"Wreck-it Ralph" - Film Review

Wreck-It-Ralph has an initial premise that sounds really cool. It’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets Toy Story. When the customers are away from the arcade, the video game characters have their own lives. Each game is interconnected so that characters can leave their own game and go to therapy in Pac-Man or get a drink at Tappers. The film gets a lot of mileage out of the many in-film references to various video games, both from the arcade era but also about more modern games such as Call of Duty and Gears of War.

While this intriguing premise is part of the film’s charm, what really sells it are the more original elements thrown in. There’s a surprisingly touching story about misfits and finding your place. I was just pleased to see an animated Disney movie that didn’t have anything to do with a princess. The film’s central relationship is about Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz. The two of them are both unwanted in their games and attempting to do things to earn their place in their respective games. This relationship ends up becoming the heart of the film. 

This is a case of the animation and the voice acting complimenting one another. There’s some wonderfully luscious, rounded animation that’s warm and inviting. The film really gives each video game world we enter a distinct feel. The animators have fun playing around with the fact that we are inside videogames. In the more retro games, characters move in stilted and clunky movements when they attempt to do different actions. The newer games are more fluid and, as Fix-It-Felix puts it, HD. This animation is brought to life by an impeccable cast. John C. Reilly is perfectly suited for Ralph, providing a real soft spot to the lug. Sarah Silverman is also well-chosen for Vanellope, providing the right amount of lisped, cutesy enthusiasm to all her lines but not so much that it becomes annoying.   

Ralph is tired of being the “bad guy” of the game he’s in, Fix-It Felix. He decides that if he gets a medal, it’ll be proof that he’s just as good as the “good guys”. So he sets out to earn a medal. His first stop is in a big shoot-em’- up.  He eventually gets the medal but in the process releases one of the bug monsters from the game, and outside their own game these creatures start to wreak havoc. 

He then finds himself in a racing game set in a candy-based world. Here he meets, who is a glitch that wasn’t meant to be part of the game. Ralph immediately sympathizes with her outcast status and tries to help her achieve her dream of winning the race.

After Ralph leaves, kids stop playing the game assuming the game is broken. The arcade owner puts an “out of order” sign on the game and plans to have the game removed. Felix (Jack McBrayer) scrambles to find ralph and save the game from going on the trash heap. 

The stakes are raised due to the fact that if a character dies outside their own game, they die for real. A problem exacerbated by the alien bugs and a meddling candy king who’s obsessed with maintaining his power, and also may not be all he seems to be.

The film works as well it does because it isn’t just a handful of amusing, randomly strung together jokes about video games. There’s a really well told, original story. Though the story has lot of familiarity to it, no one ever said a good film had to reinvent the wheel. The film’s ability to build up whole new worlds that feel rich and detailed adds to the viewing experience. Above all else though, this is a really fun movie. It’s funny, heartwarming, and filled with tons of great visuals. 

Grade: A-

Community - "Economics of Marine Biology" - Review

To be quite honest, I’m not really sure what’s going on in Community anymore. There are plenty of series that decline in quality in their fourth season. On tv right now, there’s Cougar Town, Archer, and The Vampire Diaries, all diverse series that haven’t lost their sense of purpose but aren’t operating at the same level of output they were at their peak. And yet I really just don’t know what’s happening on Community anymore.

Part of it is the natural evolution of a television comedy. Shows are often weaker in later season and pushing to squeeze out any jokes they can, and fourth seasons are a common time for this fatigue to start setting in. The show probably wouldn’t be as good as it was in the past even if Dan Harmon was still showrunner. The third season had a lot of problems that were very clear, but even with those problems the series was still producing some of its best episodes. And even in the episodes I had qualms there were plenty of funny moments that made up for their flaws.  And yet, the series isn’t all that funny anymore. Humor is subjective and tastes will vary, and so it’s a little unfair to judge a series on how funny it is, and that’s why when I review I try to get at the other matters at hand that make something work or not. But when something is funny it can raise a series above its shortcomings and when a series is not funny, well it just stinks. 

Part of it is that the episodes are overstuffed, and this is the most overstuffed of them all. Abed is hardly even in the episode, and none of the storylines are given enough room to go anywhere. But the series has been overstuffed before and made it work. And being overstuffed isn’t bad when in the hands of capable talent, but when done wrong very glaring. A lot of these stories could have become bigger premises but they’re never fleshed out enough.

I like the idea of Jeff and Pierce making an unexpected connection, and this is the most engaged Chevy Chase has appeared to be all season, but it’s barely given screentime. The Troy and Shirley storyline is incredibly pointless and never given enough room to make an impact or provide a purpose for itself.

The Annie-Dean storyline is so broad and unfocused that it doesn’t really work. While I like the idea of Magnitude being forced to retract his catchphrase, the sentiment never hits the emotional note it ought to.   

    

These are very good performers but they’re stuck in stories that even they can’t save.

Grade: C+

The Vampire Diaries - "Because the Nights" - Review

Something I’ve noticed lately in The Vampire Diaries is that it’ll have one plot that is great (arguably even one of the best it’s ever done) and then the other one or two storylines will feel slight. It’s usually been the A-plot (which is what you’d likely expect in a tv series) and for the most part these awesome plotlines are so good that they make up for the weaker portions of the episode elsewhere. This was true of last week’s episode where the newly transformed emotionless Elena was the highlight of the episode, and it’s true once again of “Because the Nights”.

It’s not just that Nina Dobrev is great in this new role. It’s the fact that this character is so completely unhinged that I have no idea what she plans to do. Klaus broods and complains, but he doesn’t really stir up unanticipated trouble. Silas is another one-minded villain hell bent on a singular goal. But, much like Katherine, emotionless Elena is a devious, calculating individual who is beholden to no one.

When Elena tells Rebekah how she’s aware of how Damon is playing her, and how she’s simultaneously playing him back, it had me grinning. This is the type of delicious scheming that is the raison d’etre of The Vampire Diaries. 

That this story is paralleled with a story of Damon’s involvement in the 1970’s punk scene is even better (Though I’d have liked to seen them play up the period detail more). Plus we get the return of one of the series best guest stars, Arielle Kebbel as Lexi. Lexi attempts to fix Damon and get him to embrace his emotions again, but Damon plays her, sleeping with her before leaving her stranded on the roof. Present day we find Elena (with the help of Rebekah – an unexpected but great pairing, which is the return of another classic Vampire Diaries element:  ever shifting alliances) doing the same thing to Damon. Karma is the worst sometimes.

While this storyline features some of the best elements to a great Vampire Diaries episode, the Silas storyline feels bland in comparison. Klaus and Caroline’s bickering has gotten repetitive and isn’t being taken in any new directions. The scheme to stop Bonnie from using expression magic to create a witch massacre also should have had more weight to it. Why isn’t’ the cavalry being called in? We get three characters trying to stop what could potentially cause the end of the world. 

The NYC storyline covers for a lot of the problems in the other storyline but I wish the episode was more streamlined. Although that ending paid off both stories nicely dovetailing them when Steffen and Damon talked only to realize they’ve both failed and thus things have gotten much, much worse. It’s the mixed bag that this season has ultimately been, but recent episodes have had enough fun and enough forward momentum to make up for the problems. And, hey, with a story as punchy as this, I can’t complain.  

Stray Observations:

-Great music choice: Talking Heads - “Psycho Killer”

-Back in the 70’s, Damon was killing people so their ID’s could be used for vampires on the run, including, unintentionally, Katherine.

-Man, they’ve done an awful job with using Bonnie’s dad.

-The crosscut of the feedings was weirdly erotic.

-“I hated the moral self-righteous you”

-Though much of the Caroline-Klaus stuff was a re-hash, this last scene between them I found to be really effective. Candice Accola’s acting was excellent.

-Caroline kills the witch to save Bonnie and in the process causes the massacre. How do we feel about this?

Grade: B+ 

"The Loves of a Blonde" - Film Review

There are some films that feel true to life. They’re filled with so many nicely observed moments that there’s an authenticity to them. They feel real. The Loves of a Blonde is obviously staged because it’s a movie, but, in the hands of director Milos Forman, there are so many of these joyous small scenes that sometimes it’s easy to forget and slip into its world.

Andula (Hana Brejchová) has gotten engaged to a man that she hasn’t seen for a month. She says she loves him but she’s upset that he hasn’t gotten back to her in so long. 

In the meantime, she goes to a party hosted for reserve troop brought in to undo the gender imbalance in the small town (A ratio of 16 women to 1 men - There's some social satire here about communism in Czechoslovakia). She and her friends notice that three soldiers keep looking over at them and they’re certain they want to dance with them. The girls are embarrassed, but also a little flattered. The soldiers, who are much older than these young girls, argue as to whether the girls would be cool with them going over to ask them to dance.

In the film's first incredibly charming and funny moment, the men send over a bottle of Champaign to the girls and the waiter accidentally sends it to the wrong table. Due to the crosscutting, the meaning of the whole situation is made further funny; the girls are relieved while the men are flustered and angry.

Eventually the soldiers do dance with them. It’s a slightly awkward but mostly fun night. After one of the soldiers pressures them to drink wine and then to go somewhere else with them, they head off to the bathroom to discuss what they should do. Andula isn’t interested though. 

She’s about to leave, but then she runs into the piano player from the band at the party. She’s been occasionally eying him all night. He convinces her to come back to his room, but she keeps saying that she’s going to leave soon. He jokes around and teaches her self-defense, and before you know it she’s won over. They sleep together, and she sneaks out in the morning. In another one of those perfect little details, at the same time she’s doing her walk of shame, she runs into one of the women from the table who falsely received the Champaign doing the exact same thing.    

She returns to her normal life. She works in the factory and lives in her dormitory. The piano player, Milda (Vladimír Pucholt), is still on her mind though. When the boy she’s technically engaged to suddenly shows up, he berates her for not wearing the ring he gave her. He makes her go back to her dorm to get the ring. When she won’t come back down, he storms in and yells at her. But her roommates defend her, and she finally tells him off. 

Inspired by this, she decides she’ll hitchhike up to see Milda. However, she never tells him that she’s coming, and it leads to a series of awkward encounters with his parents. She shows up at his apartment, but he’s at a gig. She leaves but asks them to hold onto her suitcase. The parents contemplate and argue why Milda would have a girl come over like this; the mother is particularly frustrated. Andula returns because the frontdoor is locked and she needs help leaving, but the mother has her stay since she wants to get a look at the potential beau of her son. The mother questions the lack of thoughtfulness to her decision making (where was she planning to spend the night in Prague?).   

They tell her that she can spend the night. Everyone goes to sleep, and Milda (who has been out having dinner with another girl) returns home in the middle of the night. His father hears him come in and asks him who the girl is. He claims that he doesn’t recognize her and didn’t invite her. Andula wakes up and he gets a better look at her and makes the connection as to who she is. They talk, the spark between them seems rekindled (or Milda at least feigns that it is). 

But soon after, the mother will not tolerate them sleeping together and drags him into the parents’ bed. This leads to one of the funniest and most realistic scenes, where the three individuals find it near impossible to get comfortable with the lack of space they now have in the bed. It also doesn’t help that they’re bickering the whole time (mainly about Andula’s sudden arrival). She sneaks a listen into this and it makes her cry.  She's been disillusioned by the whole incident and heads home.

Not much happens, but it all has a sincerity to it. We’ve all had those days where these odd but meaningful series of events have occurred. We’ve all juggled romantic commitments. The greatest aspect about it is how it undercuts these moments to make them all the more real. Andula showing up at Milda’s doorstep is that grand romantic gesture everyone has thought of making and seen in the movies, and she shows up and nothing goes as planned. More importantly the guy she thought she was in love with and her romantic longing turn out to both be false. A funny, poignant, breezy film.

Grade: A

New Girl - "Quick Hardening Caulk" - Review

Will they-won’t they tension is very easy to handle. For some pairings it will be infinitely more entertaining to watch the dance.  But any show can throw together two individuals with some chemistry and play out endless variations of sexual tension never amounting to anything. What’s far more difficult is to break that comfortable barrier and throw the will they-won’t they individuals head long toward eachother. 

When New Girl finally acted upon the clear development of feelings between Nick and Jess, reactions were mixed. It was a great moment and near perfectly executed, but the moment after being pleased at how well done it was, the next feeling many of us had was a sense of dread: there’s no way they can pull off the aftermath of this. But New Girl has continually proven itself incredibly capable of dealing with the aftermath of the Nick-Jess kiss.

In fact, the newly arisen tension between the two characters has sparked even more energy and life into a series that was already very good. Nick and Jess’s dynamic pre-kiss was amusing but it’s in some ways even more entertaining now post-kiss. Part of the success is due to Jake Johnson and Zooey Deschanel’s performances, but it’s also due to some great writing.

Having Nick be suddenly sexually attractive once more due to him being ambitious and goal oriented is a brilliant idea. Having it be due to him trying to win the affections of his new boss (a relationship Nick hilariously describes as, “going to end badly. But the middle part is gonna be awesome”. Oh how right you are Nick) is an even better decision. This is smart writing; it’s a surprisingly complicated conflict that requires a lot of tough balancing and it effortlessly establishes an ending that gives us a Nick-Jess hook up that doesn’t bring them together. There are other things along the way. Jess fawns for Nick in spite of herself while Nick is too oblivious to notice, and his obliviousness leads to Jess ultimately being in a drugged up state that leads to the removal of all his naivete about her feelings. This scene also ends up unexpectedly causing problems for their eventual hook up since both are too injured to properly make out. It’s an excellent series of bread crumb trail laying that pays off great. 

The will they-won’t they is still there but it’s far more complex now. Putting the cards on the table hasn’t made the show any less enjoyable; the show still has me so thrown that I have no real inclination as to what’s in store for these two, but with the feelings out in the open, there’s a livewire energy that is trickling down into all other aspects of the show. New Girl is also really good at having stories intersect and dovetail. Schmidt and Winston have their own plot going on, but before they gallivant off, they find themselves giving advice to Nick. It allows both plots to be pushed forward while finding ways to have the stories not feel entirely closed off and unrelated. 

Schmidt using a lionfish as a bizarre metaphor for losing Cece is also very funny in its own right. The way Max Greenfield plays Schmidt’s commitment to his delusions is so well-done. In the hands of many other performers, Schmidt could become grating, but it’s to Greenfield’s credit that we find Schmidt so damn endearing. When Cece shows up at the hospital and Winston has to tell her that it’s best that she leaves, it’s terribly heartbreaking. Like the Nick-Jess story, the Schmidt-Cece storyline has worked really well this season (though I’d have to say less well then Nick and Jess).

Grade: B+

Hannah Horvath and Co. Hit the Self Destruct Button: Thoughts on Season 2 of "Girls"

Spoilers on Season 2 of "Girls" Below
Was season two of Girls a perfect season of television? No. It was a season, much like its characters, constantly in flux. It was a show changing from episode to episode to become something unexpected and occasionally incredibly experimental (“One Man’s Trash”, aka the Patrick Wilson sex romp, anyone?). Though it was an uneven season (at times more so than last season), it remained a great season of television.

There are very few shows attempting what Girls is. It isn’t even that it’s about twentysomethings (we’ve seen plenty of series like that); it’s that it’s a series about frequently terrible people who it wants you to simultaneously be disgusted by and yet still like. Part of this is because we can often see ourselves in the characters; I’m twenty so I sadly do see much of myself and people I know in them. It's a show about people doing terrible things because they’re not completely tied down and they don’t know what they want to be yet (The series plays around with the idea of characters trying on new identities, pretending to be someone they’re not just to see how that new identity fits).  They're often too naive or feigning naivete about the consequences of their actions or the dickeshness of them.

But more importantly, the series manages this tricky feat by often calling the characters out on their nonsense. It may have done it less this season than last, but generally, Girls is a series that doesn’t let its characters do terrible things without saying, “Hey, that’s a pretty terrible thing. You shouldn’t do that!” And sometimes it can be far, far too subtle about this point.

By season’s end my sympathies for the character were mostly undone by the penultimate episode. I chose not to write a review for “On All Fours” because it was a deeply dark and depressing episode, and my heart just wasn’t into the whole idea of reliving that episode in minutia. Besides the now infamous sex scene between Adam and his girlfriend, there are numerous cringe-worthy moments (some funnier than others – particularly Marnie’s strange rendition of Kanye West’s “Stronger”). All in all, it’s a painful episode to sit through, and it even made me angry with the show's most likable character, Shoshanna, who has a taken a turn for the worse. 

The finale isn’t the season high point (“On All Fours” is arguably the best episode but there are other contenders). Much of it feels rushed. Shoshanna has been underutilized this season (despite being better utilized than last season), and while her decision to break up with Ray isn’t unexpected (it was something clearly in the making), it does come off very abrupt. On the whole, everything is tied up a little too nicely and the episode feels like its leaping over a few plot points to get to these endings.  Part of the problem is that this season is shorted which means the season feels less holistic than last season. 

What shines through this all though is the distinctive vision of Lena Dunham. Dunham has in her mind what she wants to do with the show, she sets out to do it, and you can love or hate it but it’s her product through and through. Frequently the show is more concerned with establishing a tone than pushing the plot forward in some direction. There’s this cool, autumnal color scheme that pervades every scene. It’s a dulled, earthy tone and it’s a look and feel quite unlike any other show. It’s hard to anticipate where an episode, or even a season is going, because big moments don’t have this tragic aura to them. They’re not built towards in the traditional plotted sense. The plot could go anywhere at any moment, and any character could carry the story at any given time.

No one has learned anything by season’s end. They typically avoid learning lessons. Hannah keeps being given opportunities for self-actualization and she never takes them. Jessa marries Thomas-John despite the fact on some level she knows it’s a bad life decision. She visits her father, knowing that there’s nothing to be gained from such a frustrating experience from a man who was never there for her. Does up and leaving mean she’s learned anything? Probably not, but only time will tell. Marnie keeps turning back to her ex Charlie, out of familiarity, though their relationship felt claustrophobic and boring in the past. In the process, she wrecks his relationship with his current girlfriend. Charlie knows getting back together is a terrible decision; it can only end badly between again, but he’s so obsessively infatuated that he can’t escape Marnie’s control. Shoshanna purposefully goes out of her way to wreck her solid, stable relationship with Ray because it doesn’t align with her fairy tale visions. She cheats on him and lies about it (with the most awkward and awful euphemism: “I held hands with a doorman”). In turn she wrecks Ray who is the only person willing to accept himself for what he is. Ray hates everything (or so he claims), but the one thing he didn’t hate was Shoshanna, and maybe he was wrong about that. 

And then there’s Hannah. The show sometimes leans to heavily on just the character of Hannah and this can be frustrating. Many characters are short shrifted screentime because the show keeps returning to focus on this character even when it isn't her story ("Video Games" is an episode about Jessa that some what awkwardly shifts the focus to Hannah to put the thematic button on the episode). But for better or for worse, Hannah is the show's protagonist. And what an awful protagonist she is. By season’s end she has isolated herself from every person around her. She’s pushed away Marnie, forced Elijah to move out for hooking up with Marnie, got dumped by Sandy, and cut ties with Adam for getting stalkerish, while Jessa has bailed. With no one to turn to her OCD kicks in. Initially this feels like it comes out of nowhere, but it ends up becoming a great part of the season (Hannah’s descent into mental illness parallels everyone else’s lives falling apart around her wonderfully). She’s bizarrely enough rescued by Adam, who romantically runs to her apartment and kicks down the door. 

Though the endings of the finale appear happy, it’s only surface level. Charlie and Marnie can’t sustain a relationship with one another. Adam and Hannah have been proven to be no good for one another. Shoshanna might need some time to hook up with people, but it’s likely to leave her empty in the end. So we’re back to the status quo of the Pilot but everyone is even more fucked up then when we first met them.  

"The Night of the Hunter" - Film Review

If you met a preacher, you’d trust them, right? They are a man of God after all; a community figure that helps those in need.

The Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum in a phenomenal, chilling performance) is anything but your typical preacher. He’s a conman who swindle widows out of money. When he learns from a fellow inmate on death row that he’s left some money behind at his home, he leaves prison with the desire to claim the money. He woos the widow, Willa Harper (Shelly Winters), and marries her. 

Ageism is major theme of The Night of the Hunter. The real protagonist of the film is the son, John (Billy Chapin), who despite his protestations can’t seem to convince his mother or anyone else that the preacher is up to no good. Even the preacher tells the boy that “it’s my word versus yours. No one is going to believe you”. And so the boy continues to persevere.

Chapin gives a surprisingly assured performance. It’s not one completely marked by cutesy or whimsy, and both John and his sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) are put through deeply trying and difficult circumstances.  

His father (Peter Graves) told him to keep the location of the money, inside his sister's doll, a secret, and he holds onto this secret for the love of his father. Pearl on the other hand is slowly becoming ingratiated to the preacher, who has an abundance of charms and an uncanny ability to use religious scripture to win anyone over, including a now infamous example re-appropriated for Do the Right Thing describing the war between love and hate. 

The preacher is a wily one. He wins over the townspeople, including the mother’s close friends and employers, who tell her that she needs a new husband. He plays her to a tee, refusing sex on their wedding night by claiming that he’s here to help raise the children and nothing else. The mother soon finds herself a devoted religious follower; she yells out speeches about staying true to scripture and how the preacher has shown her the way of the righteous. 

By the time she’s wised up, matters have gotten far out of hand. He kills her and the children are left in an even more precarious situation than before. It’s an incredibly nerve-racking film where it feels like something could go wrong at any moment (and in a number of instances certainly does). The calculated, shadowy imagery (that beautifully contrasts scenes of night and day) ramps up the tension. Night scenes have an eerie, surreal quality and there are scenes that take advantage of their studio set nature to form disturbing, jaggedly framed shots reminiscent of German expressionist films such as The Cabinets of Dr. Caligari.

Walter Schumann's score serves to heighten every moment even further. While sometimes the score is overblown, during the intense cat-and-mouse moments the score parallels the action perfectly. 

The film is underscored by significant religious undertones. The woman, Rachel Cooper (Lilian Gish), who will later become a major figure in the film, and actually believes in the religious views she’s preaching, starts the film in talking head-like pose against a dreamy, starry background discussing “wolves in sheep’s skin”, a fitting description of Mitchum’s character. Powell manipulates the religious language for his own gains, but the film doesn’t buy into his mocking of scripture. In fact, the film seems to be set in a very moral universe where actions have consequences and tend to be punished in the long run.     

   

Though the ending feels a little like a cop out, everything up to that point is superbly shot and acted. It’s a frightening, mesmerizing film that’s still thrilling and riveting. 

Grade: A