Rango

I had heard that Rango was a good animated movie for people besides little kids, but I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It's probably the best non-Pixar American animated movie I've seen since The Iron Giant, which is a lot of qualifications, but it's still a solid accomplishment. It's definitely not a movie designed to appeal directly to children; I'm sure plenty would like it, but the story and characters have enough maturity and older-skewing references built into them to make it probably appeal more directly to someone with at least more knowledge of the history of film. There's a lot of Western character archetypes and homages to a bunch of different sources, the stuff that's supposed to be fun for parents who brought their kid to the theater. It goes beyond that here, though. The whole movie seems more designed with the parent in mind than the kid.

Again, not that I don't think kids would like it at all. It's a pretty silly movie in places, and not very difficult to follow. I just thought it was aimed at me more than I expected it to be. The cast is pretty outstanding and varied, with the right idea being used when the voices were picked - they do use celebrities you've heard of, but they're cast to play characters, not to be famous and recognizable. I know Johnny Depp at least was moving around on a set to help create the character, and his Rango is pretty loveable. He's a pet iguana who ends up stranded in the desert and meets up with a small community of wild animals who are struggling to find water. There's a love interest played by Isla Fisher, and a cute little girl played by Abigail Breslin, and a wise but suspicious authority figure played by Ned Beatty. It could pretty much have been a live action Western with the same general characters and worked the same, and that's what's interesting about it. The animation enhances the movie though, providing great opportunities for little moments of humor and some pretty spectacular action sequences. There's just something about complete freedom and control of moments of excitement that really brings out the potential of the form. It's kind of a simple and predictable story, but it works because of the solid humor and charming cast. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing it dethroning Pixar in the Best Animated Feature race early next year.

Movie Update 14

I really liked all of these except for one. See if you can guess without reading the capsules!

All the President's Men


Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star as the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story. The film was only released a couple years after Nixon resigned, and it's fascinating to see a film linked so closely to a historical event. Parts of it would be unbelievable if it wasn't a true story, and it sheds a light on just how crazy the scandal was. The two leads are great, their boss also does a fine job, and it's just an extremely well-put together film. My only real disappointment is that they don't cover as much of the timeline as I would have liked, but at some point they just ran out of time. It's still over two hours.

Bonnie and Clyde

I have to think this is one of the most important films in cinema history when it comes to the depiction of violence. It's quite a bloody movie, and though The Wild Bunch holds the title as the king of violent mainstream 60s movies, it didn't come out until two years later. Bonnie and Clyde is also just a good movie, turning another true story into an interesting plot and resting on great performances by a young Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Gene Hackman also has a nice little role as Clyde's older brother. There were a few spots that felt a bit aimless, but the film lays a blueprint for movies about heists and criminals that would be copied for decades.

In the Heat of the Night


This movie actually beat Bonnie and Clyde for Best Picture at the Oscars, and it was an odd coincidence that I saw them on the same day. Night is also an important film, mostly for its depiction of racism. Sidney Poitier is a Philadelphian homicide detective who gets pulled into a murder investigation in a sleepy southern town after being essentially arrested for the crime of being black. He butts heads with the chief, played by Rod Steiger, who won Best Actor. They eventually try to put their differences aside in order to solve the crime. Night is notable for having real things to say about race while still managing to just be a really good crime movie. Some of the scenes involving race almost border on parody now, but things are still bad enough now in some cases that I guess it's mostly believable for an uneducated, isolated town over forty years ago. Another well acted, solid film.

Intolerance


I usually manage to find something good in these old movies even if the general act of watching them isn't particularly pleasant, but if there's one area where I sometimes struggle with that, it's silent dramas. I didn't like D.W. Griffith's Way Down East, and if anything his earlier Intolerance is even more of a struggle. It's over three hours long, and doesn't really have what I'd call a plot. It has four story threads from four different periods in history, showing the bad things that happen when people can't get along. It's sort of a response to how people reacted to Birth of a Nation (which I still have to see), and feels more like a very long history lesson acted out by mimes than a movie. I can understand how it was significant at the time, and how huge of a production it was. But I just didn't really like watching it at all.

Network

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to watch these older movies, where a single line can hang over its entire legacy, and leave you waiting for it to come while you're trying to enjoy the story. Network's mad as hell line earns that fame though, in one of the film's most memorable scenes out of many. What's even more remarkable about the movie though is how much what its central ideas are still seem familiar today. It came out 35 years ago, but what some of the characters say about the world being a business rather than a collection of nations and people is still being said today. It's kind of a scary thing to think about, and I had no idea people were already seeing things that way back then.

So Network is roughly equal parts drama and dark satire. Things start when a retiring news broadcaster at a dying network named Howard Beale declares one night that he will kill himself on air a week later. The executives try to quiet him up and get rid of him, until Faye Dunaway as a programming developer realizes the ratings potential of a "mad prophet" cursing and yelling at people on the air every night. They keep him around, shifting it from a news program to a variety show with a number of segments with Beale as the star, preaching wildly to a studio audience and 60 million viewers at home. It's a pretty ridiculous scenario, but it serves as a solid platform for a lot of black humor and well written, apocalyptic speeches.

The movie is a showcase of talent as much as anything made in a long time, getting nominated for and winning a ton of awards, including five performances nominated for acting Oscars, three winning. Beatrice Straight's supporting actress win makes it the briefest role to ever win such an award, making me think it was kind of a light category that year, but pretty much everyone in the movie is excellent. Peter Finch won a posthumous award for playing Beale, and Dunaway also won playing a pretty unusual sort of woman. The last time I saw William Holden he was twenty five years younger, but he's also good as the first casualty of the internal conflict arising at the network, and Robert Duvall is solid as well. Sidney Lumet directed, showing off more of his talent for making scenes consisting of little more than people talking to each other for minutes on end completely compelling. The movie could have easily failed utterly, but they managed to turn a string of monologues intro truly compelling cinema.

Toy Story 3

The original Toy Story was a big part of my youth, and the sequel was thoroughly enjoyable, but I've long thought of them as slightly inferior to most of Pixar's work in the last decade, when they really figured out how to be all things to all people. I haven't actually seen the first two since that perceived step up in quality occurred, but I don't think I'm far off with those feelings. So when everyone gave the third film totally glowing reviews and talked up its emotional content, I was a bit surprised, but not disbelieving. I went into the film expecting something between a competent third chapter and the best movie of all time, and that's pretty much what I got.

Toy Story 3 is the perfect conclusion to the series, and possibly my favorite work to date by the studio. It was a stroke of genius to have Andy age along with the people who were children when the first two movies came out, and the story they chose to tell managed to stay true to the adventurous, humorous spirit they had before while still telling the most emotionally engaging and mature story of the three, without dipping into depressing or maudlin territory. I'll put it this way: Up made me a bit misty with a well constructed, beautifully tragic love story at the center of its old-guy-with-balloons movie, but I partly felt like they were trying to manipulate me into feeling sad when I just wanted to have a good time. Toy Story 3 delighted and thrilled me before making me cry with a perfect little scene that just seemed to capture all the emotions involved in growing up and life moving on without seeming to need to try to.

The core cast from the first two movies is back, whittled down to all the truly essential characters, and they really are a great bunch. Obviously Tom Hanks and Tim Allen take center stage as Woody and Buzz, but the whole group is just fun to throw together and do things with. There's also a veritable ton of new characters added, both the villainous overlords at the daycare center and the friendly bunch at another kid's house that Woody meets. Most don't quite have the time to develop full personalities like the old characters, but they're all interesting enough, with some great new voices by guys like Timothy Dalton and Michael Keaton, and Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear is probably the best real antagonist Pixar has had.

The movie also looks outstanding, not exactly because of the technical excellence of the computer effects (although that's definitely noticeable in places, like Lots-O's fur), but just because of the artistry and style of the animation. Woody's floppy run and all the little character touches look a lot more entertaining than I think the animators really knew how to do with computers only a few years ago. Moments like Mr. Potato Head with the tortilla are among what's simply the best stuff people have ever done with the medium in terms of creativity and movement that's amusing to look at. And of course Pixar maintains their ability to create action sequences that are more inventive and thrilling than what most violent blockbusters are able to pull off.

Shooter

Shooter was a bit of an erratic movie. It had some cool ideas and interesting situations, but a lot of its overall structure and pacing as a film just seemed off. If you're interested in snipers, then it's a pretty enjoyable and apparently accurate idea of how a lot of it works. It stays technically truer than a lot of dumber action moves do, although sometimes it gets hard to follow since Wahlberg tends to mumble through a lot of his lines. I don't know if it was part of his character or just lazy acting, but I know he can do better than this. He does a competent job of looking jacked and messing up fools, though.

The side characters aren't terribly interesting or likable. Glover doesn't really work as a bad guy. I'm so used to him being the good guy that he'd really have to work hard to make me hate him, and he just ends up annoyingly smug. He and the other villains are a little heavy-handed representing the corruption in our current government, and a movie called Shooter probably just isn't the right vehicle for social commentary. Kate Mara looks pretty without adding much substance, and Michael Peña is the vaguely sympathetic sidekick who avoided the plot cliché I expected to see with him.

The plot is interesting if a bit typical of the genre, although it tends to wander and I felt myself losing interest. I was very tired at the time, so I'm not laying all the blame at the movie's feet. All of the scenes are directed well by Fuqua who seems to know what he's doing, and pretty much each individual scene is fine, it just doesn't fit together quite well, with climaxes in the wrong place and a bit of a strange ending that's a bloodbath without being satisfying to the resolution of the characters. There's a lot to like happening, it just seems like the script could have used a lot more tightening. It could have been better, and it could have been a lot worse.