Tangled

Directors: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Starring: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi
Release Date: November 24, 2010
Length: 1 hour 40 minutes

Off a hot success from last holiday’s The Princess And The Frog, Disney gives us a new cartoon musical, Tangled, which tells the fairytale of the sheltered Rapunzel. Tangled’s animation is a mix of computer graphics and hand drawings which lets the audience enjoy the wonderful story in 3D while still keeping that old Disney musical feel. Mandy Moore voices Rapunzel, a princess who was kidnapped by an evil old witch at birth for her magical golden hair that keeps this old hag young. She is brought up by this wretched woman whom Rapunzel calls Mother in a tall tower of which Rapunzel has never left and is never allowed to ever. The witch discovers that if Rapunzel’s hair is cut, it turns brown and loses it’s powers so Rapunzel’s hair grows longer and longer and is never cut. The King and Queen who lost their beloved daughter, send up floating lanterns from the castle every year on her birthday. Rapunzel, watching from her tower window, has always wondered what they are and felt on some level, they were connected to her. She dreams of seeing these lanterns up close but she knows her “mother” would never allow it. The male lead of the story, the charming Flynn Rider is an escaped convict who has run away from the law and has found Rapunzel’s tower. He finds safety inside the tower just before a confused and petrified Rapunzel knocks him out. She finds a beautiful crown in his satchel that he has stolen and makes a deal with him that if he takes her to see the floating lanterns, she will give the crown back to him. The two go off on a wild adventure into the outside world Rapunzel has never experienced before. Children who are taken to see movies today are so unbelievably lucky and blessed. Perfect family films come out rarely, not every weekend like regular films and kids aren’t taken to see movies every weekend either. About 6 or 7 great animated films come out per year and that is just the perfect number of times a child goes to the movie theatre in a year. They are almost guaranteed to love every movie experience they have without taking into account that kids can enjoy everything much easier than adults can. Tangled is the cherry on top of a fantastic year in family films. Disney films – especially musicals – have never gone wrong before and they impossibly outdo themselves with each new film they produce. Tangled has all the traits of a perfect Disney musical. There’s a touching story of a girl with a dream, all-aged humor added subtly into many scenes, a cute and innocent romance played out beautifully, and last but not least, beautiful catchy songs kids will belt out while exiting the theatre. Singer/Actress Mandy Moore lends her beautiful voice and bubbly persona to Rapunzel and creates a wonderful chemistry with Zachary Levi from the TV show Chuck, who adds his charisma to the attractive character of Flynn Rider. Both cast members vocally carried the film so well and excellently brought a charming story to life. It is an automatic shoe in that kids will love this movie but adults will also walk away loving everything about Tangled as it is one of the most enjoyable films of 2010 and is definitely the family film of the holiday season. There is absolutely nothing that won’t fill your heart with delight during this movie. Don’t think twice about taking your kids to or seeing for yourself the wonderful Tangled.

Love and Other Drugs

Director: Edward Zwick
Writers: Edward Zwick, Charles Randolph, Marshall Herskovitz
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway
Release Date: November 24, 2010
Length: 1 hour 52 minutes

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gylenhaal. Two young talented beautiful people in Hollywood playing love interests in a film called “Love and Other Drugs”. If that doesn’t scream chick flick to you, I don’t know what would. That certainly was my first impression from hearing about this movie. However, when I watched the trailer and even the beginning of the film, I started to think this might actually be a legitimately good movie. The first thing that changed my mind was the original story that “Chick Flicks” really never have. Ladies man Jamie Randall is a pharmaceutical salesman in 1996 for the drug Zoloft just before the discovery of Viagra. At one of his client’s office, he meets patient Maggie Murdock who has stage 1 Parkinson’s disease. After the two go for coffee, they end up in bed with each other within the hour. Their sexual non-relationship continues as neither of them want a boyfriend/girlfriend and just want to enjoy sex. Soon, Jamie develops strong feelings for Maggie which she at first rejects before they begin a serious relationship. All is well until Maggie’s Parkinson’s disease and Jamie’s promiscuous status starts to get in the way of this kind of real relationship neither of them has been in before. The second thing to change my mind about this being a girly kind of movie was the constant graphic sex scenes and nudity. The amount of it did not affect the movie in a good or bad way at all. The filmmakers could have maybe cut down on the amount of times Hathway shows her breasts but the sex scenes are necessary in that they define the first half of the movie. It is important to know that they have a strictly sexual affair and not at all a romantic relationship. It’s hard to put this movie under the title of romantic comedy because it’s not ridiculously funny and not entirely romantic until midway through. Both Hathaway and Gylenhaal’s characters are pretty morbid existential people that don’t see a point in relationships or love. When this trait is subtly played out in scenes, it is very believable but sometimes, it was much too forced and came off as pretentious and unnecessary. It also didn’t help the movie when one character would say “you’re more messed up than me” as opposed to letting the audience figure it out on their own. At first, it’s refreshing to see two characters that are both on the same page of moroseness instead one of them being a hopeless romantic and the other not believing in love. After a while though, you begin to get sick of their repetitive melancholic nature. However, both actors carried the movie very well. Hathaway and Gylenhaal shared a completely natural chemistry on screen and played off each other beautifully. Both being talented academy award nominated actors, their performances almost made this a great movie. My feelings of this movie being a chick flick or not went on a bit of an up-and-down rollercoaster. The movie had an original story, clever dialogue and believability until 3 quarters of the way through. It was almost like they hired a different screenwriter at this point in the film because used clichés were coming in at every turn from now on. I was able to accurately predict the ending, something I didn’t expect to do when I was watching the beginning of the film. Cheesiness and clichés don’t usually stop me from enjoying a movie however the unexpected use of them at the end was very annoying. When a film is fantastic for only 75% of it, you know that it had the potential to be great all the way through. Love And Other Drugs is not your typical chick flick, just a disappointing one.

Burlesque

Director: Steven Antin
Writer: Steven Antin
Starring: Cher, Christina Aguilera
Release Date: November 24, 2010
Length: 1 hour 59 minutes

This semi-musical film has Christina Aguilera in her first starring role as the lead and the legendary Cher in her first film in fourteen years. The story takes place in L.A. in an old Burlesque club. Can you already guess the plot? Maybe you could guess the entire storyline from start to finish if I told you that Aguilera oddly enough plays a small town girl with a big dream and Cher surprisingly plays herself with a different name. How do the other three stars of the film, Stanley Tucci, Cam Gigandet, and Kristin Bell fit into this movie then? Well, there needs to be a love interest – Cam Gigandet, a self-absorbed bitchy rival – Kristin Bell, and a sassy gay best friend for Cher – Stanley Tucci. With all that put together, you’ve got yourself one original movie. That was obviously not the goal of this movie being made though. It is no surprise to everyone, including probably the people who worked on the film, that Burlesque’s writing from the characters to the dialogue to the situations, is terrible. That doesn’t stop everyone from singing and dancing though, which provides the real entertainment for this movie. Besides the fact that I could pick out almost every scene, if not then the conversation, taken from another movie, I found myself diving further and further into a real guilty pleasure that this movie is. The bad script can also sometimes be hidden by the great acting of Cher, Tucci and even Aguilera herself. No one would have cast her in the lead role if she couldn’t act and she really does carry the movie quite well. Aguilera makes a great innocent small town girl we’ve seen a thousand times but adds a certain cute freshness that only a first time actor can hold. Her voice and singing is, of course, a whole other story. The upbeat jazzy songs of Burlesque suit her strong voice perfectly and are wonderful to listen to. She even shares a cute romance with Twilight star Cam Gigandet, as the bartender Jack of the club. Writer/director Steven Antin doesn’t seem to have the intention of making an authentic Oscar winning film but he makes one of the most fun enjoyable movies of the year with fantastic song and dance performances while managing to cast everyone perfectly with a comeback from Cher and a breakout for Christina Aguilera. If you have any interest in all, go see the best guilty pleasure movie of the year.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Director: David Yates
Writer: Steve Kloves
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Release Date: November 17, 2010
Length: 2 hours 26 minutes

J.K. Rowlings extraordinary world of Harry Potter is almost coming to a close for the big screen with the second last film installment of the franchise. Director David Yates of the previous two films made a wise decision to split the last epic novel into two parts to include as much as possible from the book as it would not be right to condense the exciting story. As I have not fully enjoyed Yates’ last two adaptations, my expectations weren’t too high for this film but I still had a huge hope that for the ending note, he would go all out and do this incredible tale complete justice. In the sixth film that came out in Summer 2009, we learn Voldemort, Harry’s immortal enemy, has split his soul in seven and put those seven pieces into various important objects or beings. These are called Horcruxes and in order for Voldemort to be killed once and for all, Harry must find and destroy each Horcrux. In this film, Harry and his two sidekicks, best friends, Ron and Hermione go on a dangerous pursuit (requested by the late Dumbeldore) to obtain and abolish all of Voldemort’s horcruxes. This means they don’t return to their beloved Hogwartz for their last year of school. As the three friends continue their search in hiding, they learn that the world of Magic is becoming a corrupt society with the Ministry of Magic being overthrown by Voldemort and his Death Eaters. This is the darkest novel of the series as the main characters are much more exposed to the saddening outside world and the people running it. Those disturbing themes of the novel are translated well on screen and the audience can fully appreciate this is no longer a children’s story. However, there are many important themes like friendship and becoming an adult that do not translate well into the film due to Yates’ repetition of mistakes from the previous two films. What’s noticeable about Yates direction is the artistry, look and shot of a scene. The last three films have had beautiful cinematography and art direction. Every shot is certainly pretty to look at but Yates, whether intentional or not, limits the dialogue and I find myself noticing how everything looks while I’m waiting for someone to speak. Much of the dialogue between the three main actors felt forced and they were only speaking lines sometimes to explain something important from the book that the audience needs to understand. I miss the heated arguments the kids would have in the previous films where sometimes a character might heaven for bid naturally cut the other one off. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson all perform well as usual in this film although, not in fault of their acting abilities, some of their scenes did not keep my interest whatsoever and came off boring. I was much more compelled by the scenes with the adult cast including Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, and Helena Bonham Carter. Like always, Fiennes was scarily venomous in his role as the crazy Dark Lord Voldemort. Alan Rickman, with his oddly captivating unemotional voice was fantastic as Severus Snape. Helena Bonham Carter (for the few scenes she was in) gave a hilarious and terrifying performance as the insane Bellatrix Lestrange, one of Voldemort’s followers. An improvement from the last film was that this actually had a semi-exciting climax. One of the benefits of splitting a story into two films is that you can end the film leaving you hanging with anticipation. A weakness from splitting the story into two films was that this half didn’t seem to be enough of its own film. It just felt like someone pressed pause on a very long film and added some epic music and credits. This film by no means was bad. It was decent, but when you think of how amazing the films used to be – the first being nominated for 3 Oscars – it is just an incredible shame that this remarkable story must end off on a note of mediocrity. If you are a fan of the novels, this latest film might disappoint you, but if you are an outsider to the series, it might just pass as an enjoyable film.  

Morning Glory

Director: Roger Michell
Writer: Aline Brosh McKenna
Starring: Rachel Mcadams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton
Release Date: November 12, 2010
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

The adorable Rachel Mcadams takes on the role of Becky Fuller in a Working Girl-esque movie, directed by Roger Michell of Notting Hill. The screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada, Aline Brosh Mckenna provides the done to death script for Morning Glory which also stars Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton and Patrick Wilson. You may have heard this inspiring story before, but let me refresh your memory one more time. Optimistic Becky gets fired from her job as a producer on a Morning show program and begins to impossibly scavenge for a job in the Big Apple. She immediately lands a job as executive producer on Daybreak, a morning show program in New York. She easily gets a beautiful apartment and begins her job making quick decisions on her first day like firing one of the show’s co-hosts. With her positive outlook, Becky plans to revitalize the show by hiring cynical egotistical retired news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Ford) that does not please high-demanding co-host Colleen Peck (Keaton). Becky takes on more and more strenuous workloads while developing an awfully quick relationship with male model look-a-like, Adam Bennett (Wilson), who works in her building. In Morning Glory, the cast is stellar, almost perfect in fact but the director and writer go flat. All four main actors in this film are extremely talented actors who have all been in extraordinary films before and together they almost shine through the overdone story of Morning Glory. It was almost like their powers weren’t strong enough as actors to destroy the defunctness and predictability of the script. As an adolescent myself, I was surprised that I enjoyed Keaton’s and Ford’s performances much more than those of Mcadams’ and Wilson’s. The annoying and clichéd romance/relationship between the two of them and the way their characters were superficially written did not help me enjoy their screen time. As big of a fan that I am of Mcadams I couldn’t enjoy her in the exasperating never-stopping role that she had in this film. Whether it was Michell’s encouragement or her natural acting, Becky Fuller seemed too upbeat and too naïve to be a real person. I see the niceness of having a looked down upon, positive person as the main character of a movie but there was is no possible way a person can remain that unrealistically cheerful after being constantly picked on by her co-workers. Her performance almost resembled that of Amy Adams in Enchanted with a forced realistic undertone. Whatever it was, no one could buy it. Ford as the pessimistic egotistical Mike Pomeroy was uncontrollably hysterical and he and Keaton shared a wonderfully entertaining chemistry between their hateful lively characters. That funny, working relationship was probably my favourite part of the film. Aside from the acting, as mentioned before, the story wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before, especially the fuzzy warm ending which I won’t rudely spoil for you. There were also an oddly high amount of scenes where the scene would start off normal and within seconds, the tension would rise too quickly for the scene with Mcadams always almost crying. This happened so often and every time I felt like I missed something important. Why else would everyone always be so angry and stressed? My enjoyment of this film was not low enough to make it not worth my money or time, but not high enough to give it a strong recommendation. Morning Glory had some cute moments and great performances but it certainly was not anything unique or special.

127 Hours

Director: Danny Boyle
Writers: Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, Aron Ralston (author)
Starring: James Franco
Release Date: November 5, 2010
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

Visionary director Danny Boyle is on a top film streak. After 2 years from his success with Slumdog Millionaire, he delivers 127 Hours, the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston and his extraordinary power to do the unthinkable in order to survive. Screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, 127 Hours is one of the most powerful, emotional, intense movie experiences of all time. Aron Ralston (James Franco) decides to leave his house one night, without his Swiss army knife, in what the audience is left to believe is another one of his adventurous escapades. Aron drives to Blue John canyon, where he meets and hangs out with two girls, Kristin (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn). About an hour after he says goodbye to them, Aron attempts to climb out of a space between canyon walls, but as he uses a boulder to push himself up, the boulder becomes dislodged and crushes his forearm against one of the canyon walls. For five days, 127 hours to be exact, Aron struggles, trying every possible way to get himself out while he videotapes himself on his camcorder. Personally, I did not want to see a film about a guy who has to cut his arm in order to survive. So let me say to the people who want to stop reading this review now because they feel that way as well, that as someone who does not enjoy gore, the actual scene where he amputates his arm is only four minutes long. The scene is quite gory and seems sickeningly realistic, but all you have to do is look down at the floor or close your eyes and when it’s over, it’s over. The reason I bought my ticket for this film was because I fully believed Danny Boyle would not disappoint after his extreme success from Slumdog Millionaire. He’s not the only one who worked on Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, though. Academy award winning screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy and producer, Christian Colson were on the same team too. The three of them did everything but let me down. Beaufoy and Boyle faced the biggest challenge of making a one-man movie as fantastic and authentic as this movie is because it’s James Franco and no one else for about 3 quarters of the movie. Boyle pulls you into Aron’s mind so you feel and know exactly how he’s feeling and how terribly stressful this potentially fatal situation is. You don’t just feel bad for him and want him to get out. You feel like you are a part of him struggling with what he’s struggling with and trying to find a way out for both of you. At the Q&A after the TIFF screening, Danny Boyle said they didn’t want to make a movie where you end up saying, “What an incredible hero, I could never do that,”. He wanted to make a movie where you are so deepy involved with this character that you question if you would ever do that, if facing the same decision. Danny Boyle fully accomplished that goal, as I found myself thinking exactly what he wanted us to think. I wasn’t surprised that Danny Boyle delivered as a director, but I was completely blown away with what James Franco delivered as an actor. Franco, so far has acted in movies that have proven him to be a funny actor or a good actor, but he hasn’t done anything to make himself seem like an amazing actor. This is that movie that changes how everyone thinks of him and proves him to be one of the most incredible actors in Hollywood. Franco is simply outstanding in this movie. His performance as Ralston felt so genuine and so real that I forgot it was James Franco from Spider-man and Pineapple Express and I never doubted him as Ralston. Despite the disturbing premise of this film, you will leave the theatre feeling incredibly inspired and joyous. 127 Hours is not a dark story but a touchingly triumphant story. There is hardly much more to compliment 127 Hours on except to mention that it got a five-minute standing ovation at the festival’s screening, of which I proudly took part in. This movie is by far, one of the best films of the year. You will certainly be missing out if you don’t see 127 Hours.