This one is a really interesting experience. I’ve been looking forward to it for AnnaSophia Robb but the rest of the cast ain’t too shabby either. Charlize Theron is fantastic in her short bit of screentime, in fact when she left the movie so early I was a little disappointed as, it has to be said, it’s not one of AnnaSophia’s most memorable or brilliant performances – at least in those early scenes. Nick Stahl and Woody Harrelson, too, are great.

But for almost a full half of the running time, it’s not much to write home about at all. It’s very melancholy, very downbeat, for the most part perfectly played by the actors and crew etc – but, kinda like The Wackness, it’s the kind of small movie that’s been done a thousand times before and at least a handful of those thousand times were miles better.

It’s when Nick Stahl and AnnaSophia hit the road to find Theron, however, that the movie really switched gears for me. There are some really beautiful moments in the second half of the movie – it’s almost the inverse of Robb’s performance in Have Dreams Will Travel – that disappointment I had in her performance early on pays off as her character finds herself on the road, playing hide and seek with Stahl, that almost iconic image of her that graces the movie’s poster, a scene in which she grabs the attention of two pre-teen boys by smoking and then rollerskating to the edge of a diving board before jumping in the water – it’s one of those stories about a young girl discovering to her surprise the things that she can do and the power that she has; and no matter how average the rest of the movie is, moments like that in movies always mean a lot to me.

When the third pleasant surprise in the cast – Dennis Hopper – shows up, it almost begins to feel like True Romance ... and then things get really squiffy. If it weren’t for the cast and the skill with which its all done, I wouldn’t hesitate to call this movie a mess – in fact, I still wanna call it a mess. But it has just enough in it, for me at least, to keep it floating gently.

Okay, we may be entering the realm of reviews that I actually started, so they might be getting longer, hehe …

But it almost pains me to say, what can be said of this that hasn’t yet been said? I know, it’s taken me an unforgivable amount of time to see it. But it’s Pixar … their reliability level is almost boringly, consistently, humblingly high, I think I’ve said before. There are other animation mediums thankfully creeping back out of the woodwork lately after a decade of CG holding centre stage (Disney’s own stuff to come in the next couple of years fascinates me it looks like the ArtRage of computer animation lol) – but when it comes to computer animation, Pixar really does unfailingly put the other companies to abject shame, and Wall•E is no exception.

What struck me most about the movie I think was how much bleaker it was even than I’d been told. Right from the opening, the empty scenes of desolation that Wall•E rolls through to Thomas Newman’s lonely score, it’s extremely unnerving and frighteningly believable as to a place we could be headed. Once the movie goes into space, I actually found myself momentarily feeling very wrong indeed at the portrayal of today’s lazy humanity’s ultimate destination. It’s astounding that a movie that on its very surface is so scathing can still win its audience over with humour and emotion through a couple of hunks of metal.

For me it easily beats Cars and The Incredibles (sorry Vi!) – perhaps not Ratatouille though the running time helps it in the repeat viewing zone. I’m not sure if it’s up there with Andrew Stanton’s own Finding Nemo. I personally wasn’t impressed a few years ago when people wowed at the expressionless emotion of Gromit in Curse of the Were-Rabbit but the amount of emotion gleaned here from glances and gestures is frequently overwhelming.

A lot of reviews I’ve read or heard talked about the basically silent first half and seemed disappointed by the second half where it’s a little more traditionally Pixar but I really didn’t feel that – and the moment at the end where the “lovers” are finally together on the same page just melted me completely, the silence, stillness, and slowness of that moment are just astonishing – nevermind for a “kids” movie … for any movie today. There’s tons of competition coming up as the Oscars approach, but I’m still standing by my theory that this year will be a more commercial contest after 2 years of bolder film making taking the cake; my beloved Mamma Mia! predix may be dreamy, but this one certainly seems like it has a shot at being the second animated feature ever to be nominated for Best Pic.

Blech. It’s starting to annoy me now the number of movies this year are leaving me with precious little to say. This is really Batman Begins Lite, it takes Downey Jr. forever to get into the damn suit here and it’s marginally interesting for that time; and when he finally does get in the suit, all personality and character just vanishes entirely, it’s horrific. Again, it just really did very little for me – even at my most generous I can’t for the life of me fathom the high regard this got across the board on its release. Downey Jr. for an Oscar? He doesn’t do anything! Again, I just don’t know what else to say about it … and believe me I’ve been trying for weeks only to come to the conclusion, “why should I?” lol.

From what I’d heard about this I’ve gotta admit I expected to like it a lot more than I ultimately did. It could be that I watched it in the past couple of weeks and my attention really hasn’t been good for movies (hence the hiatus from writing about them) and I’d certainly give it another chance some time, because there’s nothing particularly wrong with it … but I watched it pretty close to Be Kind, Rewind and I found it really just trod the same ground and, like BKRW, I would much rather to have been watching Bowfinger or Ed Wood again, or, if it were endearing British brats I wanted, then something like Millions. This just really did nothing for me in the end, the kind of movie made for those who like to praise just one movie a year for not being “all effects and explosions”, “at last!”, as if no other good movies ever get made thanks to evil, evil Hollywood. To make such a movie does not automatically make it better, and even on my best days I doubt I’d call this anything better than average.

Eep, I thought I’d written something about this one, lol. Well, you’ll soon be able to tell here that I’m just catching up as best I can this afternoon on my many missed reviews. I liked this one too. I’d kind of forgotten how much I liked the first Harold and Kumar movie until they both showed up on my TV screen again. You’ve got poop and masturbation gags within seconds here but, I don’t know, there’s something about it that makes it much less groan-inducing than it should be. There were more than a few laugh out loud moments for me, not least of which of course is the return of Neil Patrick Harris; and the bottomless party scene is pretty fantastic too.

I liked this, it made me laugh. That’s kind of the best you can expect from comedies these days, right? The best way I’d describe it is as some kind of, umm … Elf meets Borat with Adam Sandler? And hey, the Z in the title, not to mention the hair, can’t help but provoke Zoolander comparisons too. Let’s face it, there’s elements of a lot here, right down to a bare bones Jazz Singer thread that warms up the ending. After Team America I came to the realisation that my hopelessness on the movie-loving front lately might be related to the dearth of comedy in my diet, so it came down to a choice between this, the new Mike Myers and Harold & Kumar. It speaks volumes of how my respect for Adam Sandler has soared over the years that this decision was really quite the no-brainer. (It’s a long time since I started this review let alone watched the movie so I’ll leave it off there except to say I kinda loved the Mariah Carey cameo too – “I love you too, horny little man! Buy my new album!”)

Oh gosh

When I first heard about this I turned my nose up because of the whole set-up … a prequel to the original, which of course meant no Melody lol. A few months ago I saw a still from the movie posted to some IMDb message board or other and my interest seeing in the movie for all but disappeared because the moment in particular that they’d captured just looked atrociously drawn.

How fast those doubts can be swept away by the merest glance during the first few minutes here of a tiny tiny Ariel (no seashells, just a cute purple wrap, lol!) and all the other characters, and the animation, crucially, in motion. The animation here is spectacular ... and I’m not even gonna add to that ”... for a DTV sequel …”

Well, anyway, the tiny tiny Ariel doesn’t last ‘cos this is evidently all occurring pretty close to the start of the original. The story is nifty once it gets going – I actually laughed out loud when Ariel first stumbles across Sebastian’s underground music speakeasy, lol. Basically Triton has outlawed music in Atlantica and the movie is kind of Prohibition for kids about the importance of music. I guess Disney is getting a headstart on the neo-depression genre lol.

There are lots of cute references to the original, my fave being the jawdrop moment (if I remember correctly, this was also in the sequel when Melody tells Sebastian she sometimes imagines she has fins) – here it’s flipped around and it’s Ariel’s jaw that drops when she first seas goody-goody Sebastian breaking the rules by singing. Later we see the villainess Marina Del Ray mimicking the splash-up-on-the-rock moment that ended the “Part of Your World” reprise. There are some supersubtle gags for adults though, too, like “At-lant-ic-a!” when all the sea creatures find themselves locked away. The movie really has a surprisingly rebellious streak to it. Oh and also, almost making up for the absence of Melody (though her voice, Tara Strong, is here! hehe), at last Flounder is back to the cute version we fell in love with in the original, not the adolescent, voice broken, version that was about the worst thing in Return to the Sea LOL.

All in all I was surprised. I’d obviously rather see another Melody story than this but I can’t deny the animation is just leaps and bounds better than most Disney DTVs – though I’m cringing the more I hear about the Tinker Bell movie which basically sounds like Bratz meets Sex and the City with fairies, bah … I can’t wait to see the animation.

Hmph. Well, I promised myself under threat of extermination that I would write about this one if it killed me since I’ve missed another batch of reviews (I’ll get to them, most likely repeat viewings will help me come up with something to say) and I just need to force myself to write. But, again, it’s a 2008 movie about which little can be said. I wanted to see this movie for a long time which sets it apart from a lot of this year’s stuff from the start. The funky title plus an Olsen twin where you wouldn’t expect to find an Olsen twin were enough for starters. When I found out it had Josh – Drake and Josh Josh, Josh Peck – in it too, plus Ben Kingsley not exactly being Ben Kingsley, it really looked promising and a screenplay nod at next year’s Oscars seemed (and still seems) like a shoe-in (it’s just that kind of movie – I don’t know).

But … meh. It’s all well and good. At the start, the 90s references threaten to become embarrassing: a Forrest Gump bus ad here, a gameboy there, beepers a whole character in themselves – “Has this got something to do with Kurt Cobain?” Kingsley (playing a psychotherapist) asks Peck at one point. But as the movie progresses, these gimmicky nods practically disappear entirely and are more notable by their absence, being as they were the movie’s most interesting aspect. By the end, it’s the kind of indie coming of age drama that’s been done many, many times before. For the 90s nostalgia, ironically, I’d sooner pull out a movie from the very year in which this one is set, Reality Bites (it’s similar in other ways too). For the coming of age stuff … boy, just take your pick. Don’t get me wrong, it’s kooky and quirky and all the actors do fine, particularly Kingsley – but it’s nothing special whatsoever.