Toy Story

Posted on June 12, 2010 at 1:17 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Some tense scenes, characters in peril
Diversity Issues:	No strong female or minority characters
Date Released to Theaters:	1995
Date Released to DVD:	March 30, 2010
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0030IIZ4M

Celebrate the release of “Toy Story 3” with another look at the original — Pixar’s first feature release was the first theatrical released animated entirely by computer. It is now available in a pristine Blu-Ray version that pops off the screen. Although the dazzling technology is especially well suited to a story in which the major characters are made out of plastic, it is the unpretentious imagination and energy of the people behind the story and the outstanding vocal performances that make the movie an enduring classic.

The story is about the toys belonging to a boy named Andy. His favorite is a sheriff from the old west named Woody (with the voice of Tom Hanks). He acts as the leader of the rest of Andy’s toys, including a Tyrannosaurus Rex (voice of Wallace Shawn) and Mr. Potatohead (voice of Don Rickles). All is going well until Andy receives for his birthday an astronaut named Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen of “Home Improvement”). Woody becomes jealous, and in an effort to keep Andy from taking Buzz with him on an excursion, Andy accidentally knocks Buzz out the window. Woody follows, and the rest of the movie consists of their efforts to return home before the family moves away.

Children may relate to the idea of the sibling rivalry between Woody and Buzz, and the movie may provide a good starting point for a discussion of jealous feelings. It may also be fun for parents to point out some favorites from their own childhoods, including Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, Etch-a-Sketch, Slinky Dog and Barrel Of Monkeys.

NOTE: This movie may be too scary for very young children. The three- year-old with me insisted on leaving less than halfway through, and it got scarier after that. Andy’s next-door neighbor is a vicious and destructive boy named Sid, who mutilates and tortures toys. His room is filled with genuinely grotesque creations made from bits and pieces of toys — sort of Geppeto’s workshop as seen by Stephen King. Sid gets a relatively mild comeuppance as the toys “break the rules” to scare him into being kind to all toys in the future.

Children may also be troubled by the notion that the toys are “real” whenever the humans are out of the room. This is even more confusing because one of the cleverest aspects of the movie’s plot is that Buzz does not know he is a toy, and thinks he really is a space explorer on his way “to infinity and beyond.” Note also that Andy does not have a father, although it is presented so subtly that most kids will miss it.

The two toys have special appeal not only for Andy to use to imagine himself as the fantasy male archetypes of cowboy and astronaut, but also perhaps as father substitutes. Meanwhile, there are no strong female toys, only a simpering Bo Peep who flirts with Woody.

From Paris With Love

Posted on June 10, 2010 at 12:09 pm

John Travolta loves to be bad. And so he is clearly having a blast — in both senses of the word — in this film, playing a bald guy with an earring who likes to shoot first and think later. As Charlie Wax, a top ops guy who loves to break rules and mess with heads, he gives new meaning to the word trigger-happy.

If only it was as much fun for the audience. But this movie was clearly more about entertaining the star than the ticket-buyers. Wax arrives in Paris noisy and obnoxious, arguing with security about bringing his “energy drink” into the country. Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a straight-laced, chess master, embassy aide who is hoping for a promotion to black ops, slaps a diplomatic sticker on Wax’s bag to get him through. Then they are off for an odd-couple buddy-cop joy ride that involves drug dealers, terrorists, and many opportunities for shooting first and not sticking around to ask questions later. For no particular reason, Reece ends up carrying a vase filled with cocaine through many different locations like takeout.

Even by the low bar for this genre, “From Paris With Love” feels under-scripted. There are a few good set-ups from director Pierre Morel (“District B13”), including a scene in a stairwell where our updates on the action come from the bodies falling past a stunned Reece and a shoot-out in a warehouse filled with mannequins lined up like terra cotta warriors. But it misses when it asks us to take Wax even a little bit seriously as a good guy. The title’s reference to James Bond and a painful reminder of Travolta’s better days in “Pulp Fiction” just ring hollow. Return to sender.

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Action/Adventure Crime Spies

Shutter Island

Posted on June 8, 2010 at 8:00 am

Dennis Lehane, author of gritty crime novels like Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone and one of the writers of “The Wire,” and director Martin Scorsese, best known for movies like “Goodfellas” and “Casino,” about wiseguys, hitmen, and omertas, have come together for “Shutter Island.” While it is less a crime story than a horror-tinged psychological mystery, this, too, is about murder and madness, the difficulty of separating truth from lies, about twisted motives and anguished fears, and about the devastating consequences of unthinkable pain and loss.

Set in 1954, it begins when a murderer confined to a hospital for the criminally insane has not just escaped; she has disappeared. She was in a locked cell and then she was gone.

In the midst of a huge, gusting rainstorm, two federal marshals investigate, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo). The hospital, once a Civil War fort, is on an island off the coast of Massachusetts and when the storm knocks out all power and phone lines they are completely isolated. The marshals get soaked in the rain so they change into the only dry clothes available — orderly uniforms. They begin to look as though they belong there.

The hospital is eerie. The doctors are smooth but uncooperative, with an unsettling way of diagnosing not just the patients but the marshals — they seem to think that they are the ones who are asking questions. The patients cannot be trusted. But can anyone?

To say any more about what happens would be to spoil it. So, I’ll just write a bit about about some of what goes on around what is happening to the characters.

The first is just the pure pleasure of seeing a master film-maker showing us everything in his power after a lifetime of watching and making movies. No one in history has ever been more passionate about film than Martin Scorsese and that is clear in every placement of the camera, every cut from his full partner in film-making, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and every element of the set from his “Casino” production designer Dante Ferretti. The camera tracks through the dank corridors, the blade-like steps of the circular staircase, the driving rain and sheer cliff, telling us just what Scorsese wants us to know and no more. Each shot keeps us inside Teddy’s thoughts and the shifts between the objective and subjective are handled with a consummate understanding of the language of cinema.

Next is the choice of the setting, not just the island but the era. We see Teddy frequently thinking back to his traumatic experience at the liberation of the concentration camp Dachau. Teddy and the doctors are very much of their time a crucial one in the development of psychiatric theories as three camps — surgical, pharmaceutical, and talk therapies competed with each other and this adds another layer of interest to the proceedings.

Finally, this is a movie where everything feels like a metaphor, a clue, or both at once and every single detail is a part of the story. The intricacy of the story reaches a meta-level about the power of stories — to harm and to heal. It is an expert thriller with plenty of chills and jumps and goosebumps but finally it is the questions it raises about our ability to trust the characters and our own conclusions that will haunt us.

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Based on a book Drama Thriller

Alice in Wonderland

Posted on June 1, 2010 at 8:00 am

Almost 150 years ago Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson published his wildly imaginative story about Alice’s adventures down a rabbit hole. And now the wildly imaginative director Tim Burton has brought Wonderland to the 3D movie screen. It is less faithful to the original story than many of the previous dozen or so movie versions, but I think Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, would approve of Burton’s bringing his own take to the classic characters.

He brings his own story as well. Carroll’s Alice is a little girl bored by her sister’s dull book, and her journey is episodic and filled with wordplay and references to Victorian society that fill the annotated edition of the book with witty footnotes.

To make the story more cinematic, Burton tells us that all of that has already happened in what young Alice thought was a dream. This is her return visit. Alice is 18 years old and has just been proposed to by a dull but wealthy lord with no chin and bad digestion. As she meets up with the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter, she is not the only one who is confused. Characters seem puzzled and unsure about whether she is the real Alice. The Mad Hatter peers at her perplexedly. She may be Alice, and yet not quite completely the Alice they are looking for. “You were once muchier,” he tells her. “You’ve lost your muchiness.” In Burton’s version, Alice’s adventures are about her finding her “muchiness.” Her visit to Wonderland is a chance for her to understand what she is capable of and how much she will lose if she makes her decisions based on what people expect from her. As in the Carroll story, she is constantly changing size, and Burton shows us that she is really finding her place. She believes she is once again in a dream but increasingly learns that it is one she can control. By the time she faces the Jabberwock, she knows that she is in control — and that her courage and determination can create the opportunity she needs to follow her heart.

Johnny Depp brings a depth, even a poignance to the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter is utterly delicious as the peppery red queen, hilariously furious over her stolen tarts. There’s a thrilling battle, the visuals are dazzling, with references to classic book illustrations by Maxfield Parrish, and the 3D effects will have you feeling as though you are falling down the rabbit hole yourself. The frame story bookending the Wonderland/Underland adventure is tedious and, oddly, less believable than the disappearing cat and frog footmen. But Burton’s re-interpretation of the classic story is filled with muchiness and the result is pretty darn frabjuous.

Dear John

Posted on May 25, 2010 at 8:00 am

Nicholas Sparks writes the equivalent of comfort food, high-carb, low-nutrition, but sometimes it hits the spot. His stories usually feature relationships that are not just true and deep and loving but healing. And then, like ripping off a band-aid, he tears it asunder, but in a manner that demonstrates just how true and deep and loving and healing the relationship was but how ennobling as well. And there is usually some object of deep metaphoric and sentimental value.

Ladies, prepare your hankies.

This time, the author of “The Notebook,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Nights in Rodanthe,” “A Walk to Remember” and this spring’s “The Last Song” (starring Miley Cyrus) gives us John (Channing Tatum) and Savannah (Amanda Seyfried of “Mamma Mia!” and “Big Love”). She is a kind-hearted girl and he is a special forces soldier with some anger issues. They have some soft-focus moments on the beach in Charleston while he is on leave and she is on spring vacation. She is considerate to his socially impaired father (Richard Jenkins) and he is understanding with her autistic neighbor. Two weeks later, they are very much in love, and agree to write as he completes his last year of service, as they look forward to being together as soon as it is over. But 9/11 changes everything. As Richard Lovelace wrote almost 400 years ago, “I could not love thee, dear, so much/Loved I not honor more.” As wrenching as it is for both of them, they know his place is with his team, defending freedom.

But then, she writes a “Dear John” letter telling him that she is engaged. He is wounded, recovers, and returns to battle. When he finally sees her again, he learns that her choice was not what he thought.

Director Lasse HallstrÃ¶m (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “The Cider House Rules,” “My Life as a Dog”) keeps things from getting too syrupy and Tatum and Seyfried have a sweet, easy connection. Henry Thomas (the kid from “E.T”) has warmth and humor as the single father of the autistic boy. Richard Jenkins does what he can in the underwritten role of John’s father, whose reserve and awkwardness may be attributable to an autism spectrum disorder. We’re on the side of these undeniably decent and very pretty people. But there is nothing they can do to make the last third of the film feel emotionally or narratively believable. If at the end of the movie, you ask whether there was any other reason for a character not to provide more information much earlier and the only answer is that they had to find a way to fill the last 40 minutes of screen time, that is not going to work. And the sweetness of the original connection is dissolved in what feels like a trick.

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Based on a book Date movie Romance