The Wild Robot

"If I Could Talk to the Animals"

or

"What Do You See When You Look at Him?" 

"Crushing Responsibility"

 

Watching movies is always subjective. Your favorite movie may be someone else's bane (I don't plan or participate in "Movie Nights"). And one becomes selective. I'm particularly selective when it comes to animated features—I grew up watching Disney and Looney Tunes (the best!) and the output of Hanna-Barbera (limited animation and derivative plots), but also recognized those elements that were excellent where others left a lot to be desired—the Jay Ward output had really limited animation but the writing was clever and often brilliant). 

I'll hold off watching the Troll movies, or the Sing! movies or anything else that looks like it might push my negative buttons (the one that goes "Eject" for example) because I'm older in years and I'm at the point where I don't want to waste the fleeting hours I have left to me.*

 

So, yeah, I'm picky, as are you. I will not MISS a new Pixar Studios release and SEE it in a theater—I don't care how big your flat-screen is, it can't do justice to Coco—and I will usually see a new Disney feature because the early Pixar brain-trust is involved with those. With everything else, I'm choosy.

The Wild Robot was an easy "go". Based on Peter Brown's children's book, it tells the story of a utility robot, a model of the Rozzum series (this one's #7134 and voiced by Lupita Nyong'o, who is both precise and subtle), who, after a freighter capsizes in a typhoon, is washed up on an uninhabited island, more or less intact, and switched on accidentally by curious otters and proceeds to perform its duties—which is to help, solve a problem, and complete a task. Simple. Like a robot! But a robot in a forest does not compute. It's digital and everything on the island is so...organic! The animal-life is scared of this chrome trespasser and they just want to run and hide, despite the Rozzum's constant inquiries "Do you need...assistance?"

But, if there's anything about the Rozzum, is that it can learn—emulating a crab climbing a cliff saved it from being smashed by a large wave—and so, it sits and goes into "Learning Mode" until it is able to decipher the squeaks and grunts and chirps the animals make and understand it as communication tools, and the first thing they ask is "Are you here to kill us?" "Negative," it replies, but seeing the futility of trying to help these animals, Rozz decides to activate its homing retrieval beacon, but it attacked by the bear, Thorn (Mark Hamill), who breaks it. No retrieval, no "phone home."

Speaking of breaking, Rozzum's initial clumsiness leads to disasters several minor instances and one major familial one. It falls into a nest, destroying the family, with the exception of one egg. As the rest of the family is beyond repair, "Roz" takes the one egg and, seeing as there's a life-form inside, decides to keep it safe—a herculean task as there's a hungry fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who just happens to be peckish for an omelette. After the two come to a self-beneficial truce, Fink, in his own conniving way, helps Rozzum to understand what it is she is protecting, and once the egg has hatched a gosling—that imprints itself on Roz—instructs Roz on what goslings (and some foxes) can eat.

Now, there's already a lot of story there, and this Wild Robot is made up of a lot of recycled material: the "fish-out-of-water" trope, the Chuck Jones cartoon "8-Ball Bunny" ("Oooo! I'm dyyyyyin'!"), E.T.:the Extra-terrestrial, Wall•E, Noah's Ark—that will come later—and several other bits and pieces snatched from other media and cultures. But, there's another one that it takes a final page from and that's Bambi—like that movie, The Wild Robot acknowledges death and that "nature is red in tooth and claw." There is a pecking order on this little island and the small things get eaten by larger things and there is the risk that a character you might like won't last too long.

This makes the care of the newly-hatched gosling—Rozzum labels it "Brightbill" (played by Boone Storm and Kit Connor, at different stages of development)—that much more imperative. Roz has no idea how to raise a gosling and complete the task, so Fink suggests a neighbor opossum named Pinktail (Catherine O'Hara), who has plenty of off-spring, thank you, for some mothering advice. This comes down to three skill-sets: keeping the gosling fed, teaching it how to swim, and teaching it how to fly before the geese on the island make their winter migration off the island.

Food's not a problem, Fink is good at finding food—especially food that Brightbill can't eat (so, more for Fink) and Roz builds a shelter out of stones to make an enclosure to ensure its charge's safety. Teaching it to swim and teaching it to fly are other matters in terms of complexity. Oh, Roz can pull up facts on buoyancy rates and aerodynamics, but it's not the same. This little runt is going to need some extra-mentoring if it is ever going to leave the nest that Roz has constructed.

All this with the added story-rule that there are predators and there are prey and Brightbill is a tasty little morsel of a nugget. And as one gets to meet other creatures, like Matt Berry's grumpy beaver, Ving Rhames' falcon, or Bill Nighy's old goose, you realize that not every living thing on the island gets along. As someone says in Nature, "kindness is not a survival skill." All Roz wants to do is complete the task, as is its protocol. But, motherhood is just not in the programming.

So, there's a lot of basics familiar from other sources, but, the trick is trying to do it better and make it unique despite the provenance. That is something The Wild Robot does very well, taking the story places that the others hadn't and giving you fresh insights, while also charming the heck out of you. That seems to be the Dreamworks Animation trick—taking familiar things but making them seem bright and shiny again. They do that in the story...and in the artistic side of things, as well.

Where the Pixar pixelators seem to have the goal of making things look as photo-realistic as possible, Dreamworks goes another direction. I noticed it with their Puss-in-Boots: The Last Wish, a push against the reality of things and, instead, making things more impressionistic. It might be that it helps reduce the render-time of complicated images, but one can safely say that the complexity of images isn't sacrificed—there's a scene with a tree that explodes into a kaleidoscope of butterflies that is simply breath-taking to behold. The result, especially in the animation, is to give it a story-telling schmere that only increases the wonderment of what you're watching.

That is some amazing creativity on display, and between that and the directions that the story takes (and despite a jolting action-oriented third act), The Wild Robot is one of those great animation products that deserve to be considered a classic, going beyond its programming to become something very special.

 

It's the easiest "go/no go" decision you could make at the movies this year.

* I just finished reading "Opposable Thumbs," a not-bad book by Matt Singer about the history of "Siskel & Ebert at the Movies" in all its incarnations, and as much as those guys LOVED movies and LOVED reviewing movies, they got to a point where they said "if you think the movie's garbage, get up and leave! Life is too short and too precious to waste."

Notes on a Scandal

Written at the time of the film's release...

Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2006) There's a sub-category of movies that always sends K. and I into fits of giggles. It started when we saw (take a breath) Kenneth Branagh's film of Francis Ford Coppola's production of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein.' (whew!) We'd enjoyed Coppola's Bram Stoker's 'Dracula', and liked Branagh's earlier films. But something about this "Frankenstein" went seriously off-the-rails. It seemed like every performance was delivered at fever-pitch (except for John Cleese, who drastically underplayed to avoid Python-esque associations), Branagh's direction was a combination of Brian DePalma swoop-and-carousel moves and Michael Bay "shudder-shots," and Brian Doyle's score was dialed up "to 11." After awhile, she and I turned to each other with our eyes wide, and I said "I think everybody in this movie needs a good night's sleep!" and from then on, we couldn't take the movie seriously anymore.

Everybody in Notes on a Scandal needs a good night's sleep. It's a bit like Snow White done as an urban British drama. Except "Snow" isn't quite as pure. Here's the gist: Judi Dench plays Barbara, an embittered veteran school teacher, who develops a fixation on Bathsheba (Cate Blanchett), a new art-teacher in school. Sheba, as she's know, begins an affair with one of her young students, which becomes known to Barbara quite early on. Barbara then devises a scheme to blackmail a relationship with Sheba and drive a wedge between her and her family, with the aim of having Sheba for herself. 

It's a joy (and a scary thing) to see Judi Dench turn on the after-burners and go into full "battle-axe" mode. Her Barbara is the creepiest creation since Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter, with the added element of a pathetic (calculated?) vulnerability, and she's matched by Blanchett's distracted portrayal of the flibbertigibbet Sheba. There's one scene where both women go into an acting fever-pitch and its a bit like watching the performances fuse into one that's fascinating to watch, but makes you want to pull the "Emergency Stop" cord. And the hysteria is pushed at every hint of motion by Philip Glass' galloping score, even when it seems entirely gratuitous. It makes you want to back away slowly, get behind a locked door...and get a good night's sleep.

Living

Taps for "Mr. Zombie"

or

First, Do No Harm

 

An anglicized version of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote "The Remains of the Day")—which was itself an adaptation of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and directed by Oliver Hermanus, the least one can say about Living is that it does it source proud.

 

Living begins with vintage footage of 1950's London, which will slowly transition from grainy home-movie shots of anonymous footage of bustling city by-ways to, finally, landing on images of individuals rather than merely sartorially-clad ants scurrying in landscapes of blanched stone. One notices that the footage is in the "Kodak" square ratio (1.48:1), fitting the period, and never leaves it because, let's face it, the story doesn't deserve wide-screen. There are no picturesque vistas, no grand horizons, no snakes or parades or any of the other subjects that require a movie-screen to stretch. Just people. And a box is more than enough space for that.

It's certainly enough for Rodney Williams (Bill Nighy—being touted for a "career-best performance", but I think is, rather, a sterling example of an artist doing as little as possible and getting the maximum effect). Mr. Williams is a bureaucrat in the London County Council, where he does (appropriately) "as little as possible" and shuffles paper for projects that no one in any of the divisions wants to deal with. More often than not, he will be given a file, sent from another department that has been forwarded in the chain, and he will merely file it, with a non-committal "We can keep it here. It will do no harm."

It will, in fact, do nothing at all. The files that surround his little division are derisively nick-named "sky-scrapers" by his group (but not within Mr. Williams' hearing, who is also derisively nick-named "the old man"—even that is not so colorful and merely generic). Williams will assign underlings to deal with requests, where they will travel up the circuitous stair-cases of the building only to be dismissed in another office as "not the appropriate office" and the shuffling begins anew. Until, of course, it comes to rest, where it "will do no harm." Such is the everyday life of a British bureaucrat in the increasingly oxymoronic "Public Works". The uniform of suit and derby, the commute by train, the shuffling.

Unless it's the shuffling off of one's mortal coil. Williams announces to his staff that he will, unusually, be leaving early on this one day—so sorry for the bother, but can't be helped—and Williams goes off to his doctor's office. There is no blunt foreshadowing in the waiting room (as per this week's scene), merely the chilly call to the office and the pronouncement of limitations. "It's never easy, this" says the doctor, who gives him six more months. Williams pauses and as an acknowledgment of the doctor's pain and not his own says only one word. "Quite."

He will tell no one, not his son, nor his daughter-in-law, his co-workers, although he rehearses the act, always with the proviso "it's such a bore." He will do something uncharacteristic in the first days of his last days—he takes half his savings, buys a deadly amount of sleep medication and goes on a brief holiday (not even informing his co-workers), where during a breakfast, he will meet a young artist (Tom Burke) with insomnia and make a pact: he will offer his medications to the young man if he will show him how to "live a little" "I don't know how," he offers.

He will learn. A little. In the little time he has left.

 

It's a small incident, tentative, as is the entire film, but explores risk, as will the rest of the film. The risks he takes a small, insignificant, but not to him, and will have small repercussions, ultimately, in the scheme of things. But, not to him. I've been doing a small feature here, which I call "Walking Kurosawa's Road" because I've found in my viewings of the Japanese master-director, an impenetrable "something" that has always left me unmoved. The series has only covered Kurosawa's work before Rashomon—where, suddenly, the world discovered him—but, I've seen many, many of his films and, of all of them, Ikiru (the film on which Living is based) is my favorite...so far.

Living is close to it—it doesn't have Kurosawa's brutal, almost cruel, honesty, replacing it with a British reserve, and it chose to leave out the gangsters (although, they might have done if William's trip had been to Brighton Rock), but it does remain true to its source, that being Tolstoy. Kurosawa took Tolstoy's themes and crafted something original and Living merely transposes it to the Britain of the same era. And although the settings and cultures are far afield, the sentiment, the universality—the humanness—is still there, shining humbly, whether one lives in Moscow or Tokyo or London...or Timbuktu, for that matter.

Rather than kvetch that Living is merely a remake—Kurosawa has had many Western remakes (sometimes literally) of his work—one should appreciate how cinema—good cinema and good story-telling—can show us our commonality and what unites us, rather than what divides us.

 

Living does so, exquisitely.

Total Recall (2012)

Saturday is traditionally "Take out the Trash" Day

Written at the time of the film's release...

You Don't Know Dick (Philip K.)
or
I Can Misremember It For Your Wholesale

The reviews that I've seen for the new version of Total Recall have not been kind. Rotten Tomatoes, that fine aggregator/cuisinart of opinion, put it on "puree" when it said "While it boasts some impressive action sequences, Total Recall lacks the intricate plotting, wry humor, and fleshed out characters that made the original a sci-fi classic."

Huh? What the wha...?

 

Maybe I'm in Rekall right now and this is all some elaborate alternate reality, but my vivid memories of the Schwarzenegger Total Recall (made 22 years ago by that "master" of intricate plotting, wry humor and sub-tle human interactions*, Paul Verhoeven) was of an R-rated Sci-Fi gore-fest, light on "Gee-Whiz" and heavy with Cheese-Whiz, that seemed to mark the limit to how much Arnold could contort his face.** The one thing I remember being amusing was Sharon Stone as Doug Quaid's wife, in an arch performance that basically made her a star.***

This "re-imagining" (if you will) has Colin Farrell as Quaid,**** working on an assembly line for synthetic security forces—robo-cops (although they more resemble—and collapse just like—the battle-droids in the Star Wars prequels).   The elaborate set-up has the world decimated by chemical weapons making the world inhabitable on only two islands, Britain and Australia. The most precious commodity, thus, is living space, and the commute from one to the other is a tough one, a high-speed transport through the Earth's core—the shortest distance between two points being a straight line (would really have hated to be a construction worker on that project!). 

Anyway, Quaid is beset by dreams of running, chasing, shooting and loss, waking up in a cold sweat to find himself sleeping next to Lori (Kate Beckinsale, a fine actress—remember her in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing—who is going to be stuck in kick-ass roles as long as Keira Knightley, Michelle Williams, and Carey Mulligan are alive), who works for security for the United Federation of Britain, and its leader Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), which begs the question: Where's the Queen? And begs the question: she's married to a factory worker?

But if we start picking nits we'll be here until the time the movie's set in. Leave it that there are plot-holes larger and deeper than the one running through the planet, and it all begins when Quaid decides to go to the Rekall facility in his local city (which I believe is Great Britain, but owes a lot to Ridley Scott's Los Angeles in Blade Runner...and Spielberg's D.C. in his own version of Dick's Minority Report), a divey section of town with a yen for Chinese decor. Basically, he wants a spy fantasy, where there are double identities, secret plots and no one can be trusted.

He gets it, but whether it's reality or a drug-induced fantasy he has no way of knowing.  Something goes horribly (horribly) wrong, and by the end of his session, all the Rekall technicians are dead, as well as a dozen security forces, who burst in (pretty quickly, too) and whom Quaid overcomes in a single-shot, digitally-tracked shot that resembles a first-person shooter game.

Which is what this movies is, essentially—game scenarios, one after the other, trying to get to the next level. It's not that this Total Recall is anything less than competent. It truly is, and the cast is fine and all. But, it's never anything more than that, there's nothing very inspired...except from other sources, movies and video-games, mostly,***** and tangential stuff at that.

But, although attempts have been made to make it sleeker and faster-paced, there is no attempt to make it better or develop themes that the first film dropped for kinetic thrills. When you're dealing with alternate realities, why leave it at one? Why not keep the audience on edge on what's true? Why not make the stakes a little bit higher, so there are more consequences (like what this movie hints at in an early scene) for Rekall users, so there's more at risk than physical pain? This is Inception-material, but on only one level, and it's a sub-level at that. The potential was there to do more, but, instead, it's more of the same.

And Len Wiseman, the director of this, and the "Underworld" films, seems not to have much ambition for the "new." It's a few films in now, and one can say that he's not aspiring to much, other than keeping both the budget and the pace high. It's not so much directed, as art-directed, full of detail to distract from the lack of depth—highly finished, but with a sub-standard foundation. There was so much that anyone could do with this material to make it rise above the first one, rather than just make it worse.

"But, I don't WANT to be in a bad Schwarzenegger movie!"

"Vhich one: Jingle All the Vay or Last Ahction Hero?"

* ...usually involving fists, but in this case involving anything that could penetrate a human torso or face. This one was a particularly nasty exercise in excess, and I remember Schwarzenegger shilling it on Entertainment Tonight: "Yah, It's a GREAT FAMILY moo-vie, Bring the KIDS!" I was horrified to see that some idiot-parents actually did, and those kids have probably been in therapy for a couple years now.

** ...without  special effects, anyway.

*** It put her on the path, anyway, as Verhoeven was so impressed with her that he cast her in Basic Instinct, then she was a star in a flash.

**** A better match, I think, than Schwarzenegger. Farrell is more relatable, and you could see him as a factory worker, which makes the concept—which is telegraphed and anticipated to the Nth degree in both films—work a bit better. Schwarzenegger can't be believed as a factory worker—he's too much of a "800-pound gorilla in the room" to be hiding in such plain sight. The original concept...and casting...had someone like Richard Dreyfuss in the role. Now, THAT would have been fun, and surprising.

***** A lot from the first film, of course, but it's weird stuff—the plaid pattern that Quaid wears at some point, the woman in the transport station—there to fake out only the audience that had seen the first film—and the triple-breasted prostitute (probably because it's what the geeks remember...and want). All of which will bring me to an up-coming point...

Rango

Written at the time of the film's release...
 
"A Fistful of Pixels"
or
"Draw!...The Gun, Not the Computer!!"

Rango is an amusing hybrid of animated feature and a rather encyclopedic mish-mash of stylized western themes, set in an animal kingdom that could only be imagined in a Ralph Steadman fever-dream. Directed by Gore Verbinski (who manages to make interesting movies from least likely sources, like The Pirates of the  Caribbean*), it boasts a unique look, visually consulted by ace cinematographer Roger Deakins, while being the premiere animated feature to come out of George Lucas' FX house Industrial Light and Magic.

With such a background, the film should be technically interesting, and it is that, rich in detail and texture with a visual look unlike anything previously seen in computer animation. Everything looks real and like it should exist in a real world, even though the physics of things could never, ever work. It's a pixelated bizarro-world of funny animals just over the dunes from a mad civilization, a nightmare-world from inches off the ground.

While on a cross-country trip, a small highway accident causes a major disaster for a family's pet chameleon (with neatly quick-silver voice work by Johnny Depp)—an apt choice as he must change his persona often at times in the story—who finds himself stranded in the crushing heat of the desert, where his life of comfort leaves him ill-prepared for survival. 

Fortunately, he is befriended by a crusty armadillo (voiced by Alfred Molina), who seconds after meeting the lizard is run over by a truck and he's left lying prone on the asphalt with the impression of a Michelin bisecting his stomach...and he enjoins Lars (er, Rango...whatever) to go on a vision quest to face his destiny. Immediately, you know that this one is going to be a little different...not only for the kiddies, but also for producing partner Nickelodeon, which usually plays it a little safer and a little younger for its audiences.

It's something different, but also extremely familiar. I've had to gut-check this review because Rango is so stuffed to the shaded-texture sweat-band with movie references that I had to make sure geek-love didn't color my perceptions. Culled (one hesitates to say "written") by John Logan,** the story does so much reference-rustling that it feels like a pop-culture scavenger hunt—The Shakiest Gun in the West (and thus, Bob Hope's "Paleface" movies), High Noon, Shane, the Sergio Leone "spaghetti westerns," "Looney Tunes" cartoons, and a large back-wash of Chinatown. More like a tsunami, that last one, as the Mayor of the desert town of "Dirt" (clever) is a an ancient tortoise that looks, dresses, and speaks (sometimes verbatim, in the voice of Ned Beatty) like John Huston's Noah Cross from the latter.

When the chameleon drags into town, the Mayor sees an opportunity to put a patsy into the vacant Sheriff's job (there is evidently a quick turn-around in the job), which also makes the movie resemble Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, thus keeping his claws in charge of the town's water supply, or lack of it. Whatever his effectiveness in the job, one way or another "Rango" is going to be "over his head" in Dirt unless he stops concentrating on "blending in" and changes in ways more than appearance. 

Along the way, he is threatened by bad-guys and helped by unlikely allies in a free-wheeling roller-coaster with enough hi-jinks for the kids and enough "inside jokiness" for adults, done at a speed that Verbinski can't achieve in live-action films (but aspires to). This might give parents in the theater a little too much work to do, explaining things (like water-rights) while trying to deaden the "sugar-rush" the pace will give their kids. And some of the images can be a little scary for the little ones, like big snakes (modeled after Jack Palance and Lee Van Cleef) voiced by Bill Nighy (shudder).

But, it is smart, clever and different, with good performances and that extra attention to detail that shows off the best of the art-form.

* My God, I'd forgotten that he directed Mousehunt, a film I got slapstick-happy chuckles over, but that I know annoys a LOT of people.  There are times when I see a bit of Mousehunt in Rango. 

** Maybe I'm being a little harsh there. I liked this script by Logan and is the first of his that doesn't feel half-baked, and gives me hope that the guy might be able to bring substantial to the next Bond film, despite having replaced the more promising Peter Morgan. NOTE FROM 2020: The "next Bond film" turned out to be Skyfall, and did indeed turn out alright.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Written at the time of the film's video release...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Garth Jennings, 2005) On first impression (and that was in the majestic Cinerama Theater for a matinee) the big budget movie version of Douglas Adams' radio play/novel came off as hurried and a bit slip-shod. One wanted it to run at half-speed to appreciate the jokes (that we'd heard, seen and read a hundred times before) in this new context, but no, the little punks who'd made this were so comfortable with the material, and so comfortable with our knowledge of it, that they felt they could just rush it on by willy-nilly, and expect us to catch up despite the fact that we were carrying the deluxe popcorn with two drinks and a box-candy for later, maybe.

But revisiting it now on video, one has to say..."Yeah, nice job spiffing it up a bit." Of course, all it may take for you to like it might be the inclusion of your favorite bit from the radio play/book/mini-series (in which case, I was satisfied--they included the sperm-whale bit, which I always thought was a fine, cheerful/melancholic distillation of life), and since it's a very breezy encapsulation (see first graph) odds are you might feel the loss of a passage or three. Still it's a nice forest, even if a few of your favorite trees have been culled.

What's good? Generally, the cast, with Martin Freeman's "Dent, Arthur Dent" being a wonderfully down-played version of the character--the TV version with Simon Jones (the original Arthur--he has a fine cameo in the new movie) being a bit more Pythonesque (everything's a bit more Pythonesque in the TV series version)--Mos Def, a more off-center Ford Prefect, Bill Nighy a great Slartibartfast, Helen Mirren as "Deep Thought," Alan Rickman as the downcast robot Marvin, and Stephen Fry as the Voice of the Guide. 

The stand-out is Sam Rockwell who plays Galaxy President Zaphod Beeblebrox as W. with accelerated ADD (and isn't that a terrifying concept), and one has to admit that the filmmakers came up with a nifty solution for the two-head problem (Zaphod has them) that has plagued past productions. And you couldn't ask for a better beginning to the film.*

All well and good.

Zooey Deschanel is a bit creepy as Tricia/Trillian (but then, she'd have to be),** and there's an extended segment with John Malkovich which might have gone under the knife to include a couple more Guide entries, and the ending's a bit neat and tidy for an Adams adaptation, but really, I can't complain (except for that last bit), and the advanced design by Jennings and CGI-wizardry-gone-bizarre are full of little surprises right to the last jump of the Improbability Drive. 

Cheerful and friendly, while chirping about dark, dark things,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a nice addition to the ever-expanding Library of all-things-Adams.

Now if they'd just do "Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

*

 

** Ya know, reading that, I just don't think I was used to the kind of unique performer Deschanel is and after years of watching her work, a recent reviewing made me appreciate what she did in the film.