Toy Story 3

            Their have been a lot of animated film series over the years; some good, some bad and today I want to talk about the latest addition to the greatest animated film series of all time.  This is the Illusive Ones Review of Toy Story 3.

In 1995, the animation company, Pixar, released the first Toy Story film and it was undoubtedly one of the greatest animated films of all time.  I remember seeing this movie in the theater as a kid and it always made my imagination run wild, thinking that if I ran into my room fast enough or crept in quietly enough I'd catch my toys talking and/or moving about, (and as you can imagine, that never happened much to my disappointment).  At the time, it was the highest grossing animated film of all time and was nominated for 3 Oscars and was the film more or less responsible for the Academy’s adding of the Best Animated Picture Category. 

            Toy Story 2 came along four years later and proved to be one of the greatest sequels of all time, (and for a Disney sequel that's saying a lot).  Whereas the first one seemed to have dealt with being replaced and ones place in the world, this one got in to Woody's past and dealt with the inevitability of growing up.  And now, over ten years later, the series has come into full circle and this is my look at Toy Story 3.

            Many years have passed sense the end of Toy Story 2.  Andy has grown up and is on his way to college.  Over the years, most of the toys have been sold, thrown out, or given away and only a handful remain.  Thinking that being donated to a daycare is better than being thrown out or spending eternity in the attic, the toys steal away in a box being delivered to one.  At first the daycare seems like a paradise but the toys quickly find that its leader, the teddy bear Lotso, is a tyrannical dictator who sets the daycare so new toys are doomed and it's up to Woody to free the other toys and break out of the daycare before Andy leaves for college. 

            On the positive side, everything that made the original two films great is in this film.  The childish humor with a few subtle, adult jokes, the moral dilemmas, the terrifying moments and the great voice acting, (with the acceptation of Jim Varney who sadly died of lung cancer in 1999), were all in play and just as entertaining.  As I said, it was full of a lot of great jokes and gags that even as an adult I found hilarious.  There were several moments I thought the toys were actually doomed and gave me the chills, (and trust me when I say that doesn’t happen to me too often with films).  This one also had its own powerful set of themes.  Whereas 2 dealt with the inevitability of change, this one dealt with the change as it was upon the characters and how they choose to deal with it. 

            The characters are still as great as they were when they were first introduced and I found myself incredibly emotionally invested in these characters, more so then any other cast of characters that came out last year.  The last positive to mention is the main antagonist, Lotso.  While the previous Toy Story films had great villains, I felt Lotso was the best of the three.  He was a good toy who had gone bad and, unlike the last two, was completely unpredictable and you never knew what he was going to do next.

            On the negative side there were a lot of silly and annoying things about it, most dealing with Buzz, Barbie and Ken.  Barbie and Ken I just found obnoxious and felt they were unnecessary additions to the cast.  I also found Spanish Buzz to be incredibly annoying and out of place.  His relationship with Jessie hadn't really developed and still seemed like they just met even though they've known each other for years.  The last thing I have to complain about is Tim Allen’s voice acting which didn't seem right.  I don't exactly know what it was about it, but it just rubbed me the wrong way.

            All around, however, Toy Story 3 was just as good as its predecessors and one of the greatest sequels I've ever seen.  It was like seeing a film with a great, personal nostalgia value and adding in a new story and, in truth, it was probably my favorite film of 2010.  So if you've seen the first two and loved them as much as I do then I highly recommend seeing this one.  The ending will bring a tear to your eyes, it will remind you of a more innocent time when toys were still cool and I guarantee it will entertain the heck out of you.

All Around

9.5/10

The Social Network

           Partly quoting a friend of mine, if you had told someone two years ago that a film about the founding of Facebook would be both financially and critically successful, odds are they would have put you in a straight jacket and locked you in a soft room, (Korsgaard, I believe you know which friend I'm quoting).  Having seemed this film recently and how I've been reviewing Best Picture Nominees over the past few days, I decided why not keep the flow going and give my thoughts on it.  This is The Illusive One's Review of The Social Network.

            The story of the film is set as a frame narrative as Eduardo Saverin, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra sue Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, for different reasons and flashes back to Zuckerberg's days in Harvard as he first built the website and examines his relationships with Eduardo and Napster founder Sean Parker.  The film stars name as Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo, Justin Timberlake as Parker, and was directed by David Fincher.  After its release, it would go on to win 3 Golden Globes, was nominated for two more, win three Oscars and was nominated for five more.  But did it deserve all the praise it received?  Well, here are my thoughts.

            On the positive side, it was a good story of the rise of a billionaire.  Eisenberg was perfect as Zuckerberg as were Garfield as Eduardo and Timberlake as Parker.  It showed Zuckerberg as being more of a cutthroat businessman then the happy-go-lucky nerd billionaire most people view him as and I felt that this was a welcome change.  While I was expecting more humor out of a film with Eisenberg in it, there were some moments I thought were hilarious, mainly because I could actually see people getting into those kinds of situations.  Finally, I thought it was very interesting to see just how Facebook got started and how it evolved from being a project of an undergrad to the biggest social network in history.

            On the negative side, they portrayed Zuckerberg to be a complete fucking asshole.  As I said above, it was nice to see him in another light but they made him look like a complete dick.  Was he actually like this?  I don't know.  I’ve never met the man but it's pissed a lot of Zuckerberg fans off.  It also inaccurately portrays the early days of Facebook and made its founding seem a lot more fun than it actually was, (this according to the people involved who stated they were constantly working most of the time).  The point of view was also kind of bias as it's mostly through the people who are suing Zuckerberg.  It was also a little annoying the way Eisenberg would speak a hundred words a minute, as if that was suppose to make him sound smart, (it did but I still felt it was unnecessary).  The final negative has to do with the plot itself.  As this film that deals with computers and isn't some kind of over the top action movie, it tended to be a bit boring at times and only the dramatic story keeps it alive.

              In the end, if you ignore the inaccuracies, you have a great film about the rise of the world’s youngest billionaire.  It was well acted, had a great, if a bit boring, storyline and truly was entertaining.  If you’re an obsessed Zuckerberg fan who can't keep an open mind, I'd recommend skipping this one.  If not, then absolutely check this one out because it's a great one.

All Around

9/10

Inception

            About a year ago, I heard someone say that Hollywood has officially run out of ideas and if there was proof of this, it was during 2010 as it saw the release of many remakes and sequels.  It's my belief, however, that 2010 also proved that original ideas are still out there and one need only look in the right place to find them.  And today I'm going to get into, what I thought, was the most original film of 2010.  This is the Illusive One's Review of Inception.

            Released in the summer of 2010, Inception was a sci-fi thriller directed by Christopher Nolan and starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine.  In a world where technology exist to enter the human mind though dream invasion, a powerful business man, (Wannabe), hires Cobb, (DiCaprio), a man very skilled at stealing ideas from dreams, to implant an idea into the mind of Robert Fischer, (Murphy), whose corporation is threatening to gain a monopoly over energy.  The problem is that implanting an idea is nearly impossible and the team Cobb assembles has to come up with a plan that will make it work, all the while dealing with his own subconscious and the defenses Fischer’s subconscious has set up against them.

            On the positive side the plot was incredibly well put together and is where the film shines.  While the idea of being able to invade a dream wasn’t entirely original, this film perfected it.  The dilemmas and challenges the team faces were also well put together and kept you on the edge of your seat.  The multiple levels of dreams was an incredibly unique idea and kept the lines of what was a dream and what was real blurred.  Last to mention, the visual effects were great and there were plenty of action scenes to keep any action junkie satisfied and once things got moving you weren't able to keep your eyes off the screen.

            On the negative side, so much effort seemed to be put into the plot that the rest of the movie seemed to suffer.  My biggest issue with the film was the video editing.  It seemed that when a shot hit someone it took a full second for the screen to cut to the person who would only start to fall the moment the shot switched to said character.  While the plot of this film was great it took a lot of explaining and a good hour or so to get started and that may put some people off.  Last to note were the characters and acting.  The characters were just boring and I didn't feel attached to any of them.  Likewise, the dialog and acting just felt very bland and uninspired. 

            Finally, there's the ending.  I don't really count it as a positive or negative but it still pissed me off, (and I'm fairly certain I'm not alone in this).

           Despite its faults, I still found Inception very entertaining, if a little overrated.  If you're looking for Oscar bait, then I'd go elsewhere.  If you’re looking for an action movie, I'd go for The Expendables. But if you’re looking for something original, with great visual effects, and good action, then Inception is the way to go.

All Around

8.5/10

     

The Fighter

           As I'm sure you all remember, the 2010 Oscars was more like a battle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker then an awards show.  The 2011 Oscars, however, was more like a free for all between The King's Speech, The Black Swan, The Fighter, The Social Network, True Grit, Toy Story 3 and Inception.  The competition was thick, and there weren't any clear cut winner; each film getting their own share of awards.  Having finally seen a few of these movies recently, I decided to give my thoughts on one of them.  This is the Illusive One's Review of The Fighter.

            The Fighter is a film about the rise of Welterweight Champion “Irish” Micky Ward and his complicated relationships with his family, particularly his crack-head older brother Dicky, who taught him everything he knows about boxing.  It was directed by David O. Russell and stars Mark Wahlberg as Micky, (who also produced the film), Christian Bale as Dicky, his crack addicted bother, Amy Adams as Charlene, Micky's girlfriend, and Melissa Leo as Alice Ward, Micky's overbearing mother, (Bale and Leo both won Best Supporting Oscars for their roles).

           Before I get into the positives and negatives of this film I want to talk about boxing movies in general.  When it comes to sports movies, boxing movies always seem to get Oscar Nominations but never for any other sport.  Anyone have any thoughts as to why?  Despite this, to me, each film always seems to have new themes and fresh looks on the matter.  Rocky was a great underdog story, Raging Bull, (am I the only one who thinks that title sounds dirty?), gave an unmerciful display of a boxers life, Ali showed the good and bad in boxer Muhammad Ali during the 60's and 70's, Cinderella Man was the story of a comeback and triumph during the Great Depression, and Million Dollar Baby was more about the affect the boxer was having on her trainers life.  While each one of these films was great I still can't help but wonder why boxing?  Why can't stories about football or baseball be as compelling?  Please give me your thought on this because I'm at a loss.

            In any case, back to The Fighter.

            There are a lot of good things about this film so get ready for a long read in this section.  As I mentioned above, each boxing film brings new themes and fresh looks on the subject and The Fighter was no acceptation.  The story had as much to do with how Micky's family treated him as it did with boxing and questions how far family loyalty should go.

            The acting was fantastic to say the least.  Mark Wahlberg was perfect as Micky and I personally think he got snubbed for a Best Actor nomination.  Christian Bale was also fantastic and believable as Micky's crack-head, burnt-out brother.  Melissa Leo was also great in her role as Micky's selfish, overbearing mother and was a complete fucking bitch, (but in a good, believable way).  Amy Adams was also good as Charlene but was outshined by the other cast members. 

            Even the minor characters were great.  Jack McGee was great as George Ward, Micky's father who seemed to be the only family member who wanted more for Micky while the rest were just happy to let him be a nobody and get beat half to death by other boxers.  Last to mention is Mickey O'Keefe as...well himself; Micky Ward’s other trainer.  Although he has few lines and his screen time is short, he did a really great job with it.    

            Last to mention is the music.  While there isn't an original score to it, it uses classical rock and bop and fits in perfectly with the film.

            There are a few other things that I felt were positives but kind of put me off; just things that made me feel a little uncomfortable.  For starters was Bale's performance as Dicky.  As I mentioned, he was fantastic and incredibly believable as a crack-head.  Almost a little too believable for my taste.  I've had the displeasure of knowing a few junkies and druggies in my life and let me tell you, they are fucking disgusting and unpleasant to be around and I couldn't help but think about those people while watching the first half of the movie.  

            Throughout most of the movie, Micky's entire family, (with the exception of his dad), seemed like a bunch of manipulating, possessive parasites.  This mainly put me off because, once again, I have had personal experience with people like this and it kept me thinking about them.  But this is more of a personal thing for me and I wouldn't expect it to hinder anyone else's enjoyment of the film.

            There are a few negatives to mention.  For starters, Bale's thinning hair just didn't look right.  I know that's nitpicking, but I still couldn't help but notice that it didn't look right; almost like they shaved certain parts of his head then covered it back up. 

            There were also disappointingly few fights in the first half of the movie.  I know that's how boxing movie tend to be but I still found it a little annoying. 

           And last, it's another boxing movie.  Most tend to follow the same formula and The Fighter was no exception.

            In the end, I found this movie incredibly enjoyable and well worth my time.  The acting was great as were the themes involved.  If you like boxing movies then I'd highly recommend this one but if you’re looking for one with a different formula this isn't it.  But to me, this film has the perfect blend of Oscar Bait and commercial appeal so check it out when you have a chance.

All Around

9/10