Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

The first thing many people will want to know is how it compares to Tim Burton's last stop-motion effort, The Nightmare Before Christmas. (Though it should be noted that Tim Burton wrote that one and Henry Selick directed it.)

Well, before I get into the comparisons, I should go on the record as saying that, while I remember Nightmare fondly, I think I like the idea of it better than the film itself. It's beautiful visually, and it has some wonderful characters and such, but I find that I enjoy thinking about it more than actually watching it.

So given that, I'll say that I like Corpse Bride better. The animation strikes me as a touch smoother, which is probably due to advances in subtle CGI enhancements, but possibly also just due to additional experience. But the real reason for my preference is due to the story.

Nightmare has perhaps a more inventive story, but Corpse Bride is subtler, deeper. In fact, it's actually pretty mature and sophisticated. A lot of quality children's films offer just as much to the adult as to the child, but I would venture to say that Corpse Bride is not really a children's film at all. Sure, it has stuff for kids to enjoy, but the real story will be completely over their heads.

One of the themes explored by the film is how sometimes good people can end up with conflicting responsibilities. In Corpse Bride, through no real fault of his own, Victor (a subdued, but not overly so, Johnny Depp) finds himself torn between two women, both sympathetic, both in love with him. He never wanted to hurt anybody, but no matter what he does, one of them will be heartbroken. The last animated film I can remember exploring this idea is Toy Story 2, with Woody's dilemma in choosing between Andy and his old friends or the Roundup Gang.

All of us, or perhaps I should say "each" of us, are just one person, and we can't do everything. So often we think of life's choices as the "right" choice and the "wrong" choice. But what about being forced to choose between two good choices or two bad choices? Both of the women in Victor's life are good souls and both are worthy of love, but he can only please one of them. When was the last time you saw a story like that in a children's movie?

Though the writer in me wanted to tweak the ending just a little bit, I really enjoyed the story and the characters and found the entire film to be a charming, satisfying experience.

If, like me, you consider yourself an animation lover and you aren't already a fan of Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit, then you really owe it to yourself to give them a look. I'll bet you will love them.

Wallace is an inventor, a little bit oblivious perhaps, but very good natured and extremely fond of cheese. Gromit is his dog, who can't talk, but speaks volumes with his face and body-language. They've already starred in three short films, A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave, and you know what? Two of them won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. You know what else? The only one of the three that didn't win the Oscar lost it to Creature Comforts, another short by Nick Park.

Nick Park is also the man responsible for Chicken Run, another wonderful film.

Okay, okay, so Nick Park is a talented guy. Is his newest film any good?

Yes. Yes it is. Very much so.

Much of the humor is very British, so your feelings about that will have some impact on how funny you find it, but even if you aren't laughing out loud, the extremely lovable characters will bring a smile to your face and the surprisingly elaborate action sequences will get your heart pounding. The relationship between these two friends is such a joy to watch that I frankly can't imagine anyone who wouldn't like this movie. Of course, some will enjoy it more than others, but not liking Wallace and Gromit is like not liking ice cream.

Go see it.

In a word, fantastic!

Top-notch, four-star thriller.

It does exactly what I described above. Sure, there are a few things that don't make perfect sense, but they don't reach that point of being insulting and the movie carries you along so effectively that you don't notice any problems at all and you are just thoroughly entertained for the entire running time.

If you aren't already familiar with the premise, you should just stop reading now and go see the movie. I'm not going to give any spoilers that aren't available in the trailer, but frankly, if you haven't seen the trailer, don't watch it, don't read the rest of this review, just go see it.

One of the downsides of trailers and screenings and such is that in can undercut the effectiveness of some story-telling techniques. Ultimately, the trailer doesn't "give everything away" because the story doesn't depend on secrecy, but the build in the early scenes of the movie is so effective and I can only imagine how cool it would have been to go in without knowing the broad strokes of what was going to happen.

So I'm going to now proceed with the review as though everyone has at least seen the trailer. As I mentioned before, the initial build is extremely effective. We begin with Lisa, who works as a hotel manager at a luxury resort. She's played by Rachel McAdams, who I'm told is very good in Wedding Crashers, but I have not seen before. Simply put, she's very good. Anyway, Lisa is young for such an important position, but she's got a cool head, and we see her handling problems with a cool head and obvious competance. (This section also introduces a secondary character who pops up from time to time to offer the critical, but often overlooked, comic relief.)

I just deleted a very long description of what happens in the opening scenes. I had wanted to describe what made the build so effective, but I don't want to just tell you what happens when you could just go see the movie and find out for yourself. The one-sentence version is that the way Cillian Murphy's character goes from charming, attractive and self-deprecating to cold, sinister and threatening is very very good. You might remember him as the Scarecrow from Batman Begins, and he demonstrates a very wide range in this film. He's got a future ahead of him too.

So, I'll avoid really spending any more time just telling you what happens. Suffice it to say that the movie functions exactly as a thriller should, delivering suspense, scares and some very satisfying excitement.

One of the things that I really liked about it is that, even if you could potentially find some fault with the plot itself, the way the main character responds is fantastic. She's not a superhero, she's just a normal person, and yet, she's a smart normal person. She does all the right things and she tries everything. So often in these movies you want to yell at the protagonist for being so stupid. In this one, just before you're about to yell at her to do something, she actually does it!

So I won't say any more about it except that it's very good and I recommend it highly.

Flightplan, I'm sorry to say, is just average. Or rather, it averages out to be average.

Jodie Foster is a mother who is on a long international flight with her daughter. She takes a nap on the plane, but when she wakes up her daugher is missing. But how could she disappear on a plane? And why doesn't anyone else remember her even getting on board in the first place?

The reviews I'd read seemed to suggest that the movie is polarizing. Some reviews calling it "ingenious and airtight" another calling it "diabolically retarded". So I was actually rather surprised to find myself almost exactly in the middle. It's an extremely well-made and well-acted movie with a pretty crappy script.

Now, I was predisposed to like this movie. I really like Jodie Foster, and even though I knew that the movie would have a big "TWIST"TM, that would likely be less than entirely plausible, I figured that I was prepared to suspend a great deal of disbelief if the rest of the movie made it worth my time.

I was almost completely right, except that the rest of the movie wasn't quite good enough to support the ridiculously implausible script. I really wanted it to be, but it just wasn't. The problem essentially, without going into spoilerish detail, is that when the mystery is "answered" the answer basically spits in the figurative face of Occam's Razor. What happens is so overly complicated that you really wonder why anyone would bother when they could surely accomplish the same objectives in a much simpler way and without relying so much on coincidence.

Another part of the problem I think is that they don't have sufficient grounding in reality. We can buy extraordinary weird and implausible things much easier if the rest of the story is convincing enough. But the problem here is that Jodie Foster isn't just a normal woman. She designs planes, including the one it takes place on. It isn't just a normal plane, it's some super-duper double-decker plane with spiral staircases and a lounge. There just isn't enough connection to normality for us to buy the extraordinary.

But the acting is good, very good even, and the movie actually moves along pretty nicely up until the twist. But that's not enough, because a build-up like this can't support itself without the pay-off. It's like building a lean-to. You can make it water-tight and wind resistant and insultated and perfect, but without something to lean it on, it'll just lie there on the ground.

The premise and content of this movie certainly bring to mind two other films: The Forgotten, and Panic Room. In many ways, this allows a helpful comparison.

It's better than The Forgotten, but not as good as Panic Room.

Okay then, I'm going to assume that anyone reading this has already seen the film. If not, shame on you. Patience is a virtue.

Anyway, the prequels have been frustrating in a way because they tend to be really good except for about 5-10 minutes worth that just hit you like a brick and drag the whole thing down. I rewatched Episodes I and II and the Clone Wars cartoon before going into the movie and what actually struck me was how much good there really was in them. Call me an apologist if you like, but I maintain that, 30 years from now when people stop thinking of them as the "original trilogy" and the "prequels" they're going to look at the cheesy clunky bits of the prequels just like they look at the cheesy clunky bits of the original trilogy.

If you watch the original trilogy with a critical eye, there's a lot of cheesy dialogue and clunky acting in those too. So why are we so inclined to forgive those and not the prequels? I don't know. I tend to feel that way myself though too.

I've sometimes thought that I wish I could see the Star Wars movies again for the first time, now that I'm an adult. I was too young when they first came out to really appreciate everything they had too offer. I was still at the "ooh, neat laser swords and blasters and aliens!" level, and didn't really have the emotional maturity for the films to function on any other level.

So I've sometimes thought it would be interesting to see them again as I am now, but without knowing everything that happens in advance. (Though it just occurred to me that the big shocker from Empire Strikes Back will not be a shocker anymore to someone who sees the films all in order. Not sure how I feel about that.)

But in the context of some of the things I've been thinking lately regarding nostalgia, is it possible that I wouldn't like them is much if I saw them for the first time today? Would I cringe at the occasional clinker and groan at an obvious plot device? When I first saw the movies, it was before I really understood that people actually make the movies and that they could have been made differently. I just took it all for granted. Now, I look upon the movies fondly. To be sure, they are wonderful films, and that's a big part of it, but I wonder if there's also a part that loves them because I loved them as a child.

Of course, if the movies were crappy, rewatching them would be more like when I watched Transformers the movie again after 20 years. The point is that they aren't crappy, but they're also not perfect. Yet I'm inclined to forgive their flaws almost entirely out of friendly nostalgia, like you accept the annoying quirks of your best friend.

The prequels don't have that long-time friendship to rely on yet, so their flaws and their quirks are like the quirks of your best friend's annoying cousin. You're less inclined to put up with them, and they can make you less likely to get to know the good person behind them.

That's why I think that the kids who are growing up now with the new ones, rather than the old ones, will not really have this big distinction between the two trilogies. They all have great stuff, and they all have clunky bits (ESB may be the exception), but the clunky bits are forgiven in exchange for the joy brought by the great stuff.

Wow, that took longer to get out than I'd intended, but it just takes me right where I want to be to discuss this film.

It's got great stuff. It's also got some clunky bits. Not nearly as many as I and II, thank God, but it still has a couple. The reason it's better than I and II, to me, is just because the ratio of great stuff to clunky bits is much higher.

That opening space battle is probably the most impressive battle sequence I've ever seen on film, at least from a visual effects perspective. I was absolutely thrilled to see Anakin Whiner-No-More and Obi-Wan bantering and fighting alongside each other, and R2! Wow. Great stuff. Lots of it in that whole opening sequence until they crash the ship.

Then we reintroduce Padme. Hmm, I just don't know what to make of her character, because I know that Natalie Portman is a good actress. I'm pretty sure Hayden Christensen is a good actor. They both have flashes of greatness, but boy, when the two of them are together in a room, it's like a greeting card factory. Well, that's not entirely true. Some of the scenes aren't bad at all in fact, it's just that the majority of the clunky bits all come from their scenes together. In fact, I'm not even really being fair, because a lot of that perception didn't come at the time. While I was watching, I was engrossed. It was only after the fact that I saw them as clunky.

There's only two other scenes that I had any quarrel with at all. The scene where Anakin finally turns felt just a tad rushed to me, though I think that could perhaps be explained by the slippery slope of the dark side. Once he opened the mental doors by killing Mace Windu, it just rushed in like a flash flood. So I don't really have a big problem with that.

The other bit, the only bit that really stood out as being cheesy to me, was Padme's death-by-broken-heart and Darth Vader's "NOOOOOOOOO" yell. It felt like a parody of itself.

But I'm actually a little disappointed with myself for focusing so far on the negative aspects when there was so much that I absolutely loved.

For starters: Obi-Wan.

Now I've loved Ewan MacGregor for a long time now, and he's always been a fantastic actor, but boy is he ever great in this movie. He's got the skill to act around the clunk like it isn't even there. He's cool, funny, tough, vulnerable. Everything I could have possibly asked for. So many great bits with him, and every scene with him in it seems to improve everybody else too. Both Anakin and Padme's best scenes are done with Obi Wan.

I loved the little bit early on with Anakin and Obi-Wan while R2 is trying to save them from and Anakin's like: "Don't say it. No 'loose wire' jokes."

Obi-Wan: "I didn't say anything."

Anakin: "He's trying."

Obi-Wan: "I didn't say anything!"

His "You were the chosen one!" speech was heartbreaking, as was his scene in Padme's quarters.

Padme: "You're going to kill him, aren't you?"

Obi-Wan: "..." (gets up to leave) "Anakin's the father, isn't he?"

Padme: "..."

Obi-Wan:"I'm so sorry."

And the scene with the three of them on Mustafa, where he shows up in the ship and Anakin's furious, distraught "You've turned her against me!"

You know, "romance" scenes aside, Anakin is actually really good in this one. I was really struck by how he was motivated by good things, but you know what they say about good intentions.

It's interesting to see this so close to when I saw Kingdom of Heaven, with that film's discussions of whether committing evil "for the greater good" is legitimate. In Anakin's case, the answer is pretty clearly no.

And yet, in some ways, is he completely responsible? The Jedi knew he was potentially dangerous way back in Episode I, they knew he didn't have the right personality or mental outlook to be a Jedi. He was too driven by his emotions. He was not equipped to deal with the hard truths of the Jedi life, in particular, the very good reasons that they should not marry. Yet, they took him and trained him because they knew he was powerful and they wanted "the chosen one." They justified it to themselves that it would be safer to have him under their control than out on his own, but that was really a rationalization.

But that disconnect was their downfall. They were afraid of him, so they didn't trust him. In some ways, it's like overprotective parents who think that the best way to keep their children safe is to just not tell them anything about the dangerous elements of the world. "The Dark Side's bad, Mmm-kay?" He asks legitimate questions about legitimate issues and they tell him "let go of attachments" as though it's just that simple.

Now, Yoda's advice was actually the right advice, but it came WAY too late. It's like telling someone who's already addicted to "just say no." It's worse than useless because it means that the next time they need help, they won't come to you.

And that's what made him so vulnerable to Palpatine. Wow, what a great villain he is. The reason he succeeded is because 90% of what he was saying was true. It validated the feelings Anakin was already having and made him trust the other 10% too, even though the lies in that 10% were the key to everything.

Anakin did what he did because he wanted an end to the war and to save the woman he loves. Those are good things, right? And sometimes, in order to accomplish a greater good, you have to get your hands dirty. Break a few eggs. Don't you? Of course, there's nothing wrong with those desires, but the question one must ask is if the ends justify the means. In the case of the dark side, the means ultimately corrupt and distort the ends you were trying to bring about.

In the name of "peace", Anakin brings about death, suffering, betrayal and ultimately, Empire.

And Palpatine's plan! Wow. You know, I had generally understood the broad strokes of his plan before this film, but they really crystallized for me in Episode III. It's not even all that complicated. The whole thing was simply an engineered threat, in the form of the droid armies and the seperatists. The goal, of course, was to make the senate so afraid for their own safety that they would give him all the powers he needed to become Emperor. I don't know why I never grasped it so completely until now. I got caught up in the little details, wondering how this or that fit into his plan, and now I realize. His plan is simple, and he's adaptable. He uses Dooku for as long as Dooku is useful to him. Then, given the opportunity to make headway with a better apprentice, Dooku goes. It's a perfect parallel to Return of the Jedi, where he does the same thing with Luke and Vader. Only in that case, of course, Luke refuses.

So many great parallels all throughout. I can't even list them all, but two particular favorites were Anakin telling Padme that they can overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy together, and when Owen and Beru hold baby Luke under the binary sunset.

Good. I'm feeling better now. When I started this, I felt too focused on the clunky, to the exclusion of the great. It was a temporary excursion to the dark side, but now I'm back.

P.S. There are a lot of people who are getting all up in arms about politicizing the movie and making parallels between the war in the film and the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, etc. To all these people I say:

Get a life! It's just a freakin' movie!

That is all.