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: Brave

Brave (2012): Directed by: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman and Steve Purcell. Written by: Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman and Irene Mecchi. Featuring the voices of: Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly and Emma Thompson. Rated PG (Mild bear slaying). Running time: 93 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Disney/Pixar’s Brave features a princess, a castle and a witch’s spell but lacks the majesty needed to place it in the ranks of classic Disney fairytales. Neither is the film one of Pixar’s best, having little of the emotional depth or narrative subtlety we have come to expect from the studio’s finest works. Instead, Brave settles for being a lively and energetic, though mostly unoriginal, piece of kids’ entertainment.

The princess is Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a spunky tomboy who has inherited a love of archery from her father, a medieval Scottish king. She bounds about the woods on horseback shooting practice targets and boasting an impressive marksmanship, her red curls bouncing and billowing behind her. Her mother (Emma Thompson), however, has no patience for such unladylike shenanigans. As a future queen, Merida should be preparing for marriage not prancing around, pretending to be a warrior.

The King (Billy Connolly) encourages his daughter. He is a towering, barrel-chested brute of a man with one wooden leg in place of the one he lost in battle with a great bear. He is known in his kingdom as the Bear King, having a special knack for slaying the beasts (except, of course, the one that got away with his leg). Perhaps he sees something of himself in Merida – his only other children are his three sons, an impish trio of toddlers still too young for warfare – and he hesitates before inviting the Three Clans to the castle so that his daughter may select a husband from the first-born sons of the Clans’ leaders, as is tradition.

The Clans are a motley bunch and their sons aren’t much to choose from. At any rate, Merida rejects the idea of a forced marriage and sets out to change her fate. Enter the witch and the spell, the latter of which Merida hopes will change her mother’s adamant stance on marriage. What follows are some unfortunate misunderstandings and a few human-to-bear transformations, a plot development that should be whimsical and enchanting but is mostly silly more than anything else. The movie plays this magical turn for laughs; the big reveal occurs in a slapstick sequence that goes on far too long.

Around this point, you can feel the movie grasping for ideas. There is potential here for a grand tale, one that carries some real emotional heft, and to see the movie opt for an easier route is a bit disappointing. The development of the mother-daughter conflict (and their subsequent bonding and reconciliation) follows obvious and familiar paths; more than one scene seems primed for Brave-themed Mother’s Day cards.

The characters also have a tendency to over-explain themes and plot points. Pixar films are usually more trusting of their audience; the best of them expect us to get what’s going on without announcing (and repeating) it.

This is still a Pixar film though and the earmarks of their high standards for animation are all here. The landscapes are vividly depicted in sweeping wide shots and the characters’ faces are subtle and expressive in ways few animated films achieve.

But the arc of the story never matches the ambition of the visuals or the grace with which Pixar’s animators render them. Brave rests comfortably in that lower tier of Pixar films alongside the Cars movies and the latter portions of Up (the opening sequence of that film remains something of a self-contained masterpiece), which is to say that it is solid family entertainment on par with or exceeding the output of other animation studios. It is bright and cheerful and full of clever moments in spite of the loudly grinding gears of its predictable plot. That the film might have been better makes its modest success more than a little underwhelming.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/22/12

REVIEW: Cars 2

Cars 2 (2011): Dir. John Lasseter and Brad Lewis (co-director). Written by: Ben Queen. Story by: John Lasseter, Brad Lewis and Don Fogelman. Featuring the voices of: Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer. Rated G. Running time: 113 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

No animation studio – or any other group of filmmakers for that matter – has a track record as impeccable as Pixar's. They produce delightful films of imagination and heart with such consistency and regularity that one can hardly help but wonder when a blemish will appear on that record. When the first Cars film was released in 2006, it seemed to be the first Pixar film to fall short of the high standards they had set for themselves. Indeed, it is still the only film of theirs to dip below a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (I have not yet seen where Cars 2 will fall in critical reception).

To fault a very good children’s film for not being a masterpiece seems a little silly though, doesn’t it? Cars was enjoyable – if not terribly ambitious – entertainment for kids and Cars 2 is even better. That it does not reach the emotional depths of Finding Nemo or the narrative sophistication of WALL-E is not important. Cars 2 is solid family entertainment, beautifully animated and lovingly told.

The movie kicks off with a thrilling espionage mission, following the British spy car Finn McMissile (voiced by none other than Michael Caine) investigating some shady dealings on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. The scene that follows features talking cars chasing and shooting at other talking cars and it is still better than anything offered in the last Bond movie.

But never mind all that just yet. The film returns to Radiator Springs, the small town off Route 66 from the first Cars, where the charmingly daft tow-truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) helps the rusted locals when they break down on the side of the road. The racecar Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) returns after winning another championship but is quickly called to race again when a flashy Italian formula car Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) challenges McQueen. The millionaire Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard) is hosting a World Grand Prix in Japan, Italy and England to promote his new alternative fuel, Allinol, requiring all racers to use the new product during the tournament.

Mater, who naturally joins his pal on the trip abroad, meanwhile gets mistaken for an American spy in Tokyo and becomes a part of the secret mission with McMissile and the sleek Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). Similar to how The Incredibles had fun with the superhero genre and then became a rather good superhero film, or how WALL-E was one of the best science-fiction films in recent years, there are scenes in Cars 2 that are as fun as any spy movie. The story does not embrace its genre as wholeheartedly as those films did though, instead using the espionage plot to punch up the film with action and jokes, all of which are well executed.

I continue to be impressed by how well a Pixar film can pull me into its story, even when that story is set in a world of talking cars. How quickly I forget the strangeness of cars with windshields as eyes and front bumpers that form lips, and notice only the characters and what happens to them. For that, much credit should be given to the animators who are not only adept at creating believable and expressive faces for the vehicular population of Cars 2 but also the digital sets on which they drive that are both expansive and intricately detailed.

Acknowledgement must also be given to composer Michael Giacchino who, despite winning an Oscar for his score in Up, remains underappreciated as one of today’s best working movie theme composers. He has a knack for crafting lasting melodies and his spy theme in Cars 2 is a clever play on Bond soundtracks that I caught myself bobbing along to a few times. With his work also accompanying Super 8 in theaters now and an impressive resume of TV and film scores already behind him, he is on his way to becoming a household name.

By now, the Pixar brand carries with it high expectations. Cars 2, their twelfth film, cannot compete with the studio’s best but it does not need to. This is great fun that is inventive, clever and features spectacular animation which puts it ahead of the majority of children’s films. In my book, the Pixar record remains impeccable.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/26/11

Awards, Lists & Prestige: A Look at the Year-End Awards Craze and the Top 10 of 2010

Now mid-January, we find ourselves in the thick of movie awards season. The critics have published their Best of the Year lists, and just about every other weekend you can catch a glimpse of the Hollywood elite sipping on drinks and wearing their designers’ finest on any number of award broadcasts. But what are we supposed to take away from this frenzy? What does winning Best Picture mean? Or topping a Top 10 list? The cynic in me is tempted to dismiss it all. “There’s no way to determine an objective best film in a given year,” he says. And he’d be right to say so.

On the other hand, the realist in me (a close cousin to the cynic) understands that, for better or worse, the end of the year hubbub that builds up to the Academy Awards is an unavoidable part of the movie industry, so there’s no sense in bemoaning its existence. Despite what one might think seeing the annual onslaught of big-budget blockbuster hopefuls each summer, studios aren’t solely interested in box office receipts. Those glittering statuettes – whatever shape they may be – offer a chance to accumulate that other type of wealth (the non-monetary kind): prestige. The fight for prestige is not limited to studios either. Who wouldn’t want those three wondrous words (“Academy Award Winner”) attached to their name in trailers for the rest of their career?

The problem is that the winners are not always deserving of their new titles. Often, the Oscars generate a lot of (ultimately fleeting) enthusiasm around undeserving films and so the list of Best Picture winners becomes riddled with forgotten movies that, in their year, were deemed the best of the best. The Academy Awards are also painfully predictable. Nominations have yet to be announced, but I can already confidently say that The Social Network will win Best Picture.

Hold on a moment, though. The cynic in me is taking control again. Sure, the Academy Awards are a fallible cultural game that cannot accurately predict which films will be remembered 10, 20, or 50 years later, but they’re hardly worthless. They help to highlight movies that the general public might not have paid attention to otherwise.

A few weeks back, for example, I saw The King’s Speech at my local theater. The movie had been getting a lot of critical attention and the Oscar prognosticators had begun to beat their drums, so I was excited to see it. I wasn’t the only one either. The movie played to a sold-out theater and ended up being a crowd-pleaser. Exiting the theater around me as the credits rolled were excited moviegoers chatting about their favorite parts. Oscar buzz led us into the theater, but the film’s humor and heart sent us home, wanting to recommend it to a friend. The film overcame the daunting expectations that are placed on an Award Winning Film and was able to sway the many subjective opinions in its audience.

Which leads me to critics’ lists. Like the Academy Awards, they do not offer a definitive statement of the year’s best films, but instead provide insight into a critic’s personal tastes. Seeing which critics chose which films as their favorites says something that the blinding glitz and glamour of the red carpet cannot. Of course, a critic’s list can be just as susceptible to end-of-the-year hype as an awards show. In my own experience, I often look back at my choices for the year’s best and scratch my head. In 2007, I wrote that Juno was the year’s best, with No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Zodiac all taking a backseat to that cutesy-quirky romantic comedy. Three years later, Juno is still a funny movie, but each of those other films has appreciated better, rewarding multiple viewings in a way that Juno’s one-liners cannot.

Predicting which films will be remembered years from now can be a tricky thing. So with that limitation in mind, I craft my Top 10 of 2010 list. There were no movies this year that I found truly great in the four-star sense of the word (last year I saw at least four: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man and Up in the Air), but there were still some very fine movies that may yet become great in time.

The numbered order is subjective almost to the point of arbitrariness, but when organizing the list, I kept in mind the following: To what degree was the film a wholly satisfying experience? How have these films appreciated in the short time since I left the theater (or ejected the DVD as the case may be)? Organizing the list in this way led to some surprising results for me, but I think the list is an honest one. What follows are the ten films that most affected me in their various ways.

10) True Grit

Of course a Coen Bros. western would be heavier on talking than shooting. The prolific writer/directors seem to be able to take their style in just about any direction they please, and their adaptation of the novel that also inspired the 1969 classic is a witty and often violent trip out West. Add a grumbling, drunken Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role and the promising young talent of Hailee Steinfeld and you have a very entertaining film.

9) The King’s Speech

Sometimes the best historical dramas are the ones with the narrowest focus. The King’s Speech centers on King George VI’s stammer in the burgeoning years of the Radio Age. This may not sound like much of a subject for a drama, but the story is a surprisingly touching and inspirational one. Colin Firth as the titular King and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist are thrill to watch play off each other too.

8) The Kids Are All Right

No other movie I saw this year has as keen an understanding of how people interact as The Kids Are All Right. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as lesbian mothers who struggle with their children’s desire to connect with their sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo). This is wonderful comedy that occasionally flirts with melodrama but even then remains an honest a depiction of family dynamics. That the family is an unconventional one dampens none of its universality.

7) A Prophet

This fascinating French film follows a young man’s years in prison as he navigates the multicultural politics of organized crime on the inside. Though only a handful of scenes take place outside the prison walls, the film is as expansive and grand as a crime epic. Absorbing from beginning to end.

6) The Ghost Writer

A political thriller about a biographer (Ewan McGregor) who agrees to write the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) after Lang’s former ghost writer mysteriously committed suicide. Director Roman Polanski hasn’t lost any of his knack for crafting great thrillers, and this one is one of the most rich and involving mysteries in recent years. It has a phenomenal ending too.

5) The Social Network

How much is fact and how much was made up? Does it matter? Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin take the story of Facebook’s creation and turn it into the stuff of Greek drama. Jesse Eisenberg is wonderful as the borderline misanthropic Mark Zuckerberg and is surrounded by a strong supporting cast. Often dark, sometimes funny, and always engrossing.

4) Inception

Christopher Nolan is a marvelous craftsman and he outdoes himself here. He builds, then solves his own puzzle, playing by the rules he invents for himself. The result is one of the most dazzling and inventive action movies since The Matrix. Like that earlier film, Inception toys with metaphysical ideas just long enough to hold you over until the action scenes, all of which are exceptional.

3) 127 Hours

Only Danny Boyle could take the true story of Aron Ralston, who was trapped in a rock crevice for over five days, and turn it into one of the most entertaining movies of the year. Despite the seeming physical limitations of Ralston’s story, Boyle’s film is a kinetic and exhilarating ride. 127 Hours has all the tension of an action movie and its protagonist doesn’t even move for most of the film. Credit must also be given to James Franco for carrying the film in a career-best performance.

2) Black Swan

The best horror movie in years. Darren Aronofsky’s tour de force about a ballerina losing her mind is an eerie, paranoid thriller with top-shelf performances from Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Vincent Cassel. There are a number of twists and turns along the way, but the movie wisely does not trap itself into any one version of reality. The movie exists within Nina’s mind, so the question of what is or isn’t real is irrelevant. To her, everything is real, and I’m only all too happy to get caught up in her surreal nightmare.

1) Toy Story 3

Each of the previous Toy Story movies followed a basic formula: The toys leave the house, have an adventure, and eventually find their way home. In between, we’re treated to some exceptionally clever gags and top-notch animation. The third film delivers all of this plus a pitch-perfect, heart-breaking coda. Rarely does a sequel work as hard as Toy Story 3 to thematically unite its predecessors, but Pixar rises to the occasion and ends a wonderful series in a wholly satisfying way. Not even the unnecessary 3D could bring this movie down.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/17/11

Do We Need 3D?

I don’t fully understand the technical reasons why watching a movie in 3D is worse than a normal viewing, but I do know these things: 1) The picture is dimmer in a 3D movie. 2) The 3D effect is distracting. 3) It adds a surcharge to an already expensive ticket.

There are technical reasons why 3D gives us a dimmer picture, but you don’t need to be an expert on film projection to notice the difference. Should you see Toy Story 3 in 3D, consider for a moment past Pixar movies. The studio’s films have always been vibrant and colorful and yet here (and when Up came out in 3D last year), everything is a shade too dim, as though the entire film were taking place at dusk. Why is this? Something about the 3D process makes the image dimmer, but those glasses don’t make it any better. Granted, they’re a marked improvement from those red/blue glasses that used to be the standard, but they’re still a discomfort. And if you already wear glasses, they’re even worse, having to awkwardly place them over your prescription lenses.

But this gets more into my second problem with 3D – that it’s a distraction. When Avatar came out, the buzzword everybody used was “immersive.” James Cameron’s innovations in 3D technology were supposed to pull the viewer in and make them a part of the experience. For many, the effect worked. For me, it was frequently distracting. Yes, those sweeping shots of oceans and flying mountains looked pretty spectacular in 3D (though I suspect they’d have been just as memorable without it), but what about the dramatic scenes in between the sweeping effects shots and action sequences? Did you notice the way the image blurs a little when two people are just sitting and talking to each other, or walking? Some call the effect “ghosting” and it was all over the place when I saw Avatar. The 3D blends nicely in action scenes, but for those quieter moments, it became very noticeable that I was watching a 3D movie, pulling me out of the experience rather than into it.

3D is being touted as the next great innovation in movies, as if 2D movies are suddenly inferior and outdated. Even using the term 2D is a misnomer. Were you ever unsatisfied with how “flat” movies used to be? No, of course not. That’s because since birth, our eyes and brain have worked together to interpret pictures and film as representations of depth and movement. Adding the artificial third dimension only calls attention to the fact that we’re watching a movie.

And then there’s the price. We’re paying extra money for an inferior product. I’m dazzled enough by Pixar’s animation, or the latest CG effects, why do we need 3D? The simple answer is that we don’t. Studios like it because they can make money off it, and they are. Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all-time, largely thanks to the 3D surcharges. Then there’s the IMAX surcharge that, in an AMC theater, charges you for putting a faux-IMAX screen in front of the regular screen.

These scams will exist as long as people are paying for them. Christopher Nolan spoke out recently against 3D in response to questions about how the third Batman will be filmed. He explains that the choice is not up to him. Audience members speak through ticket sales and studios listen by looking at box office receipts.

So ask yourself: Do you need to see Toy Story 3 in 3D? Or Harry Potter? Or (God help us) the new Jackass movie? You can voice your opinion one way or the other with a ticket purchase.

Further reading: Roger Ebert’s “Why I Hate 3D (And You Should Too)”

- Steve Avigliano, 7/01/10

REVIEW: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010): Dir. Lee Unkrich. Written by Michael Arndt. Featuring the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, and Michael Keaton. Rated G. Running time: 103 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

We all outgrow our toys eventually, but the wonderful thing about great films, and this is especially true of great children’s films, is that they grow with us. I was 6 years old when the first Toy Story came out and 10 when I saw the second in theaters, and in revisiting the films I found they’ve not only lost none of their charm, but in fact resonate with me more than ever. Toy Story 3, arriving nearly 11 years after the first sequel, is the most sophisticated of the series, in both its animation and its message, ending the series on a poignant and wholly satisfying note.

Toy Story 3 finds Woody and Co. in a dark place – and not just in the literal sense of their placement in the forgotten toy box. Toy population in Andy’s room has shrunk after years of yard sales and garbage days, leaving only a handful of sentimental favorites left – both an economical decision by the filmmakers to not overcrowd the film with unnecessary side characters and also a heartbreaking reminder of the toys’ impermanence. As Andy packs for college, he must decide whether to hold on to these mementos of his childhood, donate them to a local daycare or forsake them to the dump. Andy, the sentimentalist he is, elects to store them in the attic with the exception of Woody, who gets an honored placement in the college box. When Andy’s mother mistakenly brings them out to the curb – a reasonable misunderstanding considering Andy packs them in a black garbage bag – the toys decide they’d rather be donated than trashed and they hitch a ride to the Sunnyside Daycare Center.

Sunnyside, in typical Pixar inventiveness, is an exciting new world filled with vibrant colors and the promise of being played with by children all day long. It seems to them Toy Heaven, an eternal life of playtime. When children grow up at Sunnyside, explains a stuffed bear and leader of Sunnyside named Lots-O’-Huggin’-Bear (Lotso for short), a new generation of kids replaces them. You’ll never need to feel the heartbreak of your owner outgrowing you because there will always be another child ready to play with you.

Woody, who has accompanied his friends this far, refuses the invitation to this seeming utopia and, in spite of his friends’ behest, embarks on a journey back to Andy’s. His failed escape, another of the thrilling toy’s-eye-view action sequences we’ve come to expect from the series, ends when a little girl, Bonnie, snatches him off the ground and brings him home. Bonnie’s room proves to be another temptation for Woody, a place where he can get all the loving, one-on-one playtime he no longer receives from Andy.

Woody’s dilemma is rendered temporarily moot, however, when he learns from Chuckles, a less-than-cheerful clown and Sunnyside veteran, that Lotso is in fact running a totalitarian regime under the guise of a toy’s paradise. The flashback sequence detailing Lotso’s past and the subsequent breakout plan that Woody hatches have more excitement than most contemporary crime films and serve as a reminder of why Pixar is still tops in animation. The studio crafts complex stories that don’t insult a child’s (or an adult’s for that matter) intelligence, and thrives on visual and narrative inventiveness.

And this is only the main narrative thread. The film is peppered with clever details and inspired tangents that come together nicely by the climax. Watch how the film shows Mrs. Potato’s ability to see in two places at once, after she leaves her detachable left eye in Andy’s room, or how the “men” of the Sunnyside toys gamble in their spare time. There’s also an ingenious subplot involving Barbie’s seduction by fashion of a Ken doll, a comedic highpoint of the film. There are a few recycled ideas – as an antagonist, Lotso recalls Toy Story 2’s Prospector in both his voice and cane-assisted walk, and when Buzz is set to “demo mode” it's a bit of a retread of his encounter with a fresh-off-the-shelves Lightyear model from Al’s Toy Barn – but even these familiar elements improve upon the original ideas enough that they remain fresh.

Toy Story 3 is every bit as imaginative and funny as the first two installments (without getting too joke-y, something the previous were even at their best), but has an emotional core that elevates and enriches its predecessors. The film, and the series on a whole, teaches acceptance of life’s changes and shows how this leap of faith is often rewarded with joys previously unknown. In the first film, Woody doesn’t want to accept that Andy might have found a new favorite toy in Buzz, but he ultimately forges an indelible friendship with the space ranger. In 2, Woody and the gang begin to accept that their owner will one day grow up, an acceptance that becomes fully realized in this film. This theme is echoed throughout the film and we see how Lotso’s reluctance to accept his own abandonment has corroded him.

The opening scene of Toy Story 3 recalls that of the first film, with Andy as a child acting out an imagined battle between Woody and Mr. Potato Head. But while the first film allowed us to observe a child playing with his toys, this one invites us inside his imagination and we see the action play out with all the dazzle Pixar’s animation team can afford. Andy’s experience is not one that we watch from a distance, but is in fact representative of what we all go through in our adolescence… and beyond.

The final shot, of white clouds on a blue sky, is a direct reference to the first image of Andy’s wallpaper at the start Toy Story. As Andy leaves his room and his toys for college, we realize that he is not abandoning that old room, but rather moving on to a larger arena, that of the real world. The room is a training ground, preparing Andy for life until he is ready to go out on his own. The films, now a completed story, offer us a similar training, showing the value in letting go and moving on to better things. And that’s something I’ll never get too old for.

** NOTE: I saw this film in Disney Digital 3D for an extra $3 and it added little to the film experience for me except a dimmer picture. More on 3D next week though.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/18/10

2009 So Far

2009 is more than half way done and it’s been a pretty good summer for movies with more good stuff to come. Here are a few thoughts that ran through my head in the last few months about some movies that I haven’t yet written about on this site. I’ve designated special awards for each.

The Gypsy Curse Award: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell was the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year so far. Taking a break from the Spiderman films (probably for the best after a disappointing Spidey 3), Sam Raimi returned to his campy horror roots with a film that revels in its own over-the-top gory glory. The music on the jump scares is cranked to 11, the blood spurting gets the Monty Python seal of approval, and the talking goat box is decisively checked off. There’s a great scene where, in a tense moment, Raimi slowly zooms in on his star (Alison Lohman) only to cut back to a wider shot, zooms in again, cuts back, zooms in again, cuts back… He does this up to five times before we realize he’s just teasing the audience. This is the work of a horror movie junkie having unabashed fun with his own film, taking every disgusting moment too far and then a little more. It’s funny, scary and a great time, even if the ending can be spotted a few scenes away.

The I Wish It Didn’t Have Talking Dogs Award: Up

The opening twenty minutes-or-so of Up are utterly perfect and had tears in my eyes, but about half way through, the movie goes from a great film, to merely a very good kids film. Up has the feel of a great Pixar short that was stretched into a full length, becoming more conventional animated fare along the way. The ending returns to the sweet sentiments of the opening, and I left the theater satisfied even if I wasn’t too excited. Note: I saw Up in 3-D and I officially declare this 3-D craze not worth the extra $3. Computer animation is impressive enough on its own, and I see no need for the extra dimension.

The Don't Get Carried Away Award: Star Trek and The Hangover

This one is a tie between two movies that I’m happy to see have done tremendous box office, but if I may play devil’s advocate I’d like to clear the hype-dust from these movies.

I was never pumped to see Star Trek, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. It’s a very entertaining film that retained the nerd appeal of the franchise while also bringing that appeal to a broader audience. (My initial prediction that the film would satisfy neither the geeks nor the masses was majorly wrong.) Star Trek gets a lot of things right, but it’s a little long and all the back-story exposition becomes tiresome. Still, I’m looking forward to the next installment when the writers won’t need to worry about such matters.

The Hangover delivered several big laughs with chuckles throughout, and it felt great to see a good comedy that didn’t have Judd Apatow’s name attached. Zach Galifianakis has also emerged as “the next big thing” and deservedly so – most if not all of the best jokes here are his. But a very funny movie does not equate to “the funniest movie ever,” a label I’ve heard used in conjunction with The Hangover. It was refreshingly funny; let’s leave it at that.

The Fuck You, McG Award: Terminator Salvation

I left the theater feeling under-whelmed, disappointed and, frankly, a little bored by the movie I had seen. Over the next few days, my disappointment festered inside my nerd gland, becoming nothing short of hatred for Terminator Salvation. It wasn’t long before I found myself loathing every frame of the movie from Christian Bale’s monotone voice to the cringe-inducing “romance.” Of course, the film isn’t nearly as bad as I’m making it out to seem. In fact, it’s a perfectly functional and disposable special effects showcase that just happens to have the Terminator logo branded on it. Remember how much fun the first two films were? This one is a stone-faced action flick, all washed-out grays and browns, without a shred of fun to its silly name (where’s the Salvation, anyways?). It’s unfocused, neglecting to offer the audience not one good villain, but instead, a host of faceless giant machines and thinking motorcycles for our heroes to fight. Director McG has plenty of ambition, but no creativity. Worst of all however how is how the once badass Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn in the first film) has been reduced to a teenaged wuss here. The film ends with a helicopter ride into the sunset (Jurassic Park anyone?) implying a sequel. You can count me out of that one.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/02/09