You'll have to go a long way to find someone who doesn't like the Minions. The cute yellow creatures were the true breakout characters from the Despicable Me films, so it was only a matter of time before they got their own movie.
The Minions have been around since the dawn of civilisation, seeking to serve the most evil master they can. However, they've not always been so lucky with that as their masters tend to perish- in part due to the Minions' well-meaning but utterly useless assistance. Stuck in a rut, three plucky Minions- Kevin, Stuart and Bob- decide to venture out into the world and find the biggest, baddest boss to serve. They find their way to VillainCon and into the employ of Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) who has a nefarious plan to steal the Queen of England's crown.
The voice cast is strong, Bullock clearly relishing playing the villain with able support by Jon Hamm as Scarlet's husband Herb. There's wonderful voice performances by Allison Janney and Michael Keaton as a seemingly normal couple who help the Minions get to VillainCon (and who are responsible for one of the funniest sight gags in the film) and there's frankly inspired casting by having Jennifer Saunders as the Queen (channelling the Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2 in places and all the funnier for it). Finally, there's a deliciously arch narration from Geoffrey Rush. Even though the Minions speak a bizarre language (a mix of English, Spanish, Italian and other languages), you're never left in any doubt of what their intentions are. This is partly down to superb animation and also down to the vocal talents of Pierre Coffin who voices the Minions. All 899 of them.
There are some inspired sight gags (the montage of the Minions through history, although mostly used in the trailers, is particularly funny) and the setting of 1960s London is good, lending itself to some sly jabs at the Brits and also a particularly strong soundtrack (including songs by the Rolling Stones, the Doors and the Who). There's also a song-and-dance routine to a Minionese version of the Cole Porter song 'Make Them Laugh' which has to be one of the more surreal things I've seen on film.
Much like The Penguins Of Madagascar, the film is frothy, light and- above all- fun. It doesn't have the depth or emotional complexity of some of Pixar's finest but it made me laugh frequently and loudly. Sometimes that's all you need.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Tez
Finally, there's a film that's actually worth seeing on the biggest screen you can find. Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity.
There's been a lot of debate about whether this film counts as sci-fi or not. To me, it's not sci-fi exactly. We're not dealing with alien worlds or Death Stars here- we are rooted in a world of science fact. The ISS, Hubble and space exploration are all real. But this isn't a documentary: the story is fictional and, no doubt, some of the effects have been heightened to increase the drama and the tension of the situation. So I'm going to back away from calling this a sci-fi movie and instead call it a psychological drama with thriller elements that's set in space.
Plot-wise, it's quite straightforward- Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are two members of a team of astronauts that are servicing the Hubble space telescope. It's Stone's first trip and Kowalski's last. However, disaster strikes when debris from a defunct Russian satellite damages their craft, leaving them stranded in the vast darkness of space.
Visually this film is absolutely stunning and at times utterly breath-taking. The first twelve minutes is an unbroken shot, focusing on Earth and the vastness of space and then introducing the Explorer and its crew. The scenes of destruction and the impression given of zero gravity, with things like tears and sparks floating, just look amazing. Cuaron, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and visual effects supervisor Tim Webber pull out all the stops to make this film look sublime.
Sandra Bullock's performance is sterling for the most part, with a few shaky script choices responsible for her dips away from greatness. Misfortune piles on misfortune for Stone and I found myself hoping she would catch a break at some point. She carries the film emotionally, mentally and physically and its a bravura turn from her (for the most part). Clooney kind of phones it in- playing a suave, charismatic raconteur is hardly a stretch- but it's fun and there's a particularly poignant scene between Clooney and Bullock about half an hour in that will bring a lump to the throat.
That's not to say that the film is perfect: some of the character points are a bit cliched, there's an ill-advised hallucination scene, plus some maudlin stuff about Stone's daughter which shone through as blatant emotional manipulation. There's also one particularly bizarre scene involving barking like a dog which really brought me out of the palpably tense mood created up to that point. I also wasn't particularly sold on one particular aspect of the ending but think I may have missed something in the lead-up to it which would explain Stone's actions, so it seems disingenuous to mark it down just on that.
There's a lot to like about this film and I admire the ambition and the end result. There are just a few niggles that stop this being truly great for me, and that's a shame. But if you are going to watch this, do try and see this on a cinema screen- you will appreciate the visual spectacle all the more.
Review: 4 out of 5
Tez
Christopher Plummer once described working with Julie Andrews like 'being beaten to death with a Valentine's Card'. There were scenes when watching Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close that I felt like I was being waterboarded with golden syrup. At times, the film is so sickly-sweet, so relentlessly sentimental that you can almost feel yourself drowning in schmaltz. It's also shamelessly emotionally manipulative, which is fair enough as it's dealing with an emotional subject. But it lacks any kind of subtlety.
The plot is fairly straightforward: a year after his father (Tom Hanks) dies in the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, nine year old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) finds a key in his father's possessions in an envelope with the name 'Black' on it. He decides it is a quest left behind for him by his father and therefore decides to seek out all people with the surname Black who live in New York. Along the way, the hyperintelligent, precocious and very earnest Oskar starts to learn the lesson that sometimes in life there isn't an order to or reason for something happening.
When a film or a novel is told through the eyes of a child, I feel that the success (or otherwise) of the endeavour is directly related to how sympathetic you feel toward the child. Therein lies one of my main problems with the film. There are several moments in which Oskar's behaviour- most notably towards his long-suffering mother (Sandra Bullock)- made me feel incredibly unsympathetic towards him. There is an idea that Oskar may have Asperger's Syndrome- a test proved 'inconclusive'- but even with this condition to ameliorate or excuse or justify some of his behaviour, I still felt that his petulant outbursts undermined what I felt for him, particularly when he tells his mother he wishes she had died in the World Trade Center instead of his father. However, when his father is presented as such a saint (as the film does, and it's in these scenes which the treacly sentiment chiefly presides), his mother is always going to look second-best.
With an occasionally unsympathetic main character, it falls to the supporting characters to stop the film from becoming unwatchable. Luckily, there is a strong supporting cast here (with the exception of Tom Hanks who I found fairly bland). Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright add some real class as Abby and William Black, who are linked to the mystery of the key. There's also nice support by Zoe Caldwell as Oskar's Teutonic grandmother and Sandra Bullock turns in a nice low-key performance as Oskar's mother. Which leads me on to Max von Sydow, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor for his role as 'The Renter', a mute man who rooms with Oskar's grandmother and who becomes involved in Oskar's quest around New York. Von Sydow doesn't utter a word throughout but he puts in a dignified performance and, whilst the revelation of The Renter's true identity isn't exactly a surprise, he fulfils an important role in helping Oskar come to terms with the noise and the busyness of the city.
I'm going to be honest now, if this film had not been nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, I would not have gone to see it. My main reason for going was to find out what made the Academy voters decide to acknowledge this movie with the top accolade. Having now seen the film, the decision to put this into the race for Best Picture is a fairly mystifying one and makes the exclusion of better-executed and better-performed films (such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) seem an egregious oversight.
I want to make it clear that I didn't hate this film; I was just very aware of being emotionally manipulated throughout which really isn't my idea of a fun night at the movies.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Tez
