The Wind Rises review

THE WIND RISES:

SOARS WITH BEAUTIFUL ANIMATION, MASTERFUL DIRECTING, AND A WELCOMING FAREWELL TO A GREAT FILMMAKER!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: **** out of 4

TOUCHSTONE PICTURES

Jiro and Nahoko in Hayao Miyazaki’s farewell masterpiece, The Wind Rises

            Director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo) has gone a long way to make it to this point in his filmmaking career, his final animated film, The Wind Rises. Like all of his other films, The Wind Rises has Miyazaki’s traditional hand drawn and painted beautiful animation, very strong character development, and once again wonderful direction by Miyazaki himself.

            The film focuses on a young man named Jiro (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt-Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper) who ever since he was a little boy, wanted to fly Japanese airplanes in World War II. Unfortunately he has poor eyesight and wears glasses, so he decided that instead of flying planes, he would build them for the Japanese soldiers to use for battle during the war.

            Jiro joins a plane engineering company with his friend Honjo (voiced by John Krasinski-The Office, Leatherheads), and he becomes one of the world’s most innovative plane designers. Along the way he meets a young girl named Naoko (voiced by Emily Blunt-The Young Victoria, The Adjustment Bureau, Looper) who he falls in love with and the illusion of an Italian airplane designer named Giovanni Caproni (voiced by Stanley Tucci-Captain America: The First Avenger, Margin Call, The Hunger Games franchise) who was Jiro’s inspiration to build planes ever since he was a kid.

            Overall The Wind Rises is a wonderful movie and a great one for Miyazaki to go out on. I always praised his animation and art style ever since I first watched Kiki’s Delivery Service when I was a little kid, the first Miyazaki film I ever saw.

            I also loved the English voice dubbing on The Wind Rises, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, and the rest of the cast portray their characters wonderfully with a lot of effort thrown in to bring these characters to life, honestly I think they did it flawlessly.

            The score music by Joe Hisaishi for the movie is composed beautifully and such a joy to listen to, like most of his music in Miyazaki’s work and the film ends with a lovely song by Yumi Matsutoya.

            This is up there with Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke as one of my favorite movies by Hayao Miyazaki. With its wonderful animation, strong characters, great English dubbing and voice acting, and a touching and emotional story really bring this outstanding film together and Miyazaki has officially ended his filmmaking career with an animated movie that’s beautiful…like the wind.

RoboCop review

ROBOCOP:

WHILE IT LACKS THE EXTREME VIOLENCE OF ITS 1987 ORIGINAL, IT’S STILL A DECENT REMAKE, AND A LOT OF FUN!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

MGM/COLUMBIA PICTURES

Joel Kinnaman shooting it up as RoboCop

            YOUR MOVE CREEP!

            Everyone’s favorite half-man, half-robot cyborg of law enforcement is back in the new re-imagining of the classic 1987 action hit, RoboCop, directed by José Padilha (Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, Bus 174) and starring Joel Kinnaman (Easy Money, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Safe House) as the title character. While the remake lacks the bloody gunfire and violence of its 1987 counterpart, this is a fine attempt for a remake, it’s not a fantastic remake like True Grit but it’s definitely better than some other certain Hollywood remakes that keep coming out (The Haunting, Conan the Barbarian, Total Recall).

            In the near future, robots uphold the law and keep the world safe instead of human police officers. There are law-enforcing robots in every country on the planet, except for the United States of America who seem to have a problem with having them keep everything safe.

            That is until Detroit police detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is killed in an explosion. An organization known as Omnicorp steps in to bring him back to life as part of an experiment to put a man inside a machine to keep the country safe, which results in the unveiling of the law-enforcing cyborg, RoboCop.

            Armed with a semi-automatic pistol and massive strength and agility, RoboCop will preserve the peace and punish crime. He is powered with a computer system invented by Omnicorp and scientist; Dr. Norton (Gary Oldman-The Dark Knight trilogy, Harry Potter franchise, Bram Stoker’s Dracula) that allows his mind to be controlled by the system and helps him fight better when he’s on duty and outside the system Alex is in control.

            In time he slowly discovers who he really was and what happened the night he was killed and overrides the system to bring the men behind his murder to justice and stop the evil CEO of Omnicorp, Raymond Sellers (Michael Keaton-Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice) from destroying his family.

            The film also stars the always entertaining, Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, The Avengers) as Pat Novak, the host of news series, The Novak Element and supporter of mechanized crime control, Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Dark Shadows) as Rick Mattox, a military tactician who trains RoboCop with his firearms, Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon, This is the End) as the head of Omnicorp marketing, Tom Pope, and Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Stop-Loss, Sucker Punch) as Alex’s wife, Clara Murphy.

            Overall this new re-imaging of RoboCop isn’t bad, plenty of gun-slinging action, explosions, and over-the-top special effects that we’ve all come to expect from a big sci-fi action flick like this. While I think this is a decent remake, I wouldn’t say it was as great as the original Peter Weller film; in fact my only problems with the movie were its lack of the extreme violence from the 1987 movie (I guess they wanted to widen the audience) and the climax is a little weak at the end.

            But with that said I still had fun watching this movie, even without the bloody violence from the original, there’s plenty of visually appealing effects, action-packed shooting scenes, and a decent portrayal of RoboCop, as far as remakes go this one is worth checking out if you’re curious…YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY!

            THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION!

The Lego Movie review

THE LEGO MOVIE:

CONSTRUCTED WITH HILARIOUS GAGS BUILT ON AMUSING VOICE ACTING!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** 1/2 out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

(From left to right) Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Metalbeard, Batman, Emmet, Astronaut Benny, Wyldstyle, Vitruvius, Unikitty, and Green Ninja in The Lego Movie

            From the studio behind Happy Feet and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street) comes a colossally entertaining animated feature based on the popular Lego toy line. The Lego Movie has surprisingly impressive and energetic animation (especially for a children’s Lego movie), a hysterical voice cast, and very funny jokes and visual humor.

            The film is about a construction worker named Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt-Parks & Recreation, Her, Guardians of the Galaxy) who lives an ordinary life in a big city of yellow, claw-handed Lego people. That is until he finds out about a secret organization known as the Master Builders, a group of Lego heroes gathered together to save the world, led by the powerful wizard, Vitruvius (voiced by Morgan Freeman-Driving Ms. Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight trilogy).

            Emmet is mistaken to be an extraordinary person and meant to save the world from an evil business tyrant, Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell-Anchorman 1 and 2, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Blades of Glory) who plans to freeze the city with the deadly substance, Kragle.

            Accompanying Emmet and Vitruvius on their mission is the sassy heroine, Wyldstyle (voiced by Elizabeth Banks-Spider-Man trilogy, The Hunger Games franchise, Pitch Perfect), the Caped Crusader himself, Batman (voiced by Will Arnett-Arrested Development, Blades of Glory, Despicable Me), a 1980s-Something-Space-Guy named Astronaut Benny (voiced by Charlie Day-It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Horrible Bosses, Pacific Rim), a half-cat, half-unicorn with breathtaking anger-management issues named Unikitty (voiced by Alison Brie-Scream 4, The Five-Year Engagement, The Kings of Summer), and a giant pirate-robot named Metalbeard (voiced by Nick Offerman-We’re the Millers, The Kings of Summer, In a World…).

            There is a large selection of familiar characters like Superman (voiced by Channing Tatum-21 Jump Street, Magic Mike, White House Down), Wonder Woman (voiced by Cobie Smulders-How I Met Your Mother, The Avengers), Green Lantern (voiced by Jonah Hill-Superbad, 21 Jump Street, This is the End), Green Ninja, Michelangelo, Michelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Mermaid, Shaq (voiced by himself) and the 2002 NBA All-Stars, and many others as members of the Master Builders who help Emmet and his friends stop Lord Business, his henchman, a split-personality Bad Cop/Good Cop (voiced by Liam Neeson-Schindler's List, Taken 1 and 2, Unknown), and Lord Business’ army of menacing robots.

            Overall The Lego Movie is surprisingly a very enjoyable animated flick, there’s plenty of energetic action, laugh out loud humor, great voice acting, and plenty of things that will appeal to both kids and adults, young and old and the joke at the end is absolutely hilarious, I won’t spoil it here but you’ll be laughing hard once you see it.
Besides great action and humor, the film also has decent character development, everyone has a unique personality that often lead to great laughs, Emmet is the ordinary everyman, Wyldstyle is the gal of action with a “Wild Style”, Batman is hilarious and definitely makes a great jerky character, although it’s hard to take The Dark Knight seriously in this flick.

            If Frozen is considered the best animated film of 2013 then The Lego Movie is so far the best animated film of 2014, certainly better than The Nut Job, but we’ll have to see how DreamWorks and Blue Sky do with Mr. Peabody and Sherman, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and Rio 2. Even so, The Lego Movie is worth seeing on the big screen and in 3D and it’s definitely a good reason to pull out that old box of Legos from when you were a little kid.

Frozen: Sing-Along review

FROZEN: SING-ALONG:

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE MOVIE COULDN’T GET ANY BETTER!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** 1/2 out of 4

DISNEY

Elsa the Snow Queen singing Let it Go in Disney’s Frozen

           Walt Disney Animation, the team behind Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph strike again with another CG animated fairy tale adventure, Frozen, loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson story, The Snow Queen. Like most of their animated features, Frozen is jam packed with songs and musical numbers, beautiful animation, and of course magic, which shouldn’t come to a shock to anyone, that’s what Disney is best at.

            The best part is now you can sing-along to all the great songs performed in the film with Frozen: Sing-Along. Throughout the film subtitles with a bouncing snowflake whenever characters are singing a song.

            The story begins with two young sisters named Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) and Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel), princesses of the kingdom Arendelle. Anna is an ordinary kind-hearted girl, while her sister, Elsa has an extraordinary gift; she has a magical ice powers and can freeze things.

            Unfortunately things get out of hand when Elsa is being crowned queen after the death of their parents, and she accidentally sends the kingdom into an eternal winter and flees into the woods. So it’s up to Anna to search for her and bring her back to the kingdom.

            Along the way, Anna meets a young ice seller named Kristoff (voiced by Jonathan Groff) and his reindeer, Sven, along with a talking snowman named Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad), who accompany Anna on her journey to bring summer back to the kingdom.

            Overall, Frozen is one of Disney’s best, but don’t get me wrong I still think Wreck-It Ralph is superior, but this is still a fantastic traditional Disney film. Most of the songs and musical numbers are upbeat and extremely catchy, especially Idina Menzel’s Let It Go, it’s a wonderful musical number and has stunning visuals to go along with it (and finally we get to sing-along to it!).

            Besides great animation and catchy musical numbers, the characters are very likable. Anna’s a very gentle and friendly character with a likable personality, Elsa is a lot of fun when she’s using her ice powers and her singing voice is amazing, Kristoff is charming and very witty, Sven the reindeer, like Max from Tangled is hilarious and has very funny facial expressions that’ll surely give the kids and adults a good laugh, and kids will adore Olaf, for his buffoonery and curiosity, he’s a cute companion for Anna and Kristoff.

            I’m not sure how this movie holds up compared to most of Disney’s traditionally drawn animated films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, or The Lion King, but I think it’s one of their best 3D animated movies, alongside Wreck-It Ralph, Tangled, and Bolt. Frozen is great family entertainment and a perfect movie to see during the holiday season, it’s charming, funny, and of course, cool as ice, now it’s even cooler than ice with Frozen: Sing-Along.