Month: November 2014

I don’t often use the democratic process when working on my website, but I like to keep things interesting. Because I only go to 1 pre-screening a week now, I have to sometimes make difficult decisions on what I want to watch now and watch later. I had FOUR choices this weeks of screenings, and since none of them were Foxcatcher, I took to Facebook and Twitter to let the people decide.

And overwhelmingly, the people decided on Rosewater.

Like most people, the only thing I knew about Rosewater is that it was directed by Jon Stewart. And that is it. Current events be damned, sometimes I don’t keep up with all of the happenings all around the world.

Don’t look too shocked, I am just super America-centric.

Rosewater is the true story of journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael García Bernal), a guy who worked for Newsweek in London. Mazier was born in Tehran, Iran, but he left it to go to Canada to get the college education and has mostly stayed away since then. Now, in London, he has a pregnant wife (Claire Foy) and things are looking good. They are sending him to Iran to cover a new election. It is a big one, because a dude who has been there forever and very religious might actually lose the election. The people are clamoring and demanding change, so they are going to maybe elect a professor who wants to help his country grow.

Very exciting times.

But while there, he ends up hanging out with some activists who are really anti the current Iranian government. Thanks to them, he can see Iran as it really is, with the protests and the underground movements. And when the conservative guy wins again? Iran blows up. Figuratively. Protests, anger, rah rah rah. Now Maziar is there a lot longer than he expected. Oh well. As long as he doesn’t do anything illegal, he should be good.

Well, he gets locked up anyways. Just for filming and showing it on the news. And he gets called a spy. And he has to stay in solitary confinement, with blindfolds, for almost 120 days, while they mentally torture him believing him to be an American spy. Weeee~

Also featuring Kim Bodnia, Dimitri Leonidas, Haluk Bilginer, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Golshifteh Farahani.

He probably got a lot of sleep with that thing too.

In case you didn’t know, the reason why Jon Stewart felt compelled to tell this story in movie form is because The Daily Show had ties to Maziar. Maziar was interviewed by The Daily Show when he was in Iran for this election in which he was jokingly called a spy along with other terrorist jokes. The Iranian government used that interview as part of their proof that he was in fact a spy, despite the nature of the show. Yeah, Jon probably felt pretty bad. But they go over that in the movie.

In case you didn’t know where the title came from, Rosewater is a scent and the main interrogator for Maziar had that type of cologne or whatever smell on him. However, awkwardly enough, the movie didn’t really explain or say that, from what I can tell. Just a small snippet about it at the beginning and then never really brought it up again. Seems to be an important point.

Rosewater really is just an average movie. I liked the cinematography, but the aspects of it as a complete film are probably Jon Stewart’s faults. It felt like a movie 10 years ago showing the few “social activism” scenes, like trending hashtags and news reports about his situation. They stood out way too much and seemed like a way to escape the film and the horrible conditions Maziar was in. Because of the frequent interruptions and weird way to present his imprisonment, I rarely could connect with him. It just didn’t feel serious enough.

I also couldn’t really figure out the purpose of this is, outside of maybe letting more people know that Iran government is kind of corrupt. It was a shitty situation, but one that also kind of got resolved pretty easily and the whole thing just felt…weird. I heard there was a documentary on the same subject, it is probably a better source of information and maybe even more entertaining.

I have to wait for a lot of things. Usually movies. Getting to a movie 3-4 hours early just to wait in a line to make sure I can see it in advance for free. Yes, my time is totally worth that.

Either way, a lot of downtime is felt there, it can suck. But I could watch movies on my phone during the wait, because watching movies before you watch a movie is cruise control to coolsville. Which is why, while waiting for a movie, I watched the documentary The Waiting Room.

Just so we are clear, this makes me cool.

The Waiting Room is about hospitals though! Namely, Highland Hospital in Oakland, California. It is notable for having the most trafficked emergency room in the country. Lot of people, lot of trauma, and of course, an area where a lot of people might not have health insurance so people have to come there when they can’t pay.

But at least they have the raddest attendant ever working the door to calm down the wait time.

The documentary is actually set up in a pretty unique way. First, it is one day of the hospital. Good. Simple. We get to hear the doctors, nurses, secretaries, and financial advisers as they work and discuss the load of people that day. We also of course get those who came in for help and as they get frustrated by their wait or their service.

But none of it is done in a visual interview format. If they are describing their frustrations, or their reasoning, or anything, it is done purely in voice over by the person over footage of them in the hospital or receiving service. The format never takes us “away” from the hospital and helps emphasize the trapped feeling. Or something like that.

Either way, it was really easy to connect with the people waiting and the staff as well.

Better yet? This documentary wasn’t preachy. The director didn’t bring opinions into anything. It was just real people, waiting, getting frustrated, and some of them receiving shitty care and being put in shitty situations. You can derive your own conclusions, if any, from what it is. But at least in 2012, this was a reality for many and it is heartbreaking.

Canada.

It has to be Canada’s fault. That is what you would think when you hear of the term Zombeavers. Clearly a country who worships the proud and noble animal would make a horror/comedy based on them turning into the undead feasting for brains.

But nope. You’d be wrong. This movie is all America, baby. And it isn’t even set in Canada. Just a nice cabin in the woods by a lake. A classic tale if any.

Whatever the reasoning behind this film, I do appreciate the way the two words line up. Bloody brilliant.

Pun about beavers and feet stumps.

Three ladies, driving to a vacation in a cabin in the woods. How any real horror movie starts.

It was supposed to involve boyfriends, but apparently Sam (Hutch Dano) cheated on Jenn (Lexi Atkins). So they now want to make Jenn feel better, so Zoe (Cortney Palm) and Mary (Rachel Melvin) have to leave their men at home.

Of course, the place has no cell reception, and maybe some creepy individuals. Like a local hunter, Smyth (Rex Linn), who tells them to cover up their bodies more. Whatadick.

And it should be noted, I guess, that some apathetic delivery drivers lost a canister of radioactive material near the lake. Went down the stream right to the beaver dam.

And don’t worry, they aren’t just strange mutated killer beavers either. They are literally undead with all the characteristics that an undead zombie beaver would and should have.

Also with Peter Gilroy and Jake Weary, as the other boyfriends.

Pun about beavers and women.

Now, this movie is a tribute to B-Movies done right. Not shitty for shitty sake. But interesting and unique with arguably a dumb plot. That is what we want in our low budget weird horrors, damn it.

The beginning and end had me laughing more than I figured, but other than that, most of the comedy just game from snide remarks from characters and the ridiculousness look of the zombeavers. Hand puppets or something, not bad terrible CGI. Added some more uniqueness to it.

It was obviously not the best film of the genre, and wasn’t terrible unique in terms of plot. Basically just zombie film, but with beavers. But it still had some very unique scenes and ways the characters interacted with the threat that made it feel a bit more interesting.

I am super stoked that they made them zombies and just not mutated beavers, by the way. It provided a way more entertaining ending than just killer beavers.

And also, we have to give the film some props for such unique advertising.

Ruining child classics is one of Hollywood’s favorite past times.

But this is not one of those examples. Because Hollywood is not behind this movie, just some low budget independent company. That’s right. The Boxcar Children, a book made in the 1920s and repopularized in the 1940s, it then spawned 159 follow up books and specials. WHAT. More impressively, they are are still making more. Four of them came out this year and a few are scheduled for 2015 already.

Of course, that series after the first book decided to go completely boring and make it a strange good-natured mystery series.

But hey, I read The Boxcar Children in like, second grade. In fact, it is the first legit book I have read. It had zero pictures, something called chapters and I didn’t read like 8 of them in one reading session.

So bring on the kids who do good things and live in the woods.

And who are as happy at winning as that one spelling bee kid.

Four kids. All brothers and sisters. And no parents. Wandering around, sleeping in bakeries, paying for bread with money they presumably earned by helping old ladies cross the street.

We got Henry (Zachary Gordon) 14 and technically the leader because he is oldest. Next is Jessie (Joey King), 12 year old girl, who is the mom figure and thus the cook. She runs things when Henry is out earning change for a living. After that is Violet (Mackenzie Foy) who I have nothing of note to say outside of the color purple and she is kind of weak and useless. But not as weak and useless as Benny (Jadon Sand) who is six and has no redeeming qualities outside of being cared for by others.

They are wandering around because their mom died or something and they don’t want to go to their mean old grandparents home. So they literally ran away, walking from town to town, being runaways with a 6 year old kid.

They are afraid of getting put in orphanages so they run into the woods afraid of some baker couple. And hey look, a box car from a train on an abandoned track for some reason. K. So they live there.

And story. Also with voice talents from Martin Sheen, J.K. Simmons, D.B. Sweeney, and Audrey Wasilewski.

They literally have to drag that kid along it looks like.

And now, my analysis where I talk mostly about how creepy the movie looks.

Man, this animated film is super creepy. Not like, uncanny valley creepy, like it is so close to human just a slight step away. No, it is just creepy because the animation is really really bad. Like, worse than video game bad. Like worse than Hoodwinked Too!. Like beyond terrible. Like before PSX graphics bad. I just don’t get it. The Snow Queen was an independent movie from like Russia and they had better animation than this one.

Watching characters eat or grab things, but having that object floating next to their hand and not holding it. And the animation was especially bad with water. And unfortunately they seem to awkwardly interact with it throughout the movie.

Gah. The animation. Gah gah gah.

The story itself? Well, it follows the book pretty darn closely. That is good for your purists. But it also turns out that the book doesn’t have a whole lot going on for it. It is a pretty boring story. But if you liked and remembered the books, then you might enjoy this not completely shit animated film version of it. But I am disappointed in that a nice live action version is something I might enjoy more. Then it won’t feel so damn creepy.

The Theory Of Everything. Quite a bold title for such a short movie. Alright, it is about two hours, but I figured it would take a lot longer than 2 hours to fully discuss and show The Theory Of Everything.

What? What’s that? It isn’t actually going to answer this question? Fuckers. No. The Theory Of Everything is actually a biographical romance film about Stephen Hawking. Yes, the Stephen Hawking. That makes sense that he would have a biographical movie I guess. He is a really smart and well known individual and given his conditions it would allow for some sexy sexy acting to occur. But I always feel weird watching a biographical film when the person in question is still alive. What if he still does something super fucking awesome, like, maybe finding an actual Theory of Everything? This film will feel like such a waste at that point. They’d have to do another one to include that monumental occasion.

What? What’s that? This movie isn’t entirely about Stephen Hawking?

Shit, let’s just get the plot details out then so I can stop making assumptions.

Although, with that grin, I am pretty sure I know who farted.

This film starts us off in the roaring 1960s at Cambridge. That is in the UK, for those non worldly readers out there. Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) is just a physics PhD student who doesn’t know what he wants to study! He is definitely smarter than the rest of his colleagues, everyone knows it. Especially Professor Sciama (David Thewlis), the most important person who needs to know that information, and he encourages Stephen to see a few exciting talks and labs that they have to offer for research projects.

But Stephen finds himself interested in something else. Namely, the body, voice, and brain of one Jane (Felicity Jones), a literature student who hopes to one day maybe get a PhD herself. For whatever reason, she sees something in his goofy face and is pretty sure she loves him back.

And then, a motor neuron disease starts to take hold. His legs and hands stop working as well as they used to be. Walking is hard. Writing is hard. Living is hard. He is becoming slowly paralyzed, his entire body, with about 2 years left to live. Jane doesn’t care. She wants to work through it with him. So in his last 2 years, he gets his PhD, gets married, and has a child! But then he is still alive.

And well, obviously, alive to this day.

Also featuring Charlie Cox and Emily Watson as two different caretakers for Mr. Hawking and are in his life way more than you’d might expect, and for different reasons.

Paralyzed yet still made 3 kids? Yeah, not everything turns off down there.

Alright, first thing you may have thought about when hearing this movie was My Left Foot. Or at least that is what I did. Daniel Day-Lewis, the master actor that he is, gave an incredibly performance of a crippled individual and won many praises for it. Eddie Redmayne will win very very similar praises.

Whether it is strong enough on its own to win overall? I doubt it, although it is still incredibly impressive. Also impressive? Felicity Jones. She had a lot to do with this film as well, and nothing felt forced or fake from her. It was also a great performance.

My biggest issue with this story is that it is based on a memoir from Jane Hawking, and thus most of the focus is on them and not Stephen Hawking. That’s right, this is technically more of a Jane Hawking bio movie, not Stephen. Bet you didn’t see that coming. And due to that reason, we have a huge lack of science and talk about his work in this movie. They touch on some light basics, but everything feels like it is super dumbed down and only headline creating topics hit. It felt awkward to rush through all of his academic successes and really made me feel like I was missing something.

Also, the one thing that was definitely missing was some sort of timeline to show us when things occurred. I can’t tell if he was able to finish his PhD and have the baby in the two years he was supposed to live or not. Obviously he lasted longer, but when did the milestones occur? They should have really forced the accomplishments on us and let us know how truly wonderful it was.

The Interstellar hype train is so hot right now, you could light a candle off of its ass. That might not make a lot of sense, but it sounds like something Matthew McConaughey could say really sweet in his voice, so I ran with it.

But seriously. Christopher Nolan is one of the more well liked directors today. The movie has had wonderful trailers. It has the capability of being as beautiful as last years Gravity, especially in an IMAX 3D setting.

But wait. Controversy! It turns out Nolan doesn’t like the fancy IMAX digital camera nonsense. No, that man likes himself good old fashioned film and filmed a lot of movie that way. Most filmmakers prefer digital cameras, as they are actually cheaper and easier to get 3D/CGI stuff with them. But a few others think that digital film making makes the movie lose a certain artistic touch.

So it turns out Nolan has released his film in two ways. In an actual film reel, which a lot of theaters have gone away with, and digitally. Not only can you watch the film in 35 MM like normal, but he also has a 70 MM version meant for IMAX screens. Nolan wanted that reel touch to his movie, given some of the themes in it, so I can tell you the movie version I watched was film. Just didn’t get to see the film IMAX version.

Enough talk about specifications, let’s talk about space people!

This film is set in the future, where things are not looking so great. The Earth has gotten kind of pissy with the wastefulness of its citizens. Tech went too hard too fast and well, a lot of people died. Now most of their crops don’t work due to diseases, all they have left is corn.

In fact, some tech people are now looked down in disdain. They don’t need fighter pilots, they need farmers and mostly farmers. So NASA has been working in secret, looking for other planets to move to, because Earth kind of sucks. And it has been going poorly. But thanks to worm holes and higher tech, they have 3 planets to check out. They just need a sweet ass pilot.

Oh hey, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey). Now a good farmer, used to be a pilot and all, before the tech haters happened. And well, he is the only guy for the job. He is just going to be gone for a few years, not a high chance of survival, not a high chance of success either. Kind of intense odds. But he has to. But does he?

He does, after all, have family. A son and daughter (Mackenzie Foy, yes she is more important than brother enough to tag). Can he leave them behind? Or can he help save humanity?

Also starring a lot of people! Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, David Gyasi, and John Lithgow.

Oh sweet, and they go surfing. Every movie needs a surfing scene.

Intestellar, if anything, is definitely a visionary achievement. The scope is grand and intense with this movie. It is about 2 hours and 45 minutes long, leaving a lot of room for plot, exploration, and some hopefully good acting.

And there is some good acting! From McConaughey. And from Mackenzie Foy and Jessica Chastain. And uhh. After that it seems to get a bit muddled from what I can tell. Because unfortunately, I had some issues with Interstellar too.

Without going into big details, the last 25 or 30 percent of the movie felt rushed, despite the long run time. The ending was full of explanations, almost pounding your head in the wall to make sure you understood things instead of letting the movie tell the story naturally. Some extremely awkwardly acted moments came out of no where. One conflict scene came near the end seemingly out of nowhere on Earth. A character died in the laziest and most “wat? really?” way possible.

Just a bunch of minor things that ruined a little bit this very very excellent film.

Now, these are the type of minor things that one can probably normally ignore, but only in that I saw so many of them, it just made it a bigger issue. It is a beautiful film, and probably even prettier in IMAX. It tackles some complex subjects in the science field and has nice allusions to the Dust Bowl. It was certainly entertaining. It just wasn’t perfect film for me.

Documentaries, schmockumentaries. I used to have my documentaries on Friday, but now they are Thursday. Let us cope with it and move on.

Let’s talk about video games, because I like video games. I would refer to myself as a gamer, even if my time is much more limited from the activity. I have to watch a lot of movies, and keep up with TV shows. It is a hard life.

But with a vague title for a documentary, Video Games: The Movie (claiming to be a movie?) could be about so many topics. Most likely it will involve the history of gaming and how it is evolved today. And really, that is all I can imagine it being about. The history of gaming.

And video games! And video games through time!

Sure enough, this documentary is mostly about video games and the history. And how systems have gotten better. And why people who play video games are cool. And how indie games are doing stuff. Hey, maybe the title is because of that other documentary, Indie Game: The Movie? I swear there were more topics, but I was so bored throughout the movie that it is really easy to forget.

Here are some of the problems. Outside of video games, it didn’t really have a lot of focus. It goes from segment to segment, about different topics, some interviews with some people, and shit ton of filler footage of just video game footage. That might sound like a good thing, but when there is just randomly 2 minutes of video game segments of various games for whatever topic, that just isn’t exciting to watch. That is boring. The segments are so unconnected, you could put them in any order and the movie would feel the same. They even have musical intro/outros for each section which makes it feel even more disjointed.

Obviously this thing isn’t going to have anything about Gamer Gate, for you people who think it would. Come on now. This thing was made like a year or so ago, and Gamer Gate is only a month or so old.

Another complaint? They show this huge timeline of gaming history and start going chronological through it, but they have major events in it that they skip. Then they start going out of order, going forward and backwards, and the events on the time line seemed to be different and change. And they still ignored a lot of stuff on there. Why show it on a timeline if you aren’t explaining it? The time line was an annoying clusterfuck.

But this documentary is still super boring. Definitely don’t watch it if you like video games. And don’t if you know nothing about them. Just read wikipedia articles.

For whatever reason, I know a lot of people who were upset when Disney bought Marvel Studios. They thought it was the end of the good stuff. They thought only bad could come. They said the same thing when they bought Lucasfilm.

I, however, was excited. They weren’t going to mess around with a good thing too much, they didn’t want to spend billions to not make billions more back! But I was even more excited about the potential of a full on, super good CGI Marvel/Disney flick. Yeah. Something with the cutting edge in technology, giving me full on super hero battles, with flash colors and everything the comics promised, and really that live action movies still can’t fully give. So when I found out it was Big Hero 6? Well, I obviously had to look up what the hell that was.

Big Hero 6 is a much smaller property that has a small following. It is most well known for having, at times, Sunfire and Silver Samurai from X-Men in it, but we know that Fox has those rights, so they had to work around it. Disney also wanted to be able to tell a new story and not feel super tied down to any mythos, so messing with a smaller property would work well with that. And hey, if they didn’t have the Big Hero 6 leader in it, they’d probably have to change a lot anyways.

And thus, this animated movie exists, presumably nothing like the (old) comics, and I knowing nothing about it couldn’t have been happier.

Yay surprises and happiness and sunshine flowers!

This story is about Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) and his trouble with ladies. That’s not true, he doesn’t have troubles, he just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about ANYTHING really, outside of robots and robot fighting. You see, Hiro is only 14, but he already graduated high school. Bright kid. Has a bright older brother too, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), but he is in college doing boring stuff. Hiro just wants to illegally bot fight and make money that way.

But once he finds out that Tadashi is actually in a really fucking cool robotics program, with really cool people? Yeah, that is when he thinks college might be a good thing, and not just living at home with his Aunt (Maya Rudolph) in San Fransokyo (which you should be able to figure out what two cities were combined for this).

Well, Hiro is able to design super sexy nanobot technology to get himself admission to the school! But when disaster strikes and he loses his invention, he is sad again. Not even his new college friends can help: Go Go Tomago (Jamie Chung), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.) and Fred (T.J. Miller).

But when he finds out his invention was stolen and is being used for nefarious purposes, well, he cannot just sit idly by. He has to fight back. And he has to use Baymax (Scott Adsit), the soft robot helper and turn him into a fighting machine! And maybe he can fight back too. And his friends. Yes… Maybe they can be…super heroes.

Also featuring James Cromwell as Professor Robert Callaghan and Alan Tudyk as the seedy business man Alistair Krei.

Shake that sexy butt.

Color? Yes. Fantastic animation? Yes yes. Likeable characters? Yesx3. A plot about science and why knowledge is good and how science can change the world? Hells to the yes.

Watching Big Hero 6, the best way to describe it was having a blast. This Disney film is notable for not having a lot of songs, which might be their goal. They went Tangled, then Wreck-It Ralph, then Frozen, and now Big Hero 6. A lot more “macho” themed movie, if you go by outdated gender stereotypes, so there is no room for silly songs. Just action, humor, and sexy sexy graphics.

This was just a really great both super hero movie and animated family film. That is a hard one to pull off. A lot of great humor and it has a lot of similarities (based on my research) with the comics, but unique enough to make it its own thing. The only issue with it being in the animated field and a Disney flick, is I know that if we are going to get it a sequel, we have at least a four year wait. Can’t have one of these guys every two years, as it will make them compete with themselves for Best Animated Picture, and they don’t want that.

And can we get another shout out to science? Yay science! Some of the tech was inspired by real life advances too, making this futuristic tale also a bit modern.

It is too close to Halloween now, but I expect fully by next year that we will see a lot of Hiro and Baymax duos out and about. Not more than Elsa, but a fair number still.

I really wanted to do some clever parody of Spoonman to start this review, but those lyrics kind of suck. Didn’t give me a lot to work with, outside of obviously changing Spoonman to Birdman.

But let’s talk about this great title. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) is the full title and so we should say it every time in public as such. Such a provocative title on its own right, and given that some of the people in here play strange fake versions of themselves, it gets even crazier.

And the movie itself is very pseudo-meta. In the quickest description, it is about a man going through a midlife crisis, who used to play a very famous super hero, but stopped and hasn’t had great work since then. That person is looking for a comeback into the public fame and risking it all to succeed. Michael Keaton of course used to play Batman, and after Multiplicity, well, who cares? And now he is in a very similar situation. Awesome. I am stoked.

And Norton plays a great actor who others can’t stand and is hard to work with. Hey!

To reiterate, Riggan (Keaton) used to be a hot commodity. He played BIRDMAN, the best super hero, people loved him. But then he stopped. He didn’t want to do it anymore.

Now look at him, middle aged, divorced, and putting on a play. A play?? Yes. On Broadway, an adaption of a a short story that he is writing, directing, and starring in. Why? Hard to say, could be the crisis, could be because he likes the author, could be anything. But it is happening and soon. But at the same time, his life is falling apart. His relationship with his daughter (Emma Stone) is strained. He is putting all of his wealth into this production. His lead performers are either bad or egotistical. He might have gotten someone pregnant. He has to deal with critics with a vendetta. And bad things just seem to keep happening!

Did I mention mid-life crisis? Because Riggan is also having trouble, when he is alone, perceiving his own reality. He almost sees reality in a different light than everyone else. They just couldn’t understand.

Also featuring Zach Galifianakis as his lawyer, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, and Edward Norton as his actors, and Amy Ryan as his ex-wife.

Also starring that guy, played by some Harvey or something like that.

One of the coolest things a director can do is have a few “really long shots” in their film, where the camera never leaves the scene, where there are not cuts, just a lot of dialogue and a lot of acting. The Master had an intense one of those, Before Midnight had a few, Tarantino does it a lot. It is awesome and shows a lot of great acting during these sorts of scenes.

I don’t know a lot about the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, except that I have reviewed only one of his films, Biutiful, but I am convinced that this man is a genius. The ENTIRE FILM is made up of incredibly long scenes. I’d say the camera must have only cut away under ten times the whole film, which is about two hours long. That is incredible.

And just so we are clear, this is not a movie with only a handful of locations where the camera is just watching a few people talking for 10-15 minutes at a time. No. People walk and people move from room to room of this tiny Broadway theater, from main stage to dressing room, to balcony, to the streets below. So the entire film is so meticulously planned that the whole thing is like a Rube Goldberg machine. Actors have to come into rooms at the right time, also props, sight gags, everything has to fit in correctly. Given that this is a comedy, timing is key for half of the laughs, so it was an incredible feat. It is almost as if they tried to convey this movie as if it was a play, where real acting had to occur.

Speaking of real acting, there were so much incredible talent in this film, but Keaton and Stone knock it out of the park. Obviously Keaton will get most of the fame, and rightfully so, most likely earning a Best Acting nomination nod for his work here. But I want to make sure that people know that Stone was also fantastic and had a monologue or two to convey intense emotions through.

The film had a great plot, it kept me guessing, and shit, even the soundtrack of “mostly just drums” worked really fucking well. Go see Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) and then maybe go see it again.

When I first saw a trailer for The Book Of Life, I was taken aback with the animation styling. And the story line. And everything about it. Well, everything but one thing.

Guillermo del Toro‘s name was attached to the picture. Really? I like del Toro, so I found that surprising because it didn’t seem like something that he heavily influenced. Outside of the Mexican influence, it just didn’t seem like his work. But I decided to give it a benefit of the doubt. There is reasoning behind the animation style, there is some cultural significance to the whole picture, and damn it. It might be excellent.

If you didn’t know, this movie has something to do with the Day of the Dead, which takes place from Halloween to Nov 2. In particular, they call Nov 2 the Day of the Dead, as that is the day that they celebrate the gravestones of their family members and party in their remembrance, the central theme to the story.

The non central theme hopefully is searching for this mythical Book of Life that gives everyone super powers. I hope.

Oh shit, those kids found it! Run! Chaos everywhere! Ahh!

Mexico in this case is the center of the universe, not only that, but the center of Mexico is a place that looks like a guitar surrounded by water, in San Angel. That is where a lot of shenanigans take place, given its central location. I guess I should explain the afterlife. Get ready for some facts. Everyone knows that once people die, their spirits go to a really sexy place where they party all day and all night and live with their families and friends! La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) rules the Land of the Remembered and it is totally fetch. But there is another afterlife place. The Land of the Forgotten, ruled by Xibalba (Ron Perlman). That is not a fun place. You see, if people in the Land of the Forgotten ever forget about someone that has died, the spirit gets moved to the Land of the Forgotten for the rest of eternity. Not a fun time at all. 🙁 🙁 🙁

Xibalba of course doesn’t like his job and wants to rule the cool place, so they make bets and wages all the time over the lives of humans to determine who rules what.

So they see these three kids running around. Manolo (Diego Luga) with his guitar and sensitivity, Joaquin (Channing Tatum) who likes to sword fight and wants to be a soldier, and of course, sweet sweet Maria (Zoe Saldana) the object of their affection and daughter of the general.

Bets! They place them. Xibalba picks Joaquin to eventually marry Maria, and La Muerte picks Manolo. If Xibalba wins, he gets to rule the Land of the Remembered, but if La Muete wins, Xibalba has to stop interfering with the lives of humans. Oh golly.

The fate of so much on such a little arrangement. And who is to say the girl will marry either boy? Pfft. Gods.

Also featuring the voice acting talent of Christina Applegate, Ice Cube, Carlos Alazraqui, Danny Trejo, and Hector Elizondo.

Not to be weird, but that is the sexiest hair I have seen on a CGI wooden puppet ever.

Turns out, del Toro didn’t have a lot to do with this movie. Sure, he was involved on some level as a producer, but he wasn’t even the executive producer. He probably provided some nice funding and helped design the Land of the Remembered, because it was vibrant and unique, but not sure what else he might have done.

A lot of music in this movie, and about half of it (or more) were actual songs but with a lot more mariachi feel to them. We got Creep and I Will Wait and much more. I think there is also unique music, but I just might not be hip enough on the music scene to get the references.

I think this is a hard movies for kids to follow. A lot is going on, a lot of characters are good and just misunderstood. After all, Xibalba isn’t a bad guy, just looks bad. Joaquin isn’t a bad guy either. The only bad guy is a bandito who doesn’t show up til the end, and I will say, he had very entertaining fight scenes.

The movie has a lot of spirit and energy, but I just found it hard to really relate to anyone. Or the story itself. It just ended up on the “okay” spectrum, which was disappointing, as I figured this one would be one of the best films of the year. Maybe I made a mistake in picking The Book Of Life over The Boxtrolls. I hope not!