voxhumana Reviews

André and Wally B. (1984)

A historic achievement

[10/10 · 20 June 2010]

This is an extraordinary and historic film, however viewers should not assess this film by the standards of current animation, but rather in its (truly ground-breaking) historical context.

This film is the CG animation equivalent of the first flight of the Wright Brothers (which lasted only 12 seconds). Much like that famous first flight in 1903, this 1984 film paved the way for all that has followed.

It is not the first CG animation ever made, but it is the first to feature a plot, characterization and expression, motion blur, and deformations (eg stretching, squashing). When it was demonstrated at the 1984 SIGGRAPH there was a crowd response bordering on hysteria, as nothing even close to this had ever been done before.

So watch this film with appropriate awe and reverence, for it is the birthing of an entire new art form which we completely take for granted now.

The Box (I) (2009)

A theological study

[7/10 · 19 June 2010]

This film has aroused a lot of heat from reviewers, far more than I would have expected. It is an ambitious film which delivers a fair (but not brilliant) execution of its premise. People who are disappointed may be trying to interpret this as a science fiction film - I think this is a complete misunderstanding.

My interpretation of the film is that it is an allegory of the Christian (and specifically Catholic) concepts of Judgement Day, Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. There are numerous references to Sartre's "No Exit" (an allegory of Hell), there are also allusions to Dante's Inferno, which explains the plot discontinuities in the middle section and at the end of the film. Finally near the end the husband specifically states "this is purgatory" as if it all makes sense to him finally.

Regardless of my thoughts, it is a film that asks you to make your own interpretation. Some people hate that sort of film and others love it (I'm in this latter group). If you enjoyed Synechdoche then you will probably love this as well. If not, oh well, never mind.

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Yet another masterpiece (!)

[10/10 · 18 June 2010]

This film is a masterpiece. Truly. It is easily the best film of the year of any genre and will definitely take it's place alongside Bambi, Snow White, Fantasia and (insert other Pixar title here) in the Pantheon of immortal animated classics.

TS3 is hilarious, touching, thought-provoking and relentlessly entertaining. The film is also very deep, even in comparison to the last three Pixar films (Ratatouille, Wall-E and Up).

Between the high and low brow gags, TS3 manages to be a profound morality study on the purpose of life, connection and disconnection, consumerism, the transition into adulthood, the wonder of imagination, and on death and renewal. As that wasn't enough, there is a brief (but profound) dissertation on the origins of political power (borrowed directly from the great philosophers of the Enlightenment), given by the most unlikely character (I'll let you find out who, but it left me howling with laughter.)

The comedy content is razor-sharp. Spanish Buzz is a scene-stealer and the gender-identity confused Ken is pure gold. However TS3 is certainly darker in theme and content that its predecessors and I sincerely question the G rating (If "The Incredibles" was PG then this certainly must be).

But Pixar don't issue the ratings and regardless, there are moments of such aching beauty that your heart will damn near burst. Pixar kindly provided some delightful sequences over the end credits to let grown men such as myself wipe away the tears before entering the lobby.

Does it have a flaw? Yes - it is at least an hour too short(!) I wanted more of the familiar characters and much, much more of the new ones, particularly Bonnie's toys. (BTW - Look out for a delightful homage to Hayao Miyazaki at Bonnie's place).

But ignoring my pettiness, all I can say is this is a triumph in every regard. It is easily the best of the Toy Story series (an astonishing achievement in itself) and many will declare it Pixar's finest effort to date. A clear candidate for a Best Picture nod and a strong contender for the screenplay Oscar.

Revealing Gallipoli (2005 TV Movie)

A truly superb documentary

[9/10 · 26 April 2010]

I recently saw "Revealing Gallipoli" on the History Channel and was deeply impressed with all aspects of its 90 minute production.

"Revealing Gallipoli" uses three presenters to tell the story from an Australian, an Irish and a Turkish perspective. The narrative seamlessly inter-cuts between a global overview of the campaign and small, deeply personal elements that convey the human side of the tragedy.

Without diminishing the contributions of the other presenters, I found the contribution of the Turkish presenter, Savas Karakas, to be absolutely outstanding. Karakas is (according to the Melbourne Age) a "major Turkish TV celebrity" and he is clearly a talented and experienced presenter. His presentation is constantly engaging and passionate, despite English not being his native language.

"Revealing Gallipoli" is also very evenly balanced and shows both sides of the fight - something few other documentaries of this doomed campaign have ever achieved. I confess I was initially a little shocked at the ANZACs being constantly referred to as "the enemy", but Karakas really conveys the passionate determination and profound dignity of the Turkish people who were simply defending their homeland.

As a side-note, if you're an ardent supporter of the WWI British High Command then you might not enjoy this very much, as the documentary squarely lays all the blame for the catastrophe with Churchill, Kitchener and Hamilton.

I've since tried to obtain a DVD version but for some absurd reason it is only being sold at $90 a copy. This is a stupid decision by the production house which prevents a wider distribution of what is an excellent documentary.

C Me Dance (2009)

When will Christian movie makers learn?

[1/10 · 6 March 2010]

There seems to be an unwritten rule within the Christian community that any film made with a Christian theme must be "gushed" about as if it is a cinematic masterpiece. A quick scan of Christian-oriented entertainment sites indicate that this film has been consistently rated 4 to 5 stars.

This is ridiculous because this film is embarrassingly bad. This misleading bias also means that terrible films like this will continue to get made.

The fact that these films get laughed at in the secular world is usually dismissed as "anti-Christian sentiment". The sentiment is not "anti-Christian", it's "anti-terrible films".

"Christian-themed" movies can (and should) be as good as any other film genre out there. But just like a building, a film requires good planning and skilled craftsmanship. If a local community built a church and it fell down, they would not be standing around saying "Oh what a wonderful church!". They'd be asking "what went wrong?" and resolving to never do it again.

No building is excused from the rules of good construction, and no film genre is excused from the rules of good film-making. As an (incomplete) list of principles:

1 - All characters (and especially the lead characters) must have a journey. In this film Sheri has a minor journey (though an implausible one - her response to contracting leukemia is as tepid as if she'd merely missed a TV show), her father and all the other characters are two dimensional puppets. (Their unsurprised reaction to the physical appearance of Satan is absurd. No matter how devout you are, if Satan really appeared in physical form you'd still be shocked to some extent.)

2 - "Show, don't tell". The film regularly stops for inane preaching and pointless exposition. If meeting Sheri has really changed a character's life - show it. Having the character sit on a couch saying "Oh, you've changed my life" is no more convincing or meaningful than them saying "Oh, I've grown two extra arms". The act of "showing" is simple. Before the "change" show me scenes of the character's behaviour. Then have the transformation. Then show me the character afterwards.

3 - Every moment of a film must either advance the plot or develop a character (ideally both). If you can't demonstrate what a given moment of a film is achieving, cut it.

There are some superb Christian-themed movies out there, eg. "The Apostle" with Robert Duvall. There are also dozens of truly superb subjects on Christian themes which could be made. 1 - A son raised in the church leaves so as to have "freedom", only to discover the real cost of this meaningless freedom (ie. a modern "prodigal son"). 2 - A skeptic who believes that Christians are "mindless drones" slowly falls for a Christian girl he works with and gradually discovers the true nature (and the causes) of his hostility. 3 - A Christian "faker" (someone who only claims to have faith so as to exploit the community for personal gain) is exposed and loses everything. Despite this he begins a journey to true redemption.

If you are a Christian and you are angered by this comment then I'm sorry. But if Christian films are to have any value at all then there needs to be an objective attitude towards quality.

The Lake House (2006)

A great idea but poorly executed

[4/10 · 18 May 2009]

This could have been a truly excellent film as the premise is fascinating. "A tale of love frustrated" is a classic theme, but this added a new twist with the lovers being separated by time. The film also hinted it wanted to explore the issue of "addiction to a fantasy", and "knowing when to accept what you have got".

To its credit the film handles the logical problems of past/future communication well: it simply ignores them. There is a mailbox and some repeated hints that a dog is somehow involved, but that is as far as the movie ever goes in attempting to justify its central premise. I heartily approve of this - both Terminator 1 and Donnie Darko employed this same "sit down and just accept it" approach with huge success.

However the film has numerous fatal weaknesses of a more basic kind - namely poor character development, implausible and/or irrational character behaviour within the context of the time-travel aspect, poorly developed (and probably unnecessary) subplots that lead to hopelessly underdeveloped minor characters, and an overly saccharine and terribly flat ending.

All of this gives the feeling that the film was hastily rushed into development, and if they had taken time to do a few more rewrites then they could have created a masterpiece, rather than a film that feels like just another throw-away "chick-flick". And most disappointingly, the fascinating issues it hinted at exploring were never really dealt with.

It's unfair to malign Bullock or Reeves as I don't think any actor could have done much better with the material. The pair actually create some genuinely sublime moments on occasion. As a result I think there is plenty more that could be done with this pairing should any producer see the potential.

But great actors + poor script = bad movie. Just ask Al Pacino.

So overall this is a real disappointment. I am secretly hoping that some writer somewhere will tackle this film's basic ideas again and create a script worthy of such a strong premise.

The Notebook (2004)

Will long outlive the critics who scorned it

[8/10 · 30 April 2009]

Now by all rights, this film should have been awful.

On paper the plot seems fairly trite, there are so many clichéd and terribly two-dimensional characters (eg Allie's father, Lon), some extremely predictable moments such as the confiscation and subsequent return of the letters by Allie's mother (on a side note - why do people always save these letters rather than just putting them in the trash?) and some very heavy handed attempts at creating suspense (gee... is Duke meant to be Noah or Lon? Like you didn't already know.)

Consequently, when the Notebook was released it was absolutely savaged by film critics for all of the above reasons. It was also condemned for trivialising Alzheimer's Disease, for being "poorly directed" (a common theme in many of the reviews) and for any number of other faults.

OK then, so if this film is just so awful, why does it have an 8.0 rating here on IMDb? Why does just about every female in the western world own it on DVD, (not to mention the many men - like myself - who have observed its uncanny ability to get girls "in the mood"?)

My answer: it is quite simply the perfect love story, told perfectly and (despite what the critics said) delivered at a perfect pace. It is intensely passionate yet quite unhurried, just like the best examples of another activity that I'll leave to your imagination.

It is timeless, and it gives substance to the dream that love can endure above all (a dream which - face it - we all buy into to some extent, even if we will never publicly admit it).

Like "The Shawshank Redemption", this is a film which has survived critical scorn and has earned its elevated stature in the public arena the hard way.

The simple fact is that people just keep buying it on DVD, people keep shedding tears to it, and critics everywhere are secretly retyping their original reviews (while fervently hoping no-one digs up what they wrote the first time).

And for the record, I'm a "man's man" who watches lots of sport and rides a motorcycle. But that scene where Allie realises that the story is actually all about her had me weeping as much as that time when I was 5 years old and Bambi's mother died.

This is a beautiful, heart-rending yet sublimely uplifting story, told with the utmost delicacy and gentle sweetness. The critics be damned.

WALL·E (2008)

A true masterpiece, possibly unparalleled.

[10/10 · 16 March 2009]

OK I'm not going to actually discuss the film very much, as other reviewers have already done a fine job. Suffice it to see you MUST see this film if you have not done so already.

Instead I'm going to make three very big calls:

Call #1 - *Wall-E is Pixar's best film.* Of course Pixar is the golden child company, responsible for Toy Story and Finding Nemo. (IMHO Pixar's worst effort to date is Ratatouille, which is merely "truly excellent".) Now Wall-E is clearly the best film technologically, but this is no surprise as every Pixar film surpasses its predecessors due to the relentless improvement of Pixar's software. However Wall-E also surpasses its siblings in its absolute artistic brilliance, emotional depth, storytelling vision, sublime music and visual language.

Call #2 - *Wall-E is the finest animated film of the "modern" (post 1980) era.* A slightly braver call, as I'm now rating Wall-E as superior to the many masterpieces from Otomo, Miyazaki and their peers. (I'm not dismissing Disney here, but I wouldn't put "Beauty and the Beast" or "Lion King" up for "best modern era animation" despite their being very,very good films.)

Call #3 - *Wall-E is the finest animated feature film, ever.* My bravest call but I'm sticking to it. There is a tendency for film fans to not embrace the new. But I just spent a weekend watching many classics - Fantasia, Snow White, Lady and the Tramp, Barefoot Gen, Akira, Spirited Away, etc. And at the end, Wall-E stands triumphant. It really is THAT GOOD.

Sure it's only my opinion, but I know I'm not alone. And if you have yet to see the film, go watch it and decide for yourself.

(PS - While I am throwing around my opinions like they actually matter, let me say that Thomas Newman was absolutely robbed when it came to the Oscar for the score.)

Heat (1995)

This is as good as it will ever get.

[10/10 · 9 May 2008]

I would have loved to have been at the pitch meeting where they tried to sell "that" scene.

---------

Director: "Well there's this scene where the cop meets the bad guy and invites him for a cup of coffee".

Studio person: "And then what happens - they shoot up the café?"

Director: "Um, no."

Studio person: "They get into a huge fistfight?"

Director: "Um, no."

Studio person: "Well... so what happens?"

Director: "Um, well, they have a cup of coffee together."

---------

Doesn't sound like much, does it. Yet I bet if you gathered a group of film critics and asked them to pick "the ten greatest scenes in the history of cinema", the coffee house scene between Pacino and De Niro would be on every list. It is simply astounding. And it anchors one of the greatest films of all time.

"HEAT" is a pure genre film - classic "cops and robbers" stuff. It has identical elements to many other cops and robbers movies - a crime, a shootout, a love interest for the good guy and the bad guy, a cop on the edge, etc.

But saying Heat is "just another genre film" is like saying a Ferrari is "just another car" or Jessica Alba is "just another woman". The bottom line is "this is as good as it gets, folks". I thought it was perfect back in 1995. I watched it on DVD some twelve years later and that assessment hasn't changed.

So it's a cops and robbers film. You already know the plot. A crime happens. A cop pursues a criminal. There is a big confrontation at the end. You've seen it a thousand times.

But HEAT isn't about the "what". It's about the "how". How is was made, and how it was delivered. And to put it simply, the film is completely flawless. The acting is beyond breath-taking. Every scene is perfect. Every moment of it's nearly three hours is to be savoured like the finest wine.

Bottom line - A masterpiece that is richly deserving of its place on the "IMDB Top 250"

Torque (2004)

Beyond bad, true 'Golden Turkey" stuff.

[3/10 · 25 January 2004]

If you are a fan of movies such as "Battlefield Earth", "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter", then this film is totally for you. If you know even a little about motorcycles, then you will find it funnier than the "Naked Gun".

*MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW*

The film has one tiny virtue - unlike "Biker Boyz", the *ahem* scriptwriters of this masterpiece have realised that motorcyclists do not regard riding in a straight line as interesting. So there IS one good sequence early on of a group of riders tackling a twisty desert highway. I was almost misled into believing that it might be a decent film, but that didn't last.

Virtues now dealt with, let's explore the full artistic squalor that Torque delivers. I won't bother with the plot - suffice it to say that there are these really mean biker gangs who will happily slaughter someone with a bike chain, sell large quantities of hard drugs but who won't use the *F* word.

The acting - there isn't any. With dialogue like this, you wouldn't want to use real actors - their own bowels would rise up and throttle them before permitting these lines to be uttered in front of a camera.

But it's a motorcycle movie, so let's examine that aspect. In case anyone doesn't know, there are two main divisions of motorcycle - street and dirt. The entire design approach is different for some very good reasons - if you put a street bike on loose dirt, it will generally fall over due to lack of traction. Miraculously, the bikes in Torque seem quite capable of doing the most spectacular stunts on very loose sand.

I'll forgive that - keen eyed observers will note that they simply took dirt bikes, glued some plastic (known as 'fairings') on them to make them look like street bikes and found some very skilled dirt riders for the stunts. However, as the movie progresses, the scriptwriters felt the need to delve deeper and deeper into the realm of silliness, with increasingly ridiculous stunts that first defy and then insult the laws of physics. The train scene involves one pirouette that fails to observe the rule that "if the real wheel spins, the bike goes forward".

The final all-CGI chase sequence is so stupid it's hard to make comments - the Harley cruiser being chased probably has a top speed of 100 mph, yet it appears to be travelling at speeds in excess of 300 mph. In this era of Lord of the Rings, it's hard to believe that CGI this bad could be released - it looks like they couldn't think of anything interesting to show, so they just blurred everything. Including the jet-engine Y2K motorcycle was a nice touch at least (it really does exist).

A few other technical comments - generally when moving at 150 mph, long blonde hair gets blown about by the wind, but not in TORQUE. During all that blue screen work, surely some technician could have stood in front of the girl with a hair dryer at least. The product placement is laughably clumsy - there is a "Pepsi-Mountain Dew" battle, and you only ever see two brand names of motorcycle (the British Triumph and Italian Aprilia) although it is obvious that 98% of the bikes are Japanese. The film has a large number of massive explosions caused by crashing bikes. As most of the bikes would have 17-20 litre tanks (5-7 gallons) and given that they have been riding around in the desert all day and so would be near empty , I find it hard to believe that they could create a 50 foot explosion, but maybe that's just me.

Even for the fact that the bike stunts are so silly, they are still the best aspect of the film, and had they occupied most of the film I would have graded it higher. Unfortunately to get to the bike stunts we have to sit through way too many lengthy and turgid periods of "drama".

I gave the film 2/10, mainly for the producers having the sheer audacity to go for a theatre release and not condemning it to "straight to video".

Dogville (2003)

A dreadful try-hard waste of time.

[3/10 · 29 December 2003]

This film appears to have been made purely to elicit all of the right responses from self-important critics, and fails completely to actually deliver a film worth watching.

*POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW*

All of the right ingredients are there - the idea and the cast is very good. Unfortunately it is bogged down by a turgid and tedious script which tends to cause laughter at inappropriate times due to the appalling dialogue - at times I felt like I was watching outtakes from "Waiting For Guffman". The narration is probably the most ghastly aspect of it, as it fails to add anything apart from droll exposition. The voice-over during the 'porcelain-smashing' scene was simply an insult to all screenwriting.

Added to this terrible script is abysmal direction - the jerky camera work and dreadful edits are useful in a tense psychological script, but using it during an inane "I love you - well I love you too" scene was just embarassing. The purpose of a cut mid-sentence during a Kidman monologue eludes me completely. I'm a big fan of technical devices, but only as long as they serve the story. Here it reeked of "look at me - I'm being radical!"

While I can see the parable aspect, the drastic transition from "town full of lovely simple close-knit people" to "town full of lying, raping, sado-masochistic psychopaths" was way too extreme and hence just rendered the whole scenario as absurd.

This film could have been very good - it was a story worth telling and it featured a cast that were more than capable of telling it. But the dreadful and pretentious direction and appalling script ruined it. 3/10.

Sex: The Annabel Chong Story (1999)

A deeply flawed film that still deserves to be seen.

[9/10 · 15 June 2002]

This is not a well-crafted documentary, and no doubt film students will pick it to pieces. BUT, it is certainly a compelling and unforgettable piece of cinema, and one that raises many more questions than it answers.

The film is as tasteful as is possible, given its subject matter. Annabel Chong (Grace Quek) is an exceptionally complex human being: highly intelligent yet quite psychologically damaged. Watching the film is like being on amphetamines - the first half is hyper-frenetic and luridly self-congratulatory, but then the "come-down" happens. And when it comes, it hits hard.

I did some follow-up research. Ironically, this documentary gave Annabel Chong the financial rewards that her gang-bang didn't, and she earned enough to buy a house and return to college. She is currently completing a course in web-design/networking. She appears to be earning her living by operating a website that combines her discussions of Windows 2000 installations with subscriber-only pornographic photos of herself and others. Like the film itself, this historical footnote doesn't give any simple answers either.

As I said, this film is flawed in many ways, (I'll let you decide in what ways) but a few weeks later I still find myself thinking about the issues it raised. And on that score, it deserves a high recommendation.

After much deliberation I gave this film a 9/10 - not because of the film's actual quality (which only deserves a 5-6), but because it is a film that deserves to be seen and contemplated.

Once Were Warriors (1994)

Good News: Star Wars (Clones) may lead people to this film

[9/10 · 12 June 2002]

Temuera Morrison is one of the leads in this film, and his role as Jango Fett in "Star Wars - Attack of the Clones" may lead people to it. I hope so anyway, because this is one of the most compelling films ever made.

It's not fun or enjoyable in the traditional sense, but it is a masterpiece. It's horrifically violent, and I definitely would not recommend it for a first date.

Despair, cultural displacement, domestic violence and alcoholism are its darker themes, but the triumph of human dignity is its redemption. An earlier reviewer said the storyline was "unstimulating" - I could not disagree more. At least all reviewers agree that the acting is stunning.

For Information's Sake: The film is set in NEW ZEALAND, not Australia - I'm amazed at how many previous reviewers seem to think they are the same place. None of the reviewers seemed to notice the theme of cultural displacement, which applies to not only the Maoris of New Zealand, but the Aborigines of Australia, the Native Americans of the USA or the Inuits of Canada/Alaska (to name, sadly, but a few...)

An absolute 10/10. BUT - make sure you know what you are in for. This is not a film for the faint-hearted.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

What a godawful piece of crap

[5/10 · 26 December 2001]

I am at a complete loss as to what anyone can see in this film. By it's very title it glorifies the days when "story" was a cheap and disposable commodity, and seeks to canonise it's lack of a script as a result. I'm sorry - "anti-art" has all been done before, and it wasn't very interesting with the dadaists back in 1915 either.

Poor acting, a non-existent script, dialogue written by someone who thinks swearing still has "shock" value and endless, pointless violence. The burger discussion was the nearest thing to a highlight.