Batman: Year One (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2011, 2012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Superhero

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Tab Murphy, from the comics story by Frank Miller
directed by Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery

by Jefferson Robbins Before he was a grouchy and politically nearsighted old man with enough clout to cast Scarlett Johansson in a $60M fetish video, Frank Miller truly did change the face of mainstream superhero comics. Doing so brought him fame as a visionary, a label that implies prophetic or pioneering concepts but–at least in comics art–is most commonly applied to artists fusing pre-existing styles into a successful hybrid, or distilling an old story to its barest elements. Miller did both. In fact, between 1986’s “The Dark Knight Returns” and the 1987 “Batman: Year One” arc, his reengineering of the Batman mythos wasn’t so much a thrusting of the character forward into the 1980s as a slingshotting back to the 1970s. The core fact of Batman, viewed in the light of Taxi Driver, is that he’s Travis Bickle with a cape and lots of money. What is Travis’s mohawk if not a costume to strike fear into the hearts of criminals? What is his trick pistol sling, fashioned from a typewriter carriage, but a blue-collar utility belt? And what is the hardboiled dialogue Miller puts in Bruce Wayne’s mouth–better read than spoken–but Bicklean self-justification? No coincidence that Batman’s first, badly-botched outing as a crimefighter in “Year One” involves the violent rescue of an underaged prostitute.

The Lion King (1994) [Platinum Edition] – DVD|[Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
screenplay by Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton
directed by Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff

by Bill Chambers The day The Lion King came out, during the summer of Gump, I bought a ticket for Wyatt Earp instead, convinced that I would be more satisfied by its three hours than by The Lion King‘s hour and change. Nobody remembers this now, but back then, the trades were counting on the reunion of Silverado collaborators Lawrence Kasdan and Kevin Costner to deliver the sleeper hit of the summer; although back then everybody involved in the production tried to pawn off the film’s failure on the growing cult of Tombstone, the fact is that Wyatt Earp is, if not the most boring movie ever made, perhaps the second-most. Still, even when a friend rolled up his sleeve for me a few weeks later to reveal four fingertip-sized bruises he sustained from watching The Lion King with his girlfriend (she white-knuckled her way through the wildebeest stampede ’til his arm went to sleep), I remained unconvinced that Disney’s latest blockbuster cartoon, which had grossed over $200M by that point, was worth the price of a ticket, having been taken for a ride by the prestige surrounding the dreadful Beauty and the Beast.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Superhero

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
Emerald Knights
screenplay by Alan Burnett and Todd Casey
directed by Lauren Montgomery
The First Lantern
screenplay by Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim
directed by Christopher Berkeley
Kilowog
screenplay by Peter J. Tomasi, based on “New Blood” by Peter J. Tomasi and Chris Samnee
directed by Lauren Montgomery
Mogo Doesn’t Socialize
screenplay by Dave Gibbons, based on the story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
directed by Jay Oliva
Laira
screenplay by Eddie Berganza, based on “What Price Honor?” by Ruben Diaz and Travis Charest
directed by Jay Oliva
Abin Sur
screenplay by Geoff Johns, based on “Tyger” by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
directed by Christopher Berkeley

by Jefferson Robbins The DC Universe direct-to-video animation series continues to earn its reputation, for good or ill, as a by-fans/for-fans endeavour. Producer Bruce Timm and company pump out Green Lantern: Emerald Knights as a kind of B-side to Martin Campbell’s disappointing Green Lantern feature film–a supporting document, the sort of thing valued mostly by collectors and fetishists. DC Comics fanboys will thrill to a flashback glimpse of planetary invasions carried out by back-issue bad-guy species the Dominators; casual viewers will likely just think it’s cool how the guys with the rings blow shit up with giant green energy swords in outer space.

The Fox and the Hound (1981) [25th Anniversary] + The Little Mermaid (1989) [Platinum Edition] – DVDs|The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II (2006) [2 Movie Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

The Fox and the Hound (1981) [25th Anniversary] + The Little Mermaid (1989) [Platinum Edition] – DVDs|The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II (2006) [2 Movie Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2006, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance, ZERO STARS

THE FOX AND THE HOUND
***½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C
uncredited screenplay, based on the novel by Daniel P. Mannix
directed by Art Stevens, Ted Berman, Richard Rich

THE LITTLE MERMAID
*½/**** Image B- Sound C Extras A
written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With The Fox and the Hound and The Little Mermaid bookending an especially turbulent decade for a studio mortally locked in a struggle to reconcile its animation pedigree with its crass commercial instincts, the former has come to be regarded in the Disney mythology as the Good Friday to the latter’s Easter Sunday. It’s therefore fitting that the two films they most emulate are 1942’s Bambi and 1950’s Cinderella, respectively, as the Forties marked the last time the Mouse House was on the brink of foreclosure. (The Fox and the Hound goes so far as to recycle cels from Bambi.) Much like The Little Mermaid represented a somewhat cynical reboot of the fairytale default, so, too, was Cinderella a glorified salvage operation following the money-/audience-hemorrhaging pro bono work Uncle Walt did on behalf of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. Alas, the Good Friday and Easter Sunday analogy applies to not just Disney’s phoenix-like resurrection but also the tonal and moral disparity between the two pictures: one is the sad truth; the other is wishful thinking.

Mars Needs Moms (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD

Mars Needs Moms (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Simon Wells & Wendy Wells, based on the book by Berkeley Breathed
directed by Simon Wells

by Angelo Muredda It’s hard to say who Mars Needs Moms was made for. An expensive but passionless special-effects exercise from yeoman director and co-screenwriter Simon Wells (The Time Machine) and producer Robert Zemeckis, who’s put all his creative eggs since The Polar Express in the motion-capture basket, Mars Needs Moms sits uneasily with compatriots like The Pagemaster in the no man’s land of children’s films too dreary for most children to sit through. If it’s too taxing a journey for kids, though, it’s largely a bore for anyone else–a flat 80 minutes of animated bodies tumbling through metallic space chutes and neon hallways ripped from Tron: Legacy, scarcely made watchable by some of its impressive technological feats and by its surprisingly subdued tone, which at times borders on the elegiac.

The Smurfs (2011)

Posted in2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Canada, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Sofia Vergara, Hank Azaria
screenplay by J. David Stem & David N. Weiss and Jat Scherick & David Ronn
directed by Raja Gosnell

by Walter Chaw Between preaching its preach about not being pigeonholed and the importance of living life in the moment, Raja Gosnell’s The Smurfs misses no opportunity to talk about the superficiality of Smurfette (voice of Katy Perry) discovering her secret shopping bug; Gargamel (Hank Azaria) turning an “old lady” into a balloon-chested hottie; and human hero Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) helping his harridan cosmetics boss Odile (Sofia Vergara) sell gallons of snake oil to the Vanity Smurfs (voice of John Oliver) of the world. There’s also a lot of pissing, puking, shitting, and farting; a disturbing running joke about putting heads on a pike; highly-imitable and often-disturbing cat violence; and a wave of overwhelming weariness that rolls off these Alvin and the Chipmunks/The Sorcerer’s Apprentice pieces of shit that tend to flop but never hard enough to prevent the clockwork arrival of another something just like it. Fact is, the kid-movie market is too lucrative to not take homerun swings at it with ’80s-nostalgic, high-concept falderal such as this; fact is, too, that The Smurfs, et al, come coated in critic-repellent asbestos, because no matter how deadening and odious something is, as long as your pliant and uncritical children enjoy it, it’s fine. What were you expecting, Citizen Kane? Were that the same rationale applied to food made for children: what were you expecting, free of salmonella and rat turds?

Rango (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Rango (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Western

***/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A-
screenplay by John Logan
directed by Gore Verbinski

by Walter Chaw Before he succumbed to bloat with his two Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, Gore Verbinski struck me as a particularly bright light in American genre pictures. His remake of The Ring and the first Pirates of the Caribbean flick were a one-two step that seemed more indicative of his promise than the not-awful-in-retrospect The Mexican and the awful but not bloated Mousehunt. (Well, okay, it was a little bloated.) When he’s right, his stuff plays a lot like South Korea’s genre cinema: walking a tightrope between grotesquerie and lightness that happens so seldom outside of Seoul it’s fair to wonder if proximity to an entertaining dictator is prerequisite. With the CG-animated, Industrial Light & Magic-assisted Rango, Verbinski teams again with muse Johnny Depp to send up Depp’s muse Hunter S. Thompson in what functions as a kind of footnote to both Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Sergio Leone’s four-film Spaghetti Western cycle. Unfortunately, it also references Polanski’s Chinatown and Verbinski’s own concept of an antiseptic purgatory from his endless Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

Cars 2 (2011)

Posted in2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Crime, Disney, Family, Japan, Pixar, Sci-Fi, Sports, Theatrical

*½/****
screenplay by Ben Queen
directed by John Lasseter

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Trading the ’50s Americana of the original for ’60s British adventure, Cars 2 seems, for a moment there, like it might actually work. The inhumanity that Walter Chaw correctly attributed to Cars scores a few subversive points in this sequel, filled as it is with complicated stunts that are, amusingly, impossible for automobiles to perform. (Even sillier: all of the anthropomorphic spy cars are retrofitted with Gatling guns and assault rifles.) But all is lost as tow-truck hick Mater (voice of Larry the Cable Guy) takes centre-stage in a convoluted espionage scheme, meaning that Cars 2 stoops to the same mistaken-identity spy parody that children’s movies have beaten into the ground since 1966’s The Man Called Flintstone. The subversion runs completely dry after the pre-title sequence, as our resident Connery (?) Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) jumps and shoots his way across oil derricks, only to hand over the reins to the blander heroes of the previous film. So the same old car jokes prevail as Pixar keeps shovelling coal onto a dead fire. Find one more extraneous character in Finn’s liaison Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer), whose primary function is to prove that Bondian double entendres don’t have much impact when everyone’s name is a double entendre.

Robots (2005) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Family, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire and Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel
directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha

by Walter Chaw Surprisingly, perhaps shockingly, Robots isn’t terrible, even though it’s a product of the same chowderheads behind Ice Age and even though it’s your basic ramshackle kid’s flick/self-esteem trope (complete with closing musical number) upon which the Shrek franchise has founded a scatological empire. What works in its favour is its attention to the little details of a world that, without explanation, is completely populated by robots that employ other robots in specialized, superfluous functions. What works against it is the lack of a firm grip on Robin Williams’s bridle (resulting in a bunch of gay jokes that weren’t funny when Milton Berle was doing them half a century ago), a weak reliance on pop cultural in-jokes that are already dated (Britney Spears? C’mon–why not Ricky Martin?), and the usual roster of fart and diarrhea jokes, which aren’t exactly a calling card for immortality. The appropriately-named Blue Sky animation studio promises a lot with its giant mainframes, but it can’t deliver anything beyond a brilliant opening sequence, a Tom Waits song (like Shrek 2), and then a lot of the same passionless, heartless idiotspeak that passes for children’s fare nowadays.

The Incredibles (2004) – [2-Disc Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] DVD + 2-Disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

The Incredibles (2004) – [2-Disc Collector’s Edition – Widescreen] DVD + 2-Disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2011, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Espionage, Family, FFC Must-Own, Pixar, Superhero

FFC Must-Own****/****
DVD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras A+
written and directed by Brad Bird

by Walter Chaw The first hint that there’s something at work in The Incredibles far beyond the pale is the casting of Sarah Vowell as the voice of wilting Violet, the wallflower older sister in the Incredibles’ nuclear family. Vowell herself is a brilliant satirist, a gifted writer, and in her heart o’ hearts, a bona fide autobiographical anthropologist. She mines the tragedies of her life for insight into the thinness of the onionskin separating our ability to function with the iron undertow of self-doubt and disappointment that comprises all of our paralyzed yesterdays. The Incredibles does a lot of things well–a lot of the same things, as it happens, that Sarah Vowell does well. Through two Toy Story films and last year’s fantastically topical Finding Nemo, Pixar has provided the new gold standard in children’s entertainment, and it has consistently done so by injecting an amazing amount of insight and depth into the foundation of its bells and whistles.

All-Star Superman (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

All-Star Superman (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2011, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero

**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
screenplay by Dwayne McDuffie, based on the comic book series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
directed by Sam Liu

by Jefferson Robbins It’s an adaptation so infatuated with its admirable source material that it fails to leap the gap between the two media. Anyone who glanced at the first page of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s “All-Star Superman” when it was published in 2005 knew it was special–a book that intended to crystallize the Superman legend and then refract the character to his logical/mythological extremes. That’s been one of Morrison’s most alluring talents as a comics scriptor. This is the guy, after all, who had “New X-Men”‘s Beast evolving into a giant blue cat-man and shitting in a litterbox. So his Superman is a guy who can read your genetic code with a glance and temper a chunk of dwarf star into a housekey; someone whose goodness is so acute he can shame superhuman tyrants into working for the commonweal, all while he’s knocking on death’s door. In fact, in this twelve-issue interpretation, Superman is not only the saviour of his world but also the creator of our own. It demands repeat visits–unlike its Blu-ray spin-off. The DC Universe direct-to-video films, from the shop of producer Bruce Timm, almost all share one common element: seen once, they never need to be seen again.

Bambi (1942) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in1940s, 2011, Animation, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family

Bambicapredux

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
story direction Perce Pearce and story adaptation Larry Morey, from the story by Felix Salten
supervising director David D. Hand

by Bryant Frazer Bambi is just 70 minutes long, but it’s one of the more versatile features in the Disney canon. It’s a cute circle-of-life story, sure, populated by talking rabbits, nominally sweet-smelling skunks, and wise old owls (not to mention the adorable chipmunks that the owl, for some reason, hasn’t preyed upon). But look what else is going on in this slice-of-wildlife film: an attempt at an animated nature documentary; a tract in opposition to sport hunting; and the impetus for generations of children to weep in terror at the prospect of losing their mothers.

Due Date (2010) + Megamind (2010)|Due Date – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Family, Road Movie, Sci-Fi, Thriller

DUE DATE
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan
screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Phillips
directed by Todd Phillips

MEGAMIND
**/****
screenplay by Alan J. Schoolcraft & Brent Simons
directed by Tom McGrath

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) is eager to fly out of Atlanta back to Los Angeles to witness the birth of his child, but a chance encounter with wannabe actor/lone weirdo Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis) lands the pair on a no-fly list and leaves Peter without his luggage or his wallet. With no alternatives, Peter becomes Ethan’s unwilling passenger–taking a seat alongside a small dog and the ashes of Ethan’s late father–on a road trip west. There appears to be a general consensus that the premise of Todd Phillips’s Due Date too closely resembles that of John Hughes’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but there’s a vital difference in that Due Date‘s lead characters are legitimately crazy. The exasperated straight man is re-imagined as a sneering jerk full of jealousy and rage (Downey Jr. maintains a cold, sweaty stare throughout), while the lovable klutz is a dangerously irresponsible lout. Roger Ebert once wrote that the Hughes film was about “empathy [and] knowing what the other guy feels.” So it is; by virtue of its characters, Due Date bypasses empathy altogether, yet it still talks about treating other people with a modicum of compassion. Phillips has finally made a naughty comedy that contemplates the consequences of its actions. Here’s a movie in which a father-to-be grows so frustrated with an annoying boy that he socks him in the stomach, then unknowingly mocks a disabled veteran (Danny McBride) and gets his ass kicked for it.

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) + Cedar Rapids (2011)

Posted in2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance, Theatrical, UK

GNOMEO & JULIET
**/****
screenplay by Kelly Asbury & Mark Burton & Kevin Cecil & Emily Cook & Kathy Greenberg & Andy Riley & Steve Hamilton Shaw, based on an original screenplay by John R. Smith & Rob Sprackling
directed by Kelly Asbury

CEDAR RAPIDS
**½/****
starring Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver
screenplay by Phil Johnston
directed by Miguel Arteta

by Ian Pugh Gnomeo & Juliet is pretty much exactly the movie you’d expect from one of the directors of Shrek 2. On the bright side, it’s also a little bit more. In this latest iteration of Shakespeare’s timeless classic, Montague and Capulet are a couple of pensioners living on Verona Drive whose lawn gnomes spring to life every now and then to wage war on each other. The lad and lass of the title (voiced by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt) meet from opposite sides and fall in love, and so on and so forth. As you may have already guessed, Gnomeo & Juliet makes room for its cutesy puns and pop-culture references by robbing “Romeo & Juliet”‘s premise of all emotional heft: the warring tribes have no sense of familial bond, which renders the central romance completely weightless; and it’s all performed with an absolute minimum amount of bloodshed, culminating in, yes, a happy ending. It’s tempting to cry anti-intellectualism until one considers the film’s predominantly British cast–after all, hasn’t British culture earned the right to make self-deprecating jokes about Shakespeare’s influence? (It just feels right knowing that Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are leading the charge in this gnome war–though Jason Statham voicing an angry, Napoleonic Tybalt sounds more subversive than it actually plays.) In fact, the film’s generally cavalier attitude towards “unassailable” literature gives the impression that it was trying to piss someone off, what with most of the loathing and introspection replaced by the requisite noisy action sequences.

Alice in Wonderland [The Masterpiece Edition] (1951) + The Lion King 1½ (2004) – DVDs|Alice in Wonderland – Blu-ray + DVD

Alice in Wonderland [The Masterpiece Edition] (1951) + The Lion King 1½ (2004) – DVDs|Alice in Wonderland – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in1950s, 2000s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Fantasy, Musical

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
**/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
story by Winston Hibler, Ted Sears, Bill Peet, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Milt Banta, Bill Cottrell, Dick Kelsey, Joe Grant, Dick Huemer, Del Connell, Tom Oreb, John Walbridge, based on Lewis Carroll’s The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass
directed by Clyde Geronimi & Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske

THE LION KING 1½
The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
screenplay by Tom Rogers, Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi and Bill Steinkeller and Evan Spiliotopoulos
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Bill Chambers It’s not like Alice in Wonderland is necessary and The Lion King 1½ isn’t–they’re both unnecessary. The two latest animated Disney films to hit DVD, they have little in common formally save that they’re jointly inessential; and yet, because of their proximate release windows, parents are likely to pick them up as a pair, and kids are likely to associate them as such. Bright, sophisticated children may arrive at the hypothesis that this is the day that animation died.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009) [Blu-ray + DVD] + The Fourth Kind (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Directors: Robert Zemeckis, DVD, Family, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Robert Zemeckis

THE FOURTH KIND
ZERO STARS/****
starring Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Corey Johnson, Elias Koteas
written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

by Ian Pugh If Robert Zemeckis hasn’t quite left the Uncanny Valley behind, at the very least, the heart missing from his latest effort–what seems like the trillionth retelling of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and the billionth animated one–correlates directly to its absence of personality, rather than to an absence of humanity. A backhanded compliment, to be sure, but the character designs finally resemble something closer to artistic interpretation than to a failed attempt at replicating human beings exactly as they are, with Marley (Gary Oldman) and Scrooge (Jim Carrey), for example, rendered almost expressionistically to evoke rotten apples and hunched skeletons. From that standpoint, the actors’ sudden bursts of acrobatic grace, no longer so incongruous, capture some of computer-animated cinema’s wonder, the kind at which Zemeckis has grasped since The Polar Express–a true example of bringing the impossible to life. The only problem is that Zemeckis’s own script isn’t worth more than a shrug, and the film relies too much on its visuals to carry the extra weight.

Toy Story 3 (2010) [2-Disc] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Toy Story 3 (2010) [2-Disc] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Family, Pixar

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
screenplay by Michael Arndt
directed by Lee Unkrich

by Walter Chaw Woody (Tom Hanks) refuses to shake Buzz’s (Tim Allen) hand in farewell at around the middle point of Pixar’s Toy Story 3, marking a dark return of sorts to the petulant Woody of the first film and a harbinger of things to come as the picture closes with sights and sounds that are easily darker than anything dreamed of in its predecessors. Maybe it’s the comfort that comes with being part of an established franchise–with the knowledge that the only watermark to exceed is that left by its own thorny, complex second chapter. Whatever the case, Toy Story 3 is more ambitious than Toy Story 2 yet less successful as well, mainly because the first half of it seems uncharacteristically uncertain of itself. It’s a feeling of awkwardness that, in retrospect, coalesces into this idea that maybe it’s dread that colours our reintroduction to these characters. Half of their number is gone without explanation, after all, including Woody’s love interest, Bo. He grieves for her. We’ll come back to this. Their owner, Andy, prepares to go to college, leaving the toys to limbo in his attic until some hoped-for, equivocal day when maybe Andy could have children of his own and thus reconnect in some pat, schmaltzy epilogue, we fear, through a closed circle of eternity via progeny. The picture resorts to nothing so simple as that, thankfully, wrapping up instead with a worthy extended post-script that returns the series to its origins, though not without irreplaceable losses and an absolute clarity of purpose that binds this trilogy into something like a definitive, modern existentialist philosophy. While it’s not Dostoevsky, it’s not that far off, either.

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in2000s, 2010, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy

**/**** Image A- Sound B- Extras C
screenplay by Joe Ansolabehere, Paul Germain, Bob Hilgenberg, Rob Muir
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Jefferson Robbins There’s this thing in children’s fiction I call the Curious George Effect. A character transgresses, and in the context of that character’s world it’s a big hairy deal, potentially life-threatening. But the repercussions are so nifty-neato that the initial sin is shrugged off, perhaps never mentioned again, perhaps not explicitly identified as an error in the first place. The consequences for the guilty character are as follows: anxiety, cool adventure, reset to status quo.

A Scanner Darkly (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

A Scanner Darkly (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2006, 2010, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Richard Linklater, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

****/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder
screenplay by Richard Linklater, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick
directed by Richard Linklater

FFC Must-Ownby Walter Chaw Our reality has almost outstripped Philip K. Dick’s paranoid fantasies, and Richard Linklater’s grim A Scanner Darkly is the slipperiest take yet on the war between perception vs. reality in a year that knows United 93. Keanu Reeves, so often woefully miscast, is wonderfully imagined here as a guy in a “scramble suit”: his appearance constantly shifting in a kaleidoscope of mismatched parts–the uniform of future-narcs (seven years from now, announce the opening titles) sent undercover to ferret out the dopers and dealers of Substance D. It’s a hallucinogen that eventually causes a rift in the individual consciousness (the left hemisphere atrophies and the right tries to compensate) and Reeves’ Agent Fred is sent to find out where dealer Donna (Winona Ryder) is getting her shit. But the scramble suits seem mainly used to keep the vice squad’s identities from one another instead of their quarry, meaning that Fred goes underground as himself, Robert Arctor, in full grunge, inhabiting his once-cozy suburban nook with tweaked conspiracy theorists Ernie (Woody Harrelson) and Barris (Robert Downey Jr.). Meaning, too, that Fred is asked to spy on Arctor, and that Barris, in a pair of hilarious scenes, informs on Arctor to Arctor. It’s not the labyrinthine audacity of Dick’s delusions that so enthrals, but rather the mendacity of them. What’s complicated about A Scanner Darkly isn’t the compression of identity or the various plots to which its characters imagine themselves hero and victim, but the idea that reality conforms itself to belief–that because life has stopped making sense to you, life has stopped making sense, period.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) + Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Action, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Family, Fantasy

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
**/****
starring Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella
screenplay by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff
directed by Oliver Stone

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA’HOOLE
*½/****
screenplay by John Orloff and Emil Stern, based on the novel Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
directed by Zack Snyder

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Oliver Stone has a penchant for writing himself into living history, and normally, it’s quite fascinating. By making movies about historical events whose ramifications have not yet fully materialized, he engages in a battle of wits with the unfamiliar. He tries to understand what’s unfolding at this very moment, constantly on the lookout for something resembling closure. From that perspective, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (hereafter Wall Street 2) suffers from Stone’s familiarity with the subject. Having already made a movie about the chaos of the free market, he knows exactly what he wants to say from the outset. Our boy Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) spent the Clinton years behind bars, leaving his personal life in shambles. Beloved son Rudy has died of a drug overdose, and hitherto-unmentioned daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan) is–irony of ironies!–a lefty blogger who won’t have anything to do with him. Enter her fiancé, Jake Moore (professional protégé Shia LaBeouf, who’s convincing enough; and the character’s name is More, get it?), an ambitious green-energy investor who wants to learn a few moves from a living legend. As fate would have it, the two men share a mutual enemy in Bretton James (Josh Brolin), the slimy businessman who sent Gekko to the slammer and spread a few market rumours that prompted Jake’s mentor/father figure (Frank Langella) to commit suicide. Gekko sees the chance to rekindle his relationship with Winnie, while Jake wants to make a mint founded on revenge. Alliances are forged, tricks are played, trust is abused, and, above all, greed continues to rule the day. When the bottom falls out, you’d best be prepared for a lot of hand-wringing in the executive boardroom–but hell, you know there are more important things floating around here, right? Winnie announces her pregnancy on the very same day that the 2008 economy does its final nosedive. Where do you think Wall Street 2 is going to end up?