Review: Paranorman (2D)

So I finally rectify my criminal shortcoming in not seeing Paranorman in the cinema! I have to say, I wish I hadn't made myself wait so long.

From the creators of Coraline comes another intense, entertaining family film set in a small town that labours under a history of witchcraft and prosecution of witches. Norman is a quiet child who has the strange power of speaking to ghosts, and while people around him call him names and put him down, his power is about to be the one thing that can save the whole town from black magic.

That's the short description anyway, Paranorman is a lot more than the advertised supernatural comedy/adventure. There's plenty of social context in the movie in relation to the prejudices of old still resounding today, as well as a heartfelt and family driven theme. 
Much like with Coraline, I respect this film for its gutsy and challenging look towards children's films; it is fun and has great humour but it never condescends and never dumbs down its audience for sake of cheap laughs. Some parents might find it dark... but this is the sort of thing I was brought up with, and I can safely say I would love this as a kid.

Asthetically too the film is gorgeous. I am a big fan of stop-frame animation, but there is a fine line where it is perfect for me; the point where you can still see the seams, but not jerky (Corpse Bride is an example of the style becoming too perfect) Here it is characterful.
The music too is great and really adds to the haunting and quirky atmosphere that is loaded into every frame of the film.

A lot of people say the characters are stereotypical and one-dimensional: the weedy, nerdy kid; the vain blonde sister; the dumb jock; the socially awkward fat kid... But it is so obviously deliberate I didn't have a problem with it, their dialogue is wonderful throughout, and these characters make me think of old 80s and 90s cartoons.

Overall, Paranorman is one of those films that actually lived up to the hype I had been hearing, and I would recommend it for everyone (yes, even the very young!) to see it around Halloween time.

Additional Marshmallows: It is obvious to me now how Paranorman completely trounced Tim Burton's Frankenweenie when they both released last year! They both have some similarities, but this is how you do it.

    

Review: Iron Man 3

Stark's getting too big for his iron clad boots, so big that there's no room for anyone else!

With an advanced, advanced preview I can give you my thoughts on Iron Man 3, and I can tell you right now, you aren't going to expect half of what happens! (the trailer threw me completely off the scent)

The film is set after the events in Avengers Assemble and we see a burnt out Tony Stark who is overwhelmed with the hero worshiping and the memories of his near-death experience. The events in Avengers are game changing, and he isn't ready for competitors pioneering in bio-warfare technology or the terrorist known only as The Mandarin.

The good stuff first. Robert Downey Jr is still on fire as Tony Stark (and no matter what I might say to lessen this experience, fans of his will still love it for him) his dialogue is still snappy and loaded with sarcastic wit. The action sequences are very creative and ludicrously dynamic what with Tony's newest suit's ability to fragment and locate him, or for it to fly and work remotely. Almost all of the action sequences revolve around this trick (if you thought the suitcase suit was bizarre, you ain't seen nothing yet!)
There are several occasions were Stark has to make do without the suit, and these are definitely the best moments in the film! Hilarious. 

But if I can now dive into the problems... I didn't like the film's antagonist. Now I may start wobbling into spoiler territory here, but early on in the film we are introduced to an indestructible soldier. Think of a fiery rendition of the Terminator's T-1000 (reforming lost limbs and all) and these soldiers become the film's main threat.
The special effects are great, but the villain's motivations and personality are paper thin. We know and love Tony Stark, now the story needs to give us some convincing villain for him to face and what we get here is not the answer. Yes, I will go out and say it: Iron Man 2's Whiplash was more interesting.
My issue is with the film's overriding focus on Stark himself (what, I hear you cry) because the story's justification for this feels shallow and unrefined:

"The love triangle in this movie is between Tony, Pepper and his obsession with those suits." - Producer Kevin Feige.

That is the film's meat at the end of the day and honestly I felt it was an insufficient theme for a third (technically fourth) outing for these characters.  

Urgh, I can't say the film wow'ed me. It isn't your typical "trilogy third act". In fact it is remarkably underplayed at times and its ponderous nature did make me a little restless: "Where are we going with this? Why are we here, talking to this character?" (especially that little kid...) which I pin almost entirely on the poorly established and executed villains.

Creative action sequences, laugh-out-loud funny moments, but unconvincing villains and a ponderous theme, makes Iron Man 3 good, but not great.

Additional Marshmallows: I really cannot say more to explain why elements don't work without spoiling the film. Let's just say there's a twist involved (I don't even know how comicbook geeks will handle it!) Go and see it for yourselves!

       
        

Review: Evil Dead

An intensely visceral, bloody and not entirely predictable remake of the 1981 horror classic.

As part of a drug rehabilitation plan, David and his three friends take his sister Mia to an old family cabin secluded in the woods. But when they find the cabin to now be the site of witchcraft, and find a mysterious book in the basement, Mia and David's troubled life is about to get a lot worse...

The Evil Dead does two things correctly: 1; it respects its source material, and 2; it doesn't dumb itself down. Now the first is due mostly because of the original's director Sam Raimi being part of the production crew, as well as the original's star Bruce Campbell. The second is due to the film having characters who aren't gaudy, whining sex-appeal teens who blunder about like headless chickens, they are actually interesting. Well, interesting compared to most horror victims.

The film's set up is effective and helps give a sense of authenticity to an otherwise brainless act. These people are trying to help a friend by isolating her drug problem, but when things go wrong, they aren't immediately aware of what is actually happening. Could it just be a drug relapse? This is way more effective than "Oh, we just want to stay in a creepy cabin cos... we wanna scare our girlfriends, har har".

Of course, the film knows that what we are here to see is the demons, and the gore, and Evil Dead doesn't persist with needless padding (it is only ninety minutes long) and escalates nicely with increasing amounts of blood drenched fury.
The effects are startlingly realised; there's no CGI tomfoolery here. People are possessed, arms are hacked off with electric meat carvers, nailguns are liberally used, hands are bitten, blood is vomited, profanities are screamed. It isn't for the faint of heart, what we have here is a remake of the 1980s "video nasty" genre! Horror fans rejoice.

It is certainly a spectacle, though either I am very desensitised to what film can do, or Evil Dead didn't quite freak me as much as it was advertised it should have. After some deliberation, I assume it is because it is a remake, and while it doesn't stick to the original characters at all (which is a blessing!) it is still the same premise and the same monsters. The same rules.

Horror is something mysterious and unknown, at least for me. Evil Dead has its jump scares at all the regular places (bathroom mirror, circling camera shots) all the cliches, which makes its greatest triumph only in its new paint job. For movies to truly terrify, they have to dig deep and dig into truly surreal and inhuman, and have the production value and intensity to pull it off. 

Evil Dead is a worthy remake of the original however, fans of horror must go and see this, and new audiences will be terrified at the concept and freakish visuals like they were in the 1980s. 

Additional Marshmallows: One thing I did notice were some subtle references to Raimi's The Evil Dead 2, however unlike the original's sequel, this remake has none of the rather bizarre, black humour which Raimi is quite notorious for now (There aren't any manically laughing mounted moose heads for example!)

    
        

 

Review: Frankenweenie (2D)

Is it ironic that Disney, who turned away a young Tim Burton for being too dark, now have their name on an unpleasant cartoon based around his original short animation?

Vincent is a young boy who has a great appreciation for science, so when his beloved dog Sparky is killed in an accident, he resurrects Sparky from the dead. Seeing this as a winning entry to their school's science fair, Vincent's peers look to recreate the same ghastly results.

Vincent was an alarming and creative animated short by Tim Burton back in 1982, and while it is both vastly superior to this film and isn't at all the same narrative, it does have a lot in common. Vincent himself, the resurrected demon dog as a pet, and even the science teacher in Frankenweenie looking a lot like Vincent Price (narrator in Vincent).

Okay, I've said "Vincent" too many times now!

Frankenweenie is something of an homage to many of Burton's original creations, and I do like the decision to make it black and white. But there is an overriding lack of substance here, most obvious being a lack of morality or message. (see the ending, which I won't spoil...) The film is more of a testimony to classic horror films than a complete children's film, making it a mystery who this film is for. Kids won't get the references (which are glaring: like a poodle getting zapped by electricity and getting a Bride of Frankenstein hairstyle) and adults won't find enough substance outside of the references.

There are glaring inconsistencies, mostly little ones that niggled away at me, and for an animation these make the entire project feel quite careless. Vincent drags the body of his dog through the house with difficulty in one scene, only in the next scene he's carrying it up the stairs without a problem?
Electricity in this movie can only be described as "magic"; while it does resurrect Sparky ala Frankenstein, it does manage to also morph a cat and a bat into a single creature. Huh?

It is a very dark, surprisingly unpleasant animation. Not like Vincent which is unpleasant but creative, Frankenweenie is unpleasant with freakish human characters and is simply other ideas stitched together.
Speaking of stitching, what exactly happened to Sparky to have him stitched like that?? He was only hit by a car, not fed through a rotor blade!

Quite underwhelming, unless you love, love classic horror film references.

Additional Marshmallows: Oh yeah, if you know anything about me, a film about a boy and his dog... a dog... couldn't make me less sympathetic!


        

Review: Oblivion

Having made his directorial debut with Tron: Legacy, Joseph Kosinski's own original creation hits the big screen and proves to be more about atmosphere than action.

Set in a future were aliens known as Scavengers (Scavs) have destroyed the Moon and as a result put Earth through apocalyptic destruction, forcing the human race to relocate. Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, a solitary technician who must live in the wastelands and repair the robots that harvest minerals vital to humanity's survival. However, when a ship crash lands and Jack investigates... everything he thinks he knows is called into question...

To go deeply into the film would be to spoil a great deal of its effectiveness, so I will refrain from doing so. What I can say is that Oblivion is not your average Hollywood sci-fi shooter. It is relatively slow paced, moody and atmospheric; giving time for the audience to see great vistas of wastelands and utter destruction. (It does have its battles, and a particular vehicular chase through an icy chasm was a prominent feature!) I'd recommend a cinema trip just for the wide, rolling landscapes and the very Tron-esque soundtrack. It is great to see science fiction films rising above being just overblown shooters and sequences of explosions! 

But it isn't without flaws. Kosinski is a new director, and while he has clearly been influenced by some of Tron's successes (soundtrack and art designs) and makes them his own now, I can't say the script here was particularly interesting. A lot of it was pretty stock sci-fi, ridged and emotionless. Okay, I cannot express reasons why this might be relevant, but even when taking those into consideration it still felt wooden. The narrative felt clouded in its own ambiguity, and as such I didn't feel enough for the people involved, or whether or not they succeed in their goals.

Personally I found it a gorgeous film to look at, a real art and concept design marvel; I could see multiple inspirations from contemporary science fiction of today (films, video games etc) and as a fan of the genre I happily ate it up! I also love to see original ideas getting such big screen treatments. More casual audiences might find it a little long-in-the-tooth however...

Additional Marshmallows: Oblivion is based off Kosinski's own graphic novel creation.
    

Review: The Croods

Dreamworks newest animated outing held a lot of promise in my mind, from a promising trailer showing some gorgeous landscapes, colourful creatures and good laughs. Yet while these are present, it didn't play out as well as I'd hoped.

The Croods are a prehistoric caveman family and the father, Grug (Nicolas Cage) protects them by being overly paranoid about anything "new" or adventurous. His daughter Eep however (Emma Stone) is rebellious and curious, and after sneaking from the safety of their cave she uncovers a new world... just as their world begins to end. Literally.

This film has some gorgeous animation. I want to stress this first as there was one specific moment where I was slack jawed; where the Croods dive and swim in water. The water effects were so startling and realistically implemented that the cartoon characters looked real by proxy! Does this one moment carry the film? A little bit, yeah!
There are some good laugh out loud moments, my cinema's audience were getting into it, especially the younger audience. The characters have disfunctional family traits that are rewarding as the film progresses (Gran is a particular favourite). The animation is dynamic and rapid-fire, almost like a Looney Toons cartoon at times, while the humour is often based around anachronisms and plays on modern living (but not unbearably so)

But, for all these good things... the story and plot just weren't there for me. Dreamworks has stunned me in recent years with some awesome storytelling and compelling character development (How to Train Your Dragon, principly) and instead The Croods... just feels like a sequence of unfortunate events; a scene happens, it ends, a scene happens... it ends (including the aforementioned water sequence...)
The characters are either one dimensional and sadly a little soulless, or very predictable. The characters themselves simply aren't interesting or unique to carry the film, and they are all we have, since this is effectively a road trip movie. There were really heavy emotional moments that simply died on me (and I'm a sucker for getting involved in movies normally!) The son and the mother, I barely know who they were except "the dumb one" and the... uhm... "supportive one?" respectively.

I don't know, but The Croods was a little too primitive for my tastes, despite how gorgeous it can look and how fun some of the moments are. A fun day out for the family perhaps, but I wouldn't be surprised if older audiences kinda shrug it off as yet another random cartoon venture.

Additional Marshmallows: And I have to add, I was really distracted by the... multi-coloured tiger/sabertooth creature. It had a weird, oversized head! It just looked wrong, I couldn't see it as a functioning creature; its head was the same size as its entire body almost!