Wreck-It Ralph

As mentioned in this reviews title (look up), the film I will be reviewing is none other than Wreck-It Ralph.  I'm sure most of you know it is one of Disney's newest animated features, unaffiliated with Pixar.  This film follows an arcade character Ralph, from the game Fix-It Felix Jr., where Ralph's only job is to destroy an apartment complex while Felix fixes it.  As can be imagined Ralph is feared and loathed by the buildings tenants.   To give you a little understanding, the film follows these characters inside the games.  Take Toy Story; the toys are toys when humans are present, but when humans go away they become life like.  They have their own hierarchy and relationships, heartaches and triumphs, same goes for Wreck-It Ralph.

As I previously mentioned, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) is a "bad guy"and is perceived as one even when the game is off.  In fact in the story we see Ralph in an "AA" type meeting.  Instead of having some drinking problem or drug problem, he is at a meeting made up of other video game badies, including: Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as M. Bison and Zangief from Street Fighter.

I thought this scene was probably my favorite because it was fun to see all these evil characters from games I played many years ago as a younger person.  It was really interesting to see inside their lives, and listen to these characters speak openly about their roles within the games; they even had an oath:

"I'm bad and that's good

I'll never be good and that's bad

There's no one I'd rather be than me."

This scene reminded me of another film  from Disney, Finding Nemo.  Just as in Wreck-It Ralph, Finding Nemo too had a scene where sharks are meeting in order to swear off eating fish in order to change the way other sea creatures look at them.  Pretty clever stuff coming out of Disney these days.

Back to the main plot.  The sub-text of this film is to show no matter what you think of yourself, there's always a rhyme and reason, a method to your madness.  You don't need to change yourself in order to fit in or to allow yourself to feel better about yourself.  How this notion was utilized was that Ralph no longer wanted to be bad, he wanted to be good; he wanted friends and admirers.  Ralph wanted to break out of his shell and show the "world" that he was more than an evil doer, a smasher of buildings, a wrecker of homes.  Ralph wanted to prove that he could be good, someone the other citizens could aspire to; so good ole Ralph decided to jump games.

Ralph up and left his world, and entered into other game worlds in search of a medal.  Why a medal?  It's simple, Felix receives a medal every time he fixes the building and wins, this then causes the citizens to throw Ralph off the roof... GAME OVER.  Ralph thought a medal would be all the proof he needed to win over the game world citizens.  So he hops into a game filled with soldiers; their objective is to destroy some evil bugs, Ralph doesn't handle the fear to well and runs off.  He eventually finds his medal, but in the process gets launched from that game into yet another.  Only this time the game he finds is one filled with racing and candy.

Ralph lands in this bizarre world of candy trees and chocolate mud, finding himself face to face with an unknown character referred to as the "glitch".  He befriends her, unwillingly at first, in order to save her from being erased and to ultimately retrieve his medal.  As can be predicted they form quite the tight friendship, they both triumph over evil, la la la, everybody's happy... roll credits.

I really liked this film from top to bottom.  One of the things I like about it was the simplicity behind the story and behind the animation.  Wreck-It Ralph didn't try to animate to the point of realism by any means.  This film used good old fashioned animation, the kind we have come to know and expect from Disney.  The Humans were animated, as well as the game characters, and didn't look any more real then the humans in Toy Story.  There was nothing flashy about this, which allows the story to shine through and make the overall picture great.  A little clutter =  better film.  The thing to take away from this is that Disney has the formula down to make a perfect story: plot, character development, hero's journey.  Most people, including myself look at Disney and think where they succeed the most is in their look, their animation, however I feel Disney's greatest asset is in fact their complete story telling ability, and this is evident in Wreck-It Ralph.


Final Words: Large Popcorn.
This is a fun story, with a common theme.  The characters are unique and engaging, while the overall look is very appealing without being distracting.  This is a great family night film, the kids will get a kick out of the entire experience!

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping

Oz the Great and Powerful

Oz the Great and Powerful is one of the newest films out of Disney's monstrous line-up of non-animated features- including The Lone Ranger and the highly anticipated, Star Wars.  Disney is hiring non-Disney "traditional" Directors for these films.  The Lone Ranger, Directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, he's the exception) Star Wars VII, Directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, cross franchised dude, as well as Super 8) and finally Oz the Great and Powerful which was Directed by one of my personal favorites...Mr. Sam Raimi (the original Spider-man trilogy, and the Evil Dead series).

The reasoning behind bringing up Disney's non-traditional director choice for this films is because Raimi has been known to have a unique directing style and has been tied to many "out of the ordinary" films. The Evil dead series were films he wrote, produced, directed, and were, as the title states, dark films (turned comedy due to its poor special effects, campy acting, and cult following).  Even the Spider-man trilogy (starring Tobey Maguire) was a bit more aggressive and edgy than most Disney adventures.  Some of Raimi's other cinematic ventures include: 2013's remake of The Evil Dead, The Grudge and the recently announced Poltergeist.  The theme with those films is that they are all dark and scary, very non-Disney. So, to hire Sam Raimi to direct your Disney film about how the Wizard of Oz becomes the Wizard of Oz seems a bit adventurous.

This film is the prequel to The Wizard of Oz- I know what you're thinking...duh!- which stars some of today's busy actors, Mila Kunis (SPOILER ALERT! the wicked witch) and James Franco (not so SPOILER ALERT, Oz), as well as some less busy actors, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz and Zach Braff.  Originally, I thought this was going to be a weak point, in that I felt this story was too important and necessary and some of these actors might not have the "chops" to handle.  I was relatively surprised, mainly by Franco and Kunis, in that they were both more than capable of doing a serious story, not just their previous stoner comedies (Ted, Your Highness).  In fact, initially in this film Franco was falling right into the label I had for him.  I felt in the beginning of the film, he seemed almost as though he wasn't on board with his character and the direction of the story, however as the film progressed, Franco's dynamism pushed past all of his labels and allowed for a stellar performance.  Kunis on the other hand, seemed to slowly but surely to decline as her character became fleshed out.

When she transformed into the witch, although she looked very witch like and fitting for being such a wicked person, her downfall came from the one thing make-up and special effects did not, but should have changed...her voice.  Mila Kunis has a rather interesting voice.  It's not powerful, or overly timid, but rather one dimensional and girly.  Add this voice to a sinister wicked witch hell bent on revenge and power, and you have almost a comical character, not very scary.  I'm not sure why they didn't alter her voice in post (Post is where all the fake magic happens; from CGI-computer generated images/imaging to all the editing both sound and image.  Post takes place after the Production, acting of the film; hence Post) or have Mila simply exaggerate her own voice, make it raspy and harsh sounding.  Kunis' voice was just as important as her physical look; her physical look changed drastically and at the same time her voice should have changed equally as drastically, yet it didn't.  This really took away from her character.  Food for thought I suppose.

As for the look of the film I'm a little on the fence.  I really enjoyed the beginning when the film was in black and white, and the aspect ratio started 4:3:

and then, as OZ found himself in...the land of OZ, the film went to color and you visibly see the aspect ratio go from 1.33:1 (4x3 old t.v.) past 1.78:1 (16x9, HD t.v) all the way to 2.35:1 which is one of the standard U.S. theater ratios.  This movement and idea was very neat, and unique.  I liked this aspect, pun intended.........(pause for laughter)........., what I didn't necessarily like was the CGI.  For starters I feel CGI should only be used sparingly or within reason (far off in the distance, or additional foliage).  I personally loathe when a film relies solely on overly animated sequences, one of my problems with The Hobbit, and I didn't touch on it, was that most of the film was fake-cartoonish; this issue was prevalent in Oz as well.  For most of the scenes you would have a very minimal amount of physical world.  The ground usually was real, and directly behind the actors was real, but most of the background was CGI'd.

(tangent)
I'm unsure as to whether I'm the only person who finds this troubling, but I honestly feel less connected to a film when there isn't anything tangible. I know cartoons are not tangible either; one cannot touch Roger Rabbit (awesome film!) or Mickey Mouse, but when the action is real, and the actors are real, and the film for all intents and purposes is meant to be real, then so should the scenery, within reason.  I always ask myself when seeing these types of films, "What would the production team/production designer have done if CGI was not available?"  The answer to this lies with films utilizing old-school special effects: Star Wars (the original 3), Planet of the Apes, Gone With The Wind; all of these films couldn't fake things, they had to build scenes, and paint them, and in most situations, pioneer them.  All I'm getting at is that film used to have to push boundaries and invent solutions when nothing existed prior, now they have limitless possibilities as to what they can do, as long as their pockets are deep enough.  I digress.
(end tangent)

Back to my original point is CGI makes the film hard, again in my opinion, to connect 100%.  As for Oz, there was a lot of CGI, but boy-howdy it looked damn good!!  The production design and costumes and make-up were beyond top-notch.  I mean they took someone who looks like the girl on the right, to the "thing" on the left, observe:

I rest my case!

So all in all, I actually really enjoyed this film!  I know most of you, if you made is thus far, have probably thought I didn't like this, well to quote Dark Helmet (Space Balls, see it!!!!) "Fooled You!!"  I believe this was a great film to bring out, especially since we have a generation of young people who probably have no clue who or what The Wizard of Oz even is.



Final Words: Large Popcorn.
Even though I have personal reservations about the overuse of CGI, I feel that the acting, story and most importantly make-up/costume/special effects more than made up for the wicked CGI of the west.  This film is rated for younger people, be prepared however, especially in 3-D, for frights.  
P.S. I think I will use more pictures in the future to help prove my theories, if you disagree, say so.  

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping  

Flight

I decided to watch one of this years Best Picture Nominated films, Flight, and I have to say it left me grounded at the terminal with no departure in sight.  This film was directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forest Gump and Back to the Future Trilogy) and stars Denzel Washington (Training Day and Malcolm X) as an airline pilot struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.  This movie left me struggling myself, not in the same way as the main character because instead of looking for booze to drink or drugs to score, I was struggling to find a reason as to why this was nominated for Best Picture.

This film starts out very adventurously and on a high note (literally); we see Captain Whip Whitaker (Washington) waking up from a pot, cocaine, and alcohol stupor to one of his flight attendants in the early hours of a flight out of Florida.  We witness the captain finishing his beer from the previous night as well as doing a line or two of coke before the scene ends, breakfast of champions!  The scene jumps to a rainy airport walk-around of his plane.  Then it transitions into Whitaker stepping onto his flight deck where he quickly pushes away from the gate. Through the nasty storm and turbulence, Whitaker aggressively flies, climbing more rapidly than usual and accelerating faster then usual in order to punch through the storm and find the smooth flying skies above the ugly clouds.

This unusual behavior lends itself to the films only impressive sequences as we see inside the cockpit and cabin of one roller coaster of a flight.  Bins are flying open and luggage pops out, we see people dropping from when the plane passes through air pockets, and we see fear in the passengers faces.  Just when you feel all is lost, the plane meets the clear blue sky and the flight has recovered from turmoil and finds itself in the norm.  As Captain Whitaker addresses his flight's passengers, we the audience see his hand (hidden from the passengers and crew) pouring vodka into an open orange juice container...dun dun duunnnn!  Cut scene, sometime later we see Whitaker asleep in his chair while the co-pilot is looking over the plane.  Suddenly, the plane's nose dives sharply and we see all the passengers and flight crew get thrown backwards in their seats while alarms, buzzers and lights of all sorts go crazy.

What we don't know at this point, (spoiler alert!) is that the plane elevator (one of the flaps on the tail allowing for lift and decent) goes haywire due to a worn part.  This failure, as mentioned above, causes the plane to dive steeply which wakes the captain from his hangover/currently drunk/cocaine nap to a surprisingly alert position.  He quickly takes control of the plane and spouts an exorbitant amount of commands to his co-pilot, all of which are followed to the "T".  The plane gets some assistance from the suddenly lowered landing gear, and procedural fuel dump; eventually Whitaker gets a "bright idea" and decides in order to keep the plane from plummeting into the ground, he will instead invert the plane in the sky, meaning turn the plane upside down.  Wh wh wh what?!

During this entire sequence we again see inside the plane, both fore and aft, while it dips and shakes and rolls over.  As you can imagine these wild maneuvers make the passengers scream and cry while things go flying around the cabin, even a little child falls (somehow) out of his seat.  I can go into a ton more detail but I think we can all imagine how terrifying such an event would be, and what kind of fear it would cause.  At the end, Whitaker is able to right the plane in the sky, and fairly "safely" glide it into the ground resulting in: 6 of the around 102 souls on board:dead, numerous injured, and the world calling Captain Whip Whitaker a hero.

 For those who need a movie re-cap:
1. Lots of booze and drugs
2. Turbulence
3. More booze
4. zzzzzzz (not to be confused with Popcorn or Snore's zzzzzzzzz)
5. Catastrophic failure of the elevator flap
6. Disastrous flying
7. Upside down
8. Disastrous flying
9. Right-side up
10. Glide landing
11. Death/Hero

The reason I have given the above breakdown of the already mentioned events of Flight, is because after this all takes place, the film literally stalls.  If Flight's entirety follows the films first 20 or so minutes, then you would have one exhilarating fright flight, however, after the flight's unfortunate turn of events the most exciting thing to happen in this film is the credits.

As you would assume after any disaster there will be an investigation.  In the case of travel related problems the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), will investigate into the disaster looking for evidence pushing the fault of the incident; either operator error, or mechanical/technical error.  As the rest of this film plays out we witness Whitaker's attempts at sobering up, however, these few attempts at self improvement eventually crumble and we then see the good ole captain binge drinking till we the viewer feels like throwing up.

The final scenes show us the trial in which Captain Whip Whitaker is the man being questioned.  During the trial he is asked a series of questions regarding his drinking, whether or not he consumed alcohol on specific days including the day of the flight.  Although he initially lied and told them what they needed to hear to clear his name; he then, after some guilt ridden questions, answers truthfully telling the council before him that not only had he consumed alcohol on the prior days in question, but that he was drunk during the flight and that he was an alcoholic.  Cue the tears, and camera flashes.  Seemed like a pretty expensive P.S.A. to thwart alcoholism if you ask me, and since you are reading my written word on my site, I will go ahead and answer for you: yes.

In the end, Captain Whip Whitaker finds himself in jail for negligent deaths, and seems to honestly be the happiest he has been in years. The NTSB explained to him and the world that the fact was the plane had an error with which it could not recover, yet due to his intoxication he was also to blame.

So, kids at home, don't drink and drive or do drugs, stay in school!*

*this message and more brought to you by POPCORN or SNORE


Final Words: zzz.
I think this film lacked quite a bit to keep audiences on the edge of their seats, especially after the initial intensity; quite a drop off.  Denzel Washington's performance was good and painful, but the story seemed less like a film and more like a PBS special.  If the title was Drunk or Booze instead,  I would say you have yourself a film.   Unless you enjoy watching those movies your teachers showed you in biology, I would probably pass, at the absolute max I would say catch this on cable for free.  Not for children, as it contains: adult language, drugs/alcohol, nudity, adult situations, use your judgement parents.


Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping    

End of Watch

End of Watch, a film directed and written by David Ayer (writer, Fast and Furious), follows two L.A.P.D. police officers, Jake Gyllenhaal (Jarhead) and Michael Pena (Gangster Squad), who patrol Los Angeles' most dangerous neighborhoods.  Much of this film focuses on gang and drug cartel interactions through a documentary styled lens.  This lends itself to make End of Watch something unique to watch.

When I say this film is "documentary style", I literally mean just that.  Think of the many documentaries you may have seen and notice how they all sort of have that similar gritty look.  The camera moves are shaky and unpolished.  Lighting is often harsh and blown out in bright areas and overly dark in...well, dark areas.  This is the case for End of Watch.  All of the camera moves and angles are from purposeful cameras, meaning, cameras we see and are aware of.  Usually, these angles are from a camera Gyllenhaal's character carries around with himself (he's taking some film production class for school, so he is documenting his career).  There are other cameras attached to the pocket of both Gyllenhaal and Pena, which gives the viewer an almost "fish eye" view of whats in front of these two men, and we wouldn't want to forget the dashboard cameras mounted on all police vehicles are also used in End of Watch.  This film definitely has a "COPS" feel to it, lots of chasing and ducking camera angles, and none of them are pretty.

While these unique angles allow for the viewer to feel apart of the action, I feel they also distract from the overall story.  When the camera is bouncing all over the place, it's difficult for our eye to follow any one specific point on the screen, thus causing what I feel is "visual overload".  Think back to the film, Bourne Supremacy.  There is a scene where Matt Damon is fighting that guy dressed similarly to himself.  In that scene the use of "shaky cam" caused the fight to become one big blur of who's who and what's happening till it ultimately ended and we see that Damon is victorious.  How did he win?  I'm not 100% sure. This "technique" makes it difficult for the viewer to fully grasp what is going on.  While watching End of Watch, I did not feel this camera technique was too over the top, it aided in realism, my problem with the "realism" was story based.

These two officers seemed to always be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time.  What I mean by this is that typically a police officer will never have to draw their weapon throughout their career, however, in End of Watch Gyllenhaal and Pena draw their weapons multiple times, now I know that South Central L.A. and East L.A. aren't exactly Key West or Dallas, but I find it hard to believe their encounters.  *I'm no cop by any means, but I was under the impression that if/when a police officer had to draw their weapon in the line of duty and fire said weapon, they then went on paid leave while the department investigated the incident.  This leaves them to take counseling on the matter; maybe my thoughts on this are incorrect, I digress.*  All I'm saying is that literally during this films course, these two cops got into multiple firefights, rescue children from a burning building, got mixed up with Mexican Drug cartel members, etc.  Look this didn't all take place within a month, I'm actually not sure what the time duration was but I assume it was over a year or two, nothing too much longer I'm sure.  This plot problem is awkward to me; on one hand we don't want to see a movie where cops are writing tickets, but that doesn't mean watching this glamorous romanticized story won't sit weird; basically a film trying to seem realistic comes off as Miami Vice or Bad Boys, overly active glamorous police work.  So all in all I feel that story aspect takes away from the unique/realistic feel of the film.  Food for thought, I'm being a little harsh.


Final Words: Medium Popcorn.
All in all End of Watch was interesting at best, but a little too far fetched and graphic for the most part.  If you want a fast paced anxious film to watch, this will most likely not disappoint, but if you want something "lighter" I would pass.

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping   

Django Unchained

Django Unchained is the newest film from writer/director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds) and his most recent Oscar success.  This film, starring Jamie Foxx (Oscar winner: Ray), Christoph Waltz (Oscar winner: Inglourious Basterds) and Leonardo Dicaprio (Inception, Titanic), follows Foxx (Django) a recently freed slave who becomes partners with Waltz (Dr. King Schultz), who is a bounty hunter.  Their partnership leads them to Candieland, a plantation owned by Dicaprio (Calvin Candie), where Django's wife, played by Kerry Washington, is one of the slaves.

This film is like all of Tarantino's films past, present and future: intense.  If Tarantino is known for any one thing in his film making it is that he does not believe in the "line" which should not be crossed.  Instead, Tarantino believes that everything is safe for him to use.  Django Unchained is his newest film which toes the line and in many cases crosses it.  Having said all this, I do not feel that this intentional crossing makes his story telling abilities or film making tarnished, rather it gives his films an edge over others.

As with any film revolving around slavery, one could expect to hear the "N" word used from time to time.  Tarantino, however, doesn't simply walk away from something as uncomfortable as said word, but instead he uses this word more then a valley girl says "like".  I for one was not born in the 19th century and assume most of my readers weren't either, so it's safe to say this word is uneasy to hear in any amount let alone a Tarantino amount-constantly.  Realistically, though, I believe this disgusting word was used more in everyday speech then we would feel comfortable believing, and more than most filmmakers feel comfortable using in their films, but not the boundary pushing Tarantino.

Another line Tarantino is notorious for crossing is graphic violence and gore.  Django Unchained is by no means a film in which should be shown in a school or to minors, however, as I previously said, I do not disagree with his portrayal of many of this films intense violent scenes.  What would happen if a freed slave had his chance at retribution towards former farm hands who earlier in his life caused pain and damage not only to himself but to his wife?  What would happen if you had multiple men in a shootout within the foyer of an estate?  I think the answer is very clear and Tarantino shows this ugly side of violence.

As I said above, Tarantino loves to walk that line of acceptable and unacceptable, and it is this precise quirk that makes his films so wildly controversial and loved.  Sure, he could make Django Unchained PG-13, and leave out any and all forms of historical controversy: violence, the "N" word, etc., or he could make a film which pushes the boundaries of such a terrible historical past and show the world, and us movie goers, that we haven't' always been perfect, and that we have toed these lines ourselves.

Now, for a little technological review.  I watched this film twice before attempting this post.  Why?  It is simple, this film has a lot going on from start to finish.  I was simply unable to take in the whole experience the first time.  So, as I watched this the second time around I began to notice a lot of things I did not care for, most of which dealt with lighting.  There were multiple sequences where the light seemed unnaturally bright, or unrealistic for the scenery.  In the opening sequence there is a very harsh or "hot" light coming from the left hand side of the screen.  In this shot there is a line of slaves and two men on horseback riding away from the light.  The reason I noticed this egregious light was because the background was totally black, no light, and see what we see is an over-exaggerated light high-lighting these character's backs and shoulders.  Where did this hot light come from?  Are we to believe this is the moon?  There was another point when they are in a tavern and there is a light shining down onto the table where Django and the good doctor are sitting.  This too was overly hot for any realistic oil lamp that tavern would have had.  Thinking back to it I feel that this light didn't lend anything to the film, rather for me it distracted me from taking in the story at that particular point in time.

All in all this film was pretty entertaining, and relatively well done, despite the awkward lighting I above mentioned.  All the actors involved were exceptionally good, but more especially Christoph Waltz and Leonardo Dicaprio.  At this point in time we are well aware that the Academy agrees with my consensus on Waltz since he was awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and well deserved it.  Sorry, spoiler alert.  As with his role in Inlgourious Baterds, Waltz commanded the attention on screen and delivered a powerful show throughout the entirety of Django Unchained.  Congrats friend!

Final Words: Medium Popcorn.
Even though my review of this film seemed relatively positive, I feel that compared to the other films I have reviewed, and given higher scores, Django Unchained, to me, was not exactly at the same level.  Having said that, I'm sure there are many of you out there who would put this particular film higher then I put others, and I do not blame you.  As for younger/immature audience, I would say this film is wildly inappropriate for the very intense sequences and language.  If you are a Tarantino fan-see it!

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping