6.)
Toy Story 3Remember being a kid and losing hours to whatever game you had going with your toys? (At my house it was Lady Lovelylocks and Madmartigan in Castle Grayskull with hordes of My Little Pony minions.) The world went away and it was more an alternate reality than a handful of plastic. The closest thing an adult can get to that may be to go see a movie like this one.
I ended up seeing Toy Story 3 twice, once in 3D with my sister and nieces, and once at the drive-in. It was awesome both times. There are plenty of live action movies that are nowhere near as moving or emotional or human as this animated one. Parts of TS3 are hysterically funny and some are heartbreaking and a lot of it is like a dream half remembered from childhood.
The whole opening scene where we get to see Andy’s game from the first movie acted out through imagination-vision was fantastic. As a kid who wondered what my toys did when I wasn’t around, I loved seeing the different toys personalities manifested. Ken doll was hilarious. He and Barbie were so cute. I loved Bonnie’s toys too. Life-changing news! Spanish mode both cracked me up and struck me as totally romantic.
I didn’t actually cry, but I sniffled. I read a review for it complaining about the depression the writer’s kids fell into after seeing it. I have to think if you’re old enough to be depressed about growing older and leaving childhood behind, you’re too old for your mom to be indignant about the cartoons you watch. That’s just me.
As always, I wanted to go home and get all my old toys out of storage after watching one of these. The word is that this is the last one for Toy Story and I kinda hope so. I think the series ended right where it should have.
7.)Eclipse
Not much of a Twilight fan, but I went to see this one with my sister, who is. I hadn’t seen any of the previous movies or finished any of the books, but it’s so pervasive now that I didn’t really need to. The plot isn’t exactly subtle, after all.
I was braced just to stand it, but it really wasn’t that bad. I thought of Matrix when the normally-scruffy kids are bitten and then turn up as leather-wearing, gel-haired vampires, as if being turned into a vampire makes you look as cool as you always wished you were when you were fourteen.
I liked the vampire flashbacks of how they were turned and the whole puppy-pile comraderie the werewolves had when they were together. I really only had two complaints with Eclipse. The first was that the whole cast had maybe three expressions that they cycled through: blank, intense stare, and some midrange one of vague anger/confusion.
The second was that the hub of all this intense staring and anger/confusion might as well have not been in the movie. Yes, I mean Bella. What does she do? A whole lot of nothing, and yet every other person in the Twi-verse orbits her like the sun. I can expect eternally bored vampires to look well, lifeless, but our heroine delivered every scene from wondering why parents of missing children didn’t just give up to accepting a marriage proposal to freezing to death with the same wooden expression and tone of voice.
8.)Inception
A moment to gush about the cast: I’ve never been much of a DiCaprio fan. I just haven’t. I only saw Titanic once in the theaters and again when my folks bought it. I don’t have any specific reason to like or dislike him. This time around though (and maybe seeing Eclipse first helped…) I was impressed by all his different expressions. The look of horrified guilt when the shade of Mal confronts Cobb toward the end was perfect. He didn’t have a line and he didn’t need one.
I have also always liked Ken Watanabe (see above). First of all, he’s beautiful, and going past that, his acting is always so understated with all these hints of stuff going on underneath. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt always surprises me. I spent too long watching 3rd Rock from the Sun with him as a cute teenager because it doesn’t seem like any time has passed and he’s suddenly grown up and looking pretty awesome in his period suits.
I was glad to see Cillian Murphy in a non-psycho role. I’ve only seen him in Batman Begins and Red Eye. I spent way too much time trying to remember the Araidne of mythology to figure out why Ellen Page’s character was named that. (I got her confused with Arachne.)
There were lots of little things I liked, such as the surprise!train. I also loved the eternal staircase move. It was so smooth and perfect and the execution of it was better than Matrix. It was a surprise and made perfect sense at the same time. One of my complaints with Inception was how linear all the dreams were, but the staircase thing is exactly the sort of not-quite-right things I have in my own dreams. A lot of the hotel scene, with rooms tilting and people floating and having to kiss to throw off someone after you, was more dream-like. Still, it would need more cats and sentient shadows and people with super powers to be one of my dreams.
I also loved the score. It was throbbing and intense and especially in surround sound. Unlike others, I enjoyed the different time span parts too. I heard some people say that the flicking back to the slow motion fall in the van annoyed them, but I appreciated the reminder. And of course the ending was designed to make you talk about it. Our take on it: I said that it had to be real because the top wobbled and it never did that in the dream, just spun and spun and spun. My sister also offered the possible proof that they all remembered being at the airport, and getting their stuff and being picked up by whoever when Cobb had pointed out to Araidne earlier that she didn’t remember how they got to the cafe. Oh yeah, and Michael Caine said this.
9.)Salt
First of all, I love me some Lieb Schreiber. Throw in the Russian accents, and that would’ve been enough to keep me entertained for an hour and a half. Luckily for everybody else, there was more than that going on. Some suspension of belief was required, but we didn’t have to stretch it too painfully.
One thing about it was that it did keep us guessing. First we thought she was being framed, then we thought she was a sleeper agent, then what? A double agent. Then no! She’s out for revenge! She’s- wait? What’s she doing now? I’m pretty obnoxious for guessing plot points, so it was fun to not know what was going on for a while.
Angelina Jolie did some cool stunt work and was convincingly badass throughout. I liked all the disguises and the lack of noticeable CG in the fight scenes. Also, Salt wasn’t nearly as bloody as I expected. I saw the broken-bottle-neck-stabbing coming and had braced for it, but it despite the body count, the movie wasn’t that gory.
The way was left open for lots of sequels, so with the Bond franchise in question, maybe Salt can be the new Bond.
10.)The Sorceror’s Apprentice
There are folks who have nothing good to say about Nicholas Cage. I saw this movie with at least one of them. It was the second movie at the drive-in double feature when we went to see Toy Story 3. It’s hard to not enjoy a movie shown at a drive-in on a summer night with a lap full of nutterbutters and cold Dr. Pepper and with good company. And not only that, I like the shabby vintage look.
Mr. Cage did all right. The special effects were fun. I liked the nesting dolls of evil and I wish there had been more background on all the different evil sorcerers imprisoned in each layer. I liked the animated eagle from the Chrysler building. Every good wizard needs to be saved by a giant eagle at some point, right?
Alfred Molina, last seen (by me) in Spiderman 2 is a good villain. Suave and menacing, with just enough sense of humor to keep him from killing the idiots he’s surrounded by and his kid flunky was just adorable. Somebody needs to adopt him.
What I didn’t like that much was poor Jay Baruchel ‘s voice. It was pretty much Hiccup without the dragons. Well, okay, one dragon. Two, counting the ring. I didn’t catch a lot of expressive range there, but then again, this is a family movie. It’s meant to be fun for kids and at the very least, bearable for the adults. And it is.
This could’ve been a darker, grown up movie. There could’ve been more blood and human sacrifice and the pretty magic could’ve been destructive instead of showy. The endboss could’ve succeeded in casting The Rising and our hero could’ve had to lose everything he cared about in the resulting devastation before he powered up and truly became the Prime Merlinian. This is Disney though, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
To Be Continued…
