Animation

Coco: The Music Is Lively, and So Are the Dead

Jeremy BeckReviews
A young boy finds stardom and death in Pixar's "Coco"

Part ticking-clock thriller, part throwback musical, part family weepie, Pixar’s Coco strikes a smart balance between new-age innovation and old-fashioned storytelling. It lacks the creative virtuosity of the studio’s greatest works: the shimmering grandeur of Finding Nemo, the emotional sophistication of Inside Out, the bravura silence of Wall-E. But while Pixar may have previously set the bar for family-friendly entertainment to be unfathomably high, it’s unfair to measure each studio’s new release against its past triumphs. Judged on its own terms, Coco is an agile and rollicking children’s film, mingling spirited action and characteristically stunning technique with wholesome sentimentality. It’s tier-two Pixar, which is another way of saying it’s pretty damn good.

It’s also beautiful, which should go without saying. Visual magnificence is a quality that we take for granted in Pixar productions—it’s simply a matter of appreciating the newest details and the whimsical flourishes within the richly textured environments and limber animation. Coco conjures a world of dazzling luminosity and ceaseless invention: arcing bridges made of bright-orange flower petals; an electric-blue swimming pool in the shape of a guitar; a skylit district of pulsating buildings, threaded together by spiraling staircases and curved viaducts. The characters, meanwhile, move with exquisite dexterity, their wonderfully expressive faces matching the well-pitched vocal performances. The people in this movie look and sound decidedly alive, which is curious, given that most of them are also dead. Read More

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Cars 3: Vroom and Doom

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from "Cars 3", in which cars drive like cars.

Pixar’s best movies are so amazingly, miraculously good, their lesser efforts can become underappreciated by comparison. The common phrase “second-tier Pixar”—often applied to, say, the fairy-tale familiarity of Brave, the slobs-versus-snobs hijinks of Monsters University, or the poky adventure of The Good Dinosaur—necessarily implies a sense of relative failure, even if all of those films are variously rewarding. But the Cars movies are different. It remains vexing that the wizard studio—presumably motivated by merchandising rather than storytelling—has insisted on turning its least interesting property into a commodified, pandering franchise. (Of course, Pixar’s other trilogy is literally about products that are purchased for children, but the Toy Story pictures also happen to be great.) When the first Cars dropped in 2006, it immediately claimed the title of “worst Pixar movie ever made”, its airy pleasantness overshadowed by the string of ingenious hits that had preceded it. Five years later, Cars 2 took that title for its own; a stunningly stupid action-comedy centered on Larry the Cable Guy’s Mater (a character who makes Jar Jar Binks seem fascinating and three-dimensional), it wasn’t just a comparative disappointment—it was a legitimately bad movie.

Perhaps the nicest thing I can say about Cars 3 is that, following its release, the unofficial tally of “Bad Pixar Movies” remains stuck at one. That’s because this latest sequel—harmless and piddling, with just a whiff of thoughtfulness and originality—is too innocuous and well-meaning to be bad. But neither is it good enough to qualify as second-tier Pixar, a designation that confers with it an attempt at beauty, ambition, and imagination. Even the studio’s weaker films at least try to be memorable, but in its relentless congeniality, Cars 3 seems calculated to make as little impact as possible. No wonder its characters constantly drive around in circles. Read More

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Your Name.: Trading Places, and Finding Feelings

Jeremy BeckReviews
Two teens trade places in "Your Name."

Part playful comedy, part wistful romance, part sci-fi mind-bender, Your Name. (yes, the period is part of the title) is a strange and beguiling experience. It’s a movie that nimbly hopscotches between tones and across genres, but it always demonstrates firm commitment to its characters. Visually, it’s a beaut, but the loveliest thing about it is its tenderness.

The ultimate intensity of Your Name.’s emotions sneaks up on you, given that the film initially scans as a poppy Japanese update on America’s cheesy ’80s comedies. Taki (voice of Ryûnosuke Kamiki), a high school student living in the clattering hub of Tokyo, is a typical teenage protagonist—comfortable with his male pals, awkward around his female crushes, and nursing a nagging worry that his existence lacks real meaning. The same is true of Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi), a dreamer living in the country village of Itomori; she has a relatively peaceful life going to school and making traditional sake, but she longs for the bustle of the big city. Residing in decidedly different worlds, Taki and Mitsuha have no connection to one another, except for one little thing: Intermittently and inexplicably, their minds get swapped into one another’s bodies. Read More

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Moana: A Girl and a God on the High Seas

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dwayne Johnson and Auli’i Cravalho are on an adventure in Disney's "Moana"

Midway through Moana, the iridescent and irresistible new animated adventure from Walt Disney Studios, an observer sizes up the title character: “If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess.” The speaker is the demigod Maui, and along with his other impressive talents—shape-shifter, warrior, chest-thumper—you can add meta commentator. Disney is as much a cultural institution as a movie studio, and Maui’s blunt assessment of Moana’s effective nobility—she feebly objects that she’s the daughter of a chief, not a king—reflects the company’s evolving self-awareness. Now in its ninth decade, the Mouse House has churned out countless tales of feminine royalty, films that are, depending on whom you ask, either exciting and empowering or formulaic and stereotypic. Moana is, in one way or another, all of these things. Yes, it’s yet another journey of self-discovery, featuring yet another plucky heroine of high birth, one who follows in the well-trodden footsteps of Aurora, Ariel, and Anna. And so what? There are far worse blueprints to hew to, much less to subtly reengineer and reinvigorate. Winking commentary aside, Moana doesn’t reinvent the (spinning) wheel, but it does capably tweak and troubleshoot the Disney formula, resulting in a thoroughly enjoyable movie that’s by turns playful and poignant.

This incremental progress begins, of course, with the film’s setting. Long criticized for its emphatic whiteness, Disney has endeavored in recent years to diversify its universe, and Moana continues that trend, taking place in Polynesia. Whether this represents legitimate growth or mere tokenism is not for me to say; in any event, I am less interested in the political dimensions of this movie than its cinematic ones. And as a piece of storytelling, the opening act of Moana is pleasant but unremarkable. Moana (voiced by newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) is the restless daughter of a local chief, dutifully obeying her tribe’s customs but constantly feeling a silent tug from the Pacific. You know the drill: She feels unfulfilled with her routine, and she chafes at her father’s insistence that she never venture beyond their island’s barrier reef. In other words, she’s a lot like Ariel. Or Merida. Or Rapunzel. To paraphrase another famous Disney character who will be returning to theaters early next year: There must be more than this provincial fishing life! Read More

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Kubo and the Two Strings: In a Land of Magic, a Storyteller on the Run

Jeremy BeckReviews
In "Kubo and the Two Strings", three strange heroes on a quest

The opening voiceover of Kubo and the Two Strings admonishes viewers not to blink. Closing our eyes, we are told, will result in the death of the film’s hero. It’s a bold gambit that could potentially induce groans from the audience, were it not accompanied by a ravishing image: a woman and her baby in a tiny canoe, surging forward against a giant wave, as rain lashes down and the moon shines ominously. It’s an enthralling sight, one that renders the narrator’s warning superfluous—who could possibly look away from such a scene? But that narration, beyond establishing the life-or-death stakes, speaks to the movie’s larger purpose. Kubo and the Two Strings isn’t just a story about an artist. It’s about how artists tell stories.

The artist-in-chief of Kubo is Travis Knight, the CEO of Laika, a studio that occupies a unique space in the American cinematic landscape. Eschewing the digital wizardry of Pixar and DreamWorks, Laika instead makes movies via stop-motion animation, that laborious method of physically manipulating individual objects for illusive effect. (This playful scene illustrates just how mind-bogglingly arduous the technique is.) Its first three films—Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls—married this painstaking approach to an off-kilter weirdness, resulting in distinctly original pictures that were always interesting, if not quite astonishing. But Kubo and the Two Strings, which is Knight’s directorial debut, is the studio’s best movie yet, combining the doting meticulousness of its prior works with a sweeping, stirring narrative and richly drawn characters. The style may be new-fangled, but the storytelling is old-fashioned in the best ways. Read More

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