Monday, 15 June 2020

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

I thought this was just going to be a silly CG flubberfest, and while there is some of that, it's sparing enough to not get tiring, and surrounded by charming comedy and legit kung fu/wuxia fight sequences. All nicely directed and acted too - the tone is always heightened without becoming obnoxious.
Rating: Very Good

Treasure Planet (2002)

Mediocre. Some of the design work is nice (John Silver looks great, for example), but a lot of it is rather unimaginative (spaceships that are just flying ships!) and the CG is often outdated and poorly integrated enough to be actively ugly. The voice-work and story are fine, nothing to write home about. Martin Short's robot character is an incredibly irritating Genie knock-off.
Rating: Bad

Thursday, 14 May 2020

Man of Tai Chi (2013)

A very deft film. Proficient fight scenes, tightly choreographed and performed, cleanly directed; minimal but effective script and performances; slick and stylish direction.
The only drawbacks are that the script is essentially a procession of tropes, and that the film occasionally shows tantalising glimpses of a slightly wilder direction which it eventually pulls back from.
Rating: Good

Wish I Was Here (2014)

Gave up halfway through. This is like an AI-produced indie drama. Everyone speaks in homilies and pitches their emotions at bizarre levels. Everything's quirky and it's full of shallow pop culture references. No one talks or acts like this, furries don't hate the term furry, and everyone knows Grimace is a McDonalds character not a Burger King one.
Rating: Bad

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)

Charming fun. It's maybe 10 minutes too long and has a couple of mildly jarring pop songs in it, but overall it's inventive, impressive, endlessly detailed and witty - in other words, it's good Aardman.
Rating: Very Good

Monday, 4 May 2020

Toy Story 4 (2019)

Another Toy Story sequel that eschews the light, snappy buddy comedy antics of the first film for treacly sentimentality and toys dealing with PTSD or existential angst and making supreme sacrifices. This one's particularly messy and sweaty, with characters regularly changing motivation on a dime, or dropping out of the movie for long periods. It feels like a fan-fic story or perhaps a clumsy attempt to stitch a handful of tv show episodes into a connected narrative. Gets half a star more than TS3 because I chuckled a few times.
Rating: Awful

Wednesday, 29 April 2020

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Pleasantly charming but rather sluggish. Needed more Wilder and less Capra.
Rating: Bad