'Saving Mr. Banks' from Himself

You wouldn't be wrong to look at Disney and assume that they run the planet at this point. Over the years, they've been amassing huge tracts of business landscape. They own animation juggernaut Pixar. They own and operate ABC and a host of other television programming licenses (including 80% of ESPN). They bought Marvel Entertainment, bringing an entire stable of profitable superhero franchises under their already-sizable roof. And this time last year the company purchased legendary studio Lucasfilm from science fiction scribe/legend George Lucas. That's right; Mickey Mouse owns Star Wars.

Naturally, this is an exciting time to own stock in the corporation (The Lone Ranger notwithstanding), but it's not hard to look back about fifty years, when Disney only SEEMINGLY ran the planet. It was the 1960's, when the company was much, MUCH smaller, but the affect it had on modern culture was never in doubt. Disneyland was one of the world's top tourist destinations, and every movie coming out of Disney's celebrated studio was an instant gold mine. Walt Disney himself was a beloved public figure, despite the allegations of racism and antisemitism that arose during what has become known as the Golden Age of Animation.

Get used to this face... Apparently Mrs. Travers wore it a lot.

And that's a life worth exploring on film, even if only in the minimalist, somewhat pandering efforts of Saving Mr. Banks. The movie recounts the untold story of Disney's (Tom Hanks) twenty year effort to adapt his daughters' favorite novel - "Mary Poppins" - to the big screen. Only one obstacle stands in his way: author Pamela "P.L." Travers (Emma Thompson), who is only agreeing to the deal on the basis that she has final say on the production. As heads collide, Travers reminisces to her early years in 1900's Australia, and her memories of an alcoholic, yet loving father. Gradually Disney begins to truly understand what it is that makes this novel and the character of Mary Poppins so special to this British author, though their difficulties make the production of one of cinema's most endearing family classics very, very hard to get done.

I think they hired Hanks just to deflect any controversial asides.

This feel-good picture comes from John Lee Hancock, and upon reflection it makes perfect sense that the director of The Rookie, The Alamo, and The Blind Side was on hand to crank up the inspirational vibe on this motion picture. The characters are all good folk, trying to get things done, and learning a bit about one another in the process. And in Thompson's case, that's worthy of some serious Oscar consideration; her performance as the successful, eccentric and somewhat protective author is right to draw raves, as she takes on a character that a lesser actor would have made either cringe-worthingly annoying or mind-numbingly sappy. Credit where it's due, some of that brilliance does come from the screenplay - co-penned by TV writers Kelly Marcel (Terra Nova) and Sue Smith (Mabo) - which features a wealth of witty dialogue, plenty of heartfelt moments and quite a bit of genuine emotional inflection. But it's Thompson who makes the role special, taking someone who could easily have been portrayed as a shrew - or worse, a villain - and making her sympathetic to everyone in the audience.

Much music was made on that piano, and... other stuff...

And it's not just Thompson that shines, as most all the cast put forth some of their best efforts to date. Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak light up the screen as the renown songwriting duo of Richard and Robert Sherman, who created such classics as "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", while West Wing and Cabin in the Woods fans will recognize the charming Bradley Whitford as Mary Poppins screenwriter Don DaGradi. Paul Giamatti turns in his casual "lovable schlep" as Travers' unwitting but friendly personal driver, certainly not a bad deal. And of course Tom Hanks is having a stellar year; between this and his excellent work in Captain Phillips, it's officially a comeback year for the veteran leading man. Casting him as Disney is a no-brainer, as there isn't an audience out there that cannot be pleased by Hanks' cool demeanor and earnest expressions. But the scene-stealer in Saving Mr. Banks is undoubtedly Colin Farrell, who appears in Travers' flashbacks as her troubled father. Again, it's a role (lovable drunk) that could so easily have been botched by a no-name performer, but Farrell really draws the audience in and allows us to get into the soul of his character. In return, we get to appreciate some of the best work from one of the industry's more under-appreciated actors working today.

Wait, when did this become Heidi?

Unfortunately, despite some stellar acting and more than a few feel-good moments, Saving Mr. Banks is far from a perfect product. Thompson's jokes almost always work, but the screenplay doesn't really allow anyone else (with the occasional exception of Disney himself) to get a jibe or zinger in. And when they do, well, they're usually not all that good. It's all about the interactions between the two main stars, and while the actors who play those secondary parts ARE quite good, they can't quite overcome the limitations of the script. There's also a distinct sense of whitewashing when you see the movie. Even if I hadn't been told about some of the egregious lies the movie would have you accept as fact (despite it said that she'd only published the one book, Travers actually had written quite a few books between "Poppins" and the movie's production, and she actually HATED the movie itself) I wouldn't say I could have been surprised. It's a movie BY Walt Disney Studios CONCERNING their parochial namesake; of COURSE there's going to be more than a bit of image massaging going on. The creative changes do make sense, but my issue has more to do with the blatant nature of Hancock's ham-fisted direction than it does with eschewing historical accuracy. Frankly, if Hancock was a better, more subtle director, he might have made this film into something truly exceptional.

Ah, the days when everyone wore ties...

As it stands, Saving Mr. Banks is certainly a serviceable, solid, and even quite sweet film. If you were looking for something to take your family to over the Christmas break, it's one of the stronger options out there, though Frozen is still the clear front-running option. While there's no getting past the fact that Banks is a flawed motion picture, it's got an abundance of charm and sufficient talent in front of the camera - especially in its two leads - to carry itself quite effortlessly into the hearts of any audience. Excellence it could have reached, especially in regards to its love letters to fathers, but for a sycophancy that ironically advocates forgiving troublesome dads without acknowledging it's own parent's missteps. Still, Thompson is looking at a well-deserved Oscar nomination (if not a win), and there ought to be a good deal of fun had at the movies should you decide to make this your destination.

Kingdom Come

When it comes to Wes Anderson (no relation) films, there are two kinds of people: those who think his are the best movies ever, and everyone else.

Okay, that's an oversimplification. It certainly does seem though that those who love the works of the independent director do so with every fiber of their being. How many people like that have you known over the years? These are the ones who stand aghast that you have not seen The Royal Tenenbaums, and hold Rushmore as an unheralded classic. They insist that Anderson's 1996 feature film debut Bottle Rocket is his best, and that The Fantastic Mr. Fox was a better animated movie than Up in 2009. They've even seen The Darjeeling Limited, which I dare you to admit you even KNEW was a real thing. Anderson's deadpan style of humor and narrative criss-crossing are well known to his fans, but as he trends away from the style of most modern comedies, many don't get on board, making Anderson's a cult fandom at best. His latest hit theaters this past week, and Moonrise Kingdom certainly looked like an interesting movie-going option. The only one of his films that I've seen before was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and while I hoped that Moonrise would at least be better than that, I honestly had no idea into what I was getting.

"Wes Anderson needs YOU."

The year is 1965, on a small island in New England. Two twelve year olds have packed up and left their unhappy homes, determined to make a life together. Orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) recently left a letter of resignation to the Boy Scouts of America, and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is leaving a family whose issues she cannot stand. As they attempt to flee and begin anew, a search is orchestrated by the island's Sheriff, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), Scout Master Randy Wright (Edward Norton), and Suzy's parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). Little does anyone know that a monster hurricane is on its way, and none of the island's inhabitants will be safe, let alone two runaways in the wild.

Now THAT'S a story they'll tell the kids someday...

It's difficult to describe exactly what I liked about seeing Moonrise Kingdom, mostly because the damn thing's so quirky it defies explanation. Anderson infuses several themes - including abandonment, infidelity, family infighting, anger issues, and intolerance - into the screenplay he co-wrote with Roman Coppola, and the result is not the illiterate mishmash you would get from lesser directors, but a cohesive, multi-staged narrative that properly builds the film's story from perfect beginning to poignant ending. One Anderson staple is to have his characters display little, if any, emotion, and while that might not be very realistic overall, it's an interesting allegory on how we censor ourselves around others, even in moments of distress and frustration. Moonrise Kingdom is smart most of the time, and silly only when it absolutely needs to be, creating a dynamic that pushes it far ahead of where Life Aquatic could reach.

She sees you!

The cast does a great job of telling that tale, and not just those actors like Murray and Jason Schwartzman, who have worked on films with Anderson in the past. Murray is of course amazing as usual, managing to play the practical father figure who occasionally allows signs of his mental depression and anger issues to pass his screen, making for one of his best performances in years. In fact, this might his best work since the excellent Lost in Translation. Bruce Willis and Frances McDormand are also impressive in their Wes Anderson debuts, with Willis actually playing it somewhat subtle as the island's Sheriff, who is also having an affair with McDormand. As for the actress, how McDormand hasn't appeared in one of Anderson's films before now is a mystery; seeing as she is all-around wonderful, delivering each line (whether normally or through Laura Bishop's trademark megaphone) perfectly. Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton round out the cast; Norton plays the squeaky clean Scout Master with the level of talent we are all used to from him, while Swinton is positively delicious as the woman considered so reprehensibly wrong that she doesn't have a name, referred to only as "Social Services".

All we need is a butcher, a baker and a candle-stick maker.

It's the preteen stars Gilman and Hayward who make the biggest impact, however. While their introductions are perhaps a bit slow, they quickly become the center of the whole film, and Anderson wisely uses them to their fullest abilities without stretching them too thin. These are their first appearances in movies, after all, and from their performances as outcast lovers, I'd be shocked if either failed to make it work with real Hollywood careers sometime in the future, should they so desire. As the our heroes, their story of finding their first love is spectacularly told, and the acting of the two kids helps properly convey their attraction, their similarities and their differences. Their outward fight against those that would keep them apart is the same as the struggle of new lovers to discover common ground and compromise, all while learning new things about the other. While Anderson does his best to make the supporting characters stand out, it is these two who are rightfully the heart and soul of Moonrise Kingdom. You could argue that twelve year olds have no real clue what love is, but this movie just wouldn't be the same without their innocence to carry it.

Because kids running off to get married is totally cool.

Obviously I can't really compare this to the best of Wes Anderson's films; I've only seen the one, and Life Aquatic has nothing that Moonrise Kingdom does not easily overpass on its way to becoming the year's #4 Film. Anderson takes a deft hand to what can be best described as the most artistic movie so far in 2012, and he is helped both by his amazing screenplay and the excellent acting of all involved. I honestly wasn't sure what I was getting into when I went to see this, but if it comes to a theater near you, do yourself a favor and check it out. It may not be for everyone, but it is a film everyone should try, just for the sake of seeing something different.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Film

If you've seen me in person at all the past few months, I've probably mentioned Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to you. I first saw the trailer back when I saw The A-Team, and as you can imagine from the fact that I would constantly re-watch the trailers at home whenever I had a free moment, I've been looking forward to it ever since. What can I say? The trailers have been instant merriment, a quick pick-me-up during a dull moment. And so when I finally had the chance to see the whole damn thing this past Thursday, I was confident that it would easily stride atop of my movie rankings, or very close thereof. And having just completed the six-set graphic novel collection by Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley, I was even more excited, having already been drawn into the story of one young man's quest to defeat his new girlfriend's seven evil exes who are out to make her new boyfriend's life a living hell.

Of course, the movie wouldn't even be in existence if not for the pre-existing graphic novel. Published by Oni Press, the first volume of the Scott Pilgrim series, called Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, was released in August of 2004 and immediately the idea of adapting it into a movie was begun, with director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) brought in almost immediately. Though most of the story had yet to be committed to paper, O'Malley was very involved in the creation of the script, with several of his dialogue lines and plot bits making their way to the movie, and in return, several of the scripts used had influence in volumes 3 and 4 of the graphic novel.

The Gorgeous Mary Elizabeth Winstead

You'll notice that I say "graphic novel" and not "manga" in referring to Scott Pilgrim, though one could be forgiven for confusing this title with the latter. The books are designed not unlike those one would see in section of your local bookstore consigned to the popular Japanese import titles. Black and white, with rare color pages, big eyes, and exaggerated animations, it's not unlike many eastern titles on the market. O'Malley was in fact influenced by manga, but his style is really closer to, say, Chynna Clugston's Blue Monday than Tite Kubo's Bleach. It's got tons of western influence as well, and it's setting in frigid Canada already sets itself apart from most titles in general.

The Scott Pilgrim series starts out great and gets better with every volume, eventually winning Harvey and Eisner awards for their strong character development, funny dialogue, crazy action, and possibly most important, a believably developing relationship between Scott and the love of his life, Ramona Flowers. With such high standards for storytelling and with excellent trailers paving the way for what we expect to see the most entertaining film this year, can the truth live up even close to the hype? In an answer, no.

Scott Pilgrim Kicks Ass

The film starts strong, following closely to the story of the first volume of the graphic novel, the only title in the series finished before scripts had begun to be written. In it, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a slacker and part-time bassist for the band Sex Bob-Omb (Names after the explosive Super Mario villain) with his friends Stephen Stills on guitar (Mark Webber), Kim Pine on drums (Alison Pill), and "Young" Neil who's their biggest fan boy (Johnny Simmons). The 23-year old Pilgrim has just begun dating a high-schooler, 17-year-old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), with whom he likes spending time because this kind of relationship is "easy" for him, one year after a particularly break-up. He shares an apartment (and bed) with his gay friend Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin) and for the time being, life seems easy. That changes when he sees a mysterious stranger in a dream, who eventually turns out to be the very real Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an American who just moved to Toronto to start over and get away from her past. That past manifests itself as the League of Evil Exes, made up of seven evil people who blame Ramona for ruining their lives and seeking that she should never be involved with be taken out of the picture, ensuring Ramona could never be happy in a relationship. The various fight scenes (and actually, many other parts of the movie) are very much inspired by video games and music, creating a unique, and outrageous, way of pushing the story forward in a way that has never been done on the big screen before. So from the point that Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) crashes a battle of the bands meet to fight Scott on, our hero is constantly on the defensive, worried about from where the next attack may arrive.

L-R: Cera, Winstead, Simmons, Wong, Pill, Webber

The acting in the film is quite good, with several of the supporting roles cast able to almost perfectly embody the graphic novel's unique conceptions, especially Wong as the Scott-crazy high-schooler Knives and Culkin as the scene-stealing Wallace. Both actors manage to perfectly personify their roles and expand upon what's known from the comic. Pill, Webber and Simmons are good as the band-mates, though little is done with them. Anna Kendrick had not yet been nominated for her Oscar for Up in the Air when shooting of this film had begun but provides much spunk for her relatively small role, and Winstead takes a great opportunity and does a fantastic job with the lead role she's been given. It's almost unfortunate that Cera is the weakest link in this ensemble cast. He plays the nerd card right, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's much range in his performances, as he's pretty much playing a slightly-older version of his character from Arrested Development, albeit with fighting prowess. He just lacks a small part of Scott's personality, his utter devotion to Ramona, that detracts from his performance. And that's why it's a shame that the ensemble cast isn't given more of a chance to shine, like they are in the comics. It's a minor quibble, but more of Kim Pine or Envy Adams (Brie Larsen) would not have hurt the story, especially since it had been pared down to a scant 112 minutes. That's a LOT of character development cut out.

The League of Evil Exes

The exes are a good variety, with the personas mostly consistent with the books. Matthew Patel is exactly the same as his print version, not surprising since the entire story to that point is a slightly truncated copy of the first book. But skateboarder/action star Lucas Lee (Chris Evans) is much different from his character in the book, who wasn't even evil, just a sellout. Parenthood's Mae Whitman is good-but-not-great as the fourth evil ex, the lesbian half-ninja Roxy Richter. But the true standout of the exes is Brandon "Superman" Routh as Todd Ingram, rock star bassist, third evil ex, and the current boyfriend of Envy Adams, Scott's ex-girlfriend. Routh manages to convey humor in silent delivery. Never mind that the lines aren't ad-libbed (they appear exactly the same in the third volume) his delivery is perfect and who knew Routh could actually ACT?? His was a pleasant surprise, easily the best part of the movie. Too bad it was squarely in the middle, as Jason Schwartzman, while seemingly cast as the penultimate evil ex-boyfriend, doesn't stack up as a main villain as he should. Even worse, the Katayanagi twins, evil exes 5 and 6, are turned from robot-building geniuses into a pair of anonymous pop stars, with not a single line of dialogue between them. The castration of their roles was not only a side-effect of the movie entering production before the comic was finished, but apparently the lack of interest the filmmakers had in new evil characters by this point and rushed through them to get to Schwartzman. In fact, from about halfway through the Roxy Richter story onward, the movie feels a little forced. A shame that such potentially interesting characters are tossed aside like garbage.

Brandon Routh shows off his vegan psychic powers

And this leads to my ultimate gripes about the movie. It would be folly to exactly convert a good story like that in the Scott Pilgrim books directly into a film, because then you'd have a six-hour film and no matter how good a performance is, it rarely will keep an audience in the spirit for that long. However, so much was cut out of the stories that it practically makes the story somewhat unbelievable (okay, as unbelievable as a story involving quick-travel dimensions, mystic Indian warriors, psychic vegan rockers, lesbian half-ninjas, and enemies that explode into currency can be) over the course of the film. Lack of minor character development is one problem. Scott's previous relationships before Ramona, including those with Kim and Envy (whose breakup had a heavy toll for Scott) are barely mentioned. Kim has been reduced to a useless wise-cracker for whom the story at large has no meaning, and Envy had a much bigger role in the books, but in the movie that ends with Todd's defeat. Those characters, as well as Scott's old high-school friend Lisa Miller (who's completely cut out of the film adaptation) are major factors in the continual degradation of the Scott/Ramona relationship over the course of the book's story, replaced in the film by Ramona simply being tired of her past catching up to her, and Scott's fear that he'll lose Ramona. These things DO have impact in the books, but on a much smaller scale. But the biggest issue the film has may be it's time line. In the books, more than a year passes between the events of volumes 1 and 6. That's a lot of time for character, relationship and plot development. In the movies, this time is scaled down to a couple of WEEKS at most. It's one thing to speed up the pattern of ex-attacks, another thing to speed up a story to fit more snugly into film-length entertainment, but the ups and downs of Scott and Ramona's relationship is believable BECAUSE it takes place over so long a period of time. The wear and tear that exists between them is a result of small things over a length of time, not big things over the short term. And cutting the film short means Scott doesn't even get to do any of the major steps forward he performs in volume 4, such as successfully getting a job and moving in with Ramona. In all, the comic featured a realistic relationship during unrealistic scenarios. With the movie, the realism of the relationship is gone. And to add insult to injury by the end, we're led to believe that he'd be better off back with Knives than Ramona.

Big Hammer

So does that mean I didn't like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? Oh, no, I liked it. I liked it A LOT. I had serious issues with the movie, mostly due to the graphic novel series still being so fresh in my mind, though the film had enough foibles of it's own. No, the excellent use of video game imagery to tell the story, outrageous humor, and the amazing acting from the ensemble cast, still puts it high on my chart for the year, even if it fell far short on expectations. I may not have loved it quite so much as I had been sure I would, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World still ends up ranked at #5 on my top 10 list for the year.

That's right. I have a top 10 movies list.

Enjoy!