Category: Uncategorized

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom has to grow on you or else you don’t believe in anything that Wes Anderson does. I’m almost there. He’s very mannered and within Moonrise Kingdom those mannerism started to grate. I was ready to hate it until I figured it out. Moonrise Kingdom is his homage to the French New Wave, Nouvelle Vague.

There was the off-kilter angles, the jump cuts, the strange close ups, the disaffected youth running from authority. Nouvelle Vague, a genre I don’t watch too much of. It took me a while to understand that it was, and when I did I started to enjoy it more. The Wes Anderson mannerisms were sublimated to some Nouvelle Vague conventions. It’s been a while since I was a film student; luckily this film resurrected those dim recesses of my mind.

3 of 5 stars.

Brave isn’t one of the best Pixar movies. It’s perfectly adequate. I think that I find it such maybe because of the fact that it falls into the “Disney princess” realm. I wish it was a “Miyazaki princess.”

Brave is about Merida’s hair. That’s the first thing you’ll notice. It’s there and I don’t think even real hair would act that way. You’ll be too busy to make note of anything else, but if you do, you’ll find that Pixar has come a long way with real people. The figures of humans are very good and you can almost see the direct lineage from the human figures in The Incredibles.

The story follows Merida as she wants to not be tied down with what her mother wants for her. She rejects having to have suitor. Then she runs away and finds a fairy god mother to make her real mother change. It’s a story about family and finding that compromise is good. You have to accept each other.

I still wish Pixar could do a Miyazaki film. Perhaps its because I thought that they could learn a few things from the anime master.

It was good to see the thanks given to Steve Jobs.

3 of 5 stars

I had a lot to say about Prometheus, two weeks ago, but now I can’t even bother. It’s gone from my memory quickly. I can’t remember my arguments against the movie, but they track with many of the complaints from others.

Number one complaint is how the story wasn’t organic; things happened because they had to happen to advance the plot and not because it was the logical progression of the story. For example, [SPOILER ALERT] two of the explorers get lost just because. Another example, one of the scientist decides to get all drunk even though he kind of proved where life began. It was out of character and just seemed that it was thrown in to get to the next chase.

The movie looked visually stunning in 3-D. That may be all that it has going for it. I wonder if this is going to age just like Blade Runner did.

3 of 5 stars.