The Lego Movie (2014)

3/5

The Lego Movie is a two-hour long advertisement that you have to pay to see. Yes, it has a story and characters, but so do thirty-second TV bits. And that doesn't change the fact that it is an advertisement for a brand, even if it is a brand that many people have fond childhood memories of. I typically don't mind product placement (e.g., I, Robot) or obvious sponsorship (e.g., The Hire: Powder Keg) as long as the movie can stand on its own merits. This movie cannot. If our analytic functions weren't so warped by our communal nostalgia of the lovable building bricks, it would be obvious to everybody just how middle-of-the-road this movie is.

The movie is frustrating because its creators seem confused as to what they are trying to say. Every theme seems half-baked, every new message inconsistent with the last one. The Lego Movie is a conceptual mess. The only thing I am certain of is that this movie thinks Legos are awesome and that you should go buy some right now!

The movie starts by satirizing the idea that following rules is good, by mocking the idea that teamwork is beneficial. (Side note: is it even really that bad to abide by laws? to work as a team?) It uses the incredibly catchy song Everything Is AWESOME!!! as a representation of the fascist, domineering society where we lose our individuality, but then uses that very same song to cheer up one of the characters later on. So are we supposed to like it or are we supposed to reject it? Because it's currently one of the most popular songs on iTunes.

And I'm a little confused by the ending. I don't want to spoil things for those who haven't seen it, so I urge people who don't want this mediocre movie spoiled to stop reading now. After this sentence there be spoilers. So is Emmett real or is he in the boy's imagination? If it's all made up, then how did Emmett move around on the table and attract the boy's attention? If it's all real, then it seems as if the boy just took credit for building literally hundreds of new designs that the Lego people actually built! Seems a little fishy to me. See what I mean when I say that the movie feels underdeveloped and poorly-thought out?

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1490017/

Ponyo (2008)

4/5

Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo is a wonderfully inventive, creative foray into another universe. The story follows a young boy named Sosuke (Jonas) and a magical goldfish creature (Cyrus) that he saves and names Ponyo. Sosuke lives with his mother (Fey) in a seaside village, alone on a cliff, while his father (Damon) is out at sea. Ponyo's father (Neeson) wants to get his daughter back because the future of the world depends on it. And so begins their magical story together.

The best part about Miyazaki's directing is by far the fantastic world he creates, the characters that inhabit it, and the rules they live by. It is fully-realized and awe-inspiring, and it is something I have never seen before. Much like Tim Burton's works, the movie has the potential to frighten and terrify, but instead benevolently lets us enjoy the triumphs over the catastrophes. However, the directing and the movie as a whole suffer from a few problems as well. There is no real conflict to consider except perhaps that nobody really knows what's going on, so they might "make a mistake" and cause the world to be destroyed. In fact, the audience doesn't know what's going on at all either because the background story isn't fleshed-out enough for anybody's to comprehend it. Side stories seem to be picked up and ignored almost haphazardly. And Fey's voice acting was sometimes good, sometimes downright bad--I'm sorry to report--but mostly just distracting. Overall, however, these flaws aren't that bad. If you're a Miyazaki fan, this will definitely not disappoint.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0876563/

Taken (2009)

3/5

Taken was sold to me as Bourne--but middle-aged. And it was sold accurately. The little plot there is (co-written by Luc Besson) follows an ex-CIA agent (Liam Neeson) racing to find his kidnapped daughter (Maggie Grace) in Paris. The first 30 minutes of the film actually give the movie a strong dramatic foothold, which helps us empathize with the father and his situation (albeit in a manner that is both overly melodramatic and unabashedly stereotypically extreme). It provides an unexpectedly long but satisfactory framework for the next 60 minutes, where the father kills everyone everywhere in every way imaginable. I suppose it is written, acted, and shot in a realistic manner, but the final product is just too ludicrous to be seen as such.

Speaking of which, the movie is extremely well-made: action-packed and adrenaline-filled, slick and cool. The cinematography is crisp, the fight scenes thrilling, the pacing tense. And while I trash-talk the plot, the all-too-real sex trafficking terrors it brings up are worth thinking about and fighting against. All in all, Taken is a solid piece of entertainment and I do not regret spending $0 on my free ticket. Anyone who loved Bourne is going to love this, so go out and enjoy.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/

Love Actually (2003)

3/5

The flaw in this feel-good romantic comedy is that it focuses too much on its moral. It's about love's ubiquity, so all the subtleties and nuances and quirks in the relationships are brought to the forefront and shoved in your face. It is no longer subtle, nuanced, and quirky. Moments that would have been powerful had they been left understated were made blunt and therefore ineffectual. To speak of specifics, the movie starts in voice-over talking about how we can see that "love actually is all around" (where the movie gets its title from) if we look at all the people in an airport. There is one scene at the end of the movie that takes place in an airport, and could have been a stunning finale. Instead of opting to end on that note, however, the director decided to bring practically every character we've met in this interlocking tale (5 or 6 couples) into an airport one month later for no reason other than to beat into our brains his message. Not to mention the overpowering and ever-present music, which made a lot of the scenes candy-coated and Hallmark.

Luckily, there were some genuinely funny moments. There were some unexpected twists and turns that I liked (on the emotive and plot fronts). There was one scene that was actually incredible, where a woman goes upstairs after she discovers her husband's infidelity and starts crying, then comes back down and pretends everything is alright. (It felt a lot like the montage in Magnolia where all the characters sing along to Aimee Mann's Wise Up.) Another positive: Keira Knightley somehow surpassed what I thought were the boundaries of hotness. By a lot.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314331/