I saw quite a few films in theaters this past holiday season, thanks in part to some awesome friends. Here’s the rundown:
The Muppets
Directed by James Bobin
People have been down on this film for being too nostalgic and too meta, and though I sympathize, I still enjoyed it immensely. As almost everyone has already said, it’s great to see the Muppets on the big screen again. Kermit and Piggy may have slightly different voices, the new characters may be a bit bland, and the musical pieces a little uninspired, but the overall product is a lot of fun. My only real gripe is that the tone of the humor has shifted a tad. The muppets used to be about wide-eyed idealism and corny, innocent jokes, but now it seems they have strayed into the realm of youtube era randomness humor, where the jokes all rely on the unexpected. While this shift in humor was noticeable, it didn’t detract from the film and was actually very well applied. The comedy writing here by co-star Jason Segel is top-notch and I look forward to another Muppet project with him at the helm.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Directed by Guy Ritchie
This is a film I should love to hate. Its director, Guy Ritchie, has taken one of my childhood heroes, the intellectual, gentlemanly and socially deft Sherlock Holmes, and turned him into a scruffy, wise-cracking ragamuffin with little if any decorum and a penchant for hand-to-hand combat. But I loved this movie, and its predecessor. It seems Ritchie has found just the right balance of period detail, over-the-top action, and fun characterizations to make even a die-hard fan of Conan Doyle’s original creation like myself crack a grin. Yes it’s silly, yes it has hardly anything to do with the original stories, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch. Also, the fight scenes are pretty good.
War Horse
Directed by Steven Spielberg
The central conceit of this film is the central conceit of every animal film: preserving the main animal’s life is paramount. No matter that human lives are put at stake and fortunes are risked, the animal must be protected, and the human characters obsess over this the whole film. There were many times in this story when any sane man would have let the horse die, but no, for some reason its life was incredibly important. If you can look past this overarching illogic, War Horse is an exceptional film, full of lovely images, high adventure and a nice dollop of melodrama, brought to us by the ever excellent Spielberg. I was impressed by the cinematography, which was near inspired, and the acting was exhaustively exquisite. World War One was approached realistically, first through flashy cavalry exercises, then a first confrontation with true brute violence, and finally a slow descent into the pits of hell that were its battlefields. The ending was nicely classic and left no eye entirely dry in the audience I saw it with. A very good animal film, and a great film about World War One.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Directed by Brad Bird
Can a film be half good? Yes. Brad Bird’s first foray into live-action after many fruitful years at an animation desk is a halfway decent action thriller. That half being the first. In that half we are treated to a wonderfully choreographed prison brawl, a gorgeously edited opening credit sequence, a breathlessly tense gadget filled mission inside the Kremlin, some epic explosions, hair-breadth escapes, and a scene filmed on the tallest building in the world that leaves you both cheering and sick to the stomach. After this we get a mediocre car chase, a series of mediocre scenes shot on a soundstage, a silly fight in an even sillier location, and a meaningless evil plot being carried out by some meaningless, completely undeveloped characters. It’s weird to go from feeling so excited to so bored in one film. If only the climax had been on that tall building in the middle. Bird is a talented director and I’d love to see him do more live action. He just needs to pick a better paced script next time.
The Adventures of Tintin
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Charming and amazing animation almost makes up for a plot that seems rushed and incomplete. From what I understand this is a fairly faithful adaptation of the original comic, which goes to show that the comic medium doesn’t always translate well to screen. The Adventures of Tintin centers around heroic boy reporter Tintin, his faithful dog Snowy, and their unlikely ally, the mostly drunken Captain Haddock. I liked this film’s old fashioned, adventure serial attitude, but some of Tintin and his friends hijinks seemed a bit too destructive for the heros they were supposed to be, and they don’t exactly have the purest motives to begin with. The film ends at a comfortable running time but the plot is hardly resolved. Hopefully we’ll see more Tintin in years to come. The jaw dropping animation alone is worth the $7+ admission and even though the story didn’t blow me away I still want to see what happens next.