Kinematoscope

This took forever to order correctly, just so you're aware. Let's get to it!



10. TRON: Legacy

I will fully admit I have too much of a soft-spot for TRON. I saw it when I was in grade school, and then I wrote a story for English class that was more or less a bald-faced ripoff.

So there's that, plus Jeff Bridges basically playing The Dude in TRON-land, the incredibly kickass Daft Punk score, and Olivia Wilde in skintight leather (see the blog header). It just had to be in the top ten.

Every criticism you may level at it is completely valid, but it's just not enough to countermeasure those other things for me. The 3D was even decently handled, too.

9. The Ghost Writer

Another great ending on this one. You think Tony Blair and his wife have seen it yet?


8. The Way Back

Another movie that might be right up my alley, because I love epic, Lord of the Rings style journeys on foot. But the look and feel and general Peter-Weirness of it more than made up for the hammy ending and the lack of character development. It helps that other than shuffling a few characters around, the extreme nature of the journey is close to the memoir on which it's based.



7. Please Give

If Woody Allen's not going to make Woody Allen movies anymore, then I vote for Nicole Holocefner to take up the mantle.

Credit Please Give for dodging complaints of stuffy New York intellectualism by moving swiftly, being funny, and not taking itself too seriously. Also this movie gets extra credit for passing the Bechdel test so hard you guys.

6. Inception

Once you see Inception enough times, the (admittedly necessary) exposition starts to drag quite a bit. But the most memorable, exciting action of the year makes it one of the best heist films ever- not, as it's frequently misunderstood to be, one of the best films about dreams ever.

It would be higher, though, if there were chemistry between any two of the actors beyond Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's awesome bickering. The central DiCaprio-Cotillard relationship fell flat for me, and Ellen Page's character may as well have been literally named "Audience Surrogate" instead of "Arachne" (which was this year's "Unobtainium" in terms of making me groan out loud).

But if I were to rank my top 40 minute stretches of the year, there's no way the last 40 of Inception doesn't top that list.


5. True Grit

Fitting that the Coens would make a stark, chilling neo-Western (No Country For Old Men) before they make a traditional one. But the genre is a perfect fit for them, with arcane, memorable language and a literally wandering storyline.

Matt Damon and Jeff Brigdes make up a powerfully dynamin triumvirate with young Hailee Steinfeld- every scene between them is a study in shifting authority and social perception in an unusual situation. With Roger F-ing Deakins and Carter Burwell bringing their standard greatness to the look and score, True Grit is right up there with Gangs of New York in the "I Can't Believe it went 0 for 10 at the Oscars" Club.



4. Winter's Bone

The perfect bleak winter movie, chilling and desolate. Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes deliver great performances in a movie that's engrossingly propulsive and quietly artful at the same time.

3. The Social Network

Previously reviewed here. I think noteworthy Best Picture snubs are just as good as wins in the larger scheme of things, as Stephen Spielberg helpfully pointed out right before giving it to The King's Speech.



2. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

How did I not do several posts about how great Scott Pilgrim was? As seen in my preferred Oscar nominations, it was a winner in every department for me.

Edgar Wright was clearly a fan of the graphic novels, and set about dutifully brining them to the screen with the spastic, nostalgic spirit intact- working closely with Bryan Lee O'Malley even as he was finishing the sixth and final volume.

As unique as the video-game style fight sequences are, the rest of the film is more enjoyable to me: wright's trademark whip-cuts are perfect for the pace of the film, and I enjoyed the way the dialogue was countered with odd bits of sound effects.

Plus, it featured the first film soundtrack (not score) that I had to have in a long time, with original songs by Beck and Metric.


1. How To Train Your Dragon

Pretty sure I covered this one already.

I would only add that if this list was titled- "The Best 20 Films of 2010 to watch on DVD," then Dragon might not be #1, but the 3D, in-theater experience (which I experienced an embarassing number of times) makes it the clear winner for the year.

(Coming as soon as he sends it to me: Dave's top ten!)

Hey, I reorganized the list, and what should appear around this spot but recent smash-sucess and word-of-mouth phenomenon How To Train Your Dragon! Considering it passed The Return Of The King and The Big Lebowski to become the film I've seen the most times in the theater, I just had to include it in the countdown.

And it did a rare thing climbing up onto the list after starting just below it- normally a film will pop up much higher than it should be (coughKick-Asscough), and then fall several spots (or off entirely). When a film starts rising months after it's released, you know it's a keeper.

The Key Players:

Directors and co-writers Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois were veteran animators that both ended up at Disney, both contributing to Mulan in various roles before teaming up for 2002's Lilo & Stitch. They moved to Dreamworks Animation in 2007, and took over production on Dragon about halfway through the process.

There's a voice cast that includes Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, and notably Scotsmen Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson, but who really cares?



Click for More...

The Story:

In the viking village of Berk, dragons raid the livestock and burn the houses almost daily- killing one is everything for your status, which is why awkward, teenage blacksmith's apprentice Hiccup is desperate to do so.

In a breathless opening attack (in which he voiceovers all the requisite back story while dragons swoop and swarm to keep our attention), he fires a homemade bola contraption at the rarest dragon of them all: a Night Fury, a deadly fast and powerful dragon no one's ever seen- and he actually hits it!

Though he also causes some mayhem when another dragon nearly eats him, leading to a scolding from his father Stoick, the village's brawny chieftan. No one believes that he brought down a night fury, but sure enough he finds the felled, jet black creature in the woods. Only he can't bring himself to kill it, no matter the dates he might get. He sets the dragon free, and soon befriends it, finding it confined to one pond because of a damaged tail.

Just as he learns to befriend them, his father puts him in training to kill dragons, leading to a great sequence where he excels at dragon fighting by rendering them harmless using tricks gleamed from his new best friend (like scratching under their chins, or dragons' distaste for spotted eel). He names the Night Fury 'Toothless' and even makes a new tail fin for him, and they learn to fly as a team.

But surely such a forbidden friendship can't last.

The Artistry:

Go here and here for reasons this film is awesome. In this space, I present a list instead:

THINGS I HAVE SEEN HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON ENOUGH TIMES TO KNOW:

1. A dragon clearly flies across the starlit sky during the opening Dreamworks logo.

2. Hiccup has a small scar on the right side of his chin, probably from an earlier blacksmith-apprenticing-related mishap.

3. It's implied in the film, but he's clearly an avid inventor: there are plans and scale models visible at his workbench for the bola-launcher, his various Toothless flying aids, and a machine that casts a net.

4. There's nothing extra at the very end of the credits (I thought it would be foolish if I'd seen it X number of times and missed an easter egg).

5. I am not the only person who saw it over and over, based on its return to the top of the box-office in its fifth week.

6. If you see it enough, the fact that America Ferrera (tv's "Ugly Betty") voices a pale, blonde Scandinavian character will cease to bother you.

7. A toy Night Fury dragon (though not, specifically, Toothless, which is dumb) costs $12.50 and is only sold at Wal-Mart.

8. If there is any dust on the projection lenses at the theater, imperfections in the screen, or smudges on your 3D glasses, you will notice them when Hiccup and Toothless fly through white clouds a couple of times and you will find it distracting.

9. A scene near the end, when Hiccup and Toothless are both falling into a wave of fire, reminds me a whole lot of the core detonation at the end of Star Trek.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

After discovering his son's "betrayal," Stocik takes Toothless and uses him to find the dragons' nest- unbeknownst to him it's inhabited by a mountain-sized queen-bee-type dragon that intimidates the others into bringing food back- hence the raids. The behemoth is poised to destroy all of the tribe's warriors, until Hiccup arrives (riding the training dragons with his fellow classmates, who bought his "we don't have to kill them" message a lot faster) to save the day.

He and Toothless destroy the giant enemy of dragon and man alike- though it looks like Hiccup dies in the aftermath at first- turns out he just lost a foot, a rare acknowledgement of mortaility in the cartoon world, and he gets the adoration of the town and the girl of his dreams.

Berk learns to live in harmony with dragonkind, and I get to wait until 2013 for the sequel I might even be more stoked for than The Dark Knight.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Higher and higher, to paraphrase Jackie Wilson. Maybe the most fun I've ever had at the movies.

The Legacy:

Too immediate to qualify, but it is Dreamworks' new "franchise" with the ending of the Shreks just now.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

This whole 'test drive' sequence is probably my favorite two and a half minutes of any film this year (narrowly edging the hallway fight from Inception). Not that this YouTube video is anything like seeing it in 3D, of course.



Leftover Thoughts:

-No dragon-related puns in this entire post. That's not how I roll. I'm thinking of a weekly feature called "Pun Roundup" (or should the title itself be a pun? DECISIONS!) where I find the most egregious puns on movie titles out there.

-I cannot tell you how much I wish this would get an encore in theaters instead of Avatar.


Coming Up...

173. The Grapes Of Wrath

172. Twelve Monkeys

171. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

And guess what? Still awesome.

Changed opinions: The "solid but not spectacular" score by John Powell* is in fact pretty great- it might be just it growing on me sentimentally, but I may buy it- and I rarely buy traditional orchestral scores (I don't even have Howard Shore's Lord Of The Rings!).

Toothless (the dragon) is clearly the most adorable animal companion ever on the silver screen (take that, dog from The Thin Man!). I will definitely get a toy** to keep on my desk (or, y'know, to spin around and the air while going "Whooosh!").

Thoroughly excited for co-directors/co-writers Cris Sanders and Dean Dublois' other work- I've never seen the highly regarded Lilo & Stitch somehow (it came out in the brief window between me being a kid and me realizing that many kids movies are awesome for everyone). Plus they have a caveman related work-in-progress for Dreamworks slated for 2012 called The Croods.

Oscars nominations I would hope it's in the running for in 2011: Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Animated (duh), Score, both Sound Awards, and Original Song (turns out it's the Sigur Rós guy! How hip is that?). The stigma of being animated will probably keep it out of things it deserves like Editing, Director, and Cinematography (though ROGER F*CKING DEAKINS' (as he will hencefoth be known) lighting contributions make it more than deserving of the latter category- give that guy an Oscar for something already).

Is there nothing wrong at all with it? Not exactly. For instance, why do the older vikings have Scottish accents while the younger ones sound American? I'll be the first to admit the plot is predictable enough, the conflicts a little too explicative (people are still staying "You're not my son!" in movies?), and the odd line a little cheesy.

And to each of these criticisms in turn, I say: "Yeah, but...dragon riding!" I'm like the young kids who didn't get the furor over The Phantom Menace because it had pod racing. Something tells me that How To Train Your Dragon will play fine in 2D, between the winning story and the beautiful animation, but there's just nothing like those flying sequences in 3D: I can think of two distinct moments when I heard the entire audience literally all gasp at once.

Not to return to the Avatar-bashing too much, but I didn't rave about that film (or its various dynamic sequences) because I just didn't care that much. Hiccup (the Dragon's hero), has to actually learn to fly, instead of just hooking up his telepathic ponytail and getting the knack of it right away.

Heck even the predictable parts of Dragon are enjoyable: you know early on that the comic relief pair of fraternal twins are going to end up riding the two-headed dragon at some point, but that doesn't make it not fun.

Once again: Go see this film. Even with Clash Of The Titans coming out the week after, you should still be able to find it on a 3D screen for a while in most cities (especially given its 98% to 29% Rotten Tomatoes advantage, and its A to B Cinemascore*** advantage over Titans). The next big 3D film is May 21st's Shrek Forever After (meh), so repeat viewings are certainly a possibility.


*The score is all on Youtube starting here. It's probably legal, maybe, sure, I dunno- I'm just not informed about these things.

**That one's cool. Or I could go to McDonald's and just buy a Happy Meal toy. Can they hold the Happy Meal?

**Cinemascore is an audience-polling service- it's taken opening weekend, so it's usually higher than it should be: B means a steep box-office drop, A means you might not lose the requisite 40% every week.

Also, I changed the blog theme and added a header image- literally never before did it occur to me to put a movie image up there.

Look, I see a lot of films, and I like a whole bunch of them. But never do I unabashedly rave about things, so believe me when I say this is important:

Go see How To Train Your Dragon. Right now.

Wow.

It finally justifies the money being thrown by studios (and audiences) at 3D technology. It makes me realize why people love roller coasters (I have a weak stomach for that stuff). It's thrilling, it's touching- it's about eight billion times better than Avatar. Yeah. Clearly Cameron and co. pioneered live-action 3D shooting, and 3D as a hugely successful business model, but you can't buy heart and you can't force thrills.

The comparison is inevitable- much of the action sequences in Avatar involve the main character riding on a dragon-like winged creature, but the cinematography in Dragon finds a way to take us up in the air for the ride- Avatar was looking for ways to flaunt itself and its world. It's the difference between "Hey look at this flying thing! Isn't it neat?" and "WE'RE GOING TO HIT THE GROUND!"

The story helps, of course. People said Avatar was like being fifteen again, dazzled by the wonder of cinema, but there was a dourness and self-seriousness to it that prevented me from getting swept away -it didn't help that it was hopelessly out of touch, painting ridiculously broad strokes. Dragon is simple and compelling- all it takes is a dragon that's more instantly personifiable than Wall-E.

Nearly every other part is done right: there's none of the Shrek and Madagascar winking pop-culture references (though there's a funny moment when the dragon tries to smile that I hope is a self-referential gag about the Dreamworks Animation Face). The voice cast mostly makes sense- Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson as Scottish-brogued Vikings and Jay Baruchel as the awkward hero (America Ferrera doesn't bring much, nor take away anything- other than a job from a voice actress). The familiar father/son conflict is undercut by genuine warmth and humor, in particular the other misfit dragon-fighter trainees.

The dragons themselves are elaborate and wildly varied, the humans expressive and not too uncanny. It's a snappy hour forty pace. John Powell's score is solid if not spectacular (though I loved it in the early meeting-the-dragon scenes). And the palette of the film seems more photorealistic than any earlier CGI effort, maybe because the filmmakers brought in eight time Oscar nominated cinematographer ROGER F*CKING DEAKINS to coordinate lighting.

Hell, even the song during the credits was fantastic:


I wish I could say that this signals a change in the Dreamworks Animation brand, moving toward films with more heart and less forgettable mugging. But since their release schedule contains a fourth Shrek, a Shrek spinoff, and the completely unnecessary Madagascar 3, I wouldn't hold out hope. It's fair to point out that there's a Kung Fu Panda sequel coming, and Dreamworks does distribute Aardman projects in the US (Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit), so it's not all a loss.

So go see How To Train Your Dragon in Digital 3D (IMAX 3D you can't turn your head from side to side) and welcome the new era of cinema. I know there are things that will replicate 3D for the home theater, but there won't be anything like seeing this in person for a while. This must be what it was like before home video.

I think I might go again tomorrow.

A look at the taglines for this week's major releases. How do studios try to hook us when they only have a sentence?

Actual tagline: Kick Some Past.

An easy pun for an oddly high-concept stoner comedy. The trailer also invites you to Get Tub'd This March, whatever that may mean. The best beat is Craig Robinson's deadpan stare at the camera after saying the movie title.




Actual tagline: none?

It's like they thought we would get a general idea of the plot from the title, or something. I'm flabbergasted by this. Unless "From the creators of Shrek (meh) and Madagascar (boo)" counts.