Finding Nemo

I feel like the first several Pixar movies were good but not quite exceptional like their more recent output, and Nemo sort of marks that transition to true brilliance. It's not a favorite, but it's really quite good, capturing the right combination of humor, excitement, and heart. I guess they really figured things out when they started making things sad. The movie doesn't linger on it, but the opening scene where Marlin loses his wife and most of his children is probably harder than anything else the studio had done to that point, and it works very well to inform the character for the rest of the film. Marlin searching all over the ocean for his son isn't a terribly different story from say, the toys trying to rescue Woody after he gets stolen, but the knowledge of that earlier tragedy gives everything a greater weight and urgency. You want him to find Nemo because you know it will destroy him if he doesn't. One of the best family relationships the company has done.

It doesn't take over the whole movie though, as there's plenty of opportunity for the expected clever action sequences and windfall of entertaining celebrity voices. Sequences like Dory reading the address by the light of an anglerfish and escaping from the seagulls in the beak of a pelican are a lot of fun, and while I think having famous people do voices because they're famous can be damaging in pointless, everyone here seems really well cast. Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres make a good leading pair, it's surprising hearing a very young Shane from Weeds as the titular character, Willem Dafoe is entertaining as the gruff leader of a group of aquarium fish including Brad Garrett and Allison Janney, and you'll probably hear a few more recognizable voices at some point. It's a nice looking film if not as eye-popping as what they've done in the last few years, and it tells its story and wraps it up at a very nice pace. Not my favorite animated movie, but a pretty good benchmark for what family films should aim for.

Legend of the Seeker - Season 2

Unless something happens to save it, Legend of the Seeker is dead and buried. I'm not too broken up about it, although I can't say I won't miss it a little. The second season improved slightly on the first, with an additional main cast member that made the general episode-to-episode dynamic a bit more interesting and a better sense of continuity and purpose over the course of the year. It's a well produced show that's kind of hard to hate, and while I'm not dying to know what happens next, I'm a bit disappointed to see a capable fantasy show bite the dust.

Like I said, regular episodes are integrated into the plot a bit better, with events leading into each other more naturally and an obvious goal from the outset. Not everything's great such as the continued existence of last season's villain, Darken Rahl. There are few things more annoying to me in genre fiction these days than a bad guy who won't go away, and despite being killed in the first season's finale he seems to show up even more often in this go around. I still like Richard and Kahlan, although the magical forces keeping them separated were really starting to drag at a certain point, although luckily that was resolved just in time for it not to matter since the show's over. The new main character is Cara, a reformed villain. Not much about her is terribly original, but her addition to the show led to some new situations and she was nice enough to look at anyway. I might miss Zedd most of all - he wasn't always as smart as you might expect the wizened mentor to be, but he was really good at killing things with fire. Like the first season, the second ended with everything turning out just fine without even a hook for the future, which at least allows me to pretend that's the end of the story and close the book on a fun if less than amazing show.

Legend of the Seeker - Season 1

I didn't know this, but apparently cult favorite horror and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has been involved with production of first-run syndicated fantasy series like Xena: Warrior Princess, and this is his latest project. I don't think it airs on any channels near me, but I found it on Hulu (where the entire first season can still be watched) when I was bored, and ended up enjoying it a reasonable amount. It's based on Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth book series, and while from what I've read that doesn't seem to be a particularly good property, it makes for entertaining escapism at the least.

The first season more or less covers the basic events of the first book, and has a fairly obvious story arc and conclusion to it despite the very episodic nature of it from week to week. It's a pretty basic fantasy tale, a young man turns out to be a chosen warrior who will wield the magic sword to defeat an evil king that has taken over a land beyond the humble home where he was raised in secret. I was glad to see them actually follow through on this instead of dragging it out as a main conflict behind the whole series, with no real resolution at any point. At least one more season is coming, so it will be interesting to see what direction they take it and what the new problem is. By the end of the season, they were reusing magical plot devices at an alarming rate, so I hope there's enough fresh ideas to mine from the books to keep it from total stagnation.

The show works week to week thanks to a pretty likable main cast of three and pretty darn good visuals for a syndicated show. It's filmed in New Zealand (just like The Lord of the Rings! (I love how this is mentioned every time the country is named on TV now, like it's a law or something)), and the nice looking vistas combine with decent computer work make it always pleasant to look at. The action scenes use a little too much Zack Snyder-esque speed ramping, but are pretty well done for TV, and most episodes have an enjoyable, unique hook. The two leads are adequate fantasy heroes, and have a nice chemistry together, although I hope they get over milking the "they love each other but can't be together" thing sometime soon. The crazy old wizard who accompanies them is pretty fun, played by that guy who kept popping up in the third installment of various major film series a few years ago, and keeps the other focused on the quest. Nothing in the show is particularly brilliant, just watchable enough to help me prevent any single moment in my life from feeling bereft of action. I like it.

The Matrix Revolutions

Structurally, the finale of the Matrix series seems very odd. The action sequences are bigger than they've ever been, but it seems like the main characters don't actually do a whole hell of a lot. It's not that easy to even come up with a point for the first half hour - they could have easily skipped the whole Trainman part and just had the stuff with the Oracle without much changing. It's like the Wachowski Brothers looked at the script and said, "This needs to be two hours. Let's add a few more scenes in the Matrix, even though this is supposed to be a dichotomy with the second movie or something." That whole part is basically a retread - one last gunfight, one last Trinity jump kick, one more scene with the Merovingian. And that's basically all the main supporting cast gets to do for the rest of the movie.

The main conflict takes place in the real world, as Keanu goes to confront the machines while their army launches an assault on the humans' last city. The big battle largely features people we don't care about - a bunch of nameless goons in poorly-thought-out walking tanks and mildly developed bit characters running around here and there, while Will Smith's wife and a snarky crew race there hoping to help. The whole thing goes on for about twenty minutes, after which this has happened: the robots are still coming. One of the most enjoyable sequences in the movie happens before all this though, on the other ship with Neo and Trinity; where Bane, a human whose mind has been taken over by Smith, attempts to kill his nemesis. It's the only fight in the series that doesn't feature stylish martial arts or science fiction vehicles, just a couple of guys knocking each other around and using anything in arm's reach to gain an advantage. The guy playing Bane has a spot on Smith impression, and while he could have taken business a little smarter than he did, it's an important sequence for showing how Neo's powers have extended beyond the computer simulation they started in.

Unfortunately, the other scenes with Smith aren't so great. He transforms from the cold, brutal, efficient machine he was before into a typical maniacal bad guy, complete with silly menacing laughter. He seems to become more human as he struggles harder to eradicate them as a species. That's probably intentional, but that doesn't make it enjoyable characterization. The final battle between him and Neo is pretty mixed. It has some good moments, and it's interesting to see an over the top anime-style fight put to actual film, but it gets silly pretty often and, again, ends up feeling a bit pointless. The story's resolution is satisfactory for what they built up, although I could have done without the very obvious Christian imagery. The series went a while with Neo being a non-specific savior, it seemed weird for them to suddenly tie him directly to one Religion. In the end, Revolutions wasn't the redemption most were hoping for after Reloaded. They're both pretty watchable sci-fi action, but they don't come close to the simple quality of the original.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

For some reason, when it came out, Sith got a decent amount of good press, and I'm not sure why. It's certainly darker and more violent, but that's not exactly what critics go for. It was critical for Anakin's inevitable turning to the dark side to work for the trilogy to be close to redeemable, and unlike a lot of people apparently, I don't think it did. It has to be believable that he'd turn, and making his motivation protecting his wife works. He should have been smart enough to see how he was manipulated, but it's understandable after seeing how emotional and selfish he can be, despite his characterization in Episode I as the nicest little boy in the galaxy.

But the scene of the actual transformation is awful. For one thing, it's somewhat laughable. Palpatine and Windu trying to convince him of the other's wrongness while moaning in their struggle, Palpatine's goofy-ass "No! No!", it's hard to take seriously. And it culminates with Anakin causing Windu's death because killing Palpatine would be wrong, even though he's the guy who made him kill Dooku. Tell me if that makes any sense. Yeah, he really helped Palpatine because he thought he needed him to save Amidala, but it was still a weak scene. Why's he sending the Jedi to arrest him anyway if he needs his help? Did he figure he'd visit him in his cell and learn the secrets of life there?

Besides the botching of the most important scene in the trilogy, Episode III is a combination of enjoyable violence, fan service, and too much post production. For some reason, the sound mix seems a bit off. Like, they rushed through adding the sound effects or something. And the over-reliance on visual effects is ludicrous. It's okay to declare that every clone trooper will be computer generated when they're all helmeted automatons, but when you're superimposing the actor's head onto a fake body, and it's obvious and looks terrible, what's the point? Make a costume, dude. It's fine. A lot of the movie just doesn't go right. Why is McGregor playing such an obnoxious cock now? How could anyone write romantic dialogue this lame? Why are all the robots starting to sound like idiotic children? It's really pretty sad. On one level it's satisfying to see how the world becomes what it was back in 1977, but I just wish it could have been better.