TOY STORY 3

It would seem to be an impossible task for any critic, or exhaustive DVD collector, to pick a favorite Pixar film (eleven entries to date). At least not until you’ve watched a particular selection three or four times, watched it alone, with a loved one, or with your entire family accompanied by a jumbo popcorn bowl. But I have found mine. Toy Story 3 is my favorite Pixar film after seeing it only once. I happen to think that it is a perfect film, and I need not a second viewing to certify my declaration. I nearly forgot what it was like to attend a film that contained a hundred laughs. The film’s laugh-to-minute ratio is unparalleled and yet the heart and soul of every character is explicit in many wonderful ways.

With childlike intuition, the writers of this third installment are submerged into the myths and branding of every character, every toy: Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head, Hamm the pig, Rex the dinosaur, Slinky Dog, Ken and Barbie, the (obsolete) Chatter Telephone, the Bookworm, and of course, Woody and Buzz Lightyear (Tom Hanks and Tim Allen respectively). If the toys are alive – when humans aren’t around – then they must see everything from a ground level, and from a human boy’s bedroom level, and the writers and its director Lee Unkrich (overtaking John Lasseter’s seat) captures their microcosm world with fantastic, boundless wit.

That’s not to say that “Toy Story” (1995) and “Toy Story 2” (1999) didn’t also contain many sublime moments of small toys in a tall world, they remain golden in Pixar’s retrospective. The predecessors had such dazzle and freshness when it was first released, but this newest addition somehow unearths, well jokes, at a deeper and more imaginative level if you can believe it, with aging toys trying to adapt in a convalescent Sunnyvale type of retirement while at the same time belong in some place where they are given human love. “Toy Story 3” is going to be a hefty worldwide blockbuster, no doubt about it, but if there are a few out there reluctant to attend because they think they are just going to get more of the same then it must be said: You are only depriving yourself unadulterated joy if you skip this.

The prelude is a fantasy cliffhanger (just as “Toy Story 2” did) that is rock ’em and sock ’em, but we are soon back in Andy’s bedroom only after a montage that shows him growing up, but now on the verge of taking off to college. This means that the toys are either going up to the attic for permanent storage or going off to donation. Andy and Andy’s mom, two imperfect humans with imperfect communication, get confused as to their agreement of where the toys go. And Woody is the one toy selected to attend Andy to college while the rest will meet another fate.

That other fate is a Daycare Center where they will be loved by more a few dozen rugrats. For Buzz Lightyear and the rest, this new destination will be paradise but minds are changed abruptly as soon as 21st century daycare kiddie monsters roughhouse the toys – playtime does not equal fun time. Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty) is the overseer of this community, so when adults and kids go home at night he is less sweet and chubby and more gruff and bossy. The story has fun with satirizing camps and prisons, as well as a police state with Lotso (short name) as Big Brother. Ken is like the Gestapo of the camp dishing out special privileges to the high-maintenance Barbie who uses the art of fashion as an ultimate means of empowerment.

In a way the entire message of the movie is about identity-shifting – with its characters compromising themselves under a new ownership, not an individual ownership but a community property ownership that is the Daycare Center. Woody wisely foresees that his family is being broken up and divided like low-grade commodities, and the Daycare Center is the grounds of a stock exchange (toys are used, more often abused while traded in the hands of copious humans, but not loved).

As characteristic of him, Woody reacts swiftly to overthrow Lotso and to lead his family of toys to exodus. In the meantime, Buzz falls victim to mainframe pre-programming that only makes his good time heroics more debonair. This adventure of revolt will delight kids, but on a more adult level it takes on existential meaning: If the toys are obsolete in Andy’s world, then where in the world can they live now?

As usual of Pixar cleverness, the twists and turns tap its characters to make bold new decisions while embarking onto strange new lands – ordinary land to us, the unknown to them. While I was worried that the film was taking its characters into a place way too trashy (excuse the pun) in its final act, the filmmakers extract its setting as a perilous destination of doom. As Woody’s gang faces their apparition of Inferno, a collective heart is discovered amongst the toys that is as touching as anything found in Disney animated classics. And the animated art itself is as imaginative as to final scenes of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957), an eternal sci-fi classic that modern audiences might have unfairly neglected. Check it out.

The anxiety at the conclusion is genuine, but the cheerful and triumphant feelings an audience will discover will be unmistakable here. Walt Disney has not fulfilled the promise of old-fashioned, good-hearted entertainment with their roster lately (fear the drudgery of both “Prince of Persia” and “Alice in Wonderland”). But here arrives an exception that Disney (and its division Pixar) takes you to a brand new wonderful world once again. And it’s – you read it here – a perfect creation.

Go to the official site at http://disney.go.com/toystory/

Grade: A

JONAH HEX

Moments before Jonah Hex began the publicist announced that the film was only 83 minutes in running time, and right then, it curried favor from me – for a moment. By the time the opening scenes were over it becomes certain that it would have been better if the filmmakers put another five minutes back in, with the exposition tripping over itself in jarring smash cuts. Are filmmakers afraid audiences are going to be demanding refunds within the first five minutes if there’s not enough bam! pow! zonk! thrown in to hammer you over the head?

With the title role of Hex, this is Josh Brolin’s attempt to go mainstream with this DC Comics-fueled western, and for the first time, he looks uncomfortable. For those unaccustomed, Brolin has starred in “No Country for Old Men” and “Milk.” He has a scarred face, with latex tissue stretching over the cheekbone over the mouth – the tissue looks like an elastic band. Brolin is designated to speaking in a low groan the entire movie.

Hex is commissioned by the government to hunt down Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, “Burn After Reading”), but it is likely Hex would hunt down Turnbull even if he wasn’t commissioned – it was Turnbull as a matter of fact who scarred Hex’s face and killed his family in front of his eyes. Malkovich delivers what is perhaps the least interesting performance of his career, although with his long-flowing greasy hair that hangs over his menacing scowl of a face, he seems like a candidate to play Judge Holden if Hollywood ever makes a movie out of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.” Besides the makeup and hair job, Malkovich never appears dedicated to this part.

I wasn’t a fan of Megan Fox in “Transformers,” but I am a male, and I was gaga over seeing her for the first time in a corset. She plays Lilah, the prostitute. She gets offers to leave the sordid lifestyle all the time but turns them down. “I don’t play house,” Lilah explains. Hex is her favorite customer, and she foresees a future with him. Keep in mind, Fox doesn’t have many scenes in the movie, so if you too are a male that might disappoint you. She is a supporting character, not a lead. There is a moment where she looks better than she has ever looked in the movie, but director (hack) Jimmy Hayward holds the shot for about 1.5 seconds.

In my notes, I wrote down that there is no subtle scene to explain Malkovich’s motivation. I don’t know what I was referring to, but pointedly, there are no subtle scenes. There is little motivation beyond the surface motivation. There is also a dream flashback inserted into the movie twice, as if you would forget. Visually the movie is not always boring, but storywise it is. Get rid of the groans and you have a story that is simplistic.

Maybe the original comic book explained more and provided depth. Don’t write in and complain that a film critic has to have thoroughbred knowledge of every comic book ever written, that would take forever, and besides this is film criticism, not comic book criticism. But “Jonah Hex” is such nonsensical mish mash that for the first time it prompts me to take back some of the things I said about “Watchmen” (there you have it), which although I disagree with the ideology of that film at least it had characters with emotional layers and a more complex objective.

“Jonah Hex” all lies in the collapse of its director who didn’t have a clear cut vision and so decided to mimic the crappy queasy cam and smash cut aesthetics of other current trash filmmakers. This is a self-conscious effort made to heap in on the bandwagon success of others. Hayward should go back to animation where his career started. Your movie sucks, Hayward, and sucks all the more because you didn’t try to at least imitate a paramount like Quentin Tarantino or Sergio Leone, you tried to imitate an amalgamation of every creative sell-out in Hollywood.

Go to the official site at http://jonah-hex.warnerbros.com/

Grade: D

THE KARATE KID

You can forget about a relocation from New Jersey to Los Angeles because in this new update of The Karate Kid you get a relocation from Detroit to China. Jaden Smith is the 12-year old kid barely starting puberty and Jackie Chan is the martial arts trainer. The 1984 crowd-pleaser, back when crowd-pleasers were an honorable craft, featured Ralph Macchio as a 17-year old high school senior who gets roughed up too many times by rich kid snobs so he falls under the guiding hand of Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi.

They don’t play the original often enough on cable. But they will still be playing it on cable in twenty years. The new one might not find the same accord. Although it doesn’t have my endorsement, it is not rotten, either. Our young actor Jaden, son of uber-famous Will Smith, has pluck and presence as Dre, and looks skilled and nimble during the martial arts action. Chan is doing one of his aging man morose acts as Mr. Han, the kind he’s been doing since he lost his stunt abilities, but he has a caring aura around him and so we buy that he has a bond with the kid.

Besides Mr. Han, Dre has two friends the entire movie: a white kid we meet at the beginning and never see again and a gifted young violinist Meiying (Han Wenwen) who has bashful eyes for him. Dre’s mom is played by that feisty actress Taraji P. Hensen (she was nominated for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), and in screenplay neglect, we never get an idea of what kind of job she got that forced her to move with her young son to China! She hardly comes off as a supermom with international communication skills, but hey, it may be set in China but it’s still the land of Hollywood corn.

If there is one big unintentional laugh it takes place within minutes after their arrival, it is observed that Dre is to start school the next day. Haha, so the movie is saying that when mom’s move their sons to foreign soil they don’t get there early to settle in and observe local sights for the first few days, no, they start work and school right away, as in next day. Another lack of subtlety: Dre gets in a fight with the local bully (Wang Zhenwei) who will become his adversary for the rest of the movie.

There is some Chinese flavor and even some dialect (with English subtitles) throughout the movie, and visits to a kung fu palace is actually the kind of awesome sequence that mightily supersedes expectations. For a moment, Dre even gets into the yin and yang spirit of advanced martial arts and we see through his eyes that he understands the interior of his opponent.

At the big tournament, Dre has to get in the ring with a number of bullies who are trained under the Fighting Dragon school which is coached by the unforgiving Master Li (Yu Rongguang Yu). It is through this character that we see the movie look at the Chinese as cruelly exotic: Master Li punches a student who is a tad on the merciful side. Once again, mercy is for the weak. Yet throughout the entire film, it’s odd, in an off-putting way, to see 12-year olds beat each other and somehow more accessible to have seen 17-year olds with developed bodies compete in the original film. The training sequences are the coolest part, but substituting the wax on / wax off is jacket on / jacket off, yet when Dre demonstrates his moves for the first time – well, it makes you want to join a karate class.

Depending on who you are, you might or might not have a problem with 12-year olds engaging in hand to hand combat. And so you want to know, how is the action in the final tournament? Is it cool? The honest answer is its half good, half bad. Half the time the action is photographed with finesse shots that are held steady and comprehensible, but the other half it is done in jarring close-ups and indistinguishable cutaways. Smith is a movie star in the making though – if he keeps his dreadlocks he can play Predator one day. But sincerely, it would be a just choice if Spike Lee or John Singleton cast him in something one day.

Go to the official site at http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thekaratekid/

Grade: C

THE A-TEAM

There are a hundred questions to be had, within the opening ten minutes alone, along the lines of how did the good guys end up tied up, who are the bad guys and where did they come from, who is representing who, how and why did two of the heroes just happen to convene in the desert, and how did these reckless guys manage to last 80 missions together, and so forth with The A-Team. Some questions are more relevant than others but the mind scans feverishly when there is nothing else to do.

Of all the TV show adaptations, this one seems particularly like a good idea to blow up to the big screen since the action possibilities of a Special Forces team gone rogue after being framed by high up government conspirators seem limitless, with built-in colorful characters. Efforts are immediately deterred when “The A-Team” is edited like a two hour coming attractions trailer.

Bradley Cooper is pre-occupied acting sexy, reprising the same kind of overgrown fraternity boy he was in “The Hangover” but is laborious here while playing Templeton “Face” Peck. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, a UFC light heavyweight, is B.A, Baracus but is no match for Mr. T. Sharlto Copley, the star of last year’s “District 9,” is pilot and navigation expert Howlin’ Mad Murdock, and also a loon but too much of a loon.

Beyond all these calculations it is humbling to report that Liam Neeson (“Taken”) gives a full-bodied performance as Hannibal Smith, the chief of the outfit. Even Neeson’s haircut seems like serious divide and conquer business. Neeson not only builds rapport with his co-stars and believable seething ridicule with his adversaries, he looks like he can take on some of his own stunts. However, there are few actual human stunts in the movie.

“The A-Team” will be attended by millions worldwide, many of them will be in a cheering mood for action and excess (mostly just excess). But as a critic I am bewildered as to why so many moviegoers are impressed with computerized stunts anymore. I can still get wowed by action, but it is much more impressionable if there is human probability.

When a tank flies in the movie by way of discharging artillery and somehow hovering the vehicle in mid-air (uh-huh), my eyes are not impressed. Certainly there are other moviegoers like me interested in what the human body is capable of doing and not what Hollywood computers are capable of doing. There is a reason why East Asia action pictures are currently more exciting.

I was finally entertained, and nudged upright in my seat, by the distraction-diversion-division finale – a gigantically staged showdown at a cargo dock stocked with freight containers – but the rest of the action in Joe Carnahan’s (he directed “Smokin’ Aces”) movie is incoherent or impossible. There is one love story in the movie involving Jessica Biel (“The Illusionist”) as a Captain Charissa Sosa and Cooper’s character Templeton. She is high level enough to order her military team to shoot down and blow-up Cooper and his buddies at one point (no arrest or detain, just shoot down), and yet somehow, he forgives her and waits for her kiss at the end of the movie. Uh huh. With so much excess and flash, the movie couldn’t care less about changing its mind about its characters five minutes later. The cinematography is flashy, too, with lots of flash-pans and crooked angles, which is a shame, too, to the discerning moviegoer.

Go to the official site at http://www.ateam-movie.com/#/splashscreen

Grade: D+

SPLICE

Splice is a horror film and a class act, and it is reassuring to report that Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley brought the best of their talents to this project. Just when horror film was dissolving into bottom of the barrel entertainment, it has somehow shot back. “Paranormal Activity” was a smart and inventive quasi-documentary that used grain and shaky cam to its benefit. “Splice” is a smart and cleverly re-tooled classic style horror that uses rhythm, anticipation and a controlled visual style.

The big players like Quentin Tarantino (“Inglorious Basterds”) and Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”) are directors who understand what a rigorous visual style can bring to a picture. More and more these days, directors are losing sense of what rhythm and control are. Look at “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” to see how haphazard the shooting and cutting style are, with disjointed images of running, jumping, swinging all randomly jumbled in the editing room, not to mention a camera that whooshes along without coherent navigation or purpose.

But here we return to the fundamental joys of moviemaking. The director of “Splice” is the talented but relatively unknown Vincenzo Natali who thirteen years ago made the claustrophobic horror “Cube” which was so good at what it’s trying to do that its effects were divisive among audiences that were elated and nerve-rattled and others who were just unnerved. Natali uses chilly blue filters for the lab technician scenes and slow zooms to heightening effect, he fixes the camera down and lets grotesque things drop into frame. What Natali fervently does is create a self-contained mood for the entire film, something that is a bit 1930’s “Frankenstein” and a body mutation David Cronenberg picture.

Brody (“King Kong”) and Polley (“Dawn of the Dead”) are the genius genetics scientists, romantically linked, who use their pharmaceutical company resources to raise a gigantic worm. But no, that’s not all folks. In order to produce higher levels of genetically-enhanced proteins for mass consumerism, they hybrid various animals, the worm, and human genetics into a hybrid creature that ages exponentially eventually is named Dren (the portrayal is by actress Delphine Chaneac). “What could possibly go wrong?” Polley asks, and as the experiment stays secret, the problems stack up.

Like all mindful horror films do, the medical duo attempts to create a relationship with the creature that has conditioning and associating learning capacity (less mindful horror films have no relationships). You’re always aware, gleefully, that Brody and Polley are too close to their experiment. We see before they do that Dren is a creature with problems tempering its own rage. While the early scenes are the true terrifying ones, the horror evolves into comedy. But creature features have always been funny in their Darwinistic free for alls. “Splice” is a comedic battle of the minds, between doctor and creature, and the doctors who have varying degrees of sympathy for this… thing.

If “Splice” falls short of being a masterpiece of its genre then it is because the engineered foreshadowing is too obvious and the final climactic showdown is a re-boot of countless other thrillers. Scariest film ever, no (but your mom might think so), but it has the kick of a quality amusement park ride. “Splice” is a irresistible breed of both brains and style, with a contagious stir of laughs and screams.

Go to the official site at http://www.splicethefilm.com/

Grade: B+

SOLITARY MAN

Solitary Man is Michael Douglas’ best performance in years, which is an edgy, slick-talking movie that is simultaneously wicked and funny, and yet more than anything, it is as uncompromising as it promises. Douglas is going the route where other aging actors of his generation – Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, Mel Gibson – have gone themselves. Douglas plays the untamable playboy who lusts after younger chicks and finds no moral error in his behavior.

Luckily, Douglas’ character Ben Kalmen happens to be a very rich guy. But the catch is that writers and directors Brian Koppelman and David Levien (they wrote “Rounders” and “Ocean’s 13” together) make Ben a guy who has smashed his own reputation and is dangerously close to losing his luxuries, like his high-rise New York penthouse. He spent all of his money buying his way out of jail, he explains. This implies that Ben’s lawyers kept him away from dire fraud charges over his auto manufacturing business. But whatever happens, Ben is dressed to kill. Or at least to thrill. Ben is so narcissistic that he thinks as long as he is present in the room, he is a thrill to everybody.

Barely besides him in his life are his ex-wife Nancy (Susan Sarandon) and his daughter Susan (Jenna Fischer), yet it’s the daughter that puts up regularly with listening to Ben’s lewd sexual conquests. But everywhere Ben goes, he thinks he has the right to invade in on other conversations. Ben’s current girlfriend Jordan (Mary Louise Parker), asks him to escort her daughter Allyson (Imogen Poots) to a college university orientation, and Ben hardly misses a beat to bust in the younger frat boy turf.

The uncompromising aspects of the story involve how Ben, not only tries to get laid over the weekend, but that he actually does. Which trickles is a domino effect of bad luck and backfiring – risking reputation, respect of family and a bank loan which he is relying on – which sends Ben nosediving. He’s left leaning on Jimmy Marino (Danny DeVito) to give him a job at a diner, and college kid Daniel Cheston (Jesse Eisenberg) who needs the aging bachelor to mentor him in the art of talking to girls.

When a rich guy like Ben though falls down hard it’s enough to make him want to change his ways around, at least according to the usual Hollywood screenplay. But Ben still wants to hit on girls, and now that he resorts to a campus town, that means 19-year old girls. The Humbert Humbert perv in Ben doesn’t want to let up. But he doesn’t want to see that he is now woefully out of place at college parties.

Douglas, whom judging on this colorfully grandiose performance, is getting to the age to play a perfect Robert Evans if ever given the opportunity, that former Paramount studios honcho and ladykiller that fell hard after a string of flops and personal bad publicity. Playing Ben, he’s still the kind of Basic/Fatal character that made Douglas an icon 20 years ago, except that “Solitary Man” happens to be a story emboldened by harsh revelations and consequences. Yet at the same time, it is fun to see Douglas revel in a character steeped in slick, lecherous conduct because he is so damn persuasive in action. Do guys like Ben ever enter 12-step programs as long as they still remain wealthy?

There are some select readers present that still crave anti-commercial movies when they become available. So far this year, I count three really good ones for you: “Greenberg,” “Chloe,” and “Solitary Man.” These are the movies that feature characters that sound like real intelligent people, the kind of people with grey shadings of good and bad behaviors. But if any of you out there that ever thought that Michael Douglas was a great actor denied a challenging role, well, then this is the challenging role he was born to play.

Go to the official site at http://www.solitarymanmovie.com/

Grade: B+

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME

Only minutes into Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time passed before I had the desire the play one of the old versions of the video game over sitting through the rest of the movie. Even for blockbuster movie nonsense, this one takes the cake. It tries so hard to be about something historic in the times of 6th century Persia. In the final banal scenes, it turns into a parable of how the United States found no WMD’s in Afghanistan. Uh huh.
The film often has an impressive look but it fades from memory like quicksand, possibly because there is nothing meaty in the storytelling for you to chew on. Oh, how the filmmakers try to rope a seemingly complex story out of all this nonsense. Jake Gyllenhaal, sporting a British accent, is the adventurer prince Dastan who is framed by somebody in the palace, by somebody likely also with a British accent.

Gyllenhaal (“Jarhead”), a born American, has been in a lot of terrific movies where he beautifully underplays his characters with a dash of humbleness. Now he is in leather-strapped warrior outfits spouting tough-gruel dialogue like he’s Orlando Bloom as Maximus. When he gets lovey-dovey eyes then that’s the Gyllenhaal we know, a lover not a fighter. A Town & Country boy, not a Persian Empire warrior. Anyway, it’s about time to ask this: Do audiences worldwide accept that British accents pretty much cover any foreign culture from any time in the past? Let’s hope not.

The outfits are intended to make Gyllenhaal, and everybody else, look beefy. And so our hero looks muscular, albeit, but not a genuine specimen of ancient times. The movie contains military strategies unbeknownst to history, featuring actors scaling walls in unprecedented and impossible ways. Yet, wink-wink humor aside, the acting is so square and serious, but let’s not forget inauthentic. I would have preferred the blockhead acting of Brendan Fraser of “The Mummy” movies, the it’s-so-stupidly-self-aware-it’s-priceless kind of acting.

As obligatory for the plot, Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, “Quantam of Solace”) is dragged through the political upheaval, at one point enslaved, but in family movie terms. She has a love and hate relationship with Dastan, but at first it’s just hate, and then it’s bantering, and then the rest of the formula. Arterton is a confused actress who doesn’t have a clue on how to modulate the love-hate formula to endear the audience. Her screen personality is poison.

Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina, cast for their pedigree, don’t add much class either despite their reputations – they parody themselves. What’s left is a CGI-heavy action film (even the snakes are CGI), with lots of rapid cutting to no positive effect. The awe is brief, though existent, in the swirling aerial shots that reveal an entire city. But the messy shooting and editing style is rampant, and director Mike Newell (“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”) has no sense of crowd control.

The worst special effects are the core ones dealing with a magic dagger that turns back the sands of time. These effects are video game similes cranked to a slow-motion effect that only lets the eye wander endlessly upon the lousy CGI. The climactic inferno – who will fall into the abyss? – is at least an imaginative and tactile demonstration of effects except that it is also ridiculously overblown (doesn’t it look hot down there, like Fahrenheit 451 kind of hot?). Even for fantasy purposes nothing in “Prince of Persia” is remotely humanly plausible or made to feel “real.”

The public statement that Disney made recently reflected that the company will make no more traditional films at all, focusing entirely on animation, franchises and superheroes. With this insultingly bad cast, incoherently scripted and disjointedly directed formula product, Walt Disney spotlights its directive in company soullessness.

Go to the official site at http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/princeofpersia/

Grade: D+