Tangled – Review

February 4, 2011 14 Comments

Tangled (2010)

Directed by Nathan Greno, Byron Howard. Starring Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy

Disney’s 50th animated feature came at a time which was overloaded by all types of cartoons. With the likes of Madagascar, Ice Age and especially Shrek, which had been so irreverent towards fairy tales (and princesses singing to birds) it seemed almost impossible for the Mouse House to go back to their origins and produce another fairy tale.
And yet, the wonderful thing about Tangled is that underneath all the pointy/tricksy 3D effects, the visual splendor , the ultra-saturated colours, and the sharp humour (which we’ve now become to expect from these types of films), it is actually a very traditional Disney story and yes it has a princess singing to birds barefoot in the forest. And you know what? It works!!!
It has been slightly updated for the 21st century audience, but it has not lost the heart and the magic: here the princess is not just pretty, but she’s also a strong character with more personality and internal conflicts than most of the previous Disney princesses put together (The scene where she she’s just been rescued and her mood changes from happy to terrorised to desperate , all in the space of few seconds, is pure genius).
But don’t worry, there’s a great male hero too, Ryder, looking as hot as ever (apparently there were meetings held at Disney to make sure that every little girl would fall in love with him), but also charming, funny and playing against expectations, with lines line “I don’t do singing” or “I don’t do back-stories”.
But it’s Mother Gothel who pretty much steals the show: she’s not just one of the most memorable baddie of the last few years, but probably up there with the stepmother from Cinderella and the Queen from Snowhite (Yes, really!). And, in the best Disney tradition (SPOILER ALERT) she will eventually fall down to her death.
And since it’s a Disney fairytale, there are animals sidekicks too. Maximus, the horse (hilarious!! you just wish the was more of him) and the cute chameleon Pascal (which was most probably born out from various brainstorm-meetings thinking of toys and merchandising).
But brushing aside any cynics thoughts, this film is a joy to watch and it looks absolutely gorgeous: the first time the Mother goes up the tower and the music swells over the wide landscape is breath-taking (even my son said “wow” aloud), the sequence in which thousands of floating lanterns light up the night sky is truly magical (also allowing the animators to really use the 3D to maximum effect). The characters look more alive than most real life actors: you can see their chest moving as they breathe, the veins on their neck pulsing before they speak, and they’re eyes are so real that it really feels they are looking at each other. Not to mention the details and care put into Rapunzel’s golden hair as she hurls it around, and even uses it as a weapon, a hook, a whip and a swing. What fun!
And talking about fun, the action set pieces are so exciting and perfectly choreographed (The scene with the water, all the chases in the forest, swinging from trees or riding horses..).
This is what animation should do: make the impossible look possible.
This is an immersive glorious 3D experience, perfectly calibrated and yet seems effortless at the same time.
Great characters, clean and simple storytelling (yes, it’s all pretty formulaic, but so are the best fairy-tales for kids!), rich in colours and details.
It may not aim as high as some the classic Pixar masterpieces, but in my book it’s family perfection. One of my favourite of the last 20 years.
On Disney + (or just buy the bluray!)

8/10

Check out my review of Toy Story 3 too

Filed under Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The Dilemma – Review

January 31, 2011 9 Comments


The Dilemma (2010)  

Directed by Ron Howard. Starring Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly

The truth might hurt, as the poster says, but so does this film!

In a way I should have known better, but in my defense I really wanted to go out and watch a movie tonight and it seemed like I had already seen everything else that my multiplex was showing. Ron Howard‘s latest comedy sounded like an easy watch for a Sunday night… How wrong I was!

This is one of the most misjudged film I have seen in a very long time and the possibly worse since I’ve started writing on this blog (I didn’t see “Vampires suck” last year, which I hear could have taken the crown).

The biggest crime of all, for a comedy of this kind, is that not only it’s just  un-funny (I probably chuckled once or twice at the most), but also it’s really boring. In fact I don’t even think it can be called a comedy… and yet it’s so superficial that it can hardly be considered a drama.

It has the longest introduction ever but I sort of decided to go for it anyway, hoping that the more time the film would spend setting up the scenes and its characters, the more engaging I would find it all once the “dilemma” would come.

Finally a good 30/40 minutes into the film (though it surely felt like a lot longer) the dilemma does arrive. Unfortunately that is almost the moment when I realized that the film was not going to improve and I plunged into complete boredom.

Everything about this film is wrong: Vince Vaughn’s monotone acting and his ludicrous religious moments, the pacing of the scenes, the lack of jokes and the complete misfires of the few that are actually there (the long speech at the 40th anniversary being the most glaring example of something which is supposed to be funny but fails on every level), the casting of Kevin James (who should clearly stay on TV) randomly paired up with Winona Ryder (never for a moment I believed that those 2 could have got married), the wasted use of Jennifer Connelly (she probably owed Ron Howard a favor from the time they did “A beautiful Mind” together: nothing else would explain why she should have taken this thin-paper part), and even Queen Latifah feels like it’s a character added in at the last moment, even on a half day re-shoot) because they felt the film didn’t have enough laughter.

What on earth happened to Ron Howard?!? I mean, only a few years ago he did Frost/Nixon, which I really loved and whatever you thought of A Beautiful Mind (over-rated Oscar bait in my view) at least it had a style and it felt as if it actually had been “directed” by somebody who knew what he was doing. Ransom was a fairly competent film too, edge of the seat drama/thriller (completely ruined by one of the worse trailer ever, which gave away 9/10 of the plot). Apollo 13 (which I haven’t seen in ages) was huge at the time and quite engaging. I even remember liking Cocoon back in the 80s (though I haven’t seen it since…).Despite all this he’s not the kind of director I would expect to see behind a comedy, but then again with Parenthood and even Edtv, he did prove  that at least he knew how to make entertaining light films… And after all, he was one of the forces behind “Arrested Development“, or was he? I’m beginning to doubt he was even involved with  the photocopying of the scripts in that series!

I’m not even sure Howard himself knew what kind of film he was making, as the film switches from bad slapstick to slow melodrama (a balance that as the New York Magazine noted “Perhaps the late Blake Edwards could have got right, but not Ron Howard”).

The general un-likability of the (potentially good) cast and the fact that this is a Ron Howard’s film makes the failure even greater.

I probably shouldn’t even waste anymore words on this.

The real dilemma for me was whether to give the film more than 1 star! In the end 4.5  will do.

4.5/10

Filed under latest movies, Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Loose Cannons – Review

January 29, 2011 5 Comments

Loose Cannons (2010) 

(Mine vaganti: Original Title)

Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek. Starring Riccardo Scamarcio, Nicole Grimaudo, Alessandro Preziosi, Elena Sofia Ricci, Ilaria Occhini.

Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek goes back to what he knows and does best: a”coming-out” comedy” about homosexuality and family values, full of memorable quirky characters, laugh out-loud moments mixed with bittersweet and poignant reflections.

These are also the themes of one of my old favorite Ozpetek’s film, the Ignorant Fairies (Le fate Ignoranti), made 10 years ago.


It is all fairly watchable stuff and it sort of works as long as it’s on the screen. However, any attempt of social comment or critique at any serious issue (the close mindedness of the South of Italy, and the way Italians like to appear which is more important than the way they are, among the others) quickly fades away and gets diluted in the pursuit of easy laughers and in the over-the-top, almost caricatural depictions of the characters. Of course, it is supposed be a comedy… but sadly that’s all it is.


The story is set in Lecce, a city in the heel of the Italian boot, in the deep south. and it focuses on the large Cantone family (so large that it took me a while to work out who was who). Tommaso, is about to come out to his parents. One night, at the dinner table, just when he’s about to break the news to the family, his older brother, Antonio announces himself to everyone that he’s gay.

The father’s refusal to accept or understand his older brother’s sexuality gives him a heart attack and leaving Tommaso at the helm of the family pasta making business, whilst at the same time trying to deal with his own hidden truth (fearing that his father won’t survive the news of both of his 2 sons being gay).

There are a lot of other storylines, and the family is certainly large enough to offer several opportunities for sub-plots. Unfortunately most of the characters remain just superficial caricatures (the wise grandmother, the loony aunt, the apprehensive mother, the homophobic father, the girl in love with the gay man and so on…) and in the end the film falls into the same clichés the director is trying to ridicule in the film.

In a way, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before, (funnily enough even within Ozpetek’s previous films too) but it’s good to see the overshadowed-by-the-Vatican-Italy finally arriving there too.


The film is handsomely filmed and the great looking, almost-perfect settings only seem to enhanced the imperfections of the family itself.

The editing (and direction) both seem a bit too pleased with themselves: some scenes could have gained something by being trimmed a bit. Even the most emotional moments always seem to go on for a bit too much than it’s needed (I’m thinking of the scenes around the tables, or more crucially – SPOILER COMING –  the one where the grandmother decides to go for her cakes, or even the one at the beach. You get the point after a few seconds and yet both scenes go on and on and on).

The same goes for the over-used music, both in terms of the actual score (which once again stresses the slapstick aspect of the film) and known songs, most of which seem rather random and a bit intrusive.

Most of the acting is very good especially the woman grandmother (Ilaria Occhini) who seems to be the only one really sees what’s happening within her family.


In the end I am happy I saw this film, and I did enjoy it, but I’m still longing for the return of the real Commedia all’Italiana of the 50s and 60s (and to a degree the 70s too) which really provided a mirror of Italian customs and values, attacking prejudices and questioning the general thinking of elites and institutions in a much more subtle way. The sometimes dark and bleak vision of the society and the bittersweet laughers those films provoked, felt a lot less forced than they are in this film which is clearly trying to be bit more commercial. Still, we’re probably heading towards the right direction.

7/10

You can read more about “Commedia all’Italiana” on my previous post on Mario Monicelli

Mario Monicelli (1915 – 2010)

Filed under latest movies, Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Catfish – Review

January 25, 2011 5 Comments

Catfish

Directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman. Starring Yaniv Schulman, Melody C. Roscher, Ariel Schulman

It’s virtually impossible to talk about Catfish without spoiling it for all those people who haven’t seen it. As the poster itself says “don’t let anyone tell you what it is”, so I’ll try to be extremely careful, just  in case, because I do think people should see this film!

Catfish will suffer from the expectations that moviegoers might have been given by the advertising campaign, which once again is very misleading.

The trailer sells is as something that it is not: A thriller or some sort of dark twisty tale. And it’s certainly dark but not in the way you’re expecting it to be: it’s actually so much more than that. It’s a window into today’s world. A touching modern tale of online dating and chatting. A look at today’s society and the ability anyone can have of living a “second life”.

If you go into it thinking that it is a horror, you will leave very disappointed. However if you go in with no expectation or an open mind, you will find yourself moved by this touching documentary.

The authenticity of the documentary itself has been called into question (though the film-makers swear it’s all true). Personally I don’t think the documentary is a fake, or at least the main story isn’t, mainly because it all seems way too plausible.

Yes, of course, some of the sequences might have been re-staged afterwards and some of the realism looks a little too real: for example, all the stuff around the setting up of the microphones, or the shots were the camera has been left on in the car just long enough for us to get the idea that our characters are getting ready.Or the shots of our main guy, with his hand in his pants, as if he didn’t even realized that the camera was on him… Or the final few scenes around the last package that arrives. Even the main’s character’s haircut conveniently changes when we need to know that time has passed .

However whether it’s all true or not is irrelevant to me.

It’s interesting to compare it with fake-documentary (released only few months ago) “I am here” by Casey Affleck. In that case, the fact that the documentary had been faked it, made the whole thing seem pretty redundant and in the end, you’re just just left with a scam which is hard to take seriously.

Here the message of the film is clear and yet at the same time it manages to be quite subtle.

It works either way, whether the whole thing has been set-up or not… Oh I wish I could say more!

I should probably watch this film again to be able to tell you whether the film is a one time trick or if it might even work on repeated viewings, however I was hooked and on the edge of my seat all the way through.

On the visual side of things, Catfish has the usual “handheld/shaky-cam” style we are so used to seeing these days, but it’s also full of little touches that fit the story so well. For example the Google-Maps and Street View style to show characters’ locations both in New York and Michigan and the houses of people miles away and yet so clear and so real…

This is what good storytelling is. It’s a clever, thought-provoking and intelligent documentary that will stay with you long after the credits have rolled on.
I saw this a week ago and I am still thinking about it.

8.5/10

Filed under DVDs& Blu-rays, latest movies, Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Barney’s Version – Review

January 24, 2011 4 Comments

Barney’s Version 

Directed by Richard J. Lewis. Starring Paul Giamatti, Macha Grenon, Paul Gross, Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver.

This is a very unusual film which took me completely by surprise. About 1 hour into it I was actually ready to hate it. Then something must have happened about half way through because slowly (maybe too slowly) what was up until that point just an average comedy, turned into something quite different: a touching story, with a very powerful ending which I am sure will stay with me for quite a while.

Paul Giamatti is the real strength of “Barney’s Version”, a film which otherwise would have become a fairly forgettable ride. He somehow manages to turn the part of the obnoxious, hard-drinking, cigar-smoking, foul-mouthed, hypocrite and quite repellent television producer, Barney Panofsky, into a moving character right at the end, just when you’re ready to dismiss him. This is certainly one of the best performances of Giamatti’s career (and that says a lot, since he’s always been very good).

Having said this, 132 minutes spent in the company of someone like Barney who is so focused on himself, so smug would stretch anyone’s patience.

His actual character is virtually impossible to comprehend and in the end, despite being present for pretty much every single scene in the film,  he does remain a mystery (and i don’t mean it as a compliment). This is certainly not Giamatti’s fault but a combination of the script (adapted from a novel by the Canadian Mordecai Richler) and a bland direction (unsurprisingly Richard J. Lewis comes from TV from things like CSI, makes no attempt to bring any style or pace to the film).

The main problem, length aside, is that you never quite believe why so many attractive women could fall in love for the sweaty, drunken Barney. And yet, he does get married 3 times and has constant flings everywhere else too. At some point I even wondered whether Giamatti was really the best choice for this story (though he is so good that he almost gets away with it).

The whole first part of the film is probably the weakest. It is fairly episodic and tries too hard to be a comedy without being funny enough. There are too many subplots which feel too random and disjointed but also there are way too many supporting characters, most whom might have played better in the novel, but here they all feel too much like caricatures (the father in law, Minnie Driver and Dustin Hoffman among many), as the film barely scratches their surface.

Then, about 1 hour into the film, something quite big happens (I won’t tell you what it is, don’t worry) and from there onwards the film finally seemed to find its way and became more focused.

Rosamunda Pike enters the film  and the relationship between her and Giamatti takes the centre stage. I have  never been really crazy about Rosamunda Pyke, but in this film she’s really good and she definitely plays one of the her best part.

Slowly the film settles into what it really should have been from the beginning, a slightly more poignant and focused film about a guy feeling the weight of the guilt and regrets for the life he’s spent. The last act is heart-wrenching and probably the most original part of the film. Some people may find it a bit too heavy handled, especially since our emotional investment in the main character has been somewhat limited by his awful persona.

It really worked on me but I can see how somebody could argue it’s rather manipulative.

On a separate note, there some in-jokes cameo appearances by some of Canada’s most notable directors, for diehard movie geeks out there: these are mainly people who have worked for producer Robert Lantos (producer of Eastern Promises). Even David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan also turn up as directors of Barney’s TV show.

6.5/10

Filed under latest movies, recently re-watched, Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →