I’m not about to spoil this movie for you. The tagline for this movie is “What Makes Us Different Makes Us Beautiful”. It’s about Christina Ricci born with a snout instead of a nose. By the end of the movie, she has a normal nose. I really think that’s all I need to say but bear with me ‘cos I feel a rant coming on. Now, maybe with The Hottie and the Nottie going around those cinemas that can afford to show it, my nitpicks over movies like this and Enchanted having fairly depressing implications about society seem beyond nitpicky. But hey, if nobody else is gonna say it then I will; if I didn’t just say what came to mind while watching a movie then I wouldn’t write anything at all.

“I know this face repulses you,” Penelope (Christina Ricci) tells Max (James McAvoy complete with pointless US accent) ”... And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to accept it. But this isn’t me, the real me is inside here somewhere just waiting to get out and you can make that happen and once the curse is broken I’ll be just like anybody else.”

“What if the curse doesn’t get broken? What if the curse can never be broken?” Max replies.

“Then I’ll kill myself. I promise, I promise I will. Marry me, Max. Marry me.”

And there’s the rub. If you happened to like Enchanted, honestly, I couldn’t recommend a better double bill companion than Penelope more whole-heartedly. Personally, my luck amazes me that I resisted seeing both on my birthday in February because either one of them would, to be blunt, have put a damper on my day. Though this movie didn’t upset me quite as much as Enchanted did – duh, it’s Christina Ricci with a snout, frankly that alone is worth my 90 minutes – I spent all those 90 minutes, as I did in Enchanted, dreading how it all would end, hoping the film makers would explain why every man who looked upon The Nose had to jump through glass or cause a scene, why not one of them would even hesitate a moment and consider the rest of her. Is she supposed to look as grotesque as what these guys seem to be reacting to? In which case it’s bad casting and makeup, and I hope that’s the case. Otherwise, it really upsets me that apparently little girls across the land have gone cuckoo for this movie that is telling them this is what they should expect if they don’t look like Reese Witherspoon.

I’m sure I’m not just being my strange and kinky self … seriously, Christina Ricci with a snout is almost even cuter than just plain Christina Ricci. I know it’s a story and the movie would end pretty quick if someone just walked in the room and said, “Hey! Cute nose!” ... what I’m saying isn’t as simple as that at all and you maybe need to see the whole movie to get the full sweep of how badly I feel it’s handled, I don’t know … it just basically sat badly with me. Maybe it’s as dumb as I’ve a feeling my response to everyone so rapidly believing Briony in Atonement was … but when something doesn’t sit with me, it doesn’t sit with me: all I can do is share the response.

I don’t have as many problems with it as I do with Enchanted – that movie had its wonderful moments and this one has even more on top of the simple fact of the Ricciness who can really do little wrong in my book. Joby Talbot’s music is gorgeous, one of those scores that, if I still bought soundtrack CDs, I’d snap up in a flash. Peter Dinklage is always worth the watch – he has one of the more interesting lines in the movie, perhaps moreso coming from him, when he says, “She’s out there on her own. Declaring her independence.” It even makes me happy enough that Christina Ricci even chose to do a project like this, it’s the kind of thing that made me go psychocrazy over her all those years ago. It’s quirky, it’s silly, it’s particularly indie-spirited even while being particularly appealing to the mainstream by its sheer freakshow nature.

But I’m loathe to sound too enthusiastic about the whole thing, because the overall message of it really makes my tummy squirm – from Grease to She’s All That I’ve always been sick of movies that basically tell people, especially girls and women, “Hey! You don’t have to be beautiful on the outside! But it helps ...” and again, even though it comes from character and is a perfectly logical part of the movie, I have to say, the moment at the end here where Catherine O’Hara (being even more loathsome than she was in For Your Consideration) starts suggesting even more “work” on Penelope’s nose even when it’s back to human form, it actually almost made me feel physically sick. Given I’ll take any opportunity to tell people my own insane dreams of magical transformation, I know how this sentiment probably makes me a big hypocrit. I don’t know what to say to that. Maybe we’re all a little hypocritical sometimes, but with me these days honesty overrides everything, and like I said, this just did not sit with me.

As I’ve said on many an occasion: any movie that can get me in such a twist as this has gotta be worth the time somehow … it just depresses me if this is what it takes nowadays. It depresses me almost profoundly. Gimme Elphaba proudly getting in people’s faces with her green skin any day over this kind of thing. She had the good sense to leave the world entirely when it turned its back on her. Nobody should have to change to fit in. That Penelope’s transformation here comes right after and as a result of her own admission that she’s “happy the way she is” just adds insult to injury in my opinion.

Lawd. I started watching this the other night but I was too tired in the end. I came to it today truly wanting to like it. I love the concept – I love the normality of the opening with Dorothy at the family get-together, it’s just so beautifully down-to-earth and the music is great there too (“Don’t know what I’m made of / Why am I afraid of … feeling?”)

But then Dorothy goes to Oz. Now, ever since Meet the Robinsons, I’m pretty careful about first impressions, and the “look” of Oz here certainly had the same effect as the future did there. The make-up (by Stan Winston no less) is hideous, the costumes wild but pretty lazy in all (like someone just went into a thrift store or a school’s theatre wardrobe and grabbed anything wild-looking)

My head just got buried more and more in my hands as the music got more indigestible and the Sesame Street quality just devoured the thing entirely. I don’t want to compare it to the 1939 movie – pretty much anything looks bad by comparison – but even coming to it with the highest desire to work with it and find the goodness with in it, I struggled painfully. I nearly died laughing when the lion lets rip with, “I’m a lion!” ROFL … I just kept feeling like Homer Simpson in the “Homer’s Phobia” episode of The Simpsons in the steelworks … “oh my god, what’s happening now?!” lol. Then it goes absurdly dark at the end! Then they all get naked? lol. It’s just a maddening mess.

I’m inclined to say it could be the worst film I’ve ever seen – but there are a lot of plus points that make me understand where its fans are coming from. The sets in themselves are often stunning. Some of the music is catchy, even in the case of “Can I Go On?” slightly moving. The rainbow in the sprinklers at the end is simply inspired, and Richard Pryor completely steals the movie when he finally appears. I’m interested in a review I read on the IMDb that says how the Broadway show was pretty spectacularly different. Whatever … it’s certainly a curio, worth watching if you’re a fan of cinema, musicals, or just plain Oz … but I personally found it pretty damn excruciating, in a geniuinely “Make it stop!” kind of way. I think the credits say it all – written by Joel Schumacher, produced by Rob Cohen, and directed by Sidney Lumet. Too many cooks spoil the broth indeed … especially when they’re that differently minded.

“Hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable.”

It truly is the happiest film ever made. And perfect to boot, like, literally, perfect, so much so that I don’t feel I need to say a lot more than that. I was really drawn to the sheer number of immediately identifiable icons in the movie this zillionth time watching it – it’s something I’ve really started to be interested in in a lot of movies recently: like just those props and simple images you can remove entirely from their context in the movie and yet their association is so indelible that pretty much anyone will know the movie from them. The gingham dress, the ruby slippers, the green-faced witch, a witch in a bubble, another under a house, the poppy field, the Emerald City, the yellow brick road, the red sand hourglass – and of course the scarecrow, tin man and lion. Any one of these things captures the imagination enough in itself. To put them altogether in one ninety minute swoop with the songs and the simply perfectly cast Judy Garland tying it all together is for me to practically bottle everything it means to dream.

For me it mostly comes down to those last scenes; the wizard declaring, “No I’m not a bad man – just a bad wizard,” bestowing the gifts upon Dorothy’s friends at the same time really highlighting the worthlessness of the societal things that package us like diplomas, medals and testimonials, in turn proffering the slightly cheesy but no less truthful notion that it really is just who we are that counts; and of course, “Oh Auntie Em … There’s No Place Like Home,” that swell of music that never fails to make me cry my eyes out.

Yes, I guess it comes to the same almost dreary happiness in its close that I hated in Enchanted – “But that’s so easy!” the Tin Man even declares when Glinda reveals to Dorothy the means to get home – but it’s the way it elevates that normality to something fantastic, never dismissing the wonder of imaginary Oz (if it is imaginary at all, I feel the urge to add) in the process. I was reminded of that wonderful line at the end of the last Harry Potter book, “Of course it’s all happening in your head … but why on earth should that mean it isn’t real?” I’m babbling and I’ve done too much of that lately. It’s just a perfect movie, okay?

I guess a minor apology might be in order here, ‘cos I think I may have kinda sniggered at the “For Your Consideration” posters that came out for this movie, asking consideration not just in categories such as visual effects and such but right up to Best Picture. Now I’ve seen it, not only can’t I understand its exclusion from a bunch of categories (most particularly yet another great song – this one by Kate Bush, can’t believe I hadn’t heard about it – bashed out by the triple nod to “Enchanted”), but also the ridiculously whiny critical response from pros and ams alike. This movie is beautiful!

Yes – if you haven’t read the books and manage to miss the first few minutes of it (in which case, serves you right – learn to watch movies from start to finish and come back, mmkay?), you might have problems figuring out the minutia of the the plot. Myself, I’ve not yet read the books, though I’ll be plowing through them in the coming months, that’s for sure – weird thing is, it occurred to me as the story unfolded that one reason I wasn’t too keen on the books (in addition to the slightly shameful, “ugh, they just copied Harry Potter” knee-jerk reaction) was that, kind of like with the Lemony Snicket books, it just seemed so familiar to me already … like, everyone else seemed to be wowed by this set-up, for example with the daemons, while my response was like, “okay got it,” lol. I love that the explanation of things like this don’t bog down the entire movie as some people seem to have required. It reminded me of the subtlety of exposition in The Last Mimzy. I can’t express how much I envy kids last year, seeing all the great movies including this one; they’ll have learned more in around 10 hours than they’ll learn all year in the classroom. People didn’t think the movie conveyed the depth of the books enough? How deeper do you want in a kids’ movie than a child’s soul being ripped from their body? As I said to someone straight after the end credits rolled – compare it to the first two Harry Potter movies? And just wow.

Two paragraphs and I haven’t even mentioned Dakota Blue Richards. Again, a minor apology … stupid knee-jerk reaction to her casting was something along the lines of, “how dare she steal Dakota’s name and be blonde!?!?” lol. Well, because she’s wonderful, that’s why. She has to do more in terms of physical, emotional, interacting with visual effects, than I think it’s safe to say any young actress has had to deal with in their first role (and not just first big screen role, it’s her first role ever) and she pulls it all off practically flawlessly. When she spits on the army and says, “Go on, then. Go on …” ... God, goosebumps city. If you read my reviews you might’ve noticed I have a thing for young, precocious and forward heroines, and they really don’t come much more forceful than Lyra, and Richards is Lyra. There’s a moment where she rides the polar bear, and I mentioned a few times before here how I love “girl and horse” movies, and that moment is like a “girl riding horse” moment except the horse is a polar bear, lol. I just realised how dumb that sounds now I’ve said it, but that moment gave me such a rush, I wish the shot were longer.

The visual effects certainly give Transformers a run for their money (ha, which probably means Pirates will win :() ... one drawback being that though the effects, the animals etc are fantastic – particularly the polar bears and as already mentioned, thanks to the jawdroppingly convincing way Richards “interacts” with them – I could really feel a change in the fluidity of the camerawork when the effects came on strong. It kind of revolves around the set-pieces in a dreary mechanical way that I found distancing.

Anyway, long story short, I pretty much adored it. Going by the vast majority’s response, it seems to me the movie is a lot like the compass itself. I was just talking earlier tonight to someone about how beautiful the thing is in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix about them not being able to see the Thestrals unless you’ve known death. Maybe it’s something like that going on here. Anyway, I certainly saw everything here. This movie tells the truth – if only you know how to read it. And I certainly can’t wait to read the books if there’s even more of the same in them.

Is this the earliest little girl “horror” movie? It’s certainly the earliest I’ve seen anyway, and the earliest I’ve seen of any genre where someone so young features so prominently. I seriously can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see it, especially considering it’s hardly an investment at 70 minutes.

I was surprised by the connection to the original – I’d heard it was mostly unrelated and it is, but there is still a strong connection you have to fill in the gaps of if you haven’t seen Cat People; or if, like me, you just haven’t seen Cat People in a long time. You kind of gather that Reed’s wife has died in circumstances they don’t speak of and Amy is suddenly seeing her etc, and you don’t really need to know any more than that.

But the story isn’t what the movie’s worth watching for. It is just one of the most beautiful looking older movies I’ve seen since Les Yeux Sans Visage, and easily one of the most interesting and watchable pre-60s movies too. It’s about loneliness and childhood fantasy etc and all of this is conveyed in beautiful images that completely transport you somewhere forgotten.

Spoilers below … but not for this movie … if you’re seeing “Wicked” any time soon, best not read the last paragraph.

Though I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, I have to admit I didn’t really know exactly what it’d be. After a year or so of doing so, I still find myself calling myself a Neil Gaiman fan even though I’ve never read a word of his writing outside his blog, lol. This following MirrorMask, Beowulf later this month, and Coraline next year, will surely get me to the books eventually.

When it comes to this type of movie the quality range is vast from The Princess Bride via Shrek through to the abominable Ella Enchanted. I think it was Mark Kermode who preferred to compare this to Time Bandits and I can see that too. But this is really more its own creature. Ultimately it kind of defied everything I expected from what initially appeared to me to be quite a messy opening. There are a lot of different stories here that come together in the end, and though it takes its time, it’s ultimately quite amazing how the screenplay juggles them (could Jonathan Ross be gracing the Oscars next year not as a host and critic but as a nominee’s guest, perhaps?)

The magic and enchantment stuff is … well, magical. It gave me that kind of feeling like when you’re a child and you actually believe in witches and things and when you think about being turned into a toad or whatever, you actually get that sinking feeling in your stomach like it might actually happen. Now, I actually do happen to still believe in a lot of weird impossible things you’re supposed to stop believing in when you’re no longer a child … but not a lot of things give me that stomach feeling – the last thing to do so was the musical “Wicked” when Boq becomes the tin man. I got it tons here, and I was completely absorbed and unquestioning for the whole 2 hours. It’s actually the second movie this week (Once being the other) which I really could happily have watched all over again straight after the end credits.

Not a lot to add to my old review except to say, of course, I still love it. I get all the flaws people point out about this movie – most of all, having watched this time with two non-readers, how badly it caters to even those who have kept up on the movie side … I mean some stuff won’t make sense to you if you haven’t at least skim-read the novel – but you know what, I’m kind of blind to them. There’s an atmosphere and pace here that just takes my breath away. I was actually willing to believe on the first viewing that I’d just been blindsided by the wondrousness of Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood but it’s actually incredible how little screentime she has so it’s not just her. There’s the If… like departure of the Weasleys, surely the most gloriously anti-establishment moment seen in movies in years; the gloriously creepy performance of Imelda Staunton, the “I must not tell lies” scene I swear, up there and comparable to the appearance of Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs; and the one criticism of others that I have to disagree with … the death of S****s … couldn’t have been done more clearly or perfectly in my opinion.

The DVD extras are disappointing – a 45 minute doc of people asking “what does it all meeeeeeannnnn,” a patronising guide to editing and a sort of awkward “sorry we cut your part so much” thing by Nat Tena (really fun in itself, but worth a whole second disc?) – but the movie is more than worth the buy. It’s easily one of the best of the year, though I’m sure I’ll be juggling it, Azkaban, and/or movies 6 and 7 as “best in series” for as long as I live.

13th July, 2007:

Whoosh. Where to begin. As usual this is going to come out in a gush because I want what I write to be as fresh as possible and I don’t want to miss a single thing that’s buzzing around in my head. The biggest book squished into the shortest movie … and quelle movie. I have to begin by grudgingly, nay, beamingly exclaiming, this isn’t just the best in the series so far, not just as good or better than Azkaban, but I actually think maybe a freakin’ masterpiece. It hit the “as good as Azkaban, definitely, but it’ll take a second viewing to be really sure if it’s more,” point by around 30 minutes … and soon after I was simply riveted.

Again, as always, I had intended to and probably should have read the book again beforehand; I found myself realising only a few minutes in how little detail I remembered from the mammoth novel. The Sirius thing and Umbridge, of course, were cemented. But even outside of those, and boy are those lovingly (if that’s the right word for Umbridge) recreated, I felt this managed to bridge the gap insanely well between the loyalty of the Columbus movies to the novels and the joyous cinematicness of Cuaron’s marvel.

But it’s not the adaptation and general technical perfection of this one that finds me comparing it to the Cuaron movie the most … the thing that really makes this one stomp the rest of the series into the ground is the fact that the kids finally match up to the giants of the British acting world they share a screen with. Even in Azkaban I found the performances of Radcliffe and co. a little niggling. Here, even the kid playing Neville Longbottom has clearly been honing his thesp skills. Heck, even the random eyes moving around in the background of the Dumbledore’s Army scenes demand a second viewing to peruse. And the casting of Luna Lovegood? I’m sure it won’t surprise some who know me if I say, I think I have a new movie crush, lol. Evanna Lynch is absolutely wonderful, and I don’t recall that character ever really grabbing me in the books.

Add the mindblowing visual effects, the usual perfect editing and production design (the wallpaper in Sirius’ house deserves an Oscar on its lonesome), the most original score in the series since John Williams penned the till-now slightly-overly-repeated themes, a wonderful new, entirely Potterish way of doing that old cinematic cliché of the spinning news headlines, and, I don’t know … generally wonderful Potter-ness? And I’m not joking, I feel this is the series’ masterpiece. But at the same time I feel like rather than Cuaron’s outsider-ish way of stumbling upon genius in Azkaban, I feel this one is more the result of a process and this is now a perfect system that can only make the remaining two installments as good, if not better. The only thing I’d change is I’d make Tonks’ hair a little pinker, lol. Oh, and though I initially wanted Helena Bonham-Carter to play Tonks here, her performance as Bellatrix LeStrange has certainly put to bed my worries about her as Mrs Lovett later this year in Sweeney Todd.

Addendum On a sidenote … as there has been since the second movie, there will come with this movie so many reviews wasting more than a few words on how “dark” the series is getting and how it’s not for little kids anymore etc. I just wanna say, get it into your heads, people, it’s Harry Potter. It’s dark. This is a series that in the books and their adaptations has grown with its audience. If you think the fifth installment where they’re well blossomed and having first kisses and all is a great movie to take your six-year-old to and you come home incensed by what they’ve been “exposed” to … you simply don’t deserve to have that six-year-old, you idiot. It’s a PG-13 in the US, a 12A in the UK. Read the effin’ guidelines, and critics, stop making these people think they need to be told by you of all people how “dark” a movie is when it’s practically written on the frickin’ tin. It’s dark. But there’s as much love and magic in each frame of this movie (gosh, just beginning with the way the distance between Harry and everyone else is portrayed, I well up just thinking about it) as there was in part one, if not more … if you’re ready.

I get the feeling that this is always going to be one of those movies I feel like I dreamt. There were a number of details in this viewing that I have literally no recollection of seeing before, even though I was watching the exact same copy of the movie that I watched the first time. If anything, the movie is more disturbing than I grudgingly admitted in the first review; but bizarrely, at the same time, I find it even more beautiful than ever. There’s really not much more I want to say at this point, except, “Squirrel butts don’t glow!” I’d also add to the “little girl lost” themed movies I referred to in the first review as good companions for it, aside from the obvious “Alice in Wonderland” adaptations, this would also work brilliantly alongside Lawn Dogs ... I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before.

21st November, 2006:

The reaction so far to this movie suggested to me that it was gonna be a real love-it-or-loathe-it affair, and I was almost certain which category I’d fall into, being as I love most Terry Gilliam movies, I love movies such as this, I was enthralled by the trailer, and recently wowed by the amazing Jodelle Ferland in Silent Hill and the “Dead Like Me” pilot (incidentally, funny how that featured a train crash much like the ending of this movie).

But the movie isn’t so cleancut as that and, as it ended, I found myself really not knowing what to feel. It’s an incredible piece of work, I can tell that immediately, but for now I can neither say I love it nor that I loathe it. I can’t believe I’m gonna say this … but this one actually kinda weirded me out, lol. That really takes some doing.

I love how one review I read of this movie recently said its biggest failing was Jodelle Ferland’s performance, and I think it’s a good place to start my review – if you can’t make the leap with Ferland, and I can understand there’ll be many who can’t, then you’re pretty screwed watching this movie, because it’s pretty much entirely her and entirely through her.

I didn’t think the movie would be nearly so unsettling as it is. As I said, it takes a lot to unsettle me, and this is one of the most uncomfortable movies I’ve ever seen. And if this movie’s disturbing to me, I can’t imagine how much it’s upsetting certain types of people (_cough_ Daily Mail cough) Yet, unsettling as it may be, my eyes haven’t been so glued to the screen in ages. Gilliam succeeds in showing how fantastic the crazy world Ferland occupies is through her eyes without forgetting to remind us what’s really happening. I think that’s what makes it so uncomfortable, the way it keeps sucking you in and as soon as you reach a warm place, it kinda slaps you and says “that’s sick!”

The music and photography are beautiful, and Jodelle Ferland’s performance, while not perfect, is certainly demanding and demands attention. The movie loses its way in the second half, I think, but it picks up beautifully for a haunting finish.

It’ll sit nicely alongside movies such as Paperhouse, Mirrormask, Labyrinth, and, I’m guessing, Pan’s Labyrinth (haven’t seen that yet, will do soon, but I get the impression it’s pretty similar stuff); and really, no matter what you think of it, I can’t understand how anybody could call it terrible, as the aesthetic values alone, as in any Terry Gilliam production, are worth the price of admission.

Slightly fragmented review there, sorry, but there’ll be plenty of chances to refine it on the many, I expect, repeat viewings I’ll be giving it.

There’s a nice review of the movie that just found its way into my RSS feed searches here.