Movies Daily by Zach Cannon

Review: WALL-E

Pixar, we need to talk. Look, I’m 22, a month from 23, and I just graduated from college. I’m going into the job force, and I’m supposed to be an adult. I need to grow up, stop being a kid, get into the real world. That sort of thing.

And then you come along, make a movie like WALL-E, and totally complicate things for me. I’m not saying it’s all your fault, I mean, I was stoked to catch your newest film at the earliest opportunity. The Incredibles ranks as one of my favorite films ever, Finding Nemo and Toy Story I find it impossible not to love, and, even though I was a little worried about you when you released Cars and Ratatouille — two films I enjoyed but didn’t adore — I still had faith that you could pull it together and release another classic.

Not only did you do that, you completely captured my imagination. You brought out the little kid in me, just like you do almost every summer. WALL-E did it differently though. Your second-in-command Andrew Stanton did something that Pixar Grand Poobah John Lasseter and resident genius Brad Bird never tried: he didn’t use any faces.

I mean, there are a few, with the goofy humans that float around WALL-E, and they’re swell and all, but for the most part, the main characters are just emotionless robots. No smiles, no dimples, a few have eye-like things, but mostly, just blank equivalents of R2-D2 and an iPod Shuffle. On top of that, Stanton’s main characters hardly talk to each other outside of a few computerized beeps. You let him do this, Pixar, and somehow he managed to create one of the most heartfelt, daring and beautiful family films in recent years.

The beauty isn’t just in the love story; though wonderfully fun, that part is kind of cliché. It is, after all, just a boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back story that happens to be wrapped up in a grander tale of human survival. The action set pieces are stunning and exciting, if not a little bit predictable, and they’ll keep the younger tykes in the audiences giggling, while their parents and older siblings are entertained too.

Beyond the story, there is a genius in WALL-E that goes almost unnoticed thanks to the brain’s ability to recognize interpret body language and project our own emotions onto blank objects. That trick comes in handy when WALL-E and EVE go to outer space to the Axiom, the ship upon which the remainder of the human race leaves. There, WALL-E meets dozens of robots and one in particular I can’t get out of my mind. It’s a dysfunctional robot with an anger problem. It constantly smashing the other ‘bots around him and when the time comes for this Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot to get WALL-E past some police-type robots it has a field day. By the time its job is done, it’s bobbing up and down, its mechanical arms and bulbous “hands” draped on its sides, it’s round, blank face has nothing on it, no grimace or expression. It remarkably reminds me exactly of a tired boxer recuperating after a tough fight.

Of course, this is just a short scene of WALL-E, a few seconds of a two-hour masterpiece, but it illustrates how well Stanton uses his medium as a canvas and paints it with emotions and ideas. Even on Earth, the air is dusty and dirty, the camera floating and shaky, the cinematography both brilliant and dazzling to the point where you can’t help but get sucked into the world not just because it feels real, it almost looks real.

Now, Pixar, I know, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. WALL-E isn’t all just good looks; it’s got a lot of heart. That blend is difficult to come by, but you and your team always do it so well. You manage to capture audiences’ eyes, their intellects, their hearts and their imagination. If you keep that up, I don’t think any of us are going to grow up any time soon.

Grade: A

Review: The Incredible Hulk

Imagine you’re Marvel. A few years ago, one of your most famous titles, The Incredible Hulk, was made into one of the dullest, least interesting comic book movies of the recent wave of films from the genre. So, now you want to make a sequel that kind of erases that version of the Hulk, and what do you do?

Hiring people who have almost no experience in comic book science fiction is what got you into trouble in the first place, so you do it again. But rather than going for an up-and-comer like Eric Bana, you cast a proven lead like Edward Norton. And rather than hiring a then Academy Award-nominated director (now winner) like Ang Lee, you get that French guy who directed The Transporter 2 (Louis Leterrier) and a mediocre screenwriter (Zak Penn). Then, pepper in talented character actors like Tim Roth, William Hurt and Tim Blake Nelson and hope this strange formula works.

In short, it does. The Incredible Hulk of 2008 is faster, leaner and meaner than the 2003 Hulk. It concerns itself less with the origins and psyche of Bruce Banner (Norton) and his big green alter ego, quickly recapping/rewriting the first movie during the opening credits and dives right into a chase.

Hiding in Brazil, Bruce is hiding both from the American military and the violent, destructive creature he morphs into when angry. He’s gone 158 days without “incident,” works in a bottling factory and attempts to find a cure for himself. When General Ross (Hurt), the Hulk’s nemesis and the father of Bruce’s girlfriend, Betty (Liv Tyler), finds him, Bruce transforms, smashes up Ross’s team and discreetly goes back to the U.S. in an attempt to up his success rate in a search for a cure.

What this Incredible Hulk lacks is a character arc. In the first, Bruce Banner’s emotional journey hinged on some unresolved father issues and a mystery that you learned the answer to in the first five minutes of the movie, though it took Bana’s Bruce two hours to get his own answers. It was dull, bloated and heavy. In this one, Bruce has one goal: to get rid of the Hulk inside him, and maybe get reunited with his girlfriend in the process. There feels like there was more to the movie at one point, especially in the first act and all the cuts that peeved Norton leave the plot feeling quick, but choppy.

Despite that, the film feels more organic than its predecessor and other superhero movies. The humor isn’t forced, and it never grows silly, like Iron Man did in its third act. Unlike most Superman films, Hulk is given a worthy adversary in Emil Blonsky/ Abomination (Roth), the soldier whose attempts to become a super-soldier (yes, that’s a reference to the reference to Captain America) turns him into a Hulk-like freak.

The final battle between Hulk and him both packs on the (very well done) CGI action, and furthers the Hulk as a character both separate from but connected to Banner, rather than merely showcasing Big Green as a destructive force of repressed psyche. It’s a taught, exciting climax to a movie that might not be incredible, but it’s pretty good.

Grade: B

Three Mini Reviews: The Visitor; Son of Rambow; Kung Fu Panda

This weekend I saw three flicks. Two of them, The Visitor and Son of Rambow, are small indie films, and the third is the big-budget DreamWorks Animation tent pole Kung Fu Panda. The Visitor and Son of Rambow have been out for a little while, and usually I wouldn’t bother to review a movie that’s not brand new unless it’s about to come out on DVD, but I imagine many people are going to discover these movies the same way I did.

The Visitor has been bouncing around theaters in Miami the last few weeks. A couple days ago at work, I overheard a woman recommending it to a friend after she had seen it in the north side of the county. This weekend, I checked the listings and it was only available in Coconut Grove, in the southern side of town. Simply put, The Visitor is a quiet, word-of-mouth character piece that’ll affect you at a deep level and remind you, even amongst the super hero spectacle summer movies, that movies can be powerful and artful stories as much as they are entertainment. In The Visitor, the lonely Walter Vale (the phenomenal Richard Jenkins) returns to the New York City apartment he owns, which he hasn’t been to in years, and finds a couple, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira),living there. An unseen Ivan rented them the apartment knowing Walter hasn’t been around. Rather than turning them out on the streets, Walter lets them stay in his apartment until they can find a new place to live. In the time, Tarek a Syrian drum player, and Walter strike up a friendship. Tarek teaches Walter to play the African drum and he begins to bloom and come back to life. This would have been your cliché flick about an older white man finding new life if it had stopped there, but it didn’t. The film becomes a larger tale about the human spirit in a multicultural, but paranoid world. Revealing much more of the plot would be spoiling much of the pleasure of the terrific, bookish narrative, so just take my word for it: The Visitor is a must see. Grade: A
A footnote: don’t mistake it for The Strangers. You will surely be shocked if you go into that expected a heartwarming story about a drum player.

I discovered Son of Rambow was playing in Miami when I was looking up show times for The Visitor. I heard about the film sometime last year after it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. I remember mixed reviews coming out of there, but a movie about two British kids who try to direct their own sequel to First Blood in the ’80s sounded fun and intriguing to me. And, ultimately, the movie is fun, but the whole isn’t greater than the sum of it’s parts. The two boys who attempt to make the unofficial sequel (their goal is to win a 17-and-under BBC film competition) are unlikely friends. Lee, a film nut, is the youngest son of absent parents who, despite his tough guy exterior, longs to have a true family. Will, on the other hand, lives with his mother, sister and grandmother in a pious community that outlaws TV and movies. His imagination locked up, Will doodles all day and when he watches First Blood one afternoon, he dreams up a story in which Rambo is imprisoned and, as Rambo’s son, he must rescue the Vietnam hero. Will and Lee team up to make their movie, but eventually find themselves split by Will’s religion, Lee’s insecurities, and a French exchange student’s Hollywood-esque meddling. Writer/director Garth Jennings, who, along with producer Nick Goldsmith, makes up the music video team Hammer & Tongs, has created a movie about imagination and the importance of individuality. He achieves the light, whimsical feel he’s looking for, but parts of Son of Rambow are uneven and keep it from being as charming as it could be. Grade: B

When I read yesterday that Kung Fu Panda had conquered the box office, I lamented to myself, because no one was really around to listen, how sad it is that traditional, 2-D cartoons aren’t made anymore. Back in my youth (all fifteen years ago), Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and The Lion King were the pinnacle of the medium and, at the same time, Toy Story was released and pretty much marked the beginning of the end. Now that John Lasseter is at Disney, he apparently wants to relaunch the hand-drawn studio, but, for the most part, it’s all digital, all the time. But that’s all right when something like Kung Fu Panda gets made. The 3-D whirling action and jiggling fat only compliment the wonderful story of Po the panda, the unlikely hero chosen to protect Valley of Peace when the evil Tai Lung threatens to destroy it. And it’s not just the story that makes Kung Fu Panda worth watching, but the life that Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane and Jack Black as the titular bear bring to their characters. In this animated entry, it’s not just 3-D; it’s well-rounded. Grade: B+

Review: Amazon Unbox on Tivo

It’s a bit unusual for me to write a technology review. Actually, I’ve never done it before, but I attempted to use my TiVo is a new media kind of way this weekend by downloading a movie, and since this is a movie blog, I guess I can write a review of it here. Last fall, Amazon.com launched Unbox. It’s a iTunes-like service through which you can download movies, TV shows, music and other things to your computer or, if you own a TiVo that is connected to your home network, directly to your home entertainment system. This past weekend, I enjoyed a very lazy and rainy Sunday and rather than driving to the store to pick up a DVD, I decided to download the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon to my TiVo through Amazon for $3.99. I assumed that, since I had downloaded things from iTunes and used Comcast’s OnDemand service, that Unbox would work the same and I’d be able to download and watch the movie with relative ease.

I was wrong. By the end of my experiment with Unbox on TiVo yesterday, eight hours had passed, the movie downloaded twice to my box, and so did the pilot of Bionic Woman, yet I only watched on hour of the movie. Here’s what happened.

The first time the movie downloaded, it reached 59 minutes and stopped it’s progress. This could have been because the Internet connection I was on was slow, but it couldn’t have been that slow, since I used my girlfriend’s computer to talk to Amazon.com about the problem. It also could have been because I started watching the movie before it finished downloading, but I only did this after my TiVo told me it was OK (for anyone who doesn’t have one, you should know, this things are remarkably expressive). Or, my TiVo may have been full because my girlfriend was recording a marathon of America’s Next Top Model, but I had deleted seven hours of Breaking Bad, plus 23 TiVo suggestions to offset any damage Tyra Banks could do to my TiVo’s memory. It also could be because there was a problem with the Unbox network and, all self-righteousness aside, I think this fourth hypothesis was probably the case.

Once it became obvious that the movie had stopped downloading (the little purple icon that indicates a movie is recording had disappeared), I called Amazon. Actually, I had Amazon call me. I think it’s impossible to call Amazon; you have to give them your number, then they’ll call you. While it’s a little odd, you get about 30 seconds of wait time compared to the long queues you get with most places. Once I got on with a customer service rep, I explained my situation, they transferred me to Unbox support and my new rep reset the movie so I could download it again. He said within 15-20 minutes, it should start up again. I hung up, ate some dinner and waited.

And waited. An hour went by and no new movie. So I had Amazon call me again, was transferred again to Unbox technical support. My friendly new technical supporter told me that my old technical supporter had put the movie into the Media Library, a sort of digital bookshelf on Amazon.com that kept track of everything I downloaded. He initiated the download to my TiVo again, had me force a connection to the TiVo service, then assured me it would download this time. I left the connection page up to make sure everything downloaded, hung up the phone, and waited about ten minutes. I jumped over to the Now Playing page, and found Bionic Woman downloading in the place of In the Shadow of the Moon.

In the interest of plot, I suppose I should explain why Bionic Woman wound up on there. Back in September, when I was helping to prepare the Fall TV Issue for the old college paper I worked for, I attempted to download Bionic Woman and Journeyman early, while one of my colleagues did the same for Chuck and Life. I had seen Pushing Daisies in the summer thanks to my job in L.A. and we were going to put together a nice advanced review of five much-buzzed-about fall pilots. Unfortunately, Unbox only works on TiVos on a broadband/wireless network, not ones plugged into the phone line, like mine was at the time. It also on works on PCs, not Macs, which I use, so my colleague was left doing the brunt of the work while I only reviewed Pushing Daisies. Since then, Bionic Woman sat in my Media Library unwatched.

OK, now that you’re up to speed, I called again and told them the wrong thing was downloading, and they restarted In the Shadow of the Moon for what was either a first, second or third time, I’m not really sure. So the movie slowly downloaded while we watched a marathon of The Deadliest Catch on Discovery. After about three episodes, In The Shadow of the Moon had stopped short again, this time at 61 minutes. I watched the additional two minutes and was left on a cliffhanger (Where on the moon did Apollo 11 land?! There were boulders all around!).

By this time it had been 8 hours, over four times the length of the movie. By my calculations, this was more than enough time to drive to almost every Blockbuster and Mom-and-Pop video store in the greater Jacksonville area, find the movie, watch it and return it, all for a comparable price. I e-mailed Amazon later that night to ask for a refund. This afternoon, they granted it.

So, I can’t really say I’m peeved at Amazon, since they tried to help me out and did refund me, though their Unbox service still has a few kinks to work out. This can’t be a completely objective review unfortunately; other than iTunes, I haven’t used any other true direct-download services, so my perspective is obviously a little one-sided. But based on the difficulty I had even downloading a movie, let alone trying to watch it, Amazon Unbox gets a C-.

Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is fun. I think it would be impossible for any Lucas-Spielberg-Ford collaboration not to be at least that much. It picks up 19 years after the last one. Since we last saw him, Indy has fought in World War II (and became Colonel Jones in the process), operated as a spy, and helped the U.S government clean up some kind of crash in Roswell.

It’s because of that last job that a bunch of Russians kidnap Dr. Jones and take him to an enormous familiar-looking warehouse in New Mexico called Hangar 51. They’re looking for a boxed-up corpse found at the crash site in Roswell. Leading the Russians is Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), a psychic Commie interested in a whole new kind of psychological warfare.

The whole affair brings some G-Men down on Indy and he loses his job as a professor. He’s just about to leave town when Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf, who is plenty cool because he dresses like Marlon Brando from The Wild Ones and says shit. Twice.) comes to him looking for help. Some guy nicknamed The Ox (John Hurt) the two know is lost in South America and Mutt’s mother has been kidnapped while looking for her.

His mother’s name: Marion Williams. Indy says he doesn’t know her, and if you’ve never heard of Indiana Jones before, you might not know who she is either. But, for everyone else, we all know Marion Williams can only be Marion Ravenwood, former love interest of Indy from Raiders of the Lost Ark. As for who the father of Mutt is, I’ll try not to spoil it, but this is a Spielberg film, and one of his trademarks is the use of bad or absent fathers and, well, Indy ran out on Marion when they were supposed to get married years ago….

Figure it out yet? Of course you have, it’s obvious, and so is so much of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve watched a few too many late-night specials on the History Channel so I know a bit about the real crystal skulls, but even if you’re completely new to the things, it’s not hard to figure out the conclusion and how they fit into South American history in the movie.

And even if you do figure it out yourself, at least the movie should be fun to see how Indy and Co. will solve the mystery and save the world this time. But Spielberg, Lucas and screenwriter David Koepp first set up a so-so plot (Indy and Mutt go to South America to find The Ox and Marion and return a crystal skull to the fabled City of Gold, a.k.a El Dorado) that’s bogged down by silly asides (expressive gophers, swinging monkeys, Indy surviving a nuclear bomb test inside a projectile lead refrigerator) and an ultimate lack of much danger.

There is no real villain in the movie, just the predictable double-crosser and a would-have-been-cool-if-they-didn’t-humanize-her Irina. Worse, there’s no mystery Indy can’t solve because they’re all already solved for him. Rather than uncovering the location of lost cities or overcoming strange curses, Indy easily deciphers — and then he and Mutt explain incessantly — the mad ramblings of Hurt’s Ox, whose own time searching for the Crystal Skulls has left him insane. Then he takes down the Russians and everyone lives happily ever after.

There are a few things that make the movie worthwhile though and the man in the fedora is right on top of the list. Ford may be 65, but he’s still spry and he still sweats humor and charisma. LaBeouf proves further that he has some chops and is well on his way to becoming the next Tom Hank/Harrison Ford/Insert Hollywood-everyman-type here. He and Ford have excellent chemistry and their rapport is energetic and the two of them together might be reason enough to have more Indiana Jones movies. Some sequences, like the long three-car chase/fight through the jungle, and Indy and Mutt battling graveyard ninjas, are exciting, though somewhat hampered down by subpar CGI. Go to the theater to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for any of these reasons, but don’t expect to find a real treasure.

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