Tag: Emma Thompson

Brave

I decided to take the kids to see the new PIXAR offering. I’ve not been disappointed by a PIXAR offering yet. Can they keep the record going with:

Brave

“Sorry, I don’t speak Bear.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Princess doesn’t like how her life is going to engages the services of a friendly witch to try and change things

See it if you like: Beautifully animated fairy tales

Set in historic Scotland, this is a huge departure for PIXAR. I think like everyone I have fair expectations from this particular company and usually it’s for  something bright and colourful with plenty of laughs and several layers. Brave breaks this template.

The voice cast are suitably impressive with Kelly MacDonald as the princess Merida, Emma Thompson as her mother and Billy Connolly as her dad. John Ratzenberger is, of course, present as he is in all the PIXAR films.

It’s the visuals that set this film apart from the rest of those from the same studio. Rather than just being bright, or detailed, or well animated, Brave is simply beautiful. The first obvious example of this is Merida’s hair – ginger curls that move ridiculously naturally in much the way that the showpiece tresses of Aki Ross in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within blew people’s (OK, animation geeks’) minds back in 2001.

Beyond that, the outdoor scenes are simply breathtaking. Rather than just being simple sets, life seems to have been breathed into every blade of grass, clump of moss, shrub and leaf. It all moves, even if nearly imperceptibly in cases, but enough to make it all seem to much richer than – in my opinion – any scenery in a CGI film before. The thing is, unless you’re looking for it it’s something you’d not notice simply because it is so good.

So the visuals set a new standard. How about the story?

Well… here’s where I was less impressed. It is a simple tale, and more of a traditional fairy story than any of the films PIXAR have done before. They’re usually a company to break the mould, not come up with new contents for it. There are no real twists or surprises and it seemed a little over-long to me.

Little Miss seemed to enjoy it, though Little Mister (he is 4 and the film’s rated PG) stated several times “I don’t like this film”, I think mainly as some of the scenes with the bears fighting were quite scary for him. Oh, and the witch (Julie Walters). Having said that, on another day I know he’d have been fine.

It just didn’t grip me with incredible imaginative new-ness the way that Toy Story or Monsters Inc. did which is a shame. It most certainly isn’t a bad film, but other than the staggering work they’ve done with the graphics it’s no modern classic either.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Men In Black III

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsSequels and remakes seem to be all the rage right now. Will Smith’s obviously in need of a new swimming pool given this sequel to a 14 year-old original and a third Bad Boys instalment also on the horizon.

Men In Black III

“Is there anybody here who is not an alien?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bad alien guy escapes and starts changing the timeline. Enter “J” and a ton of gadgets and effects

See it if you like: the original, and silly time travel films which raise more questions than they answer

Ah – sequels, adaptations, remakes and reboots. The seeming life blood of Hollywood these days. MiB3 is yet another in this string, and a good ten years since the disappointing sequel to the original. The good news, though, is that 3 does what 2 didn’t – adds in a new twist.

The original sequel (is that a weird phrase?) was very much the first film all over again, but with bigger aliens. What we have here, though, are new ideas and a very entertaining back-story which actually develops the characters. The humour, however, is lacking at the start and some of the laughs are very forced. Partly this is due to predictability, and partly as some of the lines just aren’t funny.

After the half-way mark, roughly, things pick up. The pace increases, the laughs come more readily and the action is actually quite tense. The effects are, as ever, superb. Tons of different aliens, but some excellent set pieces as well.

Don’t bother paying extra for 3D though. I say this all the time as it’s an expensive, pointless novelty. I’d reckon there’s maybe a minute of footage in the entire movie with enough “depth” to make 3D worthwhile. I guess it’s up to you if you think this is worth paying more for.

I’ll try not to give away any more than is in the trailer (some of the scenes from which, incidentally, aren’t in the final cut). A nasty bad guy alien called Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) escapes from a prison on the Moon. He sets out to get revenge on Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) by wiping him from history. Only Agent J (Smith) remembers history as it was before the change was made and seeks out a time travel device to go back and fix things.

Josh Brolin is excellent as the younger, slightly less miserable Agent K. Just by the voice alone, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a younger Jones. What made K interesting in the first two films was how morose he was. The main focus of this third instalment is why. And the answer is a superb one which really helps wrap the trilogy up.

Any complaints I have are minor and two of them involve a lot of spoilers. The other is the gross under-use of K’s relationship with “O” (Emma Thompson in the modern day, Alice Eve in the past). Things are hinted at, and it’s obvious there’s something there… but so little that it makes virtually no difference to the plot. In other words, it may as well not have been brought up in the first place. It’s hard to tell if it’s just a red herring or a side-story that was left to wither. A shame either way.

The important thing is that both Gillian and I enjoyed it. Not just a third outing for the same story, but a good tale in its own right.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta