You're very right about Leatherheads, it does feel like a classic film, mostly by way of the dialogue and story rather than the style and cinematography. I think George Clooney's actually a great Hollywood director.
My hate for Ron Howard is probably a combination of a dislike of his popular acclaim and a general distaste for his sentimental and simplistic movies that seem profound but aren't, by any measure. But more than anything I hate I hate I hate How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
I liked Wall-E, especially the opening 45 minutes. The film began to lose itself when it shifted from the world to the spaceship. Before there were just two characters (plus cockroach) and absolutely no dialogue, but on the spaceship suddenly we have an influx of characters and some weird extra explanatory plot developments. I didn't need the environmental metaphor or the didactic presence of the fat, machine-reliant humans. By the end I felt so preached at, which is something I hate in films whether I agree with them or not. You're absolutely right about the space dance, just gorgeous, and I loved the little cleaning robot, and the "island of misfit toys" assemblage of broken robots. All that stuff qualifies it as a great animated film. It was pretty much the human stuff that I didn't need; I didn't need the crowd of folk cheering Wall-E on, or the stupid plant in a shoe (which starts out like a subtle metaphor and becomes just a plot device) or any of that stuff.
More than anything, the (Chaplin-esque, Tati-esque) silent-movie opening half hour is a masterpiece, and I wish they could have kept it up. The rest of the film felt uneven, with parts considerably below Pixar's standards. I think my favorite of their films may now be Ratatouille.
Wall-E probably does have the Oscar, but it'll depend on what's nominated for me to say that it deserves it. The year Ratatouille beat Persepolis, I was a conflicted man. Not sure which of those "really" deserved the award, or if the whole concept of "awards" can handle the fact that these two great, different films were so outstanding when compared to pretty much any studio product that year (outside of, maybe, Eastern Promises).
I do think the Bond trailer looks a lot like a Bourne film; I also think it looks as generic as all previous Bonds. It's as if they tell the directors to be deliberately bland, to never "set the standard" for action films, as the Bournes have done, or Michael Bay before them, or Terminator 2 before him, or Spielberg before it, or Akira Kurosawa before all of them. Yet the Bond films are considered "definitive" action when they always play by the extremely strict structural guidelines and never deviate from the established formula (established in 1959 by Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and I'm not kidding). Casino Royale broke some rules, as did Goldeneye, and this one looks like it's about a rogue Bond, so it'll break a bit, but I'm sure there will still be a sexual romance, three or four distinct action set-pieces involving gadgets or vehicles or both, and witty one-liners peppered throughout. As for the "style" of the films, they've always looked like they were directed by the same person, which is not a sign of artistic excellence in my opinion.
Topic: Upcoming Movies (Read 13423 times)
