Tangled

Oh, Disney.  You can take the princess out of the title, but you can't take the princess out of the movie.  Despite their best efforts to make their 50th animated feature, Tangled, look a little less girly to moviegoers after the disappointing box office of last year's The Princess and the Frog, they still made a film starring a princess that also includes an evil witch, the prerequisite animal sidekicks, and a handsome prince to save the day.  And it's got songs.  Lots of songs.

Tangled is the story of Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore), the princess with the impossibly long golden hair who was stolen as an infant by the evil Mother Goethel (Donna Murphy), who needs the magical properties of Rapunzel's hair to stay forever young and beautiful.  Isolated in a lonely tower in the middle of the woods from which she is never allowed to leave, Rapunzel's chance of escape comes in the form of Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi), a thief on the run who takes refuge in the tower.  After clobbering Flynn with a frying pan (everyone's weapon of choice throughout the film), Rapunzel promises to return the crown he'd just stolen from the palace if he promises to take her to see the yearly lantern festival that up until now she has only been able to see from her tower window.  Flynn reluctantly agrees, and from there adventure and an unlikely love story ensues.

As far as princess movies go, I didn't think Tangled was quite as good as The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.  In fact, I think I liked The Princess and the Frog a little better.  The story didn't seem as strong as their earlier films.  But it's still a lot of fun.  The CG animation was beautiful, and it's got some really funny moments, my favorite being Maximus, the horse who chases after Flynn for most of the movie.  He doesn't speak, but his facial expressions are hilarious.  And it gets a little sad when you meet Rapunzel's heartbroken long-lost parents, which I wasn't expecting, but it's very well done.

Now I love musicals, so it was nice to hear some new Alan Menken songs (who composed the score with lyricist Glenn Slater).  We got a great new villian song, a really funny bar song, as well as "I See the Light," a terrific new duet between Rapunzel and Flynn.  And props to Zachary Levi - Chuck can sing!

I saw Tangled in 3D, but don't fall for it...it's nice but it added nothing to the film.  You're perfectly fine seeing it in 2D and you won't miss a thing if you do. 

Whether you like it or not, Tangled is most definitely a princess film and it's girly as all hell.  But that's definitely not a bad thing, and it still manages to be a good movie anyway.

Black Swan

Leave it to Darren Aronofsky to take a story about an insecure ballerina and turn it into a trippy hellish nightmare.  But then again, that's why we love Darren Aronofsky. 

In Black Swan, Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a ballet dancer about to make her debut in the lead role of the Swan Queen in a Lincoln Center production of Swan Lake.  Unfortunately this puts her in the awkward position of having to replace Beth (Winona Ryder), the former prima ballerina of the company who's basically been pushed out of the job due to her age and isn't happy about it, as well as having to fight off the inevitable advances of her director (Vincent Cassel).

Nina also suffers from a tremendous lack of confidence.  While she's a terrific dancer, talented enough to bring the grace and beauty required to play White Swan part of the role, she lacks the sensuality and devilishness needed to pull off the Black Swan role, much to the chagrin of her director and castmates.  Bring in Lily (Mila Kunis), the new dancer who befriends Nina but also seems ready to steal away her part in the show, and we've got a ballerina on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

This movie is all about Natalie Portman, who's in virtually every shot of this film, and she's incredible.  I'll be amazed if she doesn't win an Oscar for this (not shocked, of course...I still haven't forgotten what they did to Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler).  Nina seems emotionally unstable from the start - from her insecurities as a dancer to dealing with her overprotective mother (Barbara Hershey), so her breakdown as the movie goes on, which we see entirely from her point of view, is downright terrifying.  It seemed to be channeling a combination of the "they're all going to laugh at you!" moments from Carrie and even a bit of Norma Desmond's walk down the staircase in Sunset Blvd by the time we reach the finale, and she was just amazing.  I can't say enough good things about her performance in this film.

The visuals are typical Aronfsky:  freaky as hell, but fabulous, with another brilliant Clint Mansell score.  Plus you also get parts of the Swan Lake score, which is a thing of beauty itself.  If you're a fan (which I am, The Fountain being a criminally underappreciated favorite), you won't be disappointed.  It's a fairly simple story, but the movie itself is a total descent into madness, and it absolutely shouldn't be missed.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

We are a long way from Hogwarts, kids.  In this first part of the Harry Potter finale (Part II arrives in theaters next summer), we are in the midst of a wizarding war.  The Ministry of Magic has fallen to Voldemort's Death Eaters, who are persecuting anyone with a drop of Muggle blood in their veins, Albus Dumbledore is dead, and literally no one - wizards and Muggles alike - is safe. 

Harry Potter has been in danger in some form or another ever since his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but now the stakes have never been higher.  On the run and isolated from everyone who's protected him in the past, Harry and his best friends Ron and Hermione are searching for Horcruxes - magical objects containing pieces of Voldemort's soul.  Voldemort cannot be killed until the Horcruxes are destroyed, but the trio have no idea where these Horcruxes might be.  Or how to destroy them once they are found.  Tensions run high and friendships are tested while they scour the English countryside on this seemingly hopeless mission, the fate of the wizarding world resting on their very young and very frightened shoulders.

Whether or not it was wise to split Deathly Hallows into two parts (this is the first of JK Rowling's phone-book sized novels to be made into two films), as a fan of the books I would have to say yes, simply because Part 1 was probably the most faithful adapation of the series so far.  Director David Yates took the trio's dangerous yet directionless Horcrux quest, which tended to lag in the first half of the book, into the Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter films.  It was great.

Beautifully shot by Eduardo Serra, and brilliantly acted by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, who absolutely shine in this film, you're never made to feel that this two-part finale was simply a Warner Bros cash-grab, which it undoubtedly also was.  It perfectly captured the all-bets-are-off feeling that the book had, where no character seemed safe - in fact, two of them are killed off within the first fifteen minutes of the film - and there was no limit to the amount of horrors that could happen, making this easily the scariest film in the series as well. 

The downside of the split is that even at a 2-1/2 hour running time, it still only feels like half a film.  Even knowing when the split would be going in, the ending was incredibly abrupt.  It was also strange not seeing Hogwarts and some of the familiar characters from the previous films, although a few do make some welcome brief appearances (and we can't wait for your moment of glory in Part II, Neville Longbottom!).  They also have the issue of re-introducing a few characters who haven't been heard from since the earlier films who play an important role in the finale.  Hell, Ron's brother Bill not only makes his film debut, he also quickly needs to explain the werewolf bite scars he has from a sequence that was left out of the Half-Blood Prince film entirely.  

It's hard to gripe about anything that was left out, since we can't be sure it's not being saved for the next film.  I can say that having now seen how certain death scenes were handled in Part 1, I can't even begin to imagine how they're going to handle the emotional wreckage that is Part II. 

Now if you haven't seen the previous films or read any of the books, I'm not sure I'd recommend this film as good starting point (and why the hell would you be starting with this film anyway?).  I just finished re-reading Deathly Hallows a few weeks ago and I watched Half-Blood Prince again last night, and even my head was spinning a little trying to keep track of all of the characters, spells, and places whooshing by in this movie.  But if you are fan, then you need to see it, and get ready for next summer, because Harry Potter is going to be getting one hell of sendoff.

Unstoppable

Insipired by true events, namely a 2001 incident during which an unmanned CSX freight train carrying hazardous material sped off on a 66-mile joyride through Ohio, Unstoppable is director Tony Scott's second action film involving a train in less than two years (The Taking of Pelham 123 being the first).  And it's a pretty solidly entertaining action film.  It's a bit like Speed on a train.

The story basically follows the incident that inspired it, only with a lot more danger involved.  A freight train gets away from a careless engineer (we don't need no stinkin' airbrakes!) who hops out of the cab to flip a switch and promptly takes off at speeds of 75mph through the rural Pennsylvania countryside.  Along the way, there's a train filled with schoolkids on field trip, hairpin turns through populated towns conveniently located near giant fuel tanks, the jackass who thinks railroad crossings don't apply to him, and the usual corporate d-bags who chime in from the golf course to veto all sensible ways of stopping the thing because it causes some real damage.

Luckily we have Denzel Washington and Chris Pine around to save the day.  They play engingeers batting a not-particularly-interesting old guy/young guy argument around while driving their own train (the drama with Pine's character seemed more implausible than some of the half-assed attempts made to stop the train), but luckily that takes a backseat once they go after the runaway train.  The two of them work well together, and even though their characters are somewhat flat.  Rosario Dawson was also fun to watch as the no-nonsense dispatcher who seems to be the only one who can comprehend what's going on.

I know nothing about trains, but my dad, who's a train maniac, had a lot of fun after the movie pointing out all of the technical inaccuracies, so don't go looking for any of that.  But as an action movie, it's a lot of fun (my dad loved it anyway), especially the last half-hour or so, which is basically a big train chase with people leaping between two different locomotives at breakneck speed.  That was pretty cool. 

If you're looking for an intense character-driven story, this probably isn't it (although the performances were certainly good enough).  But if you're looking for a decent action movie, this is definitely worth checking out.

Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary

Hey Hollywood...why is this the most entertaining film I've seen in the theater this year?

Back to the Future, as anyone with any rational taste in good movies knows, is Robert Zemeckis' 1985 comedy/action/sci-fi/time travel adventure about Marty McFly, a high school kid with a completely hopeless family who accidentally gets sent back to 1955 in a time machine built out of a DeLorean that was invented by his mad scientist best friend, Doc Brown.  Once he gets there, he screws up how his parents meet (which makes his mother fall in love with him instead of the kid who will eventually be his father), so not only does he need to enlist the younger version of Doc to help him get back to the future, he also needs to make sure that his parents meet and fall in love so that he'll actually exist when he gets there.

It went on to become the highest-grossing movie of 1985, spawned two sequels, a Universal Studios theme park ride, and an animated series.  It's also arguably one of the most quotable movies to come out of the 1980s - if you have any doubts about that, I'll just remind you to check out the name of our site again.

I saw Back to the Future twice when it was first released in 1985.  Back then, I was 11 years old and thought that it was the funniest movie I'd ever seen.  I also wound up with such a total crush on Michael J. Fox that I'm fairly certain that I single-handedly kept the teen magazine industry in business that summer.  I liked it so much that my parents actually bought the rental copy of the VHS tape from the video store because I think they figured it would ultimately be cheaper than renting it a million times (they were probably right).  And I still have that VHS tape today.

This week, I got to see Back to the Future on the big screen again, thanks to the AMC re-release to celebrate the film's 25th Anniversary and the arrival of the complete trilogy on blu-ray. Getting to see it again on the big screen was a blast.  The show at the AMC Empire 25 in NY where I saw it was completely sold out and filled not just with crazed BTTF fans who could probably recite every line backwards (although we had plenty of those), but people who were saying they hadn't seen it in years and had forgotten how hilarious it was, and others who were bringing their kids, who, judging from their reactions during the movie, were already big fans too. 

They were laughing and cheering so much that it was almost hard to hear the movie in spots.  I remember the movie getting a similar reaction on opening weekend in 1985, but back then it was a crowd who was seeing the movie for the first time.  Now, everyone was one step ahead of the jokes ("Why are things so heavy in the future?  Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?") and classic moments from the movie (George decking Biff is still one of the greatest single punches in movie history), and cheering it all on like they were welcoming back an old friend.  

Another thing I remember from seeing it in 1985 was how all the adults were cracking up over all of the 1950s references - since that's the time when most of them had grown up.  Now that it's 1985 that seems like a long time ago, it was us thirtysomethings were laughing at things like old Walkmans, Huey Lewis cameos, giant video cameras, and references to Pepsi Free. 

Amazingly, I think the Pepsi Free line is the only seriously dated joke in the entire movie.  The rest of it has held up incredibly well over 25 years.  It's still insanely funny, perfectly cast (and yes, I still think Michael J. Fox is adorable) and brilliantly told.  Watching it as a little kid, I was wild about it because it was just such a funny movie.  Watching it now as a grown-up film geek, I'm just blown away at how there's just not a wasted moment in the entire film, how perfectly every part of the story manages to come together, and of course, how easily I can watch it a ton of times and still never get sick of it. 

In an era of grouchy superheroes, remakes, reboots, and 3D mania, it was just great to see a movie that didn't need any of that to be awesome.  Seeing it in the theater again was fantastic.  And now that I have my blu-ray box set of the entire trilogy, I'll be enjoying it for a long time to come.