Inside Out
Dir. Pete Docter
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Time and time again Pixar loves to play with audience's emotions, and with Inside Out, studio "brain trust" member Pete Docter literalizes the feelings we all go through both during the best Pixar flicks, and as we grow up and mature into who we are. The film follows an 11-year old girl named Riley who's making a big transition by moving from the Midwest to San Francisco. Cutting between the real world and inside Riley's mind, we see how the anthropomorphized emotions of Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Anger (Lewis Black) attempt to guide her through this stressful event via a central control room. Because Inside Out is dealing mostly with an everyday, mundane subject like the stress of moving to a new city, at times it feels as though the stakes are considerably lower than other Pixar adventures, but the way the film cleverly takes abstract psychological concepts that are universal to the human experience and makes them palatable for audiences of all ages, while making it both funny and heartwarming in typical Pixar fashion, makes Inside Out stand strongly alongside any other masterpiece from the studio.
The majority of the film follows Joy and Sadness, who are lost in Riley's mind and we watch as they try to make their way back to the control room (their absence representing Riley's sense of apathy about the move into her new home and her teenage years). This is the sort of forced way Pixar creates an adventure out of things, because a movie taking place entirely in the control room would've been too much for kids I think; and besides, we get to see the "Pixarization" of the brain, which is beautiful and charming. The movie elegantly visualizes Riley's memories by using colored balls - the colors corresponding to different emotions she was feeling at the time. Then there are the "core" memories - special glowing colored memories that help define Riley as a person; this idea of a handful of major life events defining who you are is maybe a bit simplified, but it totally works for this movie (I'm sure its incongruities would drive a psych major crazy though). Then Riley has various "islands of personality" that are extentions of her biggest interests and vitues (family, hockey, honesty, etc). The stakes of the film rise when Riley starts to change, and her islands of personality begin crumbling away. But that's just the beginning - half the fun is seeing the clever ways Pixar breathes life into these abstract concepts like the subconscious, dreams (which is fashioned like a movie studio), a literal "train of thought," and a hilarious fantasy "boyfriend generator."
The voice cast here is perfect to the point of obviousness. If you were to ask me who'd be the perfect casting for the emotions of Joy and Anger, I'd immediately say Amy Poehler and Lewis Black. However, the scene-stealer for me was Phyllis Smith (The Office) as Sadness, whose somber, withered cadence fits so perfectly with the character. The other two emotions, Fear and Disgust, I wasn't so hot on (they're the least-utilized of the five), but Hader and Kaling also do a serviceable job. And it's become almost tiresome how he keeps cranking out amazing work, but Michael Giacchino's score is wonderful...yet again. I've never heard a bad score from that man. The humor is for the most part pretty solid, though some of it was a little too "for the kids," and there are some annoying gender stereotypes going on (the dad only thinking about sports, etc). It's not even close to being as funny as the Toy Story movies, but cute little gags like "Triple Dent Gum" keep things moving.
Inside Out is a fantastic film, though personally I'd put it under many other Pixar films in the ranking (like Up, WALL-E, Ratatouille, and the Toy Story Trilogy). It doesn't have any sequences as masterful as say, the dialogue-free opening of WALL-E, or the "Ellie" montage in Up, or the compactor scene in Toy Story 3. Still, on a conceptual level, this movie is brilliant. In a Dreamworks movie these anthropomorphized characters would simply be fodder for sight gags, but here, Pete Docter really explores this young girl's psychology seriously; behind the humor and vibrant colors are so many layers of thought placed into every detail. I know that on a re-watch I'll pick up on many new details in the "mind world" that correspond to the outside. It's not a perfect movie, but I can't get over how simply and beautifully it explores a topic that we can all relate to, but is difficult to explain in "readable," visual terms. I could honestly see this movie helping parents talk with their kids about their complex feelings - and its message that ALL emotions are important, not just being happy 24/7, really struck a chord with me.
Rating: A-
Ted 2
Dir. Seth MacFarlane
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Ted was a surprise summer smash hit a few years ago, so a sequel was inevitable. In the "Ted" world, a young boy's wish for a living teddy bear came true, but now the world is jaded and no one really calls attention to this sentient stuffed toy. Mark Wahlberg returns as Ted's "thunder buddy" John Bennett, but between Ted 1 and 2, Mila Kunis's character dumped him (which in movie language says to me, "we couldn't cast her again"). Ted 2 mostly revolves around Ted's legal fight for personhood, as he finds out that he and his girlfriend Tammy-Lynn (Jessica Barth) are unable to adopt a child. So Ted and John embark on a gag-infested journey for civil rights alongside an inexperienced, bong-toting lawyer (Amanda Seyfried). Although the story for the film is pretty flimsy, MacFarlane, king of the cutaway gag, keeps things hilarious and raunchy throughout. It's the kind of joke-a-second comedy I miss seeing, and Ted 2 worked for me probably 75% of the time.
The movie works best when it's involved with silly, inconsequential jokes - but as soon as MacFarlane tries to be "serious" everything comes to a standstill. There are three unbearably long courtroom monologues which are so annoyingly grandstanding metaphors for same-sex marriage and equal rights for blacks. They feel so forced and incongruous with the "joke-a-minute" mentality that makes everything else about the film work. The same goes for a weirdly unfunny (not meant to be funny) musical number from Seyfried called "Mean Ol' Moon." I'm not sure if this was included just to qualify for the "Best Original Song" Oscar, as the original Ted was incredulously nominated, but it certainly felt that way.
Even with its cringe-worthy moments of seriousness and odd MacFarlane ego-boosting moments, Ted 2 was a consistently funny movie for me. The "Trix cereal" gag is probably one of the funniest scenes of 2015, and there's one cutaway making fun of Improv groups that clearly steps over the line, but is so completely dark it works. This is the type of movie where it's essential to see it with the right crowd. I watched Ted 2 sitting among its core demographic: a smattering of college-aged "bros" out for a night on the town. And the place was howling with laughter. I can't say what I would've thought about Ted 2 watching it on my own in complete silence, but I think fans of Ted and Family Guy will enjoy this sequel. It's not art, but it's a sophomoric, silly, tasteless, hilarious fun time.
Rating: B
Dope
Dir. Rick Famuyiwa
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As a black teenager, it can be difficult to navigate your way to finding an identity - especially if you live in a place called "The Bottoms." High-schooler Malcolm Adekanbi (Shameik Moore) is a 90's-hip hop geek living in Inglewood, California, doing his darndest to not fall in the trap of becoming a part of the drug/gangster culture. We're introduced to Malcolm and his pop culture-infused world, when he's suddenly thrust in the middle of a nasty drug deal. He and his two misfit friends (Kiersey and Tony Revolori) unwittingly run off with a backpack full of "dope," and in an effort to get rid of the evidence, Malcolm and Friends use their "geek" knowledge of the Internet to sell off their stash on the Dark Web, a concept I'm not sure that I've seen materialized yet on the big screen.
Although Dope is refreshing film in many ways, it ultimately didn't work for me. I love that it's showing this ultra-specific perspective we hardly get to see in movies, and it has a wonderfully vibrant and kinetic style that reminded me of Boogie Nights, but the story dragged quite a bit for me and didn't seem to go anywhere. Malcolm's semi-romance with Nakia (Zoë Kravitz) feels pointless, the kids' online drug business doesn't feel clever (it comes off as a Breaking Bad wannabe), and the message is so didactic the main character literally says it directly into the camera. Dope has me hopeful for what Rick Famuyiwa does next, as this film was competently made and is clearly personal, but for whatever reason it never "clicked" with me.
Rating: B-
The Wolfpack
Dir. Crystal Moselle
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Sometimes you watch a documentary and think "how the hell did the filmmaker even get to know these subjects?" The Wolfpack, winning the Documentary Grand Jury prize at this past Sundance Film Festival, had me frustratedly wondering this the whole time, as its filmmaker, Crystal Moselle, never tells us how she got to know her incredible subjects. The film is about this group of brothers whose domineering parents (but mostly their father) kept them locked inside their New York apartment - only let outside a few times a year, if at all. So to escape the monotony of being boxed inside all day, the kids escaped into movies and often faithfully re-create their favorites verbatim, with handmade props and costumes (movies like Reservoir Dogs, The Dark Knight, and Pulp Fiction). The re-enactments come off similarly to Be Kind Rewind's "Sweded" movies, which is interesting enough, and I was impressed with just how faithful they looked/sounded, but the story of these kids whose only connection to the outside world was through the window of film is so unbelievable, heartbreaking, and fascinating.
I love movies about how we think and grow, and although it's tragic what these kids went through, for me it's so interesting to see what a childhood raised almost entirely through movies would look like. These kids are protected from the "outside world," but still recognize the difference between fantasy and reality in the movies they watch, and are surprisingly "normal" considering their lack of outside stimuli. I do wish Moselle had a little more of a probing spirit, however; she lets her subjects talk about what they want, but what I really wanted to know about were the parents. What kind of 'fucked up' are you to lock up your kids for years and years? We get small bursts of their insanity, but something tells me that if someone like Errol Morris was behind the camera, we'd get more of a real story going. As it is, The Wolfpack is endlessly fascinating to me, even though it feels like certain important pieces are missing.
Rating: A-
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