Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

3/5

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a quirky little movie. It blends live action film noir with animated cartoon comedy to create a unique and wholly original atmosphere. The movie is about Eddie Valiant (Hoskins), a down-on-his-luck private investigator who has to work for cartoons in Toon Town when he's not busy guzzling down alcohol. Cartoons exist side by side with real people, but they're placed in a segregated society and are forced into the service or performance industries. Roger Rabbit (Fleischer) works in the movies as an actor. Just like all the violent cartoons of our childhood, we realize that he can't be killed by having a refrigerator dropped on his head or falling off a cliff. His wife Jessica Rabbit works in a night club as a singer. "[She's] not bad. [She's] just drawn that way." Valiant photographs her in a compromising position with prop giant Marvin Acme and shows it to Roger, who goes berserk. When Acme is found dead the next day, Roger is the usual suspect. Judge Doom (Lloyd) has devised a way to kill cartoons, by dipping them in his own special mix of paint thinners (turpentine, benzene, and acetone), and he is eager to test it out on Roger Rabbit.

Quite frankly, the special effects weren't quite at the level to make it work for me. It should have been made 25 years later at a time when special effects were advanced enough to have them believably live on screen with real actors (I'm imaging something fluid along the lines of District 9). I loved the concept though--it was bold and innovative--but the mood was just too farcical. The movie should have been a true film noir with very minor elements of black comedy, directed by someone unafraid to make an unapologetically dark film like Darren Aronofsky or the Coen brothers. And, I just realized, there are a bunch of plot holes and the whole thing doesn't really make sense in a truly cohesive and believable way. It's a great idea marred by the limitations of its time; if it gets remade into a far more serious film, I will be first in line to see it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438/

Burlesque (2010)

4/5

Burlesque is a pretty spectacular musical. (I guess technically it's not a musical because the characters never really break into song and dance; it's just part of their performance.) The movie stars Christina Aguilera as Ali, a small-town girl who wants to hit it big in LA. She discovers a burlesque lounge owned and operated by Tess (Cher) and is instantly mesmerized by it. She tries everything to get on stage and dance with them, but settles for waitressing there just so she can watch. She befriends the bartender (Gigandet) and, after her apartment gets broken into, becomes his roommate. She finally gets her chance to show everyone what she has when they hold auditions. They find it impossible to take their eyes off her. And you will too.

The songs are a mix of old-school show tunes and more modern, upbeat songs. Both are excellent, although I definitely preferred the newer songs. Cher's "Welcome to Burlesque" had me stunned from the very beginning of the movie. Christina Aguilera's "Show Me How You Burlesque" closes the film off with the same flair. Both will leave you in awe. The dancing is fantastic all around, but none of the numbers impressed me as much as those two songs did on their own. None of the other songs did either, even though several of them stood out ("Express," "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me"). If you're looking for a movie with great singing and dancing, then this is the movie to watch.

The rest of the technical aspects were a mixed bag. The cinematography and editing were better than I expected them to be, but there were some noticeable areas where it could have been improved. The acting was pretty good for the most part--especially the side characters--but there is this one scene between Aguilera and Gigandet that was laughably bad. I was actually laughing during it, to the point where my girlfriend got mad at me for it. That scene alone made me consider dropping it down to 3 stars. Overall, definitely recommended for any musical fan. And for any fan of Cher or Christina, this is a must-see.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1126591/

Unstoppable (2010)

3/5

Tony Scott's Unstoppable is a simple movie with a simple premise. An unmanned train is careening across Pennsylvania at 70 miles per hour with 8 cars of hazardous cargo. A veteran locomotive engineer (Washington) and a young train operator (Pine) attempt to stop it by latching their own train onto the renegade train's back and gunning it in the opposite direction. And that's about all you need to know plot-wise. The movie is a fairly generic popcorn flick, but it does what it intends to do well. It keeps you excited for its entire length, with excellent pacing and editing. The acting turned out to be much better than I expected (only because I never expect very much from these types of movies), but the script as a whole was quite lacking. The cinematography and directing were also bland, which comes as a welcome departure from what I'm used to from Tony Scott. To sum up, if you're looking for a way to kick back and watch an hour and a half of thrills without having to think, then this is the movie to do it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477080/

Babies (2010)

3/5

Babies is more a constructed observation than a traditional documentary. It follows a year in the life of four babies in Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and the US. It watches them as they develop, without any narration. The only statements the movie makes is in its editing and music. But it lets us come to our own conclusions through juxtaposition and atmosphere, it lets us do our own comparisons of their similarities and differences. It shows their interactions with parents, with siblings, and with animals. It lets us see them giggle and cry. It exposes their curiosity and, most compelling, their cuteness.

At 75 minutes, the movie is short. Even so, it can feel slow at times because it wanders without direction. It has moments of intermittent tension (will the rooster peck out the baby's eyes?) and laughter (seeing the face of a baby pooping, which a nearby cat quickly smells and immediately retreats from). You have to be in the mood for it or it can easily make you upset. Quite frankly, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to get out of it except a simple overview of various living conditions in the developed and developing worlds. All in all it's a pretty breezy way to spend an hour looking at babies, and may be good study during pediatrics to help memorize developmental milestones.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020938/

The Town (2010)

4/5

The Town is a movie about a lot of things. What it tries hardest to be about is a certain community in Charlestown, MA. It is a community of bank robbers, into which protagonists Doug (Affleck) and James (Renner) were born, and how its way of life is similar to other cultures and other communities. It is also about people escaping from their past and about uncertain, sacrificial love (both man-wife and parent-child). The movie starts with a bank robbery in which Claire (Hall) is taken hostage and blindfolded. She is eventually sent free without a mark on her. She is approached by the FBI (Hamm), but offers them very little except suspicion of criminal involvement. Doug starts following her to make sure she doesn't confess anything incriminating to the FBI, but soon develops a profound and all-encompassing love for her. He wants to quit his career to be with her, hoping that she will never find out the truth between how they met and how they know each other. But of course this wouldn't have been turned into a movie if life were that simple.

The directing is more than competent, with sharp cinematography and efficient editing, although a few times it felt trite or simplistic. Similarly, the script was well-written with a few concepts made overly obvious to the point of numbing bluntness. The acting was all around fantastic, although nothing really blew me away. All in all this is a technically competent movie with tense action scenes and a complex set of relationships. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to fans of excitement and/or crime.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840361/