King of Kong - great. (Netflix WatchNow)A surprisingly emotional look into the world of competitive video gaming.
Ratatouille - ok. (Netflix)I'm generally a fan of the Pixar movies but this one and Cars I found to be pretty mediocre, or at least not living up to their high standards. The Incredibles remains the gold standard for me of the Pixar oeuvre.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - great. (Netflix WatchNow)What can you say: Jimmy Stewart + Frank Capra = great entertainment. There's a lot of subtle great acting in this one, particularly from the president of the senate. And while good does triumph in the end I'm not sure if it makes me feel any better that the shenanigans in our government haven't changed at all in almost 70 years.
6 comments:
I'm long overdue in seeing Mr. Smith...
I also was on the early end of the curve on knowing about KoK, which is in my queue.
As far as Pixar, I'll pass. Funny, Lucy picks out about half the books we take home from the library. One day, she picked up one called "cars" and when I read it to her at home, it struck me as being singularly about the worst children's book I'd read in months. Pure drivel with insulting characters, a throwaway plot and just crappy all 'round. At the end of the book, I wanted to vomit. Lo and behold, when I looked at the back cover, I realized that what I had just read was the translated-to-the-page form of Pixar's "Cars." The more things change in the world of feature film animation, the more they stay the same, as far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen anything new in about 10 years and I'm quite confident that I'm not missing a thing.
I'd be curious to know the last feature film animation that you liked. I expected your negative reaction, and I can certainly imagine a book based on Cars being bad, but I'd like to understand where the line was drawn.
For me the original Toy Story had lots to recommend, including a generally good natured view of the world.
Bug's Life I never liked.
The second Toy Story was fine, just more of the same.
Monster's Inc was fine and visually quite interesting.
Finding Nemo was, again, visually amazing and entertaining.
The Incredibles was great in lots of ways, but mostly because of its good natured take on the characters. Very emotionally involving, for me anyway.
Cars - my least favorite of the batch.
Rataouille - again, nothing special, though some great visuals.
As for the stuff from the other part of Disney, blech.
As for the Shreks and Ice Age's of the world - usually good for some laughs if almost universally lacking heart.
It's entirely possible I'm painting too broad a brush. That's what I do. There's so many hundreds of potentially great movies out there, I guess I don't loose too much sleep over the idea of taking that chance and missing out on one or two gems along the way.
that said...
This is not paving any new ground but everyone present here knows I am an extremely harsh critic of anything formulaic in cinema. It drives me up the wall. The waste that goes into the making and watching of the same movie over and over and over again - truly, I don't consider this a trivial matter. And that's pretty much been my experience with most animated "kids" movies in the past couple of decades. Anthropomorphism in and of itself is a bit of a warning sign for me. But if your animals have voices that sound like the usual suspects ("jive," "Christopher Lee," the guy who played "Putty", etc. etc.) it's a total no-go.
But WAIT - it gets worse. I think I have more of an issue with The Uncanny Valley than your average Joe. That shit freaks me out, and I have a rising suspicion that CG technology has gotten far past the point of any individual movie being a "crowning achievement" and into the realm of "taking the easy way out."
Last animated (kids) movie I really liked? I take it you mean production-year-wise. I'd say Beauty & the Beast. Though that was in 1993, and on my third date with Sharon - so there may have been some factors involved there that make it unfit for analysis.
I thought I'd respond to these:
For me the original Toy Story had lots to recommend, including a generally good natured view of the world.
I liked the first Toy Story quite a bit
Bug's Life I never liked.
I thought it was OK
The second Toy Story was fine, just more of the same.
agreed
Monster's Inc was fine and visually quite interesting.
possibly, along with Nemo and Incredibles - my favs
Finding Nemo was, again, visually amazing and entertaining.
possibly along with Monsters and Incredibles - my favs
The Incredibles was great in lots of ways, but mostly because of its good natured take on the characters. Very emotionally involving, for me anyway.
Possibly, along with Nemo and Monsters - my favs
Cars - my least favorite of the batch.
the very focus on autos was a bit of a turn-off - it was maybe a little bit better than I had anticipated
Rataouille - again, nothing special, though some great visuals.
I liked this quite a bit.
The other two movies you mentioned - I have not seen, but would like to see Washington, not sure about Kong
Yeah, projecting yourself into the role of The Beast probably isn't fair.
I think your conception of what constitutes 'formula' occupies a pretty narrow range, mostly including contemporary movies you hate, most of which are really bad, but....
Old Hollywood was all about formula. Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, you name it. They made movies like they were going out of style. Many of them are great, but boy do they follow a formula. And they were created by a studio system seen as much like a factory.
The Bourne movies?
Star Trek?
Indiana Jones?
Formulas. Well done (mostly - Star Trek, I'm looking at you) but still terribly formulaic.
So it's clearly more than that...
You've become something of a pop culture anachronist, which is all well and good, but you tend to lash out rather dramatically (just your nature) and decisively. This leaves little wiggle room for discussion as it usually leaves me thinking 'jesus!' and feeling slightly whiplashed.
I may suffer from a well developed set of low expectations when it comes to pop culture. I don't absorb that much of it relatively speaking, and while I'm aware of its significant shortcomings (why I have Netflix rather than use Blockbuster) I can be content consuming it with those low expectations. Maybe my lifestyle affords me more freedom to lower my standards as my schedule is more open. I'm not sure.
As to the taking the easy way out...I'm not sure what that constitutes. The Pixar movies take nearly double the time to make as a live action movie. I'm not sure how hand-drawn animation fits into that, but I believe it was always longer too.
CG in general is overused (see Michael Bay) but as I have said many times, I can be a sucker for the great visual. I'm not going to be a sucker for the giant explosion however. But if CG is the way to bring a vision into reality, I'm certainly not going to hold it against your movie.
And while it's not an either/or, I'd rather be forced to watch something by Michael Bay than sit through the latest Wayans brothers comedy. At least in one I get interesting things to look at.
Willing to concede my tendency to lash out at certain aspects of pop-culture. As you say, I am what I am. That's my role in this little heart play. Yours is to pull "facts" out of your ass.
But I think I may be referring to "formula" in a different sense than you're thinking. I'm talking about an approach that uses stock characters, stock lines (for all intents and purposes), and a lcd in terms of gimmicks to attract an audience. The kind where you come out at the end thinking, "Why did I waste my time?" To me, it's (as I said) more than a simple waste of my valuable time (though that's bad enough). It's truly a waste of resources and (and you should be on board with this) further enforcing this anti-intellectual plauge that is so rampant in our pop culture.
There were some bad movies in the olden days - no doubt. But the ones I'm a fan of are situation/plot/and script-based. Other than the fact that people seem to comb their hair in a similar manner and they all smoke cigarettes, you'll have a hard time convincing me that most of those movies were based on those "formula" principles I outline above. I mean, obviously, there's the "stock characters" in Westerns - but even then, in any movie that stands the test of time, those characters are employed in unique and compelling situations, delivering powerful lines.
I know analogies aren't often the most accurrate way to illustrate a point, but humour me:
Imagine what your collective reactions would be if I was buying all the latest top 40 music as it came out. "Let's see - R. Kelly, that wasn't very good. Britney Spears, I didn't like that one" etc. etc. Maybe every 10 or so albums I'd stumble onto something (Amy Winehouse) and appreciate it, but then I continue right on, playing this game in which the odds are hopelessly stacked against a regular stream of quality. As an outsider looking in, you might wonder why - with a world of incredible music out there I may never hear, why I am not more discriminating about my choices. Why I am content to accept & listen to what the music industry puts all its money into pushing in front of my face. Why should we regard the movie industry any differently? I have 150 movies in my Netflix queue - and I can be confident that a majority of them I'm going to enjoy quite a bit. Why continue to take chances on genres ("superhero" movies, anything recent starring Owen Wilson, movies based on TV shows etc.) that only promise to burn you again and again. Need I remind you of the definition of insanity...
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