UPDATE DEC 23, 2015 The review is finally up. Hop on over here for it. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I have not seen the movie and this is not a review. Just a notice of intent. There will be a review, and in all fairness, I won't post any review for at least six -seven days (Tuesday or Wednesday). The screening I'm attending is still 15 hours away (at this time) and I've been diligently maintaining expectations. It's nice our cinemas have only been running one trailer (an early one) and I've avoided all the recent trailers and TV spots since. My regular movie magazines with articles on Star Wars have been laid aside. Even avoiding Facebook for the last 20 hours or so now... (if you're seeing this, it's posted via Weebly.) The fans are going to see the movie regardless and will most likely avoid any reviews as well, they will have their own opinions. I want to not be part of the crowd of eager beavers, needing to share every little thing and as much as I've been staying away from other bits and bobs about The Force Awakens, I should do the same for other fans. By delaying a week, the hard-core fans will have seen the movie by then (I think) Heck, they'll probably would have seen it by Monday! Twice or thrice, even. Until then... May the Force be with you.
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Stars Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Frank Dillane with Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson Directed by Ron Howard I had an impression of what to expect from this movie, and that was mostly based on the trailers. I knew this wasn’t an adaptation of Moby Dick but based on the supposedly true tale of another whaling ship, The Essex, and their encounter with a destructive whale. What we get is a lot more and if you’re unfamiliar with this particular tale, it goes into some darker waters. At the same time, given the outcome with the whale, there was only one place for the story to go. It becomes a movie of two halves. The first half is a sea-faring adventure and a battle of wills between two men. An able-seaman, Owen Chase Chris Hemsworth) who has been promised captaincy of a whaling ship within the company he works for but assigned to be first-mate instead for a ‘blue-blood’ seaman, Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker), out to prove his worth to his family. Their desire for a good haul of whale oil takes them over halfway across the world to the inevitable encounter with the whale. What follows in the second half is a tale of survival on the desert of the sea, and the desperate measures they take in order to survive. The whale, so heavily featured within the trailer, becomes irrelevant to the story after that. In terms of a tale, the movie delivers one of high adventure and desperate survival, but that second half isn’t much different from similar tales, and nothing new comes out from that. What the movie ultimately relies on is the performance of the cast. In that, the leads deliver some solid performances with notable turns from Cillian Murphy and young Tom Holland (the future Spider-Man). Hemsworth is stoic in his performance and line delivery, almost channeling a humanised Thor on a sea-voyage. He carries much of the movie and does it ably so. Ron Howard directs with confidence but despite creating convincing world such as those in Apollo 13 or the more recent Rush, there is an odd sheen of falsity to the visual imagery. The distraction becomes increasingly obvious that much of the filming was done against a green screen whether its the could mismatch between the foreground and background, even though it is also clear that there was a physical set for the stars to work with, Granted, the nature of the story shown is a tale being related from one of the seaman to the writer Herman Melville (Ben Wishaw), so it might be an excuse. Still, it remains a distraction. As a whole, the movie holds steady and delivers a worthy tale, with some technical distractions aside. Some may find the second half draggy, but that is the nature of the tale. Still, there are some amazingly realised scenes, particularly those involving the whales. Strong and solid performances rule here, but beyond that, one might wish the whale had more screen time. For a far superior sea-faring adventure, revisit Peter Wier's Master and Commander: On The Far Side of The World. Rating *** / 5 Please support by buying or recommending to others. Thank you. - b Stars (vocally) Noah Schnapps, Hadley Belle Miller, Bill Melendez, Noah Johnston, Alexander Garfin, Venus Schiltheis, Mariel Sheets and Kristen Chenoweth Directed by Steve Martino This is a fairly odd duck. A Peanuts movie featuring our favourite crew of kids could be considered as something special, especially given that it’s coming out in this day and age when we are so wary about kids’ safety, we might long for those long ago times when neighbourhoods were much safer and imagination would rule our daily lives. We’ve either grown up with the comic strips, the numerous books collecting the strips, the various merchandising paraphernalia or the cartoon specials that would pop up on TV… or a combination of all that in one way or another. The Peanuts Movie is, frankly, a greatest hits montage assembled around one story. Almost anything you could ever want from a movie featuring Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the gang is here, rendered in glorious CG animation (3D in some cinemas, but not here) and yet, keeping to the original design aesthetics of Charles Schulz’s comic strip right down to motion lines. What effort it must have taken the animators to break the rules of CG animation in order to maintain the look of a flat hand drawn cartoon. The backgrounds, while lovingly recreated, also keep to the simplistic design of Schulz’s pencil/pen drawings. When Snoopy is imagining himself as the World War One Ace pilot, you never see his full doghouse in flight regardless of the ariel acrobatics carrying on all over the screen. In all, the animation team under the direction of Steve Martino faithfully keep to the world as created by Schulz. The core story stays with Charlie Brown and his numerous attempts to overcome his insecurities and shyness in trying to get the little red-haired girl to notice him. A secondary story involving Snoopy writing his adventurous story featuring the ongoing battle between his flying Ace and the Red Baron provides much of the action to carry a feature length 90 minute plus cartoon. That alone goes a ways to play with the power of imagination, particularly the sequence where he attempts to escape from behind enemy lines. With these two stories front and centre, the rest of the characters pop in and out as needed (yes, Snoopy’s brothers put in an appearance too). The cast do an amazing job of replicating the voices from the cartoons and as expected, the adult characters talk with that muffled “wah wah wah” sound. If anything, this is The Peanuts movie for this generation of kids who may not like flat hand drawn animation, but it may also serve as an introduction into the world of Snoopy and Charlie Brown. For the fans, this is pure nostalgic entertainment that doesn’t really try to be anything more, and that’s okay too. They don’t try to revamp or update anything. The phones are rotary land lines, there are no modern electronic devices, Charlie Brown still attempts to write with a fountain pen and not a ball pen, music comes from a record player, and Lucy still charges 5 cents for dispensing psychiatric advice. As far as family entertainment go, this is a gold standard. Charming, entertaining, fun and enjoyable. Some times, the greatest hits are just what we need. Rating: ****/5 Please support by buying or recommending to others. Thank you. - b Stars (vocally) Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Steve Zahn, Marcus Scribner, Anna Paquin with Frances McDormand, Sam Elliot, Jeffrey Wright and (as always) John Ratzenberger Directed by Peter Sohn This one appears to be Pixar’s take on several fables in one. Firstly, the title is a misnomer. While the story does revolve around one particular dinosaur, an apatosaur called Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), he’s far from the only ‘good’ dinosaur around. The French title translates to “Arlo’s Journey” which is rather apt, while the German posters call it “Arlo & Spot” which is equally descriptive of the overall story. From the trailers, you would get the sense that this is a ‘boy and dog’ story except that the dog is a feral human child called Spot. What the trailer barely hints at is that this is essentially a Western coming-of-age fable. It could easily be said that there are truly so few stories in the world, and what matters is the telling of such stories. Yes, the movie is that predictable with certain story beats judiciously marked off as we come across them throughout the movie. One could say it’s part The Lion King or part Bambi, maybe Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron did it better or it’s similar to The Journey of Natty Gann or The Jungle Book; all of them solid family entertainment. Do those films give you a hint of what to expect? So, if you’re bringing your kids - and why not if you have them - do mind them as they may find some scenes to be rather intense. You can think back to how Bambi or The Lion King affected you as a kid, The Good Dinosaur may be that kind of movie for this generation of children. One of my concerns was the disconnect between the incredibly realised ‘world’ contrasted against the obviously cartoonish designs of the characters. About a decade and a half ago, Walt Disney Pictures attempted a similar idea with Dinosaur (2000). That one had realistically rendered dinosaurs (given the technology at the time) populating an effects enhanced real-world environment, but the talking animals created a visual disjoint. Here, the world environment created by Pixar’s artist present an incredible amount of realism at work, you could almost reach out and touch that world I wouldn’t be surprised if Pixar decided to branch out into environment effects work after this, providing other movies with such realistic environments for their backdrops. Even with the cartoonish characters, there is a sense of realism injected into their movements, behaviour and limitations, especially given the actions of these characters within the story (you’ll know what I mean when you’ve seen the movie). They work well within the context of the story and the presentation that you could marvel at the character ‘acting’ or the world around them and not be distracted by either. While Pixar has strived to maintain a level of pure family entertainment, this might the one aimed at the younger end of the spectrum thus far; The Pixar Kiddie Feature. That’s not to say there isn’t anything sufficiently satisfying for the grown-ups, but again, most of us have seen all this before. That doesn’t get in the way of a familiar story told - and presented - well. Throw in a beautiful score from brothers Jeff and Michael Danna, and the movie soars when it needs to while hitting the emotional marks as needed. Sometimes, that’s all you need to be entertained. Rating ***1/2 / 5 Please support by buying or recommending to others. Thank you. - b |
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