The Queen

Sometimes, what I haven't posted is more surprising to me than what I have. Today's case in point: this amazing film by Stephen Frears with an arch script by Peter Morgan and a terrific cast. The Queen is dead, two days after bringing in a new Prime Minister—her 15th (the first being Churchill) and a short time after celebrating her 70th year on the throne. After years of short-reigned British royalty, Elizabeth II gave a reassuring continuity to a nation going through post-imperial crises, and she managed to walk the edge of being Her Majesty and, contradictorily, Public Servant. Self-sacrifice and Privilege rarely go hand-in-hand, but she did it, and did it well.

Written at the time of the film's release.  Re-published on The Queen's.

 

"Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say"

Sir Paul McCartney

 

And another Beatles quote might be appropriate here, as well. George Harrison's horrified appraisal of Beatlemania: "We gave them an excuse to go mad." Surely that's how

the Royals must have felt seeing the outpouring of grief generated by the death of former Princess Diana over the week that this smart bitchy little film covers. The tone and volume of the crowds that surrounded Buckingham Palace, fueled by the predatory tabloids, approached hysteria and went well past the accepted levels of decorum practiced by its inhabitants. Flying the flag at half-mast for Diana? They hadn't even done it for the death of the King! The idea! There's a telling line QEII says in bewilderment: "But she isn't even an H.R.H.!"—a lovely combination of formality and informality within the Royal Family. But the film has its own opening quote, from Shakespeare--the one half-mocked by Jack Nicholson in The Departed--"Uneasy lies the head...etc, etc." But, in this day and age it can be asked, "Who wears the crown?" 

Is it the Queen, cosseted in formal procedure and pomp, restricted in her powers and budgeted by the government (the first scene of the movie has an arch little discussion between her and a portrait artist regarding democracy and the in-coming Labor party of Tony Blair. "You might not be allowed to vote, ma'am,* but it is your government." "Yes...it is," she replies, smiling at the constancy)? Is it the fledgling Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) who must bow and scrape to the Queen, but who uses whatever power he has to influence her actions? Is it Blair's eager-beaver, though cynical, staff, micro-managing and creating press-releases and agendas that sometimes frustrate, while bolstering the image of, the new PM? The Queen's consort, Prince Phillip, blusters about what is proper and how he'd do things (assuming he was in charge), and son Charles, dithering and deferential (there's a lovely moment as Charles enters a room where James Cromwell, playing Phillip--pointedly crosses his arms without even acknowledging that he knows his son is in the room), tries to sway the Queen emotionally and by proxies. Or is it the rabble with their devastated faces and the endless supply of flowers that becomes a memorial and a substitute for any public display from official sources? 

Then there is the late Princess herself, seen only in vintage news footage, at times clowning, at times vulnerable...and at times, with a look like she's viewing the proceeding with a knowing satisfaction. 

One wonders how the Royals themselves would see this film**...no doubt, as an affront to be taken in stoic, stony silence. Yet, one can understand their actions, and even have some sympathy for their dilemma, while also wanting to shake some sense into them.

The Queen is a fine, gossipy movie, with a literate script***(whether any of the things depicted behind closed draw-bridges is anyone's guess) by Peter Morgan—he also wrote last year's The Last King of Scotland, top-of-the-line performances led by Helen Mirren (who has the canny knowledge to know she's playing two roles: Elizabeth and an eerie "Elizabeth-as-Monarch," and, yes, she'll win the Oscar for Best Actress)**** and a direction by Stephen Frears that's smart and canny. The last shot is the most telling. Frears leaves us with an image of the Queen walking in her immaculate formal garden--her unruly Pomeranian dogs jumping and bouncing and using the facilities while Elizabeth pays no mind to the chaos.

Long Live the Queen.

 

* And make sure you pronounce that correctly. We're told that it is "Ma'am" as in "ham," not as in "harm." One of the conceits of the film is to show the "accepted" ways to present oneself to the Queen--always a prescribed way, no more and no less--surely a main reason for the atrophy the Windsors displayed in not responding to the public's reaction.

 

**I read somewhere in the Golden Globes coverage this morning that the Queen told Mirren "someone finally got (playing her) right."

***There's a funny scene where Blair, flush with his efforts to influence the situation starts to push for his own agenda. Elizabeth will have none of it, and warns her PM not to be too complacent for his crisis will come when he least expects it. It took every ounce of restraint to keep from yelling "Yo, Blair!" at the screen.

**** She did.

 

Post-script 02/07/07: Slate has quite an informative interview with director Stephen Frears

W.

Written at the time of the film's release. I took out a long rant about the Bush Administration (when I wrote it Bush was still in office) and I wanted my prejudices out front. Here, the prejudices are for Oliver Stone's issues with film-making (for the most part).

Plus, the venom I spewed at that time, seems almost quaint considering what has come after him since. Bush has been heard to remark about Trump "He makes me look pretty good." Michelle Obama and he are "besties," insisting on sitting together whenever "the formers" must gather. And Clinton and he act like they're joshing brothers, after Clinton and his father became close friends, post-presidencies (Clinton BEAT Bush in in the 1992 presidential election, but it didn't matter...).

One must acknowledge grace in our leaders...when they lead...and show us the way.

"Somethin' 'Bout Bein' in the Barrel"

Oliver Stone is no one's idea of an objective film-maker, if there is such a thing. Once a screenwriter puts pen to paper, they've already started manipulating the movie to their point-of-view, whether it's from the left, right, center or upside-down (Why do you think they're called "directors?"). So, no one should be surprised that Stone has an ax to grind, with W..

Stone is a director of heart, but he frequently by-passes his brain when making his points. So, Platoon, still his best film, hi-jacks the gritty depiction of grunt jungle-fighting with Stone's own conflicted "Daddy" issues, his "Pvt. Chris Taylor" having to choose between two superiors with different moral ways of engaging the enemy. Lincoln and every fantasist depicting moral choice has put angels and devils on our shoulders. Stone burdens us with His Old Man. That same scenario was transferred to High Finance, with his very next film Wall Street. I haven't seen every film of Stone's, but most of them are concerned, in some capacity, with paternal conflicts. And because he's a better propagandist than scenarist, most Stone films stop dead whenever we get to each Stone "thesis," invariably a Message being presented by a single character who has center-stage and our undivided attention. JFK, a dazzling technical exercise of photography and editing, comes positively unglued in its presentation of conflicting conspiracy scenarios for Pres. Kennedy's assassination (Kennedy being another Stone father figure--"Our murdered King," as he's described in the screenplay (completely by-passing any thought that we might, you know, be living in a democracy with a representative government), until Kevin Costner's prosecutor Jim Garrison places in his summation a theory on military-industrial conspiracy behind the Vietnam War, a Stone obsession.* In W. Dick Cheney—Richard Dreyfuss clearly enjoys being given the opportunity to play him**—stops an Iraq War strategy session to pontificate on securing Middle East interests for oil exploitation for a hundred years. Give the man points for passion, but his movies become such a glut of emotion that the point becomes lost in the gnashing of teeth and the wringing of hands. His bio-pic of Nixon was such a slap-dash affair, it seemed like a badly-cast TV-movie gloss-over, skipping from high-light to low-light in time to shoe-horn the next commercial (A weirdly fictional conversation between Chairman Mao and Nixon was Stone's show-stopper there). By the end, with its End-Credits playing over a Mormon Tabernacle Choir-rendition of "Shenandoah," one almost felt some sympathy for the man. Nixon, not Stone.

W. (his too-early summation of the second Bush Administration) suffers the same problems. It's a gloss of recent events, interspersed with flash-backs to the wastrel days of the young George W. Bush (played throughout by Josh Brolin),*** drunk with entitlement and just about anything else he could find. Particular heed is paid to his relationship with "Pappy" George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell, though he seems nothing like Bush the Elder, displays quiet bluster and submerged weakness), in which the good-for-nothing son is particularly eaten up, not by his own failures, but by his father's view of them.

The best part of the film—oddly for Stone—is Bush's conversion to The Faith. Struggling with his alcoholism, determined to become a Public Figure (as private industry success constantly eludes him), he is converted by Pastor Earl Hudd (Stacy Keach, playing it straight, and doing some of the best work of his long career), introducing Bush to the second "Daddy," the Divine One, slotting this film into the standard Stone scenario. One knew, as soon as Bob Woodward revealed that Bush, prior to the invasion of Iraq, didn't consult his father/former President, but, instead, relied on the advice of a "Higher Father to appeal to," that Stone would obsess on it and exploit it. The film-maker takes the one relationship as far as it will go, creating a fantasy sequence where Bush 41 challenges Bush 43 to fisticuffs, but Stone doesn't have "the stones" to have W. duking it out with his Savior, J.C.

That battle's still to come.

Stone starts "W." with a Sergio Leone close-up of Bush's steely gaze, what impressionist Frank Caliendo says "like he's always got the sun in his eyes." It's another fantasy sequence, where W. acknowledges the cheers of an empty baseball stadium from center-field--what he'll later reveal as "his favorite place on Earth." The movie will end back on those eyes, searching, confused, disoriented--having lost a pop-fly "in the lights." Those distorted lights show up twice more in the movie--in that previously mentioned conversion scene, as well as when a hung-over Bush collapses while jogging. That's it? That's what we get? A half-assed light show? Is Stone saying he's abandoned by God, or that Bush is overwhelmed by his circumstances? The metaphor's too half-baked to communicate as solid concept clearly.

One could look at W.'s story in Shakespearean terms, as a modern day Prince Hal, whoring and wenching in his oats-sewing days to become the Monarch his father couldn't be. The difference is Hal had Falstaff as guide to the back-alleys of Agincourt. George W. Bush is his own King. And his own Fool.

But Oliver Stone is too busy making room for his "Daddy" theories to create a proper condemnation. As with Nixon, you start to actually sympathize with the man. Any illumination into the man or the effect of his Administration is lost in the lights. To Stone, he is just another Yalie "poor little lamb who has lost his way."

Bah. Bah...and Bah.

* Any judge would have gaveled the irrelevancy, but Stone's judge was played by the real-life Garrison.

** Dreyfuss had a lovely phrase about working with Stone on W. when he was on "The View:" "You can still be a fascist...even if you're on the left."

**Josh Brolin does fine work, but the performance feels a bit "one-note," having to nail the too-familiar Bush mannerisms and vocal tendencies.

Tomorrow—merely by coincidence, another "period" film.

The Laundromat

That Clinking, Clanking Sound
or 
And the People All Said 'Sit Down. Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat'

Steve Soderbergh has been experimenting with the ways of getting films distributed for years—he's worked out the mechanics of film-making (he does the cinematography and the editing himself, by and large), but the distribution has always been a challenge. Distribution means can affect what sort of movie gets made and how a good movie can be altered in order to maximize the investment. Sometimes it can alter it to the point where the mere vestige of the film's intent will make it onto the screen, as distribution will determine how much the money the film will make back to its investors.

It's a big deal, and Soderbergh, who has been careening from serious movies to fluff, has experimented with all sorts of distribution models. This is his first film for Netflix, and it worked out with a kind of serendipity. It involves Meryl Streep. And Mike Nichols.

Nichols had a close relationship with Soderbergh—the two frequently paired up to do commentaries for Nichols' films for DVD—and, before he died, Nichols suggested that Streep work with Soderbergh on a project, as she might find it a rewarding job. This project, The Laundromat, an exploration of shell corporations and the revelations that came from The Panama Papers leaks had been in the works for a few years, and when Streep signed on to star, it attracted the attention of Netflix—it seems they didn't have a lot of Streep's films in its collection. Voila! Netflix put up the money (theoretically).

The Laundromat is almost a perfect film for a streaming service like Netflix, as opposed to theater distribution. Not unlike the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, it is not a star-driven story (and nobody wears a symbol on their chest) but a theme-based anthology, in this case revolving around the true "trickle-down" from a diversified and increasingly speculative economy. That subject won't beat a path to any multi-plex, but Soderbergh and his screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Informant!, The Bourne Ultimatum) do a fairly comprehensive (and episodic) breakdown of what the issues are, demonstrations of the dangers of these issues, and consequences—the true "tickle-down"—to those who can't afford shells, shills, and hedge strategies to preserve the money but are still affected by them, nonetheless.

As such, it's a better film in both presentation and explanation than the lauded The Big Short, and it's as encompassing and cautionary as Soderbergh's extraordinary (and extraordinarily prescient) film, Contagion.

The Laundromat begins cheekily with a "Dawn of Man" sequence, ala 2001: A Space Odyssey and introduces us to its two most important characters, the narrators, Jürgen Mossack (played by Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (played by Antonio Banderas) of the now-defunct (but real, true-life) company Mossack Fonseca*, self-described as "white gloves—we keep hands from getting dirty." In this opening, they describe the history of money—while helping—and making life difficult—for some anonymous cave-men, their eyes masked by digital black bars. The introduction is simple and whimsical:

Ramón Fonseca: First of all, there are some things you should know before we begin.
Jürgen Mossack: For instance, we are real people, just like you.
Ramón Fonseca: Secondly, we did not write a word of this. To be perfectly frank, we would have preferred all of this remain a secret.
Jürgen Mossack: But we had no choice in the matter. We just woke up one day and everything changed.
Ramón Fonseca: There were stories about us everywhere: TV, newspapers, and the internet.
Jürgen Mossack: And now it is our turn to tell a few stories. Think of them as fairy tales that actually happened.
Ramón Fonseca:  Don't worry, these stories are not just about us. They're also about you.
Jürgen Mossack: And how is that possible? 
Ramón Fonseca: Because all these stories are about money.
Jürgen Mossack: The idea of money. The necessity of money. The secret life of money.
Ramón Fonseca:  Before money, there was only the barter system. You tried to trade what you had or what you could do for what you needed. You have bananas, but you need a cow. I have a cow, but I hate bananas, so, as you can imagine, there are limits to this system. Bananas turn brown over time and cows can, you know wander away. So, an agreed-upon medium of exchange was needed.
Jurgen Mossack: What is a medium of exchange? Well, it could be a nugget of gold. Or some other shiny rocks that are generally found to be scarce. It could be a...a slip of paper...with words on it...or pictures of powerful people. And if you read those words, you will see that they are arranged into a promise of value.
Ramón Fonseca: Slips of paper...which you cannot peel and eat or do not give milk...are what we all agreed to call "money." And these slips gave birth to many other pieces of paper with more writing on them.
Jürgen Mossack: And some of those words, they told the story of credit.
Ramón Fonseca: Oh...stay with us now. This is important.
Jürgen Mossack: Credit is an invention that meant you no longer needed to carry around, uh, millions of bananas on slips of paper.
Ramón Fonseca: So you now have something invisible, credit, standing in for something intangible, a cow.
Jürgen Mossack: Credit said that even if you didn't have all the bananas you need for what you want, you could borrow bananas...from the future.
Ramón Fonseca: So, credit is just the future tense of the language of money.
Jürgen Mossack: Speaking of the future...
Ramón Fonseca: Things have gotten a little more complicated. Actually, a LOT more complicated.
Jürgen Mossack: There is more money than ever before!
Ramón Fonseca: Our money has more names than ever before.
Jürgen Mossack: Commodities, loans, stocks and bonds. Funds and funds of funds.
Ramón Fonseca: Futures, equity, derivatives, securitized debt, shorts and margin calls. Financial instruments.
Jürgen Mossack: Words. Invisible. Abstract. Very different from cows.

That is a fun little primer on money—that, essentially, it does not exist. It is merely an agreement of value, and it has nothing to do with reality. Like the price of gold or platinum, the cost of a Rembrandt, the cost of a fake Rembrandt, or the salary of a CEO. Words. Promises. Abstract. The film is broken down into chapters sub-headed by financial "secrets" which have relations to the segment that follows, be it part of the main story of Ellen Martin (Streep's character) or short tales that might have some basis in true events or not.  

Secret 1: The Meek Get Screwed: Ellen Martin (Streep) and her husband (James Cromwell) meet friends for a little boat-cruise that ends up in disaster when the boat flips and her husband is killed. There is no insurance because the company insuring the excursion company has been resold to a foreign company based out of the island of Nevis in the Caribbean and is a trust held by Mossack Fonseca. The money cannot be touched.
Secret 2: It's Just Shells: Ellen relocates to Las Vegas where she has bought a condominium that overlooks the spot where she and her husband first met. But, her real estate agent (Sharon Stone) tells her the deal's off, even though papers were signed. Russian investors have paid double in cash for the property. Ellen goes to confront the managers of the company in Nevis, but, instead, finds only a post office box. She runs into the MF trust manager (Jeffrey Wright), who pretends not to speak English, but is planning to fly to Miami. 
Secret 3: Tell a Friend: When a trust-fund gets in trouble, it merely moves its assets to a more friendly nation for its benefit.

Secret 4: Bribery 101: Charles (Nonso Anozie) is an African billionaire who makes the mistake of having an affair with the friend of his college-age daughter, who finds out and threatens to tell her mother. To keep her silent about it, Charles offers her shares in one of his investment companies worth $20 billion, which she eventually finds out is worthless because it is only a shell company. When we see Mossack and Fonseco again, they'll reveal that shell corporations aren't illegal—tax evasion is a crime, but tax avoidance isn't and that everyone has shell corporations, and that The Laundromat's director has five of them (and even the writer has one).

Secret 5: Making a Killing: Based on a true incident, a Mossack functionary, Maywood (Matthias Schoenarts) tries to put pressure on a Chinese woman (Rosalind Chao) to maintain a laundering interest through his company, but for larger fees and winds up being poisoned by her for his trouble.

What is brilliant about The Laundromat is the emphasis and power of money's abstract properties. Yes, they may be only a promise of value, but that will still break down (I would say "trump" but I won't go for the cheap laugh) things that are more substantial, like law, contractual obligations, family loyalty, or the value of a human life (money, to no one's surprise, is more valuable). No wonder we've got billionaires—in their gilt-edged ivory towers—who, at the end of the day...or their lives...have merely acquired money "to hide behind" (in the film's phrase), and sold out any grip of reality. Money is more reliable than bimbo-wives, bratty irresponsible kids, and failing organs, particularly maxed-out livers and shriveled, atrophied hearts. The illusion of money is power, and, without it, you're just another human.

Can't have that.

And if you want power, then it's nothing without having people without it. Sen. Barry Goldwater (conservative Republican from Arizona) was asked after Watergate what would prevent another one. His answer was blunt: "Stop printing money." Damn right. The Laundromat ends with the words of the whistle-blower who leaked the Panama Papers intoned by three characters played by the same actor, ripping away artifice to get to reality and they make the leap that the only way to get rid of the problem is by campaign finance reform...because the guys allowing the problem and the fleecing of America are the ones taking bribes from the fleecers. They have the power to do it, but concede that power to the guys with bucks and the means to hide it for them. The bucks stop with them, and there the "trickle-down" stops.

* The two men and their company did exist and did extensive interviews with screenwriter Burns, but days before the film was to appear on Netflix, they issued a cease and desist to stop the film or they would sue. Netflix dismissed the threat as "laughable."

The Artist (2011)

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

Portrait of the Film as a Young Medium
or
Silents is Golden

First off...GREAT sound-design.

(tap, tap, tap...is this mic' on?)

It's easy to be positively giddy over the success that The Artist has enjoyed (ultimately winning the year's best Picture Oscar). I've enjoyed Michel Hazanavicius' previous pairings with Jean Dujardin—the spy-spoof OSS-117 films—even if they were a little uneven, they managed to nail the ambiance of the films they were parodying, while also chortling over their excesses, even while embracing them. 

And Dujardin is a terrific performer, light on his feet and hitting his comedy points with deft left jabs. In the "OSS" films, it was pretty obvious that he was a superb cross-over entertainer, believable when playing it straight (if ever), but also knowing just how far to push things to trip it into comedy. Unlike Peter Sellers, whose agents always seemed to be harboring deep-set inferiority complexes underneath their pompous egotism, Dujardin was always blissfully clueless, truly believing that he was terrific, and that the strings of pratfalls, misfires and collateral damage were just temporary set-backs, no matter how regularly they occurred, followed by a laugh that was too loud and went on far too long.

The Artist has no problems of pace, or of sequences that fall flat. It takes its strengths from the medium it cherishes—the silent films on the cusp of sound, when the visual art of story-telling was at its peak and was somewhat quashed to accommodate the large pieces of equipment that could squeak and rumble and ruin a fluid camera movement, and when expression was King. The world of film was silent and focused on image—I was struck in a sequence that showed a high angle of a motion-picture theater audience watching a film being projected with symphonic accompaniment, that the eye always wandered to what was on screen—it tells its story with the directness of vision of that particular era (okay, some close-ups belie the time and the film dispenses with fog-filters and other tricks employed then) and the clean image of glamour, even to the simplicity of a cold-water flat of an apartment. 

Faces are carefully chosen for contrast and specificity of character, rather than overall performance, and one can only imagine the voices that accompany the expressions—appropriately, dialog cards are used, but sparingly—nothing aural spoils the picture contained within the frame, widening it or presenting the intrusion of a world outside of it, a point that is made quite literally at one point in one very clever sequence. One is clued in early on, when movie star George Valentin (Dujardin) stands behind the movie screen as his film ends and awaits acknowledgment from the crowd.  Haznavacius holds on his image as he waits—there is only silence—until he raises his fist in triumph at the applause we cannot hear, and which is verified only by the enthusiasm of the crowd in the next shot. The rules are set—we have to trust in what we see, not in what we expect to hear. This is not verisimilitude—the illusion of reality imposed by sound and image—this is a heightened and false world of industrialized artifice, concentrated and crystallized in glamorous black and white fiction, flaws be damned.

"...the eye always wandered to what was on screen"

But, it's more than that. Haznavacius isn't satisfied (as Mel Brooks was in his own Silent Movie of 1976) with just making a film without sound. He takes pains to evoke the era in which they were made, choosing the Los Angeles locations of the film extraordinarily carefully, to emphasize the arid spaces and chiaroscuro-deco architecture of the time (one nice sequence of a chance meeting on a studio staircase between Valentin—on his way down—and plucky starlet Peppy Miller—Bérénice Bejo, on her way up—is filmed in the beloved Bradbury Building, as if Fritz Lang or King Vidor had filmed it—straight on—as if to emphasize the ant-like activity of the personnel. And there is a visual grace to the story-telling that evokes the poetry that silent films were capable of in getting their point across without words.

Anything wrong with it? Not really, even the "controversial" use of Bernard Herrmann's "Scene d'amour" from Vertigo is appropriate (far more than it was in 12 Monkeys), with its combination of dramatic urgency and heartbreak, for a sequence it was clearly designed for. There are other films that were released last year with more reach (The Tree of Life) and depth (The Descendents), but The Artist is a great evocation of the joy of cinema, and its possibilities to entertain, even with limited means.

"...when the visual art of story-telling was at its peak"

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona, 2018) I didn't go see the latest installment of the "Jurassic Park" series when it was in theaters because its predecessor Jurassic World didn't do anything new, but merely switched out new characters for the old (with the exception of Jeff Goldblum), and continued with the idea that, despite the mayhem from three previous movies, someone—or some conglomerate—would still think it was a good idea to create a theme park around living, breathing, carnivorous, and entirely untrainable giant lizards. Then, they went with the crazy idea that someone—especially Chris Pratt's Owen Grady—could train veloci-raptors and—because science fiction reality isn't enough—that one could create NEW dinosaur types by tinkering with their DNA. There is just so much evidence that this is a Capital B-Capital I-Bad Idea on so many levels, but the movie had to track away from the original's "naivete of visionaries" theme to the naivete and craven greed of corporate interests. You can always count on corporations to do the wrong thing when a buck is concerned. So, the initial under-pinning of "just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should" gets lost in a message so obvious and ever-present, any novel new idea gets swamped by it.

Well, along comes Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and it recycles Spielberg's (rare) sequel film The Lost World: Jurassic Park, like so much re-captured DNA, with only a few changes to people, places, and things.

In that, the ne'er-do-well nephew of park creator John Hammond decided that, despite the disasters evident in the first film, he would ship a bunch of the dino's over to the U.S. (that wasn't in Crichton's follow-up novel, but Spielberg really wanted to have rampaging T-Rex's tromping through city-streets before some hack did it) for profit—because it worked so well having them on Isla Nublar.

Again, very bad idea. But, it's the exact same premise of Fallen Kingdom. This very bad idea is predicated on the issue that the volcano on Isla Nublar has decided to go super-nova, and so a mission is undertaken—by Hammond's business partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to save as many different dino-types as possible and put them on a new island—don't most large  islands have volcano's?—where they'll be safe to wander around without trampling any tourists (and, evidently, there are dino-preservationists who, since we've already messed with the natural order of things, think we should protect dinosaurs because they're so warm and cuddly, fit right into our eco-system, and besides "what could go worng? This is how Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) gets roped into the thing and this movie.

And if she's onboard, she'll get Pratt's raptor-trainer to coax "Blue" the remaining raptor from the last movie to get into a cage, or even sit on his lap, for the long flight to the new paleological digs.

This would be all fine-and-dandy (if a Bad Idea), if the intent was to actually re-locate the dinosaurs. But, no, it's a ruse by those shadowy corporate interests to auction off species for their potential uses of weapons of mass-stomping (they probably didn't show King Kong as the in-flight movie). Again, Bad Thing to do, but, then, a sequel was a bad thing to do, as well—so, one can imagine that such a thing might be possible.

The movie does have one nice little wrinkle to it that might be considered an interesting idea, and that is how they employ the standard "spunky little kid" into the scenario, which does utilize the "just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you should" theme to its maximum and logical conclusion. It is the one interesting idea in this sorry mess.

It is a sad thing to see, especially considering the director. J. A. Bayona has made a couple of really good, if not especially profitable films—A Monster Calls and The Impossible. Both of them are miles apart in genre and subject matter—one based on a popular children's book and the other on a true incident that occurred during the catastrophic tsunami in Thailand in 2004. It must have been tempting to take this talented director and try and goose his box-office appeal with a franchise-piece. But, it might have better served the director (and movies in general) to have allowed him to merely go with his muse and develop a project of his own leanings to create something truly unique as has been seen in his work in the past.

That might have been a GOOD idea.

Big Hero 6

Anime-zing
or
"This...Is What I've Been Working On"

Animation has come a long way since Winsor McKay first made Gertie the Dinosaur dance. From crude (if meticulous) key-animation to today's computer animation, it is still quite noticeable when somebody does something a little bit more innovative than what one is used to. Toy Story took computer imagery out of the clunky stage to give it grace, Ratatouille started to take things into the realm of photo-realism, Tangled took traditional Disney animation and gave it depth, which only advanced further with Frozen. Now, here comes Big Hero 6 (only somewhat related to the Marvel source), which advances things even further, while taking things in a slightly tangential tack in style.  

And, thematically, the way Disney has been doing lately, it manages to break away from the tropes of the genre and move in a fresh direction.

It is the future in the blended city of San Fransokyo (you can immediately tell the cross-culturalism when the Golden Gate Bridge has some decidedly pagoda-like stylings). Young Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) is a genius 14 year old engineer, who hasn't really applied himself except in the underground world of "bot-fights," where he wins wads of cash with his deceptively simple, unassuming little gadget that becomes a Tazmanian devil in the ring.

His hustling gets him in trouble with local toughs, but he is rescued by his older brother (Daniel Henney)—also an engineering genius—and encouraged for the umpteenth time, not to waste his life hustling, but become study and use his talents where they can do the most good—a quick stop at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology on the way to the next bot-fight lights the spark in him, and he begins to apply himself to the Next Great Idea that will gain him entry into the Institute.

What he comes up with is a lulu, a swarm of micro-bots that, with a neural transmitter, can be controlled by its human host to become...nearly anything. His presentation at the institute attracts the attention of the school's legendary Dr. Callaghan (James Cromwell) and the corporate kingpin Allistair Krei (Alan Tudyk), both of whom want Hiro's technology; Hiro decides not to sell his tech and his presentation wins him a scholarship.

But, things do not go well that night. The presentation hall where the competition is held erupts in flames and Dr. Callaghan is trapped inside. Hiro's brother Tadashi rushes in to save his mentor and the whole place explodes. There could be no survivors. Hiro is despondent over the loss of his brother, and foregoes his college plans, despite the encouragement of Tadashi's friends and colleagues. His only comfort is the Baymax (voiced by "30 Rock's" Scott Adsit), the "healthcare companion" that Tadashi was perfecting at the time of his death. Baymax is a big inflatable medical scanner that can diagnose, prescribe and comfort the sick.   Hiro, not being in the best of shape, accidentally activates him and the two discover that one of Hiro's micro-bots has survived the explosion at the presentation center...and appears to be trying to respond to commands.

But, from whom?

Baymax and Hiro set out to find out where the tiny micro-bot is attracted to and find an abandoned warehouse, with tones of Hiro's micro-bots in stasis. They also find a Kabuki-masked stranger controlling them. Both are set upon by the controlled micro-bots and only barely manage to escape, with the help of Tadashi's fellow students. The group decides to get to the bottom of all this and form a team with their tech-gadgets to try and find "Mr. Kabuki" and bring him to justice...as Big Hero 6, each of Tadashi's friends taking on a persona and "power" that matches their personality and research path.

Not the most promising of scenarios. Two things struck me about Big Hero 6, though, that took it out of the norm of most animation and superhero stories. Number one, the animation. It is of the Disney 2-D school (the directors worked on The Emperor's New Groove, Bolt and The Princess and the Frog) that has been plumped into three dimensions the way the studio's been doing it since Tangled.  But, there's more of an emphasis on detail and shading than has been done in the past—San Fransokyo is bathed in diffused light from a combination of fog and neon. And there's no Uncanny Valley near this Silicon Valley.  The characters are clearly cartoonish and caricature, but the shading and play of light across the faces and expressions suggest a musculature that could not be found in your standard artist's maquette. That awareness comes early on with the expressions of the participants in the bot-fight sequence, and after, one just becomes used to it, noting when something is noticeably tactile looking. I've missed an animated feature or two (like the Madagascar's and Box-Trolls), but this was the first time I got a sense of depth and musculature in the faces. It's definitely a step up.

On the well-trudged superhero front, the story is interesting. It sets up the by-now required de rigeuer "revenge/eye-for-an-eye" scenario that dominates the entire sub-genre of superhero movies (born out of the more commonplace action film), but—and this might have come with the influence of Disney exec/former Pixar head John Lasseter—that "avenging" storyline is subverted to the point where the "taking revenge" impetus is both undermined and rendered moot (as being indistinguishable from the villains' motivations). It is odd that the "superhero" story has become so enmeshed in this singular through-line of story (to the point where even the most altruistic of the "meta-heroes" must be shoe-horned into the "you shall be revenged" Bat-school) when the history of the comics have been rife with different origins. Big Hero 6 breaks the mold and even questions its legitimacy.

And that, for one, makes it seem all the more fresh...and heroic.

Big Hero 6 is accompanied by a short cartoon, Feast, that pushes the way narrative is told in a purely visual way.  Definitely worth checking out.