Movie Musings: Does it Have to be a Trilogy?

"How could you forget about me, mate?"

So a few years back I wrote a blog asking where the adventure movies of the 80s and 90s went. I provided a pretty strict definition of "adventure movie". If you don't want to head back to that blog here is the definition:

I’m talking about something set in our world, maybe in the past, but a past where heroes still use their fists and their smart mouths to get out of trouble. The hero is usually on a quest of some kind, and there are obstacles to overcome and a girl to win over. While these movies have action, they are more about the exotic locations, overcoming the obstacles and getting away alive and with some kind of loot. 

Pretty basic right? Well I actually forgot an entire trilogy of movies in my examination back in 2011. The Pirates of the Caribbean films of the 2000s would fit perfectly in that group. Curse of the Black Pearl came out in 2003 and was followed up by Dead Man's Chest in 2006 and At Worlds End in 2007. This was a big series for that decade, right up there with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. This was Disney's fantasy adventure juggernaut and audiences went in droves to the films. One of the big reasons was Johnny Depp's unique and hilarious performance as Captain Jack Sparrow. But all three movies had tons of eye candy, top notch action sequences and a score by Hans Zimmer that has pretty much redefined what swashbuckling soundtracks should sound like.

So how the hell could I forget these movies? Easy, the sequels weren't all that good.

You don't know jack about Captain Jack (DDR style).

Curse of the Black Pearl is a fun movie. It takes the pirate film tropes, the adventure movie tropes and Disney movie tropes, scrambles them all around and twists them up in some entertaining and unique ways. Yes Johnny Depp's performance is key. But I argue that Geoffrey Rush as Captain Barbossa is just as integral to the film. He is the foil to Sparrow, and has almost as many memorable lines as our roguish lead. He makes for a great villain, and one who has a reason to do what he does - to shed his undead state and live the life of a human again. The fluffy romance between Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly takes a backseat to the shenanigans of the pirates. It does provide a bit of a balance to the rest of the characters. The movie does overstay its welcome a little bit, but all in all, it is solid entertainment, and was a bit of a surprise hit when it came out.

Of course Disney is never one to miss a trick. So when the film's popularity blossomed they pulled in director Gore Verbinski to direct two more films, back to back to create a trilogy. This is not an uncommon practice. Back to the Future did this with some success. But so did The Matrix and most folks dismiss Reloaded and Revolutions as misguided and unnecessary.

"See what happens when you leave me out of your
bloody film? ARRRRRRR!"

I submit that the same fate befell the two pirates films. The first film was 143 minutes long. The second film 151 minutes long. The third film was 169 minutes long. The sequels make you feel every last minute. Dead Mans Chest  is especially bad. Geoffrey Rush only appears in cameo and new villain Davy Jones (played with verve by Bill Nighy) just doesn't cut the mustard. I also argue that the  two sequels have way too much Jack Sparrow in them. His cooky, crazy schtick gets really old really fast, especially without a good foil to play off of. You realize very quickly how much Rush added to the original film.

The visuals and production design remain impeccable, but the action scenes go on way too long (something that was a bit of a problem in Curse of the Black Pearl as well). As much as the movie tries to be fun, there just is a dowerness to the whole that the Davy Jones plot line adds that makes the films move at a crawl.

Um yeah, this is just too much - 169 minutes too much.

What is really strange is that Dead Man's Chest ends with Captain Jack Sparrow being killed and then awakening in a strange limbo in At Worlds End. (Oh and those scenes with multiple Jacks arguing with each other is visually kind of cool, but man was that just plain Johnny Depp overload.) Pretty much the same thing happens to Neo at the end of Reloaded and he starts in a subway station limbo in Revolutions. Where the creators of the Pirates movie doing an homage to the 2003 film? Or was it just a case of lazy screen writing?

Hard to say, but after seeing the borrowed scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, I'm thinking they knew what they were doing. So we had a trilogy of adventure films in the 2000s. I'm not crazy about them, and still feel that the flawed Indiana Jones films are still better then either of those painful Pirates sequels. Yeah, I would even put Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ahead of Dead Man's Chest. Sadly, Disney won't let the Pirates films die, even after mediocre reviews for On Stranger Tides back in 2011. People keep going to see these films, and I'm guessing it is all the Depp fans out there.

I'd rather watch The Pirate Movie again, than watch those
sequels. No seriously, I would.

The thing is, studios need to stop with the spontaneous trilogies. Buried in the scripts for Dead Man's Chest and At Worlds End is a solidly entertaining film. It would probably run around 151 minutes or so, but with the fat cut out and the adventure focused on (and with Barbossa in a more prominent role) you could have had a sequel that matched the original film. But we get this messy trilogy instead. And studios still haven't learned their lesson. The Hobbit trilogy suffered the same bloated fate. The lesson is, focus on making a single great movie, unless you have a story worth telling in trilogy form. Sadly, Pirates of the Caribbean just wasn't that story.

Movie Musings: Where Have I Seen This Before? Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

So my wife and I enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl quite a bit. It is one of our Summer Movies. I capitalize those words because we have a group of Summer Movies in our collection. These are films that are fun, no brain entertainment that are perfect for lazy Sunday viewing when the weather gets warmer. Flicks like Pacific Rim, Jurassic Park, Transformers and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad all fall into that group.

Thing is as frequently as we'd watched the first Pirates film, we hadn't watched the two follow up pirates films of that trilogy since they were released on DVD (nearly ten years ago for Dead Man's Chest). We decided to give them a revisit and I've got a whole blog about that experience coming up. But I did want to post this little moment because it made me chuckle.

I mean this was done as an homage, right? They knew they were borrowing from one of the greats, right? This isn't another case of Independence Day ripping something off and trying to pass it off as its own, right? Lets give them the benefit of the doubt.

Enjoyed this moment of familiarity? Click an ad before you go.

Casino Royale (2006)

Introduction:

So when it comes time for a new James Bond to take center stage, well let’s just say franchise fans get nervous. When Daniel Craig was announced to take over the role of 007, you could call the response nothing short of a general uproar. Probably hadn’t seen this many people complaining since Dalton landed the role. What is funny is that looking back at it now, it seems kinda silly, because most folks have accepted Craig in the part. But 2006, it was crazy talk I tell ya, crazy talk!

Summary:

Newly promoted British Secret Service agent James Bond (Daniel Craig) is given his first assignment as a “00” agent. He must track down a bomber in Madagascar. After an extended chase and an explosion, Bond finds that the bomber is only one of a team. The trail takes him to the Bahamas where he discovers another bomber and a middleman who is taking his orders from a figure known as Le Chifre (Mads Mikkelsen).

Le Chifre is bankrolling terrorists, and his next scheme is to win a huge amount of money at a poker tournament at Casino Royle in Montenegro. M (Judi Dench) sends Bond, the best poker player in MI6 to go and trounce Le Chifre, forcing the terrorist to come running to the secret service and spilling his guts. If Bond loses, the British government funds terrorism. At his side is Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) a lovely treasury agent who’s around to make sure Bond doesn’t screw up. However, M didn’t count on all the other people just waiting to take a shot at the money and at Bond. So begins a very deadly game at Casino Royale.

Good Points:

• Daniel Craig brings back some danger to James Bond
• Vesper is one of the best Bond girls in the franchise
• Some top-notch action balanced with an interesting story

Bad Points:

• The villains of the film are very nebulous
• Not wall-to-wall action like some of the previous films
• A very long film, will test some viewers patience

Overall:

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals: 5

Sound: 5

Acting: 5

Script: 4

Music: 4

Direction: 4

Entertainment: 5

Total:  5

In Depth Review

Bond. James Bond - 2006

I think we all know that Die Another Day ended up being a film that didn’t satisfy too many people. In fact a lot of folks consider it the nadir of the series. I still think that the early 70s Bond flicks were worse, but the final Brosnan outing does leave a lot to be desired.

In any case, it was time for a change, and the producers decided that not only were they going to get a new actor as Bond, but they were going to shake up the franchise and do something completely new. They were going to show us Bond as an agent starting out in the role of 007. That’s right, the popularity of Batman Begins inspired them to take this route, but the concept had been brought up before, back when Dalton took the role. At the time, the head producers were not sure that audiences would take to seeing Bond as anything other than a pro. But Batman Begins showed that this angle could work for an established character, and it could reinvigorate a stale franchise.

Let the games begin!

So the reboot button was pushed. But where to start the story? Why not back with Ian Fleming’s first James bond novel, Casino Royale. It was an inspired choice. It was one of the few stories not yet adapted by the official franchise. But oddly it is the novel that has been adapted the most number of times. There was a 1954 episode of the television series Climax that used the story. It featured the American agent Jim Bond, but it was the same plot. Then there was the infamous James Bond parody version in 1967.

This version would go back to the novel’s core plot, and that would take up the second half of the film. But the first half would be all new material that would drive Bond to the poker table in Montenegro, and face to face with Le Chifre. The novel didn’t have a lot of action in it, focusing more on suspense and tension. The portions of the film that are based on the novel use the same format, but the new material injects action sequences into the proceedings, something modern audiences expect in their James Bond adventures.

With the script in place for Casino Royale, a director was chosen. Martin Campbell was selected based on his wonderful work at introducing a new James Bond to the world in 1995 with Goldeneye. Campbell was very familiar with filming top-notch action scenes as well as balancing these with tension and thrills. He was the perfect man for the job.

The third time a Bond film went to Venice.

Like most Bond films Casino Royale has some wonderful location shooting. James travels the world from Madagascar, to the Bahamas, Montenegro and then to a finale in Venice, Italy. We get lots of great establishing shots for these locales, and Bond gets to do some serious exploring in both the Bahamas and Venice. There is also some fine studio work for the interiors used in the film. Everything has that James Bond glamorous look. But the work here is actually closer to what we saw in the Dalton films like The Living Daylights where everything looks like it could be from our real world, but with a touch more pizzazz. No super villain lairs out of You Only Live Twice for this film.

One of the key elements of any James Bond adventure are the action scenes. In the mid 2000s, there was a trend to film and edit action scenes with hand held cameras, lightening fast editing and tons of zooms. The idea to create an immediacy during these scenes that pulls audiences in. Used correctly this technique can be very effective. The problem is, not many directors knew how to use it correctly. The result is action scenes that are difficult to follow at best or completely incomprehensible at worst. The action scenes of Casino Royale avoid this trap. All the key action scenes are well filmed and edited, allowing the viewer to follow the action and thrill to some of the amazing stunt work on display.

One of the best action scenes in the series.

That’s right, we got away from the dreadful CGI mess that ruined Die Another Day for a lot of Bond Fans. Instead we get some elite stunt work. The opening foot chase in Madagascar has to be one of the best action scenes in any James Bond film. Bond chases the bomber through a construction site, and dodging all kinds of obstacles and dangers. The free running is impressive and you can tell that it was done for real, even at some dizzying heights. Additional action scenes at the Miami airport (with some crazy stunt driving) and the final shoot out in Venice are also impressive. But I think the foot chase tops the rest. It is a bit of a shame that it comes at the beginning of the film, but it does get things started with a bang.

One of the reasons the action scenes work so well is that Craig really brings a grittiness and edge to his performance, something we really hadn’t seen since Dalton. For Craig it seems like the stakes are real. and he really throws himself into these sequences. In Casino Royale we see Bond really get trashed, especially during the Miami bomber sequence. We haven’t seen Bond get this beat up since the finale of License to Kill. But seeing Bond throwing himself in, often over his head, raises the thrills a notch.

I'm smiling now, but I'm about to shoot you.

Craig’s take on Bond is very similar to Dalton’s and it is clear both men based their performance on Fleming’s literary version of the character. The main difference is that Craig’s version is still making mistakes and getting in over his head. By the time we reach Skyfall, Craig’s Bond has gotten better at gauging his adversaries, allies and his own capabilities. One of the great things about the Casino Royale script, and the reboot in general is that we get to see this version of Bond change over the course of the films. This film is the starting point, but James Bond at the beginning is not the same man at the end. This is a rare thing in the franchise, the last time it happened was in Goldeneye, and you have to look back to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service before that. Craig delivers in the role. He is tough, arrogant, but still has a heart. And that heart is what ends up betraying him.

"I'm the money."

But can you really blame him? Eva Green plays one of the most intriguing and compelling Bond girls in franchise history. In a lot of ways she reminds me of Tracy from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, a woman who is confident in her skills, but is hiding her fragility behind a cold mask. Green and Craig play off each other perfectly. The scene where Bond comforts Lynd after the attack at the Casino is perfectly acted and filmed. Her vulnerability comes through and Bond must protect her. The genuine attachment Bond has for Lynd by the end of the film is apparent, and makes the ending have more punch. That ending comes right out of the book, I’m impressed they kept it.

Beware the tears of a gambler, especially the
bloody ones.

The other key component of a James Bond film in the villain, but in Casino Royale we get something a bit different. The movie doesn’t really have a primary villain in a traditional sense. Le Chifre is set up as the main evildoer. Mikkelson plays him with a cool and dethatched contempt, very similar to Dr. No, actually. Le Chifre has the bleeding eye and facial scar – typical Bond villain visuals. But the tables shift when Le Chifre has Bond in his clutches he becomes something else – a desperate man. Mikkelson does a great job with this element (and there are hints all the way through his performance that he is merely a tool, and he knows it). Even while torturing Bond we can see he’s losing his control and is desperate to stay alive. The evil in this movie is like a hydra, Bond may kill one head, but another more dangerous one appears. The trail leads to the mysterious Mr. White (Jesper Christiansen), but even he turns out to be a hand of a larger organization, revealed in Quantum ofSolace.

"You look like hell. Did you blow up again?"

Some familiar characters and faces returned for this reboot. The head of the British secret service is still named M and still played by Judi Dench. Her performance here is a lot closer to the one she gave us in Goldeneye, where she treats Bond more as a tool and less as a person. In the Brosnan era we saw a kind of bond develop between these two characters. And a similar thing happens with Craig and Dench in the new continuity. But here she treats him as a professional, but one who keeps making mistakes. The creators did not keep any of the other London characters in the mix: no Moneypenny, no Q branch. A lot of people were disturbed by this, but I think it allowed us to focus on Bond as the primary character, something the films hadn’t really had a chance to do in a long time (although you could argue that The World is Not Enough attempted this in its own muddled way).

Another returning character with a new face is Bond’s CIA chum Felix Leiter (Jeffery Wright). He makes his first appearance in the novel of Casino Royale, so it makes sense to have him here. Wright does a good job in the small but key role. We also meet Rene Mathis (Giancarlo Gianni), a fellow agent working with Bond (or is he?) on the case. Both these characters are interesting enough and will appear again in key roles in Quantum of Solace.

"I have no armor left."

Another element that the producers brought on to reassure viewers that the new Bond was still James Bond was the music. David Arnold had scored the three previous 007 adventures with Pierce Brosnan, and his style had taken what John Barry pioneered in the 1960s and modernized it with 1990s electronics. For Casino Royale Arnold maintained his Barry inspired style but minimized the electronics. This is a leaner and meaner score in a lot of ways, getting back to the basics of James Bond music. But instead of using the classic James Bond theme by Monty Norman, Arnold worked with Chris Cornell to write the title song You Know My Name. It was the first time in decades that we had a title song for a James Bond movie sung by a man (The Living Daylights was the last one, but this shares more with Live and Let Die with it’s more rock oriented style). You Know My Name becomes the main theme for the film. This combined with the love theme do a wonderful job musically. Arnold hints at the James Bond theme a few times in the movie, such as when Bond starts on his trail for Le Chifre, or when he sees himself in a tuxedo for the first time. But he saves a full-bodied rip roaring version of the theme for the final scene – where James Bond steps forward for the first time and says the classic line “Bond… James Bond”. Arnold nails it, and this score is one of the best of his career.

Bond is definitely back in action.

Casino Royale is a James Bond film stripped down to its basics. It is a movie about James Bond, focusing on his job, his interaction with Lynd and Le Chifre and showing us how he became a 00 agent. By stripping away the super villains, the over the top action and the huge sets the film shares a lot of similarities with Dr. No or From Russia with Love. The film is 144 minutes long, the longest of the James Bond film to date. But the movie earns the length with a pacing that keeps everything balanced and interesting. Even the poker scenes, which could be a dangerous narrative trap are edited in such a way that Martin Campbell keeps the tension high. The final result is one of the best James Bond adventures of the entire franchise. It was easy to see that James Bond was back and Daniel Craig delivered.

Paprika - 2006

Introduction:

Back when Inception came out in theaters audiences were thrilled by the concept of dream warriors diving into other people’s dreams and obtaining secret information. But anime fans felt like they had seen this story only a few years earlier. Where director Christopher Nolan kept a tight rein on the rules and dark visuals of his dreamscapes for Inception, director Satoshi Kon used the chaos and surreal nature of dreams to create a dynamic and colorful world where anything can happen. While the two films share many elements in common, Paprika is just as spicy as it name hints, and way more unhinged.

Summary:

Dr. Chiba (Cindy Robinson) and her colleagues have created the ultimate dream machine – the DC Mini. Put this little device on your head and you can experience another person’s dreams (as long as they have a DC mini on their heads). Not only is this a fun party favor, but it can also be used to help people with psychological problems and stress relief.

Then someone steals the prototype and begins messing around with it. Not all the controls were in place yet, and anyone who’s already used the DC Mini is now susceptible to experiencing a full-blown waking dream. Chiba and her team must find out who stole the DC Mini and stop them before they break down all the barriers between the dream consciousness and the real world, as we perceive it. Luckily there is a dream warrior named Paprika (Cindy Robinson again) who has a little experience in these matters. But is she in over her head?

Good Points:

• Amazing animation makes the dream world come to life
• Balances humor and action very well
• Has some great creepy moments

Bad Points:

• A few too many characters weakens some of the storylines
• Some of the English voice acting is not up to the task
• The ending is anticlimactic

Overall:

Kon takes many of the themes and concepts he explored in Paranoia Agent  and refines them down to a tighter story. The result is more coherent and streamlined, and yet still a bit clunky. Visually the movie is amazing, with Kon flexing his surreal muscles to great effect. But the ending falls a little flat. Still this is one of my favorites by the director and well worth seeking out.

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals: 5

Sound: 5

Acting: 3

Script: 4

Music: 5

Direction: 5

Entertainment: 4

Total:  4

In Depth Review

There is a riddle to be solved, but Paprika doesn't
have the answer.

In many ways, Paprika is the culmination of the imagery and themes that fascinated director Satoshi Kon. It deals with perception of reality and the way dreams fit into that reality. It deals with questions of identity, is the real person the one in the dream or the one that is awake? It deals with our ideas of the future and how it can twist into something we didn’t expect or want. And it does all this while moving at a breakneck speed, exploding with creative visuals and delivering thrills, chills and laughs.

Of all the films by Kon, this appears to have the largest budget, and that makes the visuals some of the most impressive in his cannon. His character design remains familiar, and you’ll see faces you recognize from Millennium Actress or Paranoia Agent playing different roles here. But there is a cleanness to the design that was lacking in the earlier works.

Sure people talking on cell phones in a movie theater
are annoying, but this dream parade is something else!

But my favorite moments are the dream sequences, where Kon always excels. The movie opens with a dream circus, as the police inspector Konakawa (George C. Cole) finds himself searching the big top for a criminal. As he cases the area we start to notice little things are off. An obvious male clown speaks with a woman’s voice, a mask on the back of a child’s head suddenly has eyes and watches him. Then the ring master points at Konakawa and he is bathed in a spotlight. He blinks in the glare of the light and then finds himself in a cage in the center ring, like a circus lion. Before he can react the crowd rushes him, and in a scene inspired by Being John Malkovich all the onlookers have his face – including women and children. They start to paw at him through the cage and the ground suddenly becomes soft, as he sinks into it amid the roaring crowd we can see the terror on his face.

So yeah, Kon captures the nightmare feeling perfectly. His visuals continue in the same vein, often mixing subtle surreal moments with over the top explosions of colorful animation and bizarre imagery. He maintains his technique of keeping the viewer off balance by shifting sequences, often in mid-line or as the camera turns. Because we are often in the dream world (or in the real world as the dreams start to leak in) it all makes some kind of sense. I marvel at his ability to perform these visual slights of hand and yet never lose the audience, and we’ve seen his skill at doing this from the beginning with Perfect Blue.

The deeper Paprika delves into dreams, the darker
they can become.

Perfect Blue got pretty twisted visually, but Kon’s films have never delved into the darkness too much since then. Well Paprika changes that. Nightmare images abound and there are some great creepy moments: the worst being when Paprika is captured and abused by one of the villains. The man is essentially reaching into Paprika and pulling out the naked and helpless woman inside. It is basically a rape of the consciousness playing out In front of us.

But contrast that to some of the scenes where you can tell Kon and the animators are just unleashing the creativity. The dream parade is one of those sequences that will probably stick in your mind whenever you think of the film, because it is so strange, colorful and unique that you can’t help but be impressed with it. Hundreds of fantastical characters dancing, cavorting and flying around down the center of Tokyo is not something you see in any movie very often. There are also scenes where the character revel in the freedom of the dream world, like when Paprika flies into Tokyo for the final confrontation, or when she jumps from sign, to computer screen, to truck artwork to t-shirt during the opening credits. There’s a playfulness in these scenes that invites the viewer to sit back and enjoy the ride.

To go along with the surreal images, Kon’s sound team goes into overdrive to combine the real world sounds with warped, altered and synthesized sounds to put everything off kilter. It’s really a masterful job and it adds quite a bit to the feeling that you are witnessing some bizarre dreams playing out in front of you.

Dr. Chiba explores an abandoned amusement park.
But is she awake, or deep in a dream?

But one of the big heroes of Paprika is composer Susumu Hirasawa. He sticks to his typical style of using electronics and synths to create a series of musical vignettes. Kon then used these to build into his film, taking pieces here and there to flesh out the whole film. Hirasawa does some interesting work with human voices (his own in many cases) editing, warping and layering them in various tracks over the orchestral samples and pure electronics. It’s an eclectic mix, but it works wonders in the film and it unique to the film. Because of the nature of the film, some of the material gets very atmospheric and dark. But the parade tracks, and the theme for Paprika herself are gems. I think found Kon perfect musical collaborator in Hirasawa and it’s a shame we won’t get any more collaborations.

In many ways Paprika is like a summary of Paranoia Agent in a thematic sense. It takes many of the same elements and ideas and concentrates them down into a single slick story. Without all the characters fighting for attention and different side roads that Kon went down in the television series, Paprika is both more focused and dynamic than the television series. Dr. Chiba and Paprika are the main characters, but the way they interact with Dr. Tokita (Yuri Lowenthal) and Dr. Osanai (Doug Erholtz) affect perceptions by all three characters.

Konakawa literally finds no footing as the dream world
warps around him.

The first couple of times I had a problem with the character of Inspector Konakawa, who seemed to be added into the film as a kind of heroic figure to swoop in at the end and save Paprika. And while that does seem to be the case, there is more going on. Much like Tokyo Godfathers, Konakawa explores the concept of dreams in the sense of aspirations. As a young man Konakawa dreamed of becoming a famous film director (Akira Kurosawa is directly referenced in the film). But life’s path lead him to police work. However his job is causing him serious anxiety issues, which is why he is working with Paprika using the DC Mini and dream therapy. And while Konakawa’s journey seems to be running along side the main story, instead of intersecting it, the final moments of the film deal with him. I love the nod to Kon’s previous films appearing as posters in the movie theater Konakawa visits at the end.

Always remember, in a dream, the difference between
falling and flying is a matter of perspective.

Aside from that there is also the issue of the finale. I’ve never been a big fan of the ending. From a thematic and conceptual point of view it should work, but the execution seems a little too easy in the end. It feels anticlimactic, and a bit of a letdown after all the different things we’ve seen up to that point. In fact Paprika’s amazing escape from the main villain seems to promise something a bit more. But then again, there is a giant naked woman on the screen, so that will be a great finale for some viewers.

These two elements keep the film from really nailing a top-notch grade. Paprika ends up being a bit uneven in the final analysis. I really enjoy it each time I watch it, and I love how Kon really got down to the center of the themes he’d been working on since Perfect Blue. But in the end I think Millennium Actress had a bit more heart to it. Still for a swan song, Paprika shows the animator developing his abilities and heading toward something more interesting. It’s a shame we didn’t get any more work after this.

Dr. Chiba chats with Paprika. But which is real
and which is the dream?

Let’s return to the original question, was Paprika better than Inception? I firmly vote for a big “Yes!” Nolan’s films always feel distanced and a bit cold to me. The fact that such strict rules were imposed on dreams in Inception took away from the very fact that they were dreams. It is the unpredictability of dreams that makes them so appealing and horrifying. It is something that Kon grasps very well and indulges in his film. Nolan did explore how choices can affect the subconscious and create serious mental problems. In Paprika we have a similar situation with Inspector Konakawa. And in this aspect, I think Nolan’s use of the character is better integrated into the story and works better with the ending. With that said, I enjoyed Inception. I still think it is Nolan’s best film. But compared to the wonderful world created by Satoshi Kon, well let’s just say I’d rather have Paprika visit my dreams instead of Leonardo Di Caprio. I think she’d be more fun.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Introduction:

Mission: Impossible II didn’t go down too well with most folks. John Woo’s style seemed at odds with the franchise and was too different from the twisty thriller that Brian Depalma delivered. It appeared the franchise was stalled. But Tom Cruise wasn’t about to let that happen. They brought in popular television director J. J. Abrams and gave him his first shot at a big budget motion picture. Was it worth the gamble?

Summary:

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is settling into a nice quite life with his fiancé Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Sure he stays in touch with his old pals at the MI office and does some teaching of new recruits. But he wants to leave that life behind. Which means he’s going to get pulled right back into it.

One of his former students, Agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) has been caught during an investigation of a powerful arms dealer Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Lindsey has vital information and Ethan is pulled in for one last job, to save Lindsey and find out what info she has. For this impossible mission he’s going to need the help of his old pal Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames reprising his role from the original film) and two new agents Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Lei (Maggie Q). But there’s a catch, Davian seems to be one step ahead of them, and he’s not going to allow any of Ethan’s missions, impossible or otherwise, to succeed.

Good Points:

• Does a great job balancing thrills and action
• Captures the intensity of the first film with some intense sequences
• The story makes Ethan a bit more human 

Bad Points:

• Some annoying overuse of shaky camera style
• Seymour Hoffman seems a bit underused
• Tom Cruise is playing Tom Cruise… again

Overall:

Abrams did a fine job with his first full-length movie, and a big budget star vehicle at that. The story has a bit more of a personal edge to it, allowing us to get to know Ethan a bit better, but Cruise is still Cruise no matter what the script says. Some of the actions scenes get a bit confusing with the camera work, and some of the dialogue scenes have the shaky-cam syndrome. But the pacing is pretty solid and Michael Giacchino’s score is a great mix of modern cool with the classic themes from the television series. The film takes itself deadly serious, and a little humor could have helped. An enjoyable thrill ride for weekend viewing.

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals: 4

Sound: 4

Acting: 3

Script: 4

Music: 4

Direction: 4

Entertainment: 3

Total:  4

Curious about a full review, sent me an email and I’ll make additional thoughts to this review. 

Mission: Impossible Reviews

• Mission: Impossible
• Mission: Impossible 2
• Mission: Impossible 3
• Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
• Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

Introduction:

This anime title would always pop up when I was doing some research on Satoshi Kon films. He didn’t have anything to do with it, but it seems that a lot of folks who like his stuff enjoyed this film. So I decided to give it a try.

Summary:

Makoto Kanno (Emily Hirst) is your typical high school aged girl. She’s got a couple guy friends Chiaki Mamiya (Andrew Francis) a handsome goofoff and Kosuke Tsuda (Alex Zahara) an athletic baseball fan. When she isn’t hanging out with these guys, she’s running late to class, annoying her sister and visiting her aunt Kazuko (Saffron Henderson).

One day Makoto finds something odd in the storage room behind the school science lab. She never gets a good look at it, but from that day forward she can time travel. With a leap, she can hurtle back in time. Mokoto quickly uses this to correct mistakes she makes throughout the day. Annoying sister eats her pudding snack? A quick jump back and Makoto gets to first. She makes an ass out of herself during Home Ec? Jump back and let some other poor dope lights his food on fire. She’s having so much fun that she doesn’t realize that all her little changes are affecting everything around her. When one of her friends ends up in very real danger because of her changes Makoto has to figure out a way to undo the damage before her ability runs out.

Good Points:

• An interesting take on time travel
• Manages to work a little romance and poignancy into the story
• There’s a neat twist at the end

Bad Points:

• Some of the animation is a little on the sparse side
• The tone of the movie varies wildly
• Makoto is a bit dense at times.

Overall:

This movie was a pleasant find. Many of Makoto’s actions feel just like something a typical teenage girl would do if granted the power of time travel. But the movie can’t seem to nail down a tone – one minute it’s silly high school comedy, next it’s a meditation on fate and death, next it’s a romance. It ends up hurting the pacing a bit and kept pulling me out of the story. But the final result was an entertaining film with enough depth to make it worth your time.

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals: 4

Sound: 3

Acting: 3

Script: 4

Music: 3

Direction: 4

Entertainment: 4

Total: 4

In Depth Review

Most tales of time travel focus on the big picture. How will the character shape or interact with major events in history. Its rare to encounter a story that focuses on time travel in the smaller scale, just jumping back a day or two to change things around.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is not about the why or how time travel is possible, but more focused on the themes of choice and fate. In that way, it’s less a sci-fi story and more of a character study of Mokoto. She’s your typical high school aged girl. She’s unsure of herself, a bit awkward, but a decent girl who only seems to be truly annoyed by her little sister. But also she’s completely focused on herself and how others perceive her. That’s not to say that Makoto is vain, but she’s a typical adolescent.

We watch her during the course of one day, the way she interacts with people, the choices she makes, and the little incident in the storage room behind the lab. But on her way home things go badly: the brakes on her bike don’t work and she ends up being thrown in front of a train. But this “leap” pushes her into a time warp and the next thing she knows she can time travel. Once she figures this out, it becomes a game to her.

At first the movie is light fun, with Mokoto doing her best to make the perfect day. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Groundhog Day. But the incident with the train stays in our mind (and Mokoto’s). After a conversation with her aunt, who is often referred to as Aunt Witch, Mokoto realizes that the little changes she makes may be affecting others.

This is combined with the fact that a small couple of numbers appears on her arm, counting down the number of jumps she has left. Now Mokoto attempts to fix some of the impacts she makes on others and discovers how interrelated everything is. This is actually a very interesting concept: a dash of chaos theory. The smallest thing can have a huge impact on the way her day turns out. There are times when she gets asked out on a date; other times she is left wandering home alone. Sometimes one of her friend’s ends up on the broken bike, and killed, other times she finds herself back at the same fork.

What I found interesting is the fact that death appears early in the film and continues to loom through the rest of the movie. It’s like those Choose Your Own Adventure novels that would end in your demise. Mokoto doesn’t want her friends to die, and she doesn’t want to die, but is it necessary that someone dies in front of that train?

Eventually the movie reveals how Mokoto obtained the ability to time travel, and while it does end up slowing down the finale of the film a bit, it also adds an interesting twist to the whole thing. We’ve seen so many of the same moments with slight variations that it becomes obvious that one of the times that Mokoto ends up in the storage room, she could easily have run into herself or someone else who is also time leaping (shades of Back to the Future Part 2). This combined with some of the more cryptic lines from Aunt Witch and we begin to wonder just how often folks end up time leaping.

While all these themes are present the movie spends most of its time providing an interesting combination of gentle laughs, a bit of romance and some sadness to the story. The only problem is that these transitions end up being a bit jarring. Things get a bit convoluted in places and the ending lacks the proper punch, because of all the different elements that make it up. In all honesty this is actually a pretty ambitious story to tell, and I can see how it ended up a bit tangled.

The animation is pretty good, a bit plain looking in places and lacking in some detail (especially compared to something like Tokyo Godfathers or Ghost in the Shell). But in many ways it fits the story and the mood the film is going for. There’s a lot of softness to the movie and the colors tend toward the golden and airy. The exceptions are the time warp scenes, which utilize hard looking computer animation and lots of brilliant colors. It makes these sequences stand out but again, fits with the story.

The English voice acting was pretty good and fit the characters. So if you prefer your anime in English this one won’t cause your ears to bleed. The musical score was a perfect fit, but never really caught my attention.

All in all you get a pretty solid movie, one that takes a typically sci-fi premise and turns it into something of a romp. Anyone looking for something a bit different for a weekend rental will find a lot to enjoy here.