Inside Out. Rated PG (mild themes). 102 minutes. Directed by Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen. Screenplay by Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley and Pete Docter.
It is impossible to imagine how much poorer our lives would be without the films (A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, to name just a few) from Pixar Animation Studios. Ever since their game-changing debut with Toy Story (1995), Pixar have been at the forefront of animated storytelling, and imaginations around the world have been inspired by their marvellously inventive creations.
It might also be just as impossible to imagine how Pixar could raise the bar yet again, particularly within an industry that is obsessed with producing a seemingly endless number of sequels. And while Pixar is no stranger to the perils of sequelitis, Inside Out represents a bold, original and radical departure from all that has gone before.
Set mostly inside the mind of a girl named Riley, Inside Out is about how her emotions – Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger – create, harvest and store our young heroine’s memories and life experiences. The creative team’s skill and unwavering commitment to what can only be described as a challenging and mind-altering premise, results in some extraordinary sequences and some incredibly special ones, such as those featuring the gorgeous creation that is Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong.
Where Inside Out succeeds without peer, is in the magical way in which an abstract Universe of emotion, thought, memory and action has been imagined and then flawlessly realised. Not only is Inside Out one of the most original films in recent memory, it is also a film that has the power to change not only the way you think, imagine and recall, but also what you think about. And these days, that is nothing less than an astonishing achievement, and one that will leave you utterly enthralled.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Pitch Perfect 2. Rated M (sexual references). 115 minutes. Directed by Elizabeth Banks. Screenplay by Kay Cannon.
Verdict: A hugely entertaining sequel that lights up the big screen.
As surely as the sun will set, sequels to smash hit movies will eventually find their way onto our cinema screens. In the case of this sequel to Pitch Perfect (2012), it’s a welcome relief to discover that instead of trying, unsuccessfully, to reinvent what worked the first time around, Banks (making an assured feature-length directorial debut) and Cannon (Pitch Perfect, 30 Rock), play to all the first film’s undeniable strengths and deliver a sequel that is almost superior to its predecessor.
After a disastrous televised live performance in front of the President and First Lady of the United States, the Bellas are suspended from auditioning new members and from performing in the US. Facing the end of their dreams of a capella stardom, the girls discover a loophole in the terms of their suspension, which means that they can compete in the European titles in Copenhagen. The big challenge will be regaining the confidence to take on their nemesis, German supergroup Das Sound Machine.
One of the key aspects to the success of a sequel is ensuring that as many of the original cast members return to reprise their roles, a feat that Pitch Perfect 2 has achieved with great success. While the performances are effervescent, the standout is Cannon’s screenplay, which is the perfect fusion of musicality, personal drive and ambition, romance (although thankfully nothing too tense or complicated) and some fantastic laughs, of which Rebel Wilson (Fat Amy) and Adam DeVine (Bumper) get the majority share with which to have an absolute ball. Wilson (who clowns with the very best of them) canoeing across a huge lake to woo Bumper, is just one of the hilarious sequences that is guaranteed to have you laughing like you won’t have laughed in the cinema yet this year.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Birdman. Rated MA 15+ (strong coarse language). 119 minutes. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Screenplay by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo.
Verdict: Batman meets Birdman.
Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is famous for playing superhero Birdman in a successful series of films. Desperate to inject his life and career with some artistic integrity, Thomson puts everything he has on the line to write, direct and star in a Broadway play. His Birdman alter ego, however, has other ideas about how easy it is going to be for him leave the much-loved character behind once and for all.
Deep within this hectic collision of style over content lies a fascinating premise. Hollywood stars have long envied their theatre-making colleagues (and vice versa), while famous celebrities appearing in plays can guarantee sold out seasons that run for months. So what are the differences between film and theatre for actors? And why does Thomson believe one ‘star turn’ to be more important than the other?
Birdman, instead, reads and plays like a bad soap opera, and Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams) and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s (Gravity) vision for the film to run as one long, single take simply becomes torturous. There is hardly a moment of stillness or silence, which only reveals a drama so riddled with clichés that it cannot possibly survive any kind of intelligent interrogation.
Keaton, who was obviously cast because he played Batman twice in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), has his moments, and the rest of the cast are obviously working incredibly hard to meet Iñárritu’s gruelling expectations.
But Birdman’s fatal flaw is the scene where the film turns into what is obviously a Birdman film, with spectacular special effects and swooping prehistoric creatures. His alter ego snarls that this is the film that the people want to see. In this case he is, rather unfortunately, absolutely right.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
Wild. Rated MA 15+ (strong sex scenes and drug use). 115 minutes. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. Screenplay by Nick Hornby. Based on the autobiographical novel by Cheryl Strayed.
Verdict: Mother Nature fails to show up in this intimate story of survival and redemption.
With rare candour and an unashamed sense of wanting to light the way forward for others who have suffered the torture of domestic abuse, the intimate details of Strayed’s downward spiral after the collapse of her seemingly perfect marriage and the untimely death of her mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) result in a riveting survival story.
Similarly to Tracks (2013) and Into the Wild (2007), Wild explores a journey into the wilderness, where life as Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) knew it is supposed to be challenged by the experiences of the environment beyond her far from ordinary day-to-day existence. In this case, the wilderness is represented by the 4,286 km long Pacific Crest Trail that starts at Mexico’s border with the USA and ends at Canada’s.
Using an array of often rapid fire flashbacks to the devastating experiences of the past, Vallée (who also edits brilliantly with Martin Pensa), has connected the various tormented conflicts from Strayed’s past into a near-perfect whole, to which Witherspoon and Dern (both of whom have been nominated for Academy Awards® for their work) respond superbly. Dern, in particular, brings extraordinary truth through vulnerability to her performance that makes her painful exit from the story almost too difficult for it to recover from.
While the counter-intuitive rhythm provides the film with a deeply unsettling sense of time and place, a significant problem is that the hiking sequences remain mostly unremarkable. With few exceptions, there is little sense of impending danger or remoteness, to the point where the experience too often resembles a walk in the (national) park.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
