Ratatouille

I wonder if the kids growing up over the past decade will realize how lucky they were to be children in the era of Pixar? My childhood ended just as Toy Story came out, and by the time A Bug's Life was released, I was already at the age where "kid's movies" were beneath me. It really wasn't until The Incredibles that I was mature enough to see Pixar movies as more than just children's entertainment. Now, we all have those movies we grew up with that we look back on with fondness, but often that fondness has more to do with our being kids than the actual quality of the films. I somehow doubt Flight of the Navigator, D.A.R.Y.L., or The Great Mouse Detective really hold up well. Yet for 12 years, Pixar have consistently brought us the best family films. These are films that anyone can enjoy, regardless of age. I hope that when the kids of today are older, they will be able to see that the difference between Ratatouille and Shrek the Third is like the difference between Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Rock-A-Doodle.

Ratatouille is a complex message wrapped in a simple premise. Remy the rat knows that he can be a great chef if given a chance. After getting separated from his family, he finds himself in the restaurant of his recently deceased idol, Gusteau the Chef. From his perch, he witnesses the new garbage boy, Linguini, attempting to fix a soup he spilled. Linguini knows nothing about cooking and is clearly ruining the soup, so Remy intervenes and fixes it, only to be caught. Linguini takes Remy to the river to dispose of him, but realizes that Remy can understand him. Not only that, but Remy could be Linguini's ticket to cooking success. The two team-up and Linguini quickly becomes the most renowned new chef in Paris. But his boss, Skinner, knows something is amiss, and he won't rest until he finds out what.

The film focuses greatly on following your dreams, as well as examining prejudices. If Remy really is a better chef than any human, should he be allowed to cook, in spite of the fact that he is a rat? It's an interesting question, and one that doesn't come with as simple of a solution as one might expect from an animated film. This isn't meant to be some magical rat that can talk; he's just a regular rat that you might find in your basement, and he happens to understand cooking. As such, the film treats him as we might treat a regular rat, so the ending is satisfyingly true to life, yet not a downer, either. The film never tries to tell us how we should feel about our prejudices, only trying to open up our mind to the idea of how our prejudices work. It's really rather beautiful.

Director Brad Bird grounds the film very much in reality. As I mentioned, this is just a normal rat. He can't speak English, so he and Linguini can't actually converse. Yes, he can understand English, but it's treated in a fairly realistic manner. We'd never expect our pets to start talking to us, but we do get the sense that they can understand us sometimes. Remy can talk to other rats, however, and he is voiced by Patton Oswalt. The voice work in general in this film is another example of why Pixar is so great. Aside from Oswalt, I did not recognize a single voice. So color me surprised to find such actors as Will Arnett, Peter O'Toole, Brain Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garafalo, and Ian Holm in the cast list. Pixar makes a real effort to find actors who fit the characters, not big names who can sell a movie. These actors fit their parts so perfectly, I never once thought "Will Arnett sure is being funny" like I might have thought about Eddie Murphy in Shrek. This only helps us to become absorbed into the world of the film.

And oh, what a world it is. Bird directs this film with such deftness that you forget it's animated. The camera swoops and swerves. It peeks in through windows, and down through holes. It all feels like a living, breathing world with things constantly going on outside of the frame. The animation itself compliments that world wonderfully, and I doubt there has been a better looking CG film yet made. It's not enough they get the fur on the rats right, they have to get the constant heart beat as well (watch Remy and you'll notice his little chest is always rapidly beating). Pixar still has trouble getting humans to not look creepy, however. The eyes in particular look like glass eyes. Yet that is a small quibble for such a gorgeous film.

Of all the Pixar films, though, this may be the least accessible to kids. It's about two hours long and the story is filed with references to things I doubt kids would care about (French cuisine, the process of critical food reviews, etc). Also, it's not very funny compared to other animated films. It's much more about the story and the world, and I fear the younger ones will not care. But for anyone who is old enough to enjoy a film beyond just jokes, the story is enough to delight.

People always like to rank the Pixar films, in spite of the fact that it's like comparing the tallest skyscrapers. Yeah, one might be the tallest, but they're all so tall and separated by only a few feet in height, it feels slightly pointless. If The Incredibles and the Toy Story duo are the best, then Ratatouille falls in just underneath. But again, that's not saying much, as they are all pretty amazing. Really, if you want to have a good time and be taken into a beautiful and fully realized world, you could do a lot worse than this delightful adventure.

As always with Pixar, Ratatouille is also accompanied by a short film. This one is called Lifted, and it's about an alien space ship attempting to abduct an unsuspecting human. While not quite as good as last year's One Man Band, it is still quite cute. As per usual, there is no speaking in the short, instead relying only on the ability of the animators to create an engaging visual story. These short films give one a lot of hope for next summer's Wall-E, Pixar's rumored attempt at making a largely dialogue-free animated film. It's nice to see that they're never satisfied in giving us the same old thing every time, unlike their counterparts at Dreamworks.

Live Free or Die Hard

In 1993's The Last Action Hero, a young boy magically enters the world of an action movie staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold learns that he is in fact a hero in an action movie, and as such certain conventions must always apply-the most important being that he will never die no matter how ridiculous the situations he finds himself in. Watching the newest Die Hard movie, I found myself thinking back to this movie and that particular element. In one scene in Live Free or Die Hard John McClane is driving a car at full speed down a tunnel, planning to drive it into a waiting helicopter. Just before jumping out, he mumbles "This is probably a bad idea," then jumps out. Sure enough, the plan works, and McClane just laughs to himself. It seems that McClane has finally discovered that he is in a movie as well, and as such he doesn't take anything seriously anymore. He can't die, so he may as well create the most preposterous situations imaginable for himself. The sense of urgency or dread that something terrible might happen no matter how hard McClane tries to avert it found in previous installments is gone, replaced with simply an attempt to one up the previous stunts.

Very few franchises are consistently good beyond the first film, but I'd place the Die Hard trilogy in that rare camp in which each movie is pretty damn good. Sure Die Hard 2 was a bit silly, but it generally worked. Die Hard With a Vengeance, however, is an unqualified great sequel, recapturing much of what made the original so good while attempting to do something different. That Live Free falls so short of the mark is made all the more unpleasant because of how strong the track record was for this franchise. I think part of what's so wrong with this film is that the plot is a great idea for an action film, but not a great idea for a Die Hard film. The premise is that a group of terrorists unleash a blackout on America, disrupting lights, computers, TV, everything. It'd probably work as a fun James Bond film, or maybe even as a season of 24. But Die Hard always had a more personal, intimate element to the story, and here McClane feels like he was transplanted into the story instead of being an integral part of it.

Speaking of McClane, Bruce Willis doesn't seem to be particularly enjoying himself this time around. McClane starts the movie off stalking his now grown up daughter, and only goes downhill from there. Whereas McClane used to be his enemy's equal, here he is reduced to a manchild, incapable of understanding what is going on around him. Indeed, we at times are left wondering if all McClane's previous adventures haven't rendered him brain damaged. Take, for example, a scene in which he is talking to a villain over a webcam. McClane puts his hand in front of the webcam when he wants to tell his partner something private, and is mocked when the villain tells him that covering the webcam doesn't mute the sound. Scenes like this are rampant in the film, and only serve to make us laugh at McClane, not with him. But hey, as long as a gun and the occassional vehicle will get the job done, why bother making him into anything resembling an intelligent human being?

Perhaps the biggest laugh in the film is one that must have made the filmmakers pale in dread. In any action franchise, the latest installment is only as good as your villain. So when an audience laughs at your villain's attempts at being menacing, you must realize you have a turkey on your hands. Timothy Olyphant seems like a good villain choice, but looks can be deceiving. In the scene where McClane and the villain, Thomas Gabriel, talk for the first time, Gabriel has just learned that someone he cares about has died. Looking visibly shaken, perhaps near tears, he shouts "You have no idea who I am or what I'm capable of!" Instead of coming across as menacing, he instead resembles a child whining at his parents after they've punished him for hitting his little brother. Add to this the information we learn about him throughout the film (he once worked for the government and threw a hissyfit when no one would listen to his report that someone could bring the country down via the same methods he eventually uses), and you have arguably one of the worst villains in recent film history.

The other new additions to the cast are Justin Long as a hacker, Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith) as Long's buddy Warlock, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy McClane. Long is supposed to be the comic relief, but films this bad don't need comic relief, they are their own comic relief, so he's essentially a nothing element (made all the more apparent by the fact that we never get a reason why the bad guys want him dead so badly, or why the government care if he lives once they realize he has nothing to do with the attacks). Smith is cute as a grown man living in his mother's basement, but then again, cute and Die Hard are a hard mixture to swallow. Winstead, however, seems to be the only one who ever watched a Die Hard movie. She is perhaps the most interesting character in the film, and the least pitiable damsel in distress ever. If her father didn't show up to save her, she'd probably just save herself. Maybe a movie about her next time would be better than an aging, brain damaged John McClane.

There's really nothing here to recommend. The plot is poorly executed to the point of never feeling any tension. The characters are almost unanimously awful. And the PG-13 rating makes you realize how watered down it all is. I don't know that a string or profanities or more violent death scenes would have helped, but at least it might have made this feel a bit more like a Die Hard. In a summer of awful sequels, Live Free or Die Hard fights tooth and nails to stand atop a mountain of crap as the worst of the bunch.

Sicko

We remain the only first world country in the world without universal health care. That is the jumping off point for Sicko, the latest documentary from Michael Moore, but it is by no means the point of the film. Moore uses the health care system as a way of reminding us that we are all human beings and we are all in this together. If we don't come to grips with that fact we could be headed down a road that we can never come back from. It's a frightening and sad statement, but one with an underlying spark of hope. Regardless of how you feel about Michael Moore as a person, there's no denying that he is onto something pretty important this time around.

Moore works best when he is rallying against an idea or an institution rather than a person. Roger & Me used General Electric CEO Roger Smith as a symbol of corruption, a technique repeated with Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. Switching gears, he attacked the President more than he attacked an idea in Fahrenheit 9/11, and the film suffered greatly for it. Thankfully there are no villains here, just ideas. Indeed, this is Moore's most restrained film by far. He is on no witch hunts, and aside from a trip to Guantanamo Bay, the film is devoid of any stunts. It is simply a look at something that is deeply flawed in America: our health care system.

The film offers numerous anecdotes from real hospital patients as proof of how distressing things have become. There's the man whose insurance wouldn't cover reattaching both his fingers he lost in an accident, so he had to choose which finger he liked more. There's the woman who couldn't pay for her hospital stay, so she was put in a cab and dropped off, still under heavy sedation, on a sidewalk in front of a free clinic. Then there's the mother who had full health care for her child. She rushed to the hospital when her kid was deathly ill, only to learn her insurance didn't cover that particular hospital. The child died on the way to the closest covered hospital. Now some people might be cynical enough to say "yeah, but what are we supposed to do, not pay our doctors?" To that Moore gives us a very long winded and strong answer.

Moore travels to Canada, to Great Britain, and to France. All have free health care. All have higher life expectancies. The doctors live off government pay, and they live very nicely (one doctor lives in a million dollar mansion). The patients are better off and are allowed to stay in the hospital as long as they need to without fear of being kicked out for lack of funds. In Great Britain they even pay for your ride home if you need a cab. We begin to see that these benefits go beyond health care. People don't have to pay for college, day care is almost free, and you can get a government paid helper to come to your house after you give birth and take care of everything from meals to laundry, free of charge to you. At times you think these places must be some imaginary utopia, not our allies and neighbors.

Usually Moore relies too heavily on inserting himself and his jokey gimmicks into his documentaries in order to get a rise out of you, but not this time. Moore is really barely seen, and it feels a lot like a traditional documentary. That is a wise choice on his part, as there is a lot here to digest without having to question the validity of his stunts. The whole thing is much more mannered and methodical, showing us exactly what is wrong and how we can fix it. Our health care doesn't have to be this bad, and that's the saddest part.

I know a lot of people have a hard time with Michael Moore, and I myself was a bit resistant to the film at first. I think he is usually an entertaining filmmaker, but a poor documentarian, letting his personality get in the way of the facts. Yet this film won me over completely by the end. It's engrossing, thought-provoking, and insightful. Moore has really opened up the audience potential for documentaries in the last few years, so I hope that trend holds for this film as well, because this isn't just Moore's most important documentary, but the most important film of the year. And also quite possibly the best.

1408

Stephen King tales are some of the most notoriously difficult stories to translate from print to screen. The only ones that seem to consistently work as movies are his short stories, having produced such films as Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption. 1408 is another one of King's short stories turned motion picture, and while it doesn't hit the heights of either of the aforementioned, it does work relatively well for most of its run time, and could probably be placed in the upper echelon of King adaptations.

Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a paranormal researcher who writes books about the most haunted places in America. The only problem is he has found no real proof of an afterlife, and finds the idea of paranormal activity to be silly. So when he receives an anonymous postcard from the Dolphin Hotel warning him to stay away from room 1408, he takes it as a challenge. In spite of the warnings of the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson in a glorified cameo), Enslin shacks up for the night, only to discover that things may be more dangerous than he believed.

1408 is a throwback to the days when horror movies actually tried to scare you instead of shock you or gross you out. There is little violence, and no real blood or gore. Instead the film builds up suspense, bursting every so often with a good scare. Moments such as Enslin seeing a mirror of himself in the adjacent building's window are quite unsettling. Adding to the air of foreboding is the well-integrated flashbacks to the death of Enslin's young daughter. These moments ground the character in reality, as well as open up possible interpretations as to what exactly might be causing the increasingly disturbing occurrences in the room. The film also dwells quite a bit on some strong themes, notably coping with death. It gets pretty heavy for a horror movie, but fans of King will know this is par for the course in his writing. It blends well with the horror aspects, and makes the film feel more full as a result.

Cusack does a very good job of acting by himself for most of the run time. While he does overact a bit (his hissyfit with the refrigerator was a little too much), for the most part he makes you forget that he's the only real actor on screen. He's funny, sarcastic, frightened, angry, and seemingly every other emotion on the spectrum at some point. It's kind of a shame, then, that the film never quite knows what to do with him or his situation. For a good hour we are pretty engrossed in what is happening, but slowly it becomes apparent that the film just has a list of things it wants to show us, but no real idea of what to do with those things. The whole film just kind of sputters to an ending, with no real resolution or sense of closure. And for a second you almost think the film is going to go for the ultimate cop-out ending, but thankfully it avoids it.

Folks looking for some good scares won't be disappointed, and they might even be surprised at how deep the character of Enslin is. Yet in spite of some strong thematic material, the film fails to present us with any real feeling of direction. It just needed something more to make it all gel together better, some sort of overarching sense of purpose. Still, it's better than most horror films out these days, and any fans of Stephen King's works will likely be happy with this more intelligent translation of his writing than the majority of his adaptations.

Once

Now here is a delightful little film that proves you don't need a huge budget or big name actors in order to make a great movie. I am not joking when I say that there are scenes in Once that are more exhilarating than anything in the three big threequels released this past May. Once is what real film making is all about.

A street performer in Dublin (Glen Hansard) alternates his days playing guitar on the street and repairing vacuums with his father. One evening he meets an eccentric young woman (Marketa Irglova) who tells him she loves his music. The two develop a friendship based around their love for creating music. Yes, Once is a musical, but in the most unusual sense. There's no dance sequences, and the music comes naturally from the story and situations. Not being a fan of musicals, I found myself pleasantly surprised at how much I couldn't wait for each new song to come along.

Watching these two performers (and from what I understand, both are musicians first, actors second) create music together is thrilling. There is a deep connection between the two, and the music reflects it so perfectly that you yourself begin to fall in love with the characters. You want them to end up together by film's end, a result you are never certain will happen. She has an estranged husband she thinks she should reconcile with, and he has an ex-girlfriend he regrets leaving. Yet the two are so perfect for each other that you suspect they have to end up together. I won't spoil the final shot of the film, but it is exactly what it needs to be, and it's what pushed me over the top to give this film a full four out of four stars.

I'll admit, the story is not especially revolutionary nor developed (all told, Once doesn't quite hit 90 minutes). Yet the music is so perfect you'll be looking for the soundtrack upon leaving the theater. If you enjoy music based films, this is required viewing, and even if you don't, give this one a try. I honestly can't imagine someone with half a heart not loving these characters, their songs, and this film.

Ocean's Thirteen

When Ocean's Eleven came out, part of the charm while watching was thinking "I can almost believe this would work." Yes we were asked to take some leaps of faith, but if we were willing to buy into the world the film created, then everything seemed to make sense. Unfortunately, Ocean's Thirteen asks us to believe in things that we simply cannot accept, and the film suffers for it. Yet even with its flaws, this third Ocean's outing is just breezy enough to recommend to fans of the original. It's nothing new, but it has its moments.

The film starts by largely writing off the second installment (with one surprising exception that pays off at the end). Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones are both out, and this time it's pretty much just the boys. When Reuben (Elliot Gould) is hospitalized after an altercation with gambling tycoon Willie Bank (Al Pacino), the gang get back together for revenge. This time, instead of trying to rob the casino, they set out to make it so everyone on the floor opening day will simultaneously win, bankrupting Bank. In order to achieve this, they end up working with an old nemesis, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia).

By not forming an elaborate heist, the film suffers from a lack of purpose or suspense. We know pretty much from the beginning exactly how they're going to achieve their plan, so there's no mystery about it. Because of this, the film has to throw some random curve balls in their way to keep us interested, including an impromptu diamond theft. And while it's a bit hard to swallow the idea that they're going to rig every game in the casino, it's downright impossible to accept the way they go about making everyone in the casino quit their game while winning. Yet in spite of the failing of the plot, we begin to realize that we really aren't here for the plot anymore-we're here for the characters.

Everyone gets their moments to shine, something Ocean's Twelve sorely lacked. Especially funny was a subplot involving the Malloy brothers (Casey Affleck and Scott Caan) and a worker's revolution in Mexico. Surprisingly, it feels like Clooney, Pitt, and Damon have less screen time in this installment, allowing for the secondary characters to play a bigger part. And it was nice to see the film try and humanize the Terry Benedict character after making him into a villain the first two outings (although admittedly, he's still a bit of a weasel). Al Pacino goes in the exact opposite direction you'd expect him to with the central villain, downplaying his menacing side and never going over the top.

Really, there is no need for this movie, it never achieves the level of pure fun the original had. Yet I still found myself smiling at times, and I left the film feeling good about it, even if I knew it would vanish from my memory within a few hours. But if you like that kind of mindless entertainment mixed with some good laughs and familiar characters, you'll probably not regret catching Ocean's Thirteen.

Knocked Up

With Knocked Up, writer/director Judd Apatow solidifies his status as the best thing to happen to comedy in years. I don't think we've witnessed a filmmaker ascend as quickly and as strongly in the comedy genre since the heyday of Mel Brooks in the late 60's and early 70's. After his double-header of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared on TV, Apatow switched to the big screen and gave us The 40 Year Old Virgin. Those all profited from lowered expectations, as no one really knew who this man was or what tricks he had up his sleeve. But there's no catching us off guard this time, Mr. Apatow, and that's what makes Knocked Up so delightful: you expect it to reach those lofty heights achieved by his previous works, and largely it does.

What's surprising about Apatow's oeuvre is how simple his premises can be. To go into detail on what Knocked Up is about might seem a a bit redundant: it's in the title. Yet how can he continually create winners out of such simple, one sentence premises? The answer is all in the characters. These aren't one note slapstick caricatures that you're supposed to laugh at, but very real people that you want to laugh with. The story of a lovable loser named Ben (Seth Rogen) getting his one night stand Alison (Katherine Heigl) pregnant is really more about showing us what these two people are made of than simple hijinks. They're also surrounded by Alison's sister Debbie and her husband Pete (Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd), as well as Ben's friends Jason, Jay, Martin, and Jonah (Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Martin Starr, and Jonah Hill). Every one of them is a delight to watch and add flavor and nuance to such a simple idea of a story. Much like he did in Virgin, Apatow makes the film as much about the relationships between all the secondary characters as about the plot.

Seth Rogen as Ben is a revelation. He's been paying his dues for years in small parts in films as varied as Anchorman and Donnie Darko, as well as staring in both of Apatow's TV shows. He's not the type of guy you think of when you think lead actor, but there was never a moment here where I doubted him or didn't buy him as the lead. Perhaps part of this has to do with the way he's portrayed as a secondary character who is thrust into the limelight; even he is slightly surprised to be the focus of the story. Early on you see Alison and Debbie getting into a nightclub, and off to the side is Ben, unassuming and barely noticeable. Yet this is his story, and he comes to embrace the curve life has thrown him with both charm and determination. If there's any remaining doubt that Rogen can pull off a staring role, look no farther than his scenes leading up to the birth where, when trying to look out for Alison and his unborn child, he tells everyone who is being a hindrance to screw off. This isn't just some goofy stoner anymore, but a man who wants very much to make sure his child will be brought into this world safely and correctly.

The rest of the cast is all wonderful. Heigl fits her role perfectly and you can kind of buy her eventual love for Ben. Paul Rudd is always reliable as the goofy sidekick, and his one liners are among the best in the film. But he also gets a chance to stretch, and he is able to be both repulsive and sympathetic at times. Leslie Mann is an actress I have never warmed up to, but being Apatow's wife, I've accepted that she will always get roles in his films. So color me surprised that she was quite great in her role. She could be shrill on occasion, but mostly I got her character and appreciated the way she balanced out Rudd. As for the guys playing Ben's friends, they always leave you wanting more of them. They pop in just long enough to give you a laugh and an insight into Ben's life before disappearing again. They aren't as well developed as the friends in Virgin were, but then they aren't meant to be as much of a focal point as those characters were.

I think the best argument for what's so great about Knocked Up is that, at easily over two hours, it is a film that should have worn out its welcome well before it's over. Yet these characters are so inviting and engaging that I didn't want to leave their world and would have stayed there for far longer if given the chance. It also didn't hurt that it may have the best laugh to minute ratio of any film so far this year (who knew Munich references could evoke so many laughs?) After such a lackluster May filled with bad sequel after sequel, it's nice to find something so refreshingly funny and original out there.