REVIEW: Monsters University

Monsters University (2013): Dir. Dan Scanlon. Written by: Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird and Dan Scanlon. Featuring the voices of: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Charlie Day, Dave Foley, Sean Hayes, Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Joel Murray and Peter Sohn. Rated G (believable college shenanigans but astonishingly still 100% family-friendly). Running time: 104 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

There are movies that are good kids’ entertainment and there are movies that are simply good entertainment. Monsters University is good entertainment. I laughed out loud more during it than any animated film in recent memory and, as a relatively recent college graduate, even felt a nostalgic pang or two for my campus days.

A prequel to Disney/Pixar’s 2001 film Monsters Inc., it tells the story of how Mike and Sully, our monster heroes from that movie, met in college and further explores the monster world. A bit of backstory is necessary to understand that world but Monsters University does a nice job filling you in if it’s been a while since you saw the first one.

In Monsters Inc. we learned that the monsters that hide under children’s beds and in their closets are not the result of overactive imaginations or side effects of an undigested late night snack. They are very real and exist in their own world, using the energy from children’s screams to power their society. The geographic and metaphysical relation between this world and the human world remains a mystery but monsters are able to freely travel from the Monsters Inc. headquarters to a given child’s bedroom through a specially designed door that acts as a portal.

The monsters themselves vary in shape, color and size. Some have wings and claws, others have tentacles and multiple heads. Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) is round and green, and his single eyeball takes up nearly his whole body. When we first see him in childhood flashback, he is no bigger than a volleyball. A puny runt by any monster’s standards, Mike is in awe of the Scarers, the professional scream team at Monsters Inc., who he catches a glimpse of on a school field trip to the facility.

You’re too small, you’re not scary enough, you’ll never be a Scarer, Mike’s classmates tell him. He sets out to prove them wrong by studying relentlessly and working hard to get into Monsters University. A student can study all sorts of subjects at MU but anyone who’s anyone is in the Scare Program. The terrifying, dragon-like Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) personally oversees the program. She interrupts Professor Knight’s (the always professorial Alfred Molina) Scaring 101 class to lecture the incoming freshmen on a strict, new exam at the end of their first semester. Fail it and you’re out of the program.

That’s no sweat for James Sullivan (John Goodman), a shaggy, blue-haired beast with a ferocious roar. Looking leaner than his older self in Monsters Inc. (and in an inspired touch, styling the fur on his head in a faux-hawk), Sully comes from a family of Scarers. He assumes he’ll be able to coast through college on the legacy of his family name.

A fierce rivalry forms between Mike and Sully, which ultimately lands them in hot water with Hardscrabble. In order to redeem themselves, they must team up and win the Scare Games, an annual tournament held by MU’s greek life. Helping them is Oozma Kappa, the lamest monster frat on campus. These new characters include the two-headed Terri and Terry (Sean Hayes and Dave Foley), a many-eyed blob named Squishy (Peter Sohn), the oblong furry freak Art (Charlie Day) and Don Carlton (Joel Murray), a former salesman with a moustache shaped like bat wings who is going back to school to learn “the computers.”

The rivals-the-pals story is a bit familiar but it’s executed well here and the pleasures of Monsters University are in the embellishments. There are endless sight gags in this exquisitely animated film and the script is genuinely hilarious at times. I continue to be impressed too with Pixar animators’ abilities to create complex emotions on their characters’ faces. There are several key turning points in the plot conveyed by a subtle glance or facial expression.

And it is this emotional sensitivity, a Pixar trademark for nearly two decades now, that makes Monsters University such a satisfying experience. The script, written by Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird and Dan Scanlon (who also directed the movie), has no shortage of wit and humor but it also has heart. This is a compassionate story about the importance of hard work and of realizing that your shortcomings may actually be strengths if viewed from a different angle.

These are excellent, positive messages for a kid in the audience and when these themes are expressed as gracefully as they are here, they ring true no matter how old you are.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/28/13

REVIEW: Argo

Argo (2012): Dir. Ben Affleck. Written by: Chris Terrio. Based on the books The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and The Great Escape by Joshuah Bearman. Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman. Rated R (Violence, language). Running time: 120 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Argo tells an unbelievable story, a prime cut of Hollywood entertainment complete with a daring rescue, down-to-the-wire phone calls and by-the-skin-of-their-teeth chases. That this story is also a true one dampens none of the thrills director Ben Affleck and screenwriter ­­­­­Chris Terrio cull from declassified files of a CIA mission from 1980.

The mission, which occurred during the early months of the Iran hostage crisis that began in 1979 and lasted until 1981, was to save six civilian lives who narrowly escaped the U.S. embassy before it was flooded and overrun by protestors. When it comes to the attention of the CIA that these six men and women have fled to sanctuary in the Canadian ambassador to Iran’s home, the government plots a rescue mission.

Enter CIA officer Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck). He has the look of a guy who has spent countless hours in smoke-filled backrooms of the government agency – both intensely focused and somewhat dazed. He is brought in to advise the CIA on the mission and quickly concludes that none of the proposed plans are even remotely achievable. The only way out of Tehran, he says, is the airport, which means they will need a plausible cover story and fake identities.

Here’s an idea: What if they pretend to be members of a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a science-fiction film to be shot in Iran? It’s a crazy idea but is it just crazy enough to work or simply crazy? The CIA, seeing no better alternative, gives Mendez’s plan the go-ahead.

An operation like this will need lots of help, which is also to say the movie offers a number of opportunities for choice supporting roles. Ben Affleck, making good use of his friendships with fellow actors, has assembled a strong ensemble cast filled with fantastic character actors. John Goodman as the genial John Chambers, an Oscar-winning makeup artist and Mendez’s Hollywood connect, and Alan Arkin as Lester Siegel, a crotchety veteran producer, make a lively pair. They spend most of their screen time together, trading quips and banter, and Mr. Arkin in particular gets most of the film’s funniest lines. An intense Bryan Cranston plays Jack O’Donnell, Mendez’s direct superior, and Mr. Cranston’s commanding presence drives many of the more tense scenes late in the film.

Mr. Affleck gives a strong performance too but more impressive is the sure command he maintains as a director. The film toggles between scenes of the six Americans hiding out, jittering nervously about their fates, and scenes of Mendez preparing for the mission. We get a real sense for the politics at work not only in the CIA but in Hollywood as well. Mendez must contend with the difficulties of planning a dangerous undercover operation in addition to navigating the bureaucracy required in order to get a film – even a fake one – into production.

Argo acknowledges the absurdity of this process while also addressing the grave reality of the larger geopolitical conflicts that defined this period of American history. And it illustrates the strangeness of all this with startling clarity. One superb scene shows Mendez arriving in Tehran, riding through its streets in the back of a taxicab. He glances out the window and sees an Iranian woman eating outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken followed by – no less than a few blocks down – a man hanged for treason from a construction crane.

It is a strange world we live in and Argo streamlines its strangeness and complexity into an engrossing two hours of commercial entertainment.

- Steve Avigliano, 10/18/12

REVIEW: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011): Dir. Stephen Daldry. Written by: Eric Roth. Starring: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Caldwell. Rated PG-13 (Intense emotional themes but nothing offensive). Running time: 129 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The images of 9/11 are indisputably among the most indelible and powerful of our time. They hardly need any assistance to have an emotional impact. Indeed, when some additional effect does accompany them – a soft glow around the edge of the frame, slow motion, dramatic music – like in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a mopey melodrama directed by Stephen Daldry, they actually cushion the images and dampen their impact. The harrowing, indescribable feelings of those individuals who lived through that day are transformed into more familiar, more digestible shades of sadness, which allow us to leave the theater feeling an undue sense of catharsis and resolution.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a Very Serious movie about a Very Serious subject. Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) lost his father, Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks), in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a day young Oskar refers to as “The Worst Day.” We see their impossibly heartwarming father-son relationship through flashbacks and Thomas Schell is a clear frontrunner for Father of the Year. (Oskar even refers to him as “the greatest father in the world” late in the film.)

When he was alive, Thomas played a game with his son they called, “Reconnaissance Expedition,” which involves Oskar searching about the city for clues to riddles his father has created for him. In order to solve the riddles, he must wander around Central Park, retrieving artifacts and talking to strangers. The film’s image of New York City is an overwhelmingly and unrealistically friendly one. (For every grumpy person that tells Oskar to kiss off and go away, there are ten who welcome him with open arms and provide him with a genuine life experience, a proportion I would argue is closer to its inverse in reality, but whatever.) Even the homeless are pretty cheerful.

One such riddle, which is left unsolved at the time of his father’s death, has Oskar looking for a mysterious sixth borough of New York. After the Worst Day, the project is forgotten until a year later when Oskar discovers a new clue: an envelope marked “Black” hidden inside a blue vase in his father’s closet. Inside the envelope is a key. What does the key open? Does the key signify a new Reconnaissance Expedition? Or is it meant to help Oskar discover what and where the sixth borough was?

Oskar takes a shot in the dark and (correctly) assumes the key belongs to someone with the last name Black. He sets out to talk to everyone in New York City named Black – there are over 400 in the phone book, never mind the unlisted ones – and ask them if they knew his father. Along the way he meets a kind woman (Viola Davis) and her ex-husband (Jeffrey Wright), jokes with his building’s doorman (John Goodman) and strikes up a friendship with the mute, old man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell). Oskar’s mother (Sandra Bullock), an emotionally vacant woman following the Worst Day, pays disturbingly little attention to where her son goes all day long. A last minute twist tries to paint her as Mother of the Year, but I didn’t buy it.

Oskar is a certain breed of movie child, remarkably insightful and poignant at all the right moments. He is the kind of child who at times acts strikingly like an adult but then falls back on childish emotions, usually when convenient for the plot. Newcomer Thomas Horn, a very articulate and talented young actor, was apparently discovered on Jeopardy’s Kids Week, which should give you an idea of the type of kid he is. In the film, Oskar explains he was tested for Asperger’s syndrome but that the tests were not definitive. The film is less ambiguous and portrays Oskar quite clearly as having the disorder. He is a mathematical thinker, able to create complex organizational systems but is also prone to emotional fits and social anxiety.

Mr. Horn’s performance is impressive and I do not doubt that it is an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s syndrome. As the story’s protagonist though, is Oskar maybe too precocious? I want to tread lightly here because I do not wish to be insensitive but I wonder, does director Stephen Daldry occasionally manipulate Oskar’s condition to increase the film’s weepy quotient? When Oskar monologues about the chaotic nature of the world around him, is the film using the boy’s power of articulation to further drain our tear ducts? Would a less cogent child have the same emotional impact?

Mr. Daldry is not an untalented director and he creates a number of lovely, small moments with his characters. The way Oskar hides under the bed and scratches at the floor on the Worst Day. The gentle kidding of a father who never condescends to his son. Unfortunately, he is not as adept in working the larger mechanisms of the story. The film is too long and its pace dwindles to a crawl in its midsection.

I was also disappointed to find that the driving forces of the film – the riddle Oskar’s father left him, the significance of the key – are not satisfyingly resolved and the film mostly shrugs them off as serendipitous necessities of the plot. Of course, in a film like this, the destination is less important than the journey. I’m not sure the journey is much more meaningful though. The movie dispenses some vague lessons about the beauty of life but nothing that warrants evoking the images of the smoke billowing from the Twin Towers or the Falling Man. There is no need for us to shy away from these images but it is imperative that we do not misuse them either.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/30/12

REVIEW: The Artist

The Artist (2011): Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller. Rated PG-13 (Nothing offensive). Running time: 100 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The sudden rise of talkies in the late 1920s causes trouble for the career of a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) in The Artist, an awfully cute exercise in nostalgia written and directed by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius. In loving homage to the silent era, The Artist itself is a silent film complete with a whimsical score by Ludovic Bource on the soundtrack and title cards that pop up onscreen with dialogue. Unfortunately, this clever premise amounts to little more than a gimmick. There is not enough story to sustain the film’s 100 minutes and this playful tribute wears its welcome.

Exiting the theater after his latest film’s premiere, George Valentin (Dujardin) poses for the cameras. A fan (Bérénice Bejo) drops her purse at his feet and Valentin, the flirt that he is, takes the opportunity to ham it up even more for the papers. He grabs hold of her and she – Peppy Miller is her name – even plants a kiss on the actor’s cheek. The cameramen go nuts for this and pictures of the impromptu smooch are on the front page of every newspaper. Mr. Hazanavicius delights in depicting a pre-paparazzi Hollywood when the press only took flattering pictures of celebrities.

Taking full advantage of her fifteen minutes of fame, Peppy Miller charms her way into a bit part in George Valentin’s new movie that is currently shooting in a Hollywood backlot. She and Valentin flirt onset but Valentin is unhappily married to an icy woman (Penelope Ann Miller) and in this rose-colored view of 1927, infidelity is not an option. So the fling fizzles before it begins and the two move on.

Flash-forward to a few years later: The talkie has arrived and the studio head (a cigar chomping John Goodman) informs Valentin that he will have to transition to the new medium if he wants to remain a star. Valentin is outraged. Silent film is not dead, he says. And to prove it he will finance and star in his own film. The movie, an adventure picture, bankrupts Valentin and he becomes depressed. The advent of sound is great news to Peppy Miller, though. The young actress’s name now fills the marquees and audiences line up around the block to buy tickets to the latest Peppy Miller romance.

Valentin meanwhile drowns his sorrows in booze. His only friends are his dog (Uggie, the Jack Russell) and his driver (James Cromwell). Here, the film gets bogged down with redundant scenes of Valentin moping about unemployed and it becomes clear that Mr. Hazanavicius is stalling for time. Scenes drag on longer than they need to and a number of scenes could have been cut entirely. He clearly has a love for old Hollywood and diligently recreates the visual style of a silent film but when he begins padding his story, the retro-conceit loses its charm.

There are a few self-conscious winks aimed at modern audiences – one character flips the bird and a few shots feature visual flourishes that would have been too technically sophisticated at the turn of the century – and often the whole film feels as though it is winking and smiling at you. But The Artist lacks energy. What should have been a lively celebration of Hollywood’s past grows tedious and repetitive. There is so much potential here for Mr. Hazanavicius to pay tribute to the many genres of the silent era but he curiously limits himself to an underdeveloped story that cannot support a feature-length film. Instead of giving us a dozen scenes of Valentin wallowing in his misery, why not fill that time with more lively material, like a dance number? (The movie does end with a tap dance but it’s too little, too late.)

The Artist does have one truly astounding scene: a dream sequence that comes after Valentin learns his studio will no longer produce silent films. As he sits in his dressing room, the world suddenly starts making noise. His footsteps are audible on the wooden floor. Cars are heard out the window. The dog barks. But when Valentin opens his mouth to speak – nothing. He screams but no sound comes out. Its an arresting moment but occurs early in the film and nothing that follows matches its ingenuity. The Artist is a nice idea but simply cannot sustain itself beyond a handful of clever scenes.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/22/12