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By  Will Silver, on January 2, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Daniel Mays, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones, Joe Starr, Enn Reitel, Mackenzie Crook
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Expectations: Somewhat high, but I should know better.
Sometimes I get excited about a film despite my better judgement nagging me incessantly to watch something else. This would be one of those times. I read some of the Tintin books as a child, but I am by no means a scholar or in any way knowledgeable about them. I remember the basics, but not much else. When Spielberg announced that he would finally film a couple of the books, I got excited. I thought, “This will be like a new Indiana Jones film, and preferably one without all the negative trappings of the fourth entry into that series (although, I still find that one remarkably enjoyable for some reason).” Then my excitement waned a bit as it was also announced Tintin would be all motion capture animation. I’m not a fan of Robert Zemeckis’s popular forays into the technology, so I found myself torn, wondering if I should be excited or indifferent. Well, I’ve seen Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin and honestly it’s a bit of both.
The film jumps right into the storyline without a shred of character development or stage-setting or anything. Just right into the intrigue. OK, I can hang. If it means more time for fun, high-stakes shenanigans, I’m in. Tintin buys a model ship from a street vendor and is immediately accosted by one man willing to pay double, and then another asking him to, “Name his price.” Tintin, of course, states that the ship is not for sale and returns home with it only to have a short scuffle between Tintin’s dog Snowy and an alleycat result in the ship’s masts breaking, and the secret within to fall out.
Continue reading The Adventures of Tintin (2011) →
By Will Silver, on December 30, 2011, 5:20 am  Starring Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries, Eric Bana, Bethany Whitmore, Renée Geyer
Directed by Adam Elliot
Expectations: Moderate. Heard good things.
The past few weeks I’ve been doing my best to wipe my cinematic slate clean of everything that’s been clogging it up for the past year (or more). While this is theoretically impossible for me with my Netflix Queue maxed out at 500, another couple hundred on the Instant Queue and hundreds of other films I’d like to see not represented there, I’m doing my best to prioritize and pave the way for an upcoming year filled with new and exciting movies. What I’m getting at is that I’ve intended to watch Mary and Max for the past thirteen months. My co-worker watched the film in October or November of last year and highly recommended the film to me. She knew I was a huge fan of claymation, and she cited the character depth in the film as something that I would probably connect with. I took the film home with the distinct intention to watch it within a few weeks. Time passed and I soon found myself at the end of December, a period in our work schedule where an imposed furlough makes it so that we’re all off work for the final week or so of December. I said to myself, “Perfect. I will finally get to that Mary and Max movie during the furlough.” You can probably see where this is going, and perhaps I’m revealing too much about my procrastinating tendencies, but I never did watch the film. Instead it languished in my mind for the entirety of 2011, until I found myself once again at home on the first day of our December furlough. When I thought of Mary and Max again (as I do every few days or so) I realized just how long it had been “something I’d get to.” Lately, I’ve forced myself to schedule things like this to bring order out of the procrastination chaos, and after my realization that it had been a full year, I decided right then and there to finally watch it this week. And I did. And I loved it.
Continue reading Mary and Max (2009) →
By Will Silver, on May 26, 2011, 7:08 am  Whisper of the Heart [耳をすませば] (1995)
Starring Yōko Honna, Issei Takahashi, Maiko Kayama, Yoshimi Nakajima, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, Takashi Tachibana, Shigeru Muroi, Keiju Kobayashi, Yorie Yamashita, Minami Takayama, Mayumi Iizuka
Directed by Yoshifumi Kondō
Expectations: High. I love Studio Ghibli and even though this isn’t directed by Miyazaki, I have high hopes.
Shizuku is a young junior high school student, busy reading every fairy tale she can get her hands on. It’s much more fun than studying! She soon notices a certain name that keeps popping up on the library index cards of the books she checks out. Who is this boy who reads all the same books? He must be someone very special! Shizuku quickly develops a crush on him that only mystery could facilitate. Written by Hayao Miyazaki, Whisper of the Heart hits every note perfectly and cleverly. Set in the mid-90s when libraries around the globe were undergoing the shift to computerized record-keeping, Miyazaki and director Yoshifumi Kondō manage to tell an enchanting love story completely based around the slowly dying old ways of the library, in what may be the most heart-warming anti-technology tale of all-time.
Continue reading Whisper of the Heart (1995) →
By Will Silver, on March 3, 2011, 6:17 am  The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Starring Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Jennifer Cody, Jenifer Lewis, Jim Cummings, Michael-Leon Wooley, Peter Bartlett, John Goodman, Oprah Winfrey
Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker
Expectations: Moderate. I want to like this one.
Disney finally makes a return to hand-drawn animation and it’s actually pretty good! The Princess and the Frog tells a modified version of the classic tale, The Frog Prince, but this time around both a prince and a princess are transformed into amphibians. Oh no! Featuring the stunning backdrop of New Orleans, Louisiana and all the jazz and Cajun fixin’s that come along with it, The Princess and the Frog is a delight for fans of classic Disney animation.
That being said, I think the film is a bit too long. Perhaps one or two fewer songs and it would have been much better, because realistically there’s only so many princess songs I can handle in one sitting. I suppose I should have expected as much in a Disney Princess film, but I was hoping for a bit more variety. Keith David is the cast standout as the Shadow Man voodoo practitioner, owning every scene he’s in with an oozing charm. His big song is the best of the film as well, featuring some insanely good animation that is reminiscent of the psychedelic Pink Elephant song in Dumbo.
Overall, it’s a great reboot to the hand-drawn Disney lineup and I hope they put out some more of these types of movies. The film expertly captures the mood of New Orleans and will excite and delight fans of all ages.
By Will Silver, on January 26, 2011, 5:41 am  Toy Story 3 (2010)
Starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Blake Clark, Estelle Harris, Jodi Benson, John Morris, Emily Hahn, Laurie Metcalf, R. Lee Ermey, Jeff Pidgeon, Teddy Newton, Bud Luckey, Javier Fernandez-Peña, Timothy Dalton
Directed by Lee Unkrich
Expectations: High. I can’t wait!
Toy Story 3 is an excellent conclusion to the Toy Story series, effectively giving fans another shot of toy action that manages to exceed the previous sequel and almost reach the heights of the near-perfect first film. I had the utmost faith in the team at Pixar to deliver a quality film, but they even exceeded my expectations.
Continue reading Toy Story 3 (2010) →
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Starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Daniel Mays, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones, Joe Starr, Enn Reitel, Mackenzie Crook
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