cleverly and humorously integrate "angry" into the solution. That isn't to say that anger and violence are always the answer, or that outsiders should never be trusted, but let's be honest. This is The Angry Birds Movie based on an iPhone game. On principle alone, one should have an easy time suspending disbelief.

I think the film's biggest issue is that it doesn't manage to contribute anything meaningful to the animated movie canon. It lacks the brains to afford it a place alongside Pixar's finest and features a couple of extremely crude jokes that don't need to be in a movie marketed to 6, 7 and 8 year olds. Granted, one of them made me laugh harder than I have in a while, but the film is packed with enough cheeky sight gags and puns that some inessential laughs could've probably afforded to fly the coop.

The voice acting is generally solid, with one very curious standout. During the opening titles, you'll notice the name "Sean Penn" at fifth or sixth billing. I said to myself "They got freaking Sean Penn for The Angry Birds Movie?" IMDb confirms this is THE Sean Penn. He plays a character called Terence, who is like Red on steroids. Fans of the game should place him as "the big brother bird" or, as I call him, the giant, heavy, wrecking-ball bird. Terence is also in the anger management program with Red, Chuck, and Bomb. Terence spends the entire movie sitting there grumbling. Talking about beginning-to-end hilarity, this joke didn't hit me until after I left the theater: Sony must've given THE Sean Penn $1 million to literally walk into a sound booth and growl. This may be the film's biggest joke of all.

So is The Angry Birds Movie essential? Not by a long shot, but it's here now and can never be erased from this world. It's not as clever a piece of commercial art as something like The Lego Movie, but it offers plenty of laughs and some dazzling animation. You could do worse.

B-

"Ratchet & Clank" Review

Ratchet & Clank is based on the series of popular PlayStation video games. Rainmaker Entertainment worked in conjunction with developer Insomniac Games and Sony Computer Entertainment to produce this new presentation of the characters' origins. Gramercy Pictures distributes. Fans will be delighted to know that the core voice talent from the original games reprise their roles here with some recognizable Hollywood names rounding out the cast.

The Ratchet & Clank movie is vibrant fun for longtime series devotees and should captivate young kids who are new to the franchise. All others need not apply.

The story brings us in on Ratchet (voiced by James Arnold Taylor), a mechanic with dreams of joining the Galactic Rangers and becoming a hero alongside his idol Captain Qwark (voiced by Jim Ward). When Dr. Nefarious (voiced by Armin Shimerman) and Chairman Drek (voiced by Paul Giamatti) re-emerge with a bigger scheme, the Galactic Rangers must recruit an additional member to help fight back. We can all guess who gets the gig. On his way to intergalactic superstardom, Ratchet meets Clank (voiced by David Kaye), an android created as a defect during the manufacturing of Dr. Nefarious's killer robot army. Through a series of slapstick moments, Ratchet, Clank and the Rangers take on overwhelming odds and learn the importance of friendship and teamwork.

The best thing about Ratchet & Clank is that the story allows for plenty of charming character moments without losing its overall focus. Eagle-eyed PlayStation fans will get a kick out of the scene where Clank scans Ratchet in order to figure out what species he is. One of the potential matches is another beloved PS2 character. Between this scene and the introduction of various characters and favorite weapons from the Rangers' arsenal, there's a satisfying bit of fan service at work. 

Some may go as far as calling Ratchet & Clank the best movie adaptation of a video game ever made, and perhaps it is. The bar isn't terribly high right now; the potential savior may still be coming down the pike in the form of Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed. That said, almost every big animated film released in the past couple of years has turned out to be thematically rich, emotionally dense, artistically stunning, and just plain entertaining to boot. Looking at you Lego Movie, Inside Out, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, How to Train Your Dragon 2... 

Since we've been spoiled so much lately, it's hard to turn the brain completely off for Ratchet & Clank's brand of Saturday-morning buffoonery. It's fun, and a bit nostalgic, but there are plenty of other, better, films out there offering the same thing. Ratchet & Clank ultimately gives us nothing that we haven't seen before in Toy Story, Star Wars, or in episodes of "Jimmy Neutron." Level-headed adults and teens too young to recall the games are better off finding their entertainment elsewhere, but twentysomething fans and young children should enjoy it.

C

"The Jungle Book" Review

Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) delivers a mind-blowing adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book for Walt Disney Pictures. Favreau works from a script by Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li).

Disney's newest live-action iteration finds impeccable balance in maintaining the crowd-friendly lightheartedness of the 1967 cartoon and the darker, more frightening edge of Kipling's original stories. This is an adventure picture that everyone in the family will get something out of no matter what. It's just that much fun.

Favreau's The Jungle Book picks up with the "man-cub" Mowgli (Neel Sethi) well-established as a member of the wolf pack overseen by Akela (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) and Raksha (voiced by Lupita Nyong'o). On the day of the "water truce," in which all animals from the jungle are welcome to drink from the same watering hole, Mowgli receives an unwelcome threat from the tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) - "leave the jungle forever or perish." When Mowgli flees, Shere Khan decides to go back on his deal and hunt the man-cub down anyway. As he treks across the jungle, Mowgli undergoes a journey of self-discovery where he meets a slew of characters - some good, like the bear Baloo (voiced by Bill Murray), and some bad, such as Kaa the python (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and King Louie the orangutan (voiced by Christopher Walken).

The artificial world that Favreau and everyone from the production designer to the art directors to the VFX wizards create together is the most immersive and lifelike since Life of Pi, maybe even Avatar. As wondrous as Pi's vast ocean and the planet of Pandora were, Favreau's jungle gets the edge because it feels the most plausible. Talking animals are most certainly the stuff of fantasy storytelling, but this jungle feels like a real location, and the animals themselves maintain a photorealistic appearance even while speaking. Nothing about this jungle's textures and foliage is stylized or "Seussified." Everything is modeled after real, tangible plant and animal life.

In two separate scenes, the camera follows Mowgli at the bottom of a landslide and later across a sloshing river with Baloo. In respective instances, mud and water speckle the lens as if filming on location, even though the end credits clearly state "Filmed entirely in Downtown Los Angeles."

Everyone loves to pooh-pooh the use of CGI in Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, but when it's used almost as a character in and of itself to supplement the larger story, and it's completed with such an eye for lifelike immersion, the artists and storytellers deserve nothing but praise. Save maybe Rogue One, The Jungle Book should have little to no competition on its way to the next Best Visual Effects Oscar.

The voice acting is mostly magnificent, with Murray, Elba, and Ben Kingsley as the panther Bagheera standing out. Elba's work, combined with the fine digital rendering of the tiger himself, make this Shere Khan one of Disney's nastiest all-time villains. He may even crack some "Best Movie Villains Ever" lists. Though Shere Khan certainly asserts dominance over Cruella de Ville and Ursula, time will tell how he stacks up against the likes of Darth Vader, Hans Gruber and Ledger's Joker. For me, it's pretty close.

Probably the most pleasant surprise out of all the recognizable voices was that of the late Garry Shandling who has a bit role as Ikki the porcupine. It's a riot to listen to Shandling spout lines one last time as he scuttles around claiming sticks and rocks for his home like an anal-retentive fusspot. Credit Favreau for affording the film the kind of breathing room that allows small moments like Ikki's to shine while maintaining the story's larger focus.

Not all the performances are A-grade however. Newcomer Sethi is as decent a choice as any to play a live-action Mowgli inspired by the cartoon. But some of his dialogue delivery feels corny, as if he's not really feeling it and is just saying lines because someone told him to. I also didn't care for Walken as Don Corleo - I mean - King Louie. As the monarch of the monkeys, Walken does his best Brando impression and then tries to sing Louie Prima. It's awful, and with Richard Sherman's retooled lyrics, this was easily the most grating sequence in an otherwise swingin' production.

It's just barely saved by a sly wink to Walken's classic "More Cowbell" skit from Saturday Night Live.

Thankfully these flaws never outweigh the film's senses of fun, humor and danger. The Jungle Book is an adventure well-worth taking with the entire family. The astonishing visuals pop even more in 3-D, and several sequences beg to be experienced in IMAX. If IMAX 3-D is an option in your area, don't think twice.

A-

"Zootopia" Review

With its 55th animated feature, Walt Disney Animation Studios serves up yet another home run in the form of Zootopia - a lush, colorful feature that may be too dense for kids. Older teens and adults should eat up the film's deep conspiracy plot and its mature, but never dirty, sense of humor. Keen-eyed fans of The Godfather, Breaking Bad, and past Disney animated hits will find plenty to chuckle about.

The story starts with Judy Hopps (Once Upon A Time's Ginnifer Goodwin), a bunny from a small country town with dreams of being a police officer in the big city of Zootopia. After being told to temper her expectations for the real world, Judy leaves the haters behind and heads to the police academy. Her first day on the job in Zootopia leads her to an encounter with a sly fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman). After a rough first day, the city-slick Nick and greenhorn Judy become unlikely partners when Judy takes on a missing persons case in a last-ditch effort to save her career. As they chase down leads all over town, a more sinister plot comes to light.

If anything bad can be said about the film, it's that things fall into place too conveniently on more than one occasion for our heroes. I won't list examples in fear of giving too much away, but leads and hunches are often resolved with little effort from the story or the characters. This diminishes the stakes a bit and undermines some of the most interesting aspects of (especially) Judy's character. It's odd that the bunny who doesn't have a clue suddenly seems to have an answer for everything. When she doesn't, her conveniently paired fox friend does.

It's easy to see past these flaws, however, because of how incredible everything else is. The animation is gorgeous; every animal, building, article of clothing and drop of water is realized with vivid detail. And believe it or not, everything looks even better in 3-D.

The voice acting is also quite strong. Bateman shines as Nick, a perfect match for the actor's smart comedic sensibilities. Goodwin is perpetually engaging as Judy. The two lead an impeccable supporting cast including Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, J.K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Tommy Chong and Shakira among others.

Lastly, Disney delivers another ballsy message in the form of a colorful kid's movie. The central conflict of Zootopia stems from deep-seeded prejudice. Predators and prey co-habitate in Zootopia despite their biology, and this creates a fascinating, sometimes complicated, dynamic for both the characters and the world they exist in. It's a message that rings all too truly for the real world today, but the deeper issues at hand for us humans have existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Until hate and prejudice are erased from the face of the earth, films like Zootopia will continue to timelessly inform as well as entertain.

A-

"Anomalisa" Review

Few storytellers tap into the complexities of human emotions with more honesty than Charlie Kaufman. With Anomalisa, he returns to the screen for the first time since 2008's Synecdoche, New York, now pulling double duty as writer/co-director with Duke Johnson.

From the poster above, it's easy to tell that Kaufman's new film is well-marketed with superlatives that make it sound like a life-changing masterwork of modern cinema. An Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature all but seals its status as the can't-miss puppet show of the season. While Anomalisa offers much more dramatic nuance and understated comedy than your typical Punch & Judy sketch, the film's stop-motion pleasures only take it so far.

By the time the credits rolled, I felt unmoved albeit mildly entertained.

The story follows Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a customer service guru who has just traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to speak at a conference. Despite having a successful, bestselling book and a loving family back in Los Angeles, Michael struggles with the mundanity of his existence. To him, everyone looks and sounds alike (all ancillary characters, male and female, are voiced by the same man - Tom Noonan). Everyone, that is, except Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), a seemingly insignificant woman who turns out to be the one person able to give Michael a fresh perspective. She's an anomaly in his mundane life; "anoma-Lisa," as he agrees to call her.

Questions are left frustratingly unanswered in the end, and it appears as if the events of the film don't really change Michael as much as we're lead to believe the whole time. Maybe that's the message, that temporary solutions are rarely the real answer. Or perhaps the final lesson really is that "there is no lesson" - something that Michael himself alludes during the film. Either way, that's kind of a ballsy message to try and get across in a film, but either way it didn't quite work for me. It's really a far more depressing piece of work than I expected.

Cincinnati natives especially should chuckle at the way Kaufman pokes fun of the city, especially the chili and the zoo. Being from that area myself, the jokes about both are pretty spot-on. That's really where Anomalisa shines. Its humor comes from the relatable nuances of Michael's day. It takes him five tries to get the card key to work to his hotel room, regardless of what rush, or lack thereof, he's in. He takes a ride in a cab where the driver won't shut up about things to do and see in the city.

Kaufman has always had a talent for creating vivid, almost fantastical, worlds that either mirror our own or exist within them. Anomalisa's sense of humor serves the world-building quite well, as we've all come to expect from Kaufman.

The voice acting is also strong, as is the technical, stop-motion wizardry from Johnson. I think this story is actually quite effective with puppets - especially the aspects regarding the Fregoli syndrome and certain moments when Michael begins to question his own identity. That said, it's still a story we've seen many times before, even occasionally from Kaufman himself (see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the movie Her from frequent Kaufman collaborator Spike Jonze).

While Kaufman and Johnson deserve some props for creating such a vivid world filled with nuance and sleight humor, there's nothing from narrative or emotional standpoints that makes me want to rush out and recommend Anomalisa to everyone. Even though this film is meant to be smart animation for adults, my money is on Pixar's Inside Out for the Oscar. It navigates the complexities of human emotions more accessibly and therefore more effectively.

C