Rio (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Carlos Saldanha. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, George Lopez.
Soulless animated movie from Blue Sky Studios, the world's foremost specialist in soulless animated movies.
A domesticated blue macaw named Blu is taken by his owner to meet the last female of his species in Rio de Janeiro. Adventures are had.
Devoid of all imagination and sincerity, the film runs on a sort of horrifying artificial enthusiasm like those creepy recorded voices at the carnival. Amid the light show of celebrity cameos and upbeat musical numbers, there's the sense that at any moment the bright plastic facade could fall down and reveal the red eyes and whirring gears of the monstrous automatons beneath.
No one involved in this production did anything out of love of the craft or desire to tell a story. This is a factory film, written and printed to precise specifications.
But there's no denying that it has polish. The animation and voice acting are above reproach. The script is as tight as it could reasonably be, tweaked no doubt over countless rewrites by the most economically priced script doctors. The sidekicks are varied and inoffensive. There are funny moments-scientifically weighed and measured for maximum revenue potential. In many ways it's a work of art.
I hate that children will probably love this movie.
Rated G for gag reflex.
2.5 out of 5
Ironclad (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Jonathan English. Starring James Purefoy, Paul Giamatti, Kate Mara.
Independent action drama about yet another historical battle against impossible odds.
In the year 1215, a small group of rebel warriors holds out for months against a siege of Rochester Castle by King John of England (Paul Giamatti), who has decided that the whole Magna Carta thing is cramping his style.
The setting is an interesting slice of history made more appealing-but not exactly exciting-by some modest exaggerations of reality.
The script is conservative in its approach. We've seen all these characters before: there's the silent and unapproachable lead warrior; the fat, crude, and boisterous sidekick; and the wide-eyed rookie who absolutely isn't named "Frodo." All of these work well enough. The writing only approaches eye-rolling territory with the clichéd romance between the poor undersexed nobleman's wife (Kate Mara) and the gruff Templar (James Purefoy) who does his best to ignore her constantly fluttering eyelashes. I guess this story had to be about something besides a bunch of smelly soldiers waiting around to die.
The battle scenes themselves are nicely constructed and outrageously brutal. You often hear people talk about beating someone to death with their own severed arm, but I think this might be the first time I've actually seen it happen.
It's a well-made, mature, but ultimately very ordinary medieval war film.
Rated R for very squishy Danish warriors.
3.5 out of 5
