Video review: "Coco"

While otherwise a strong movie year, 2017 was notably lacking in outstanding animated films. “Coco” was easily the best of the lot, though I’d also give some love to the underappreciated “Ferdinand” and “Loving Vincent,” which was animation-by-painting.

Anthony Gonzalez voice-stars as Miguel, a young boy who lives to play music. Problem is, his entire family has a bad history with musicians, stemming back to his great-great grandmother banning tunes from the household after her troubadour husband walked out on them. So Miguel plays on the side, hoping to enter the big music contest in honor of Ernest de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), a late, great singer who’s basically the Elvis of Mexico.

On the holiday of Día de Muertos, a day of devotion to the deceased, Miguel finds himself trapped in the land of the dead, where status is determined by how well you are remembered. Ernesto is the prince of the city, while others like the hapless Hector, a bumbling charlatan voiced by Gael Garcia Bernal, eke out an existence on the edge of the magical city, in danger of being completely forgotten and fading away into nothingness.

The dead are represented as cool-looking skeletons with googly eyes, still wearing the clothes, hair and facial expressions they had in life. It can be a little creepy for younger children, but we soon take the denizens at face value and fall into adventure. Miguel has until the next day to lift the curse, or remain trapped among the dead forever.

Filled with fantastic colors, rousing music, a vivacious Latin cultural theme and a heartwarming tale about the importance of family, “Coco” is a sheer delight for all ages.

Bonus features are exquisite, though most come with the Blu-ray combo pack. The DVD version includes a feature-length commentary track by directed Lee Unkrich, co-director Adrian Molina and producer Darla K. Anderson, plus a featurette on Dante, Miguel’s dimwitted canine companion.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add seven deleted scenes and 11 more featurettes, including a travelogue through Mexico, the exhaustive animation process, original animated pieces and more.

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Review: "Coco"

So, it turns out the 1% are living it up even in the Land of the Dead.

In “Coco,” the delightful new animated film from Disney/Pixar, we journey to the great beyond during the Mexican holiday of Día de Muertos, a day dedicated to remembering the dead. In this telling, the spirits of the dead are partying it up themselves in a fabulous city filled with color and music.

Represented as skeletons who still retain their hair and clothes, the dead have their own set of currency. And it’s not money, but memories.

If you’ve got a lot of people among the living who still remember you and place your photograph on a shrine, you get to travel back to the living to visit with your loved ones. You also get to keep the gifts they offer up to your memory, and the admiration of your fellow bags of bones.

It’s a dizzy, delightful concept from screenwriters Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich. “Coco” is a Latin-flavored feast of lavish entertainment that also nudges us to remember what’s most important: family. Veteran Pixar director Lee Unkrich (with Molina serving as co-director) ably guides us through an action-filled plot that pauses for a few sustaining moments of stillness and contemplation.

Anthony Gonzalez provides the voice of Miguel, the scrappy offspring of a family of shoemakers who hate music. Well, that’s not strictly true, but his great-great grandmother Imelda (Alanna Ubach) was furious when her troubadour husband ran off on her and forbade any music in their household. Trouble is, Miguel is a gifted musician who craves to release the song in his heart.

Miguel idolizes Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), “the world’s greatest musician” and an Elvis-type figure who became rich and famous on the back of his movies and songs, most notably his power love ballad, “Remember Me.” (Molina, Germaine Franco, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez provide the film’s wonderful songs.)

Through a bunch of contretemps I won’t bore you with, Miguel finds himself transported to the Land of the Dead, trapped to remain there forever unless he obtains the right blessing by sunrise. And that means tracking down his hero, Ernesto, who resides in a castle where the “rich” -- those revered and remembered -- are having a big fiesta.

Tagging along is his dimwitted canine friend, Dante -- a street pup who for some reason can also travel to the land of the not-living. And he picks up another companion in Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal), a clownish rapscallion who claims to know Ernesto.

During their journeys they visit the slums of the dead, where those in danger of being forgotten completely eke out a pitiable existence. Miguel and Hector also bump into other notable figures, like Miguel’s ancestors and artist Frida Kahlo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley), who gets slightly skewered.

The skeletons are visual marvels, with expressive eyeballs floating magically inside their skulls and bones that easily come apart and join back together again. For instance, when Hector needs to get down a precipice, he simply lets his body fall to the bottom and smash, then the pieces snap back together.

Be forewarned: although there’s no overt violence at all in the movie, the skeletons, themes about death and a few fearsome critters will prove scary to smaller children. My 4-year-old needed some lap time during the movie.

It’s been a rather weak year for animation, so it’s an easy to call to crown the imaginative, emotive “Coco” as the best I’ve seen in 2017.

Review: "Rosewater"

I'm not sure if "Rosewater" would have receive all the intention it's getting if not for the presence of writer/director Jon Stewart, the TV funnyman/self-declared oracle who wanted to take a crack at something more serious. Still, it's a good film, a bit overly earnest, but certainly worthy of our attention.

It's not surprising Stewart chose the plight of journalist Maziar Bahari as his subject. The Canadian-Iranian was arrested by the Iranian regime in 2009 following an appearance on a segment for Stewart's "The Daily Show" in which the interviewer jokingly referred to Bahari as a Western spy. The Muslim fundamentalists who run the government, who aren't big on subtleties, arrested him and kept him in solitary confinement for nearly four months, where he was submitted to emotional and physical torture.

The film, based on a book by Bahari, takes a long time getting to its heart, which is Bahari (played by Gael García Bernal) trapped in a room with his "specialist," aka interrogator. The first 30 minutes or so show him wandering around Tehran covering the Iranian presidential elections, videotaping the sometimes-violent demonstrations, and visiting with his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo).

This section is supposed to establish Bahari's bona fides as a gentle free thinker who just wants to bear witness to the historical events taking place. But it slows down the proceedings greatly and sap them of emotional strength.

Once captured, though, the movie takes off even as the story stays more or less locked in a single room. Bahari is kept blindfolded almost all the time, facing a wall, while his specialist tries to elicit a confession out of him. Over the weeks and months that follow, he learns little about the man other than he uses rosewater as a cologne.

Trapped the rest of the time in a lonely cell, the man's mind begins to wander -- thinking of his pregnant wife, his father (Haluk Bilginer), who was himself kept a prisoner during the days of the Shah, and his sister (Golshifteh Farahani), who suffered a similar fate for being a Communist in the 1980s.

The conversations with his imagined father were the most interesting to me, as Bahari falls further into despair and considers giving up and signing the confession. In a demonstration of old-school manliness, his father's spirit urges him to "give them nothing" and resist the beatings, and walk out of prison with his head held high -- even if it takes years.

Eventually, Bahari finds a way to overcome his captors using his imagination and willpower. It's the triumph of the beta male.

The performances are generally solid, especially Kim Bodnia as "Rosewater," Bahari's chief interrogator. Bodnia portrays him as a man who knows he has an awful job, but tries to make the best of it as he can. Over time he forms a bond with his prisoner that is surprising to him, especially when his superior orders him to deliver an arbitrary beating.

"Rosewater" isn't a great drama, but it's a pretty good one. Whatever else you want to say, Jon Stewart has a future in movies if ever gets tired of being incredibly rich and successful on television.

Review: "Letters to Juliet"

When you see as many romantic comedies as I do, you practically shiver when you spy one on your calendar. After a thousand Meet Cutes and a thousand 90-minute dances in which the couple pretends to hate each other right up until the moment they realize they're in love, one craves something with a modicum of originality and heartfelt emotion.

Blow some kisses to "Letters to Juliet" for having both, if in modest quantities. The cast is attractive and engaging and we like spending time with them (with one notable exception), and all the gorgeous Tuscan landscapes are almost worth the price of admission by themselves.

Amanda Seyfried is some kind of workaholic, appearing in five movies in the last two years in addition to starring in the HBO series "Big Love." Here she plays Sophie, an ambitious wannabe writer who finds a long-lost love letter while traveling in Tuscany, and resolves to reunite the lovers and rekindle the romance. Of course, she finds some of her own along the way.

That might sound nice, except that she's already engaged to Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), a chef who's about to open his own restaurant in New York, and seems to view the trip as an opportunity to meet with suppliers and scout out exclusive vineyards.

Bored, Sophie visits the Casa de Giulietta in Verona, supposed home of the family that inspired "Romeo and Juliet." There's a tradition of visitors (read: women) attaching letters about their romantic troubles on the wall, and Sophie stumbles across "Juliet's secretaries" -- women who collect the letters, and answer them.

Beneath a broken brick Sophie finds a worn letter written in 1957 by Claire, an English girl who ran away from Lorenzo, her Italian lover. She writes her back, and to Sophie's surprise Claire herself appears a few days later, with her grandson in tow. Claire resolves to find her soul mate, and Sophie, sensing a good story, tags along.

I'm don't think I'm giving away anything in saying that Claire eventually finds her Lorenzo. The trailer for "Juliet" happily gives away this information, and even if it didn't, the parameters of a film like this demand such a resolution. Vanessa Redgrave -- still a stunner at 73 -- invests the character with a shy sort of determination that's enchanting.

Less interesting is the romance on the main stage. Claire's grandson Charlie is a completely stock character -- the uptight British prig whose fussiness and constant annoyance at the female lead are supposed to mask the passionate heart beneath. Hugh Grant and Colin Firth milked this sort of role for years.

I don't blame actor Christopher Egan, who's just playing the cards screenwriters Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan dealt him. The trouble is, they spend so much time making Charlie an unlikable twit, that when Sophie starts to fall for him we don't understand what it is she's supposed to be seeing.

Director Gary Winick has a nice eye for capturing the rolling hills and dirt roads of the countryside, the pastoral outdoor feasts, and the colorful Italian folk who all seem to have an instinctive understanding of the emotional logic of Claire's quest for lost love, and never question it.

Except for Romeo being such a star-cussed jerk, "Letters to Juliet" is an agreeable romp. In romcom terms, it may not be a soul mate, but makes for a pleasant enough one-off blind date.

2.5 stars out of four