Lovely.
Just lovely.
The plot: WALL-E, a rubbish processing robot, lives a lonely, simple life on an abandoned Earth of the future, pottering around collecting up the litter and debris and compacting it into small cubes. One day, a ship descends and from it emerges a new robot, EVE. After some initial confusion and the occasional laser blast, the robots seem to be getting along, right up to the moment EVE is exposed to a small plant, at which point she sticks it in her chest and seems to deactivate.
Confused, WALL-E tries to bring her round, unsuccessfully. Then, suddenly, the ship returns and takes EVE away, but WALL-E manages to clamber aboard, and the race is on to save EVE and discover just what was so important about that small piece of vegetation.
Beautifully animated, this is thoughtful, warm, truly heart-aching stuff.
Normally, when something is considered family friendly and 'life-affirming' (shudder) my bile gland goes into overdrive, but here, it was impossible not to be enchanted.
Incredibly, for a movie aimed at kids primarily, there are very few lines of dialogue, most of the plot development done by visuals alone, be it action scenes or the expressionism of the robot creations themselves.
After being burnt by Toy Story 1 way back when - I HATED that - I have been giving Pixar a wide berth but, with Finding Nemo and now WALL-E, I'm starting to get the feeling my prejudices may have been misplaced and that, far from being pale shadows of the mastery of Hayao 'Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away' Miyazaki, maybe, just maybe, Pixar are worth another look.
Excellent, indeed.
5 out of 5
Showing posts with label science gone wrong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science gone wrong. Show all posts
Monday, 10 January 2011
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Jurassic Park III (2001) Dir: Joe Johnston
I am loathe to admit it, but the first Jurassic Park movie is something of a guilty pleasure, a film that I have seen more times than is healthy and can quote virtually line for line as it is playing.
It has a certain character that I find captivating; Spielberg's almost childlike enthusiasm for the subject matter seeps through every frame, his goggle-eyed fascination with the dinosaurs apparent from the first moment they are introduced in a sequence that has the hairs on the back of the neck standing to attention.
So, it was with some reluctance that I sat down to watch the 3rd installment, part 2 having been such a damp squib.
The plot: Dr. Alan 'Sam Neill' Grant is back, this time convinced by a wealthy couple to act as guide in a fly-past of dino-island number 2, Isla Soma.
Inevitably, all is not as it seems.
The pair in question have lost a child on the island - how careless - and have recruited Grant to act not as a guide from the air as he believes, but from the ground, as they seek their missing spawn.
As you can probably imagine, he is more than a little miffed.
So the scene is set for a romp across the island, with nerry an opportunity wasted for some full on 'saurus action.
And, in many ways, this is where the movie fails.
In Spielberg's original, he set things up nicely, paced the damn thing to add, you know, tension and drama. Here, the very second the 'plane lands, they are set upon by something altogether massive and escape by the skin of their teeth before in the next scene something else attacks them then some smaller things join in en masse our heroes fleeing for their lives before being ambushed by velociraptors working as a team showing uncanny intelligence and when they escape them something else ghastly wants to strip their flesh before another set of carnivorous beastlies chases them and....and....and Sweet Suffering Jaysus I was so exhausted with the none stop, frenetic nature of the narrative that I genuinely ceased to care.
All out action is fine, but you still need dynamics, you still need something to latch onto in terms of emotional attachment.
Sam Neill is watchable enough reprising his role, though he does seem a touch bored, as does William H. Macy, who was probably wondering what on Earth he was doing in the film in the first place. Tea Leoni tries her best, bless her, but, let's be honest, she's a pretty useléss actréss.
All action, all adrenaline, none stop carnage that, ultimately, wasn't as interesting as that description suggests.
It has a certain character that I find captivating; Spielberg's almost childlike enthusiasm for the subject matter seeps through every frame, his goggle-eyed fascination with the dinosaurs apparent from the first moment they are introduced in a sequence that has the hairs on the back of the neck standing to attention.
So, it was with some reluctance that I sat down to watch the 3rd installment, part 2 having been such a damp squib.
The plot: Dr. Alan 'Sam Neill' Grant is back, this time convinced by a wealthy couple to act as guide in a fly-past of dino-island number 2, Isla Soma.
Inevitably, all is not as it seems.
The pair in question have lost a child on the island - how careless - and have recruited Grant to act not as a guide from the air as he believes, but from the ground, as they seek their missing spawn.
As you can probably imagine, he is more than a little miffed.
So the scene is set for a romp across the island, with nerry an opportunity wasted for some full on 'saurus action.
And, in many ways, this is where the movie fails.
In Spielberg's original, he set things up nicely, paced the damn thing to add, you know, tension and drama. Here, the very second the 'plane lands, they are set upon by something altogether massive and escape by the skin of their teeth before in the next scene something else attacks them then some smaller things join in en masse our heroes fleeing for their lives before being ambushed by velociraptors working as a team showing uncanny intelligence and when they escape them something else ghastly wants to strip their flesh before another set of carnivorous beastlies chases them and....and....and Sweet Suffering Jaysus I was so exhausted with the none stop, frenetic nature of the narrative that I genuinely ceased to care.
All out action is fine, but you still need dynamics, you still need something to latch onto in terms of emotional attachment.
Sam Neill is watchable enough reprising his role, though he does seem a touch bored, as does William H. Macy, who was probably wondering what on Earth he was doing in the film in the first place. Tea Leoni tries her best, bless her, but, let's be honest, she's a pretty useléss actréss.
All action, all adrenaline, none stop carnage that, ultimately, wasn't as interesting as that description suggests.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)