The Adventures of Tintin

My only previous experience with Tintin was seeing a few episodes of the cartoon when I was a kid. They made enough of an impression though that I was interested in seeing the movie as soon as I heard about it, especially based on the amount of talent involved in its creation. Directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, written by three talented British writers, and starring a pretty solid cast. It's actually a pretty darn small cast - if you don't count the bad guy's many henchmen, the film has only a handful of characters with real roles, and there are all of maybe two women who have any lines at all. But it's not really a film focused on dialogue, or subplots, or anything that doesn't relate directly to the central quest. If there's ever a movie that earned the term "breakneck pace", it's this one. It stomps on the gas pedal in the opening minutes, and never lets up until it's all over. Even the exposition scenes are packed with action and visual trickery. That and the fact that the script crams together elements of three different Tintin stories lends the movie a sort of rushed feeling, like there was just too much adventure to get through and not enough time. But while it can be tiring by the end, the movie is so packed with charm and fun that I couldn't help but enjoy it the entire time.

Jamie Bell stars as Tintin, a young European journalist (Bell is British, though in the original books he's Belgian) who frequently gets involved in larger-than-life adventures when following a story. He finds a scale model recreation of a famous lost ship, and when he refuses to sell it to a man played by Daniel Craig named Sakharine, he gets kidnapped and brought on board a boat. There he meets its captain, Haddock, played by a drunken and bumbling Andy Serkis, and the two (along with Tintin's dog Snowy) escape, attempting to find the treasure that Sakharine is really after. The treasure ties into Haddock's family history, and he and Tintin become unlikely friends on their quest to solve the mystery of his past. Serkis gives quite a fun performance, even if he resorts to rhyming exclamations a bit too often. Bell fits well as Tintin, it's fun to see Craig play a villain, and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are once again a likable pair as Thompson and Thomson.

Of course I haven't really mentioned the fact that the film is animated, or any of the controversy around that. I've seen numerous people complain about the realistic look the movie goes for, rather than exactly mimicking the original art style. There have also been repeated references to the uncanny valley, though I've come to accept that people will now complain about it every time something animated even attempts to resemble reality. Maybe some people really are instinctively put off by any computer animation that isn't completely cartoony, but I was able to watch this entire film without noticing anything that really bothered me. The movie walks a very fine line by obviously being animated but still having extremely detailed nuances in the texture and animation of its characters, but I thought they pulled it off for the most part. I also think they really took advantage of the animated medium, especially in the crafting of the action scenes. There's a heck of a lot of them, and almost every one manages to do things that real life action wouldn't. The highlight of the whole film is a chase scene in a single take, through a Moroccan city and with numerous different characters involved at various points in both the chasing and being chased. Obviously being animated makes such a scene feasible, but even with that caveat, it's still a complete marvel of planning, design, and coordination to pull it off. That it isn't quite the film's climax is a symptom of the fact that the creators might not have known when enough is enough, but it's still a great scene. The last moments of the film are pretty explicitly setting up a sequel, and I hope the movie is successful enough for one to get made, because they did a great job of establishing a really fun and endearing setting, and I'd like to see Peter Jackson take his turn at the wheel.

Attack the Block

I usually like to avoid directly comparing things to other things for too long, but sometimes they're so similar that it's hard to avoid. That's the situation with Attack the Block, which has a lot of things that make it different from Super 8 but they share enough of a core that I can't really ignore it. They're both science-fiction movies that introduce a likable group of kids in their natural environment, and then turn that environment upside down with a violent event that brings hostile aliens into the mix. Their influences seem pretty different, as Super 8 is sort of an homage to older family-friendly genre movies that happens to be a lot louder, while Attack the Block is much more of a straight-up horror movie. I liked Super 8 more, but Block is a very good film in its own right.

It starts with a small-time gang of teenagers mugging a young woman on some holiday in England before getting distracted by something crashing into a nearby car from the sky. The woman escapes, and Moses, the leader of the little gang, investigates the car and gets scratched up by a strange alien creature. They corner it in a shed and kill it, and then take it to show some other people they know, including Nick Frost as a charmingly detached tenant in their building who maintains a weed farm for a local criminal. While there they see more things crashing in the neighborhood, and gather some equipment up to go defend their block. Soon though they realize these aliens are much bigger and more dangerous than the first one, and all hell breaks loose as they try desperately to survive.

Like Super 8, Attack the Block builds up a good rapport between the main characters before anything really bad happens, making the emotional core of the rest of the film much stronger. It's a much quicker process since the movie is only a scant 85 minutes or so, but despite their criminal leanings, the kids have an enjoyable interplay amongst themselves and the film has a surprising amount of social commentary on how crummy upbringings and flaws in the system of law help create young scoundrels like them better than they deter it. It was kind of surprising to see a horror movie where underage people are actually the main victims, and because of how deftly they were made sympathetic, it's genuinely distressing sometimes to see what happens to them. It's also just a really effectively creepy and unique creature design, with the aliens being large, hair black masses with their only distinguishable feature being their mouths full of glowing teeth.

Joe Cornish has never written or directed a movie before, but he shows skill at both, deftly weaving together strong comedic moments with an effectively tense and exciting sci-fi horror atmosphere, and managing to tell a simple but strong story very quickly and effectively. I can see why he's started writing together with Edgar Wright, as both have a lot of talent at bringing together humor with competently handled genre elements. There were a few bit of the story that seemed a bit rushed through or too convenient, but taken on its merits and its limited scope, it's a very successful film. The kid actors are really good, and I really think there should just be more small experiments like this one happening all the time.

Spaced

Spaced was the breakout hit for its creators, who went on to make popular movies like Shaun of the Dead and are now recognizable successes. It's a short and brilliant little series about a couple of new friends who pretend to be a couple to get an apartment. The focus of the show thankfully isn't their wacky hijinks as they try to keep up the ruse though, it's just a funny look at life through the eyes of its interesting cast of characters. A huge part of it is pop culture references, as Simon Pegg's character spends his time playing video games and trying to break into the comic book industry. There's a lot of references to Star Wars in particular, and an episode in the second season heavily satirizes The Matrix, the events of which the characters call "slightly unbelievable".

For the most part, the show is just pure fun to watch. Even when I wasn't laughing out loud, I usually at least had a smile on my face. There's only 14 episodes across two seasons, but each one is good and packed with references and inside jokes, making the show a little too esoteric for some members of the general populace but a big treat for anyone who gets it. Even when it's not trying to be funny it succeeds. It says some genuine things about friendship, and the relationship development between co-writers Pegg and Jessica Stevenson is extremely well done. It doesn't last very long, but Spaced is pretty close to the perfect sitcom.

Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz is the next genre comedy from the Shaun of the Dead guys that honors its subject matter as much as it satires it. Shaun was a great take on zombie movies. Not only was it very funny, it was actually more than competent as just an example of the style. Hot Fuzz purports to do the same with Hollywood action movies, except for the fact that more than half of it is a lot closer to a slasher/mystery movie. Simon Pegg is the hotshot, ultra-serious officer who was transferred to a small town for being too good, and Nick Frost essentially reprises his role as Pegg's dumb, yet sympathetic friend. The two bond over the course of the movie, and at times their togetherness seemed almost romantic. I later learned that there was originally a female love interest for the main character who was cut, and a lot of her lines were given to Frost without any changes, which is actually pretty funny.

Anyway, Sandford is in the running for England's nicest village again, but a mysterious hooded figure has been killing townspeople and disguising his work as accidents. Pegg is sure it's murder, but no one believes him. He has to piece together what's really happening before the killer strikes again. It really is more like Scream than any action movie I've seen. Even if it wasn't what I expected, it was still plenty entertaining, with lots of great lines and jokes and hilariously over-the-top death scenes. A little closer to the end than I would have liked, they finally make the transition to the action part of the movie. There's a lot of entertainment to be had in the short time he and his allies are having gun fights with barkeepers, old men, and supermarket workers. They poke a lot of fun at the ridiculousness of modern movies while having a good go at it themselves. There's a dramatic climax with one more sickly humorous moment before a contrived ending finishes the movie a bit weakly. I think Shaun of the Dead was a bit better focused and stronger as a film, but Hot Fuzz was still good fun.