"Cryptozoo" feels like a throwback to the late 1970s or early '80s -- an animated movie that is very much adult in tone and content, presenting a story that is both fanciful and cutting. There's lots of violence and nudity, though leavened with an environmental/moral message, making the whole enterprise seem like a more enlightened version of "Heavy Metal."
The story, set in the late 1960s, is about the world hiding multitudes of cryptids, or mythological creatures, that various factions of humanity want to exploit or help. Some of the cryptids are dangerous and beastly, others very human-like and intelligent. They're constantly in danger of being discovered, captured and sold into servitude.
There are mammoth scorpions, tiny imp-like critters, a South American snake as big as a skyscraper, figures with no head but a face on their torso, unicorns, pegasi, dragons and cryptids that are just dancing balls of light.
The film features voices by some name actors including Lake Bell, Michael Cera, Zoe Kazan and Peter Stormare. Written and directed by Dash Shaw, it features an animation team led by Jane Samborski. At first glance, the animation (largely hand-drawn, I believe) may seem to lack the sharpness and polish of what we've become used to, possibly even bordering an amateurish.
You've got to love a spin-off where they just added one word to the title: “The LEGO Batman Movie” plucks the breakout character from the first movie and gives him his own flick, with gleeful fun for kiddies resulting.
There is a goodly helping of inside jokes for grownups, but these movies are aimed squarely at the 10-and-under set. They’re colorful, fast-paced, full of action and mildly crude humor.
Will Arnett returns as the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne, who’s a self-centered jerk trying to mask his yearning for a family to stave off his crushing loneliness. One is soon presented to him in the form of a boy ward of the state who will become Robin (Michael Cera), Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and his own loyal butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes).
Zach Galifianakis voices the Joker, who launches a scheme to free all the villains trapped in the Phantom Zone. He’s stuck somewhere between trying to kill Batman and wanting a relationship with him. Perhaps one will lead to the other.
We get to see virtually every bad guy Batman has fought over the years in LEGO form, along with a bunch of new ones like Condiment Man. (His power his exactly what you think.) The blocky, deceivingly crude animation is slick and appealing.
“The LEGO Batman” movie is entirely a retread of the first movie, but with the pieces changed all around into different forms.
Bonus features are quite extensive, and -- in a move that’s increasingly rare -- you get the same goodies with the standard DVD version as the Blu-ray upgrade.
There’s a feature-length commentary track by director Chris McKay and his crew, deleted scenes, four new Batman animated shorts (favorite title: “Batman is Just Not That Into You”) and another short for the upcoming “LEGO Ninjago” movie. Plus, social media promos, trailers and six making-of featurettes.
Batman was the breakout character of “The Lego Movie” -- which is not bad for a guy who’s been hanging around since 1939.
He basically operated as comic relief, voiced by a mock-gravely Will Arnett in a spoof of the character’s grim persona. It worked because on some level I think most of us find Bats a bit teadious after a while. Having something like a dozen movie iterations doesn’t help.
For me, the highest point of parody was when Batman played some music he’d written, pounding thrash rock punctuated by the lyrics, “Darkness!! …No parents!!”
So now he’s got his own movie, and the challenge is to see if they can sustain a parody of a tiresome superhero without it becoming tiresome itself. The answer is: mostly.
I feel sort of ridiculous offering a story summary of the movie. Credited to five (!) writers, it’s a deliberately chaotic mashup of Batman lore, including virtually every villain he’s ever fought, plus a bunch more created on the spot.
One of them, Condiment Man, has a superpower of squirting mustard and ketchup at you. Not even powerful arcs of sauce, just limp little spurts that fall ineffectually at his feet. Maybe try not to be such a traditionalist, dude -- work some salsa or tzatziki into the mix.
Anyway, the joke is that Batman/Bruce Wayne is super arrogant and self-centered, but secretly he’s desperately lonely and in denial about it. He spends his off time loitering around the bat cave, pestered by his butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), about letting people in.
Fortunately, a group of people immediately presents itself as his potential new family, including Alfred himself, a nervous scamp of an orphan who will become Robin (Michael Cera) and Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), the new commissioner of Gotham City. She’s taking over from her dad, Jim Gordon, after graduating from “Harvard Police School.” Dear daddy just pushed the button for the bat signal whenever trouble appeared, but the new sheriff in town has some discomforting ideas about Batman sharing the limelight.
The threat comes from the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), the Batman’s old nemesis who’s feeling a bit neglected these days. Batman won’t even admit to calling Joker his arch-enemy, saying that he likes to fight lots of different people and doesn’t have any preferences. “I like to fight around,” he says, in one of many in-jokes aimed at adults.
So Joker and his gang get the idea to release all the super-villains trapped by Superman in the Phantom Zone, and soon Bats has got more on his hands than he can handle.
Directed by Chris McKay, “The Lego Batman Movie” is a stylistic clone of “The Lego Movie” – ridiculously fast-paced, lots of colorful action that the eye can’t all track, chockful of quips and comedic asides.
It’s aimed squarely at kids, but is smart and savvy enough to throw in enough to keep parents engaged, too. Compared to so many moribund animated flicks lately that couldn’t pull off that trick -- “Sing,” “Trolls” -- it almost seems like a super-power.
I have heard “Sausage Party” described as one of the best movies of the year, by people whose opinion I respect. I’ve heard it called a smutty smear of cinematic excrement. Both descriptions leave me puzzled.
Certainly, “Sausage Party” is foul-mouthed, foul-minded, foul-humored, just… foul. It’s in the “dirty animated movie” tradition of “Fritz the Cat,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” and the like. Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Salma Hayak, Jonah Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera and a host of other big names give voice to pieces of anthropomorphized food living in the grocery store who dream of one day being bought and taken home with humans.
To them, it’s their very reason for existence, their ticket to “the Great Beyond.” Little do they know that their destiny involves being chewed up and swallowed. Of course, they soon find out about their gruesome fate and set out to escape it.
Rogen and Wiig are the centerpieces as Frank and Brenda, who are a hot dog and bun with a burning desire to one day be together. Along the way there’s plenty of violence, cursing, and the whole thing culminates in a massive food orgy. Yeah.
Let’s put it this way: the villain is a real douche -- as in, the feminine hygiene product.
There are certainly some funny moments in “Sausage Party.” And the movie is more thoughtful than you might initially think, with some clever observations on how our political, ethnic and religious divides are largely constructed illusions.
In the end, though, it’s a breezily entertaining flick that will pass the time, but deserves neither the accolades or vitriol that have been heaved its way.
Bonus features are pretty good, though some of them are only available as digital downloads available through certain retailers. These include an alternative ending that occurs in the real (non-animated) world.
The DVD comes with a making-of doc, “Animation Imaginatorium,” as well as three featurettes. The Blu-ray adds another featurette, appropriately titled, “Shock and Awe: How Did This Get Made?” Plus a gag reel and “Line-O-Rama.”
What could have been a terribly tiresome joke turns out to be an extravagantly funny one. Young(ish) Hollywood stars playing themselves convene for a wild party at James Franco's house, which gets broken up by ... the Apocalypse.
Yeah, really: brimstone, demons, the whole bit. Needless to say, they aren't among those who ascend into heaven during The Rapture, which leaves these entitled stars feeling rather miffed. Things grow progressively worse, the food and water run low and they start turning on each other, with merrily over-the-top results.
I think what makes it a giddy romp instead of a giant sandwich of self-indulgence is that the versions of themselves played by the comedy stars are thoroughly unlikable and selfish. Each seems to be doing an amalgam of their various film roles, with all the negative characteristics played up.
It goes so far that they crack on each other for bad role choices or movies that underwhelmed. Seth Rogen, who co-directed and co-wrote the film with Evan Goldberg, gets a lot of abuse for the mush-brained "The Green Hornet" ... for which, of course, Rogen and Goldberg did the screenplay.
The bare-bones setup is that Seth is hosting his old friend Jay Baruchel in L.A. for a few days. Jay is estranged from Seth's new buddies, including Franco, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson. He gets strong-armed into attending a shindig at Franco's swank new Hollywood pad, it gets kinda awkward -- until death rains from the sky and holes open up in the earth.
Most of the guests and other celebrities get killed off rather quickly, including Mindy Kaling, Rihanna, Paul Rudd and Jason Segal. Michael Cera, playing an arrogant coked-up version of himself, meets an especially messy end.
The survivors spend the next days and weeks holed up in Franco's house (which somehow manages to retain electricity even as the rest of town is fried into a smoking cinder).
The humor is really, really raunchy, with a bend toward the scatological. The running thread is that the entire bunch is ruled by narcissism, even when it seems like they're playing buddy-buddy.
Jay is the lone voice of reason, suggesting they repent their sins and hope for salvation. But it's a hard sell with this bunch. Their facility with religious faith extends only as far as Franco comparing the Holy Trinity to Neapolitan ice cream.
Emma Watson has a wicked turn playing herself, who busts into the boys' house with an axe and can't wait to bust out again.
"This Is the End" is essentially a one-joke movie, but it's one these young show biz funnymen gleefully -- and skillfully -- play on themselves.
"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is one of those movies that divides people into groups: Those who loved it and those who couldn't care less about it (and probably never saw it).
Despite generally glowing reviews and a lot of excitement from its geekeratti target audience, "Scott Pilgrim" died at the box office. The saga of a Toronto dweeb who must fight the seven evil ex-boyfriends of his new lady love -- all done with video game-style super powers and an indie hard rock soundtrack -- must've seemed too far out for most ticket buyers.
I thought it was fun and fresh, and certainly one of the more visually inventive films of the year.
Michael Cera plays Scott, an impish slacker who meets Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the ultimate cool girl. Scott makes it his mission in life to become her boyfriend, which he accomplishes in short order.
Alas, Ramona has those seven nasty exes, who have sort of pact to destroy anyone who would replace them.
Director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Bacall based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, uses each of the fights as natural chapters in the plot. The evil boyfriends are played by stars such as Jason Schwartzman, Brandon Routh and Chris Evans.
Ultimately, "Scott Pilgrim" may have been too cool for its own good.
If you're a fan of this movie, you're going to want to buy your own disc just for the extra features, which are among the best I've ever seen.
The extras are the same for single-disc DVD and Blu-ray editions. There are four separate feature-length commentary tracks, including one by Cera and the other principal actors. There's also a blooper reel, still photo gallery, and 27 minutes worth of deleted scenes -- including an alternate ending where he and Ramona don't end up together.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack is where things really get awesome.
On top of the stuff listed above, there's the standard goodies: A 50-minute making-of doc, a 16-minute feature on the various musical acts (including Beck) who wrote songs for the movie, and other featurettes on subjects like visual effects and sound design.
But they're just getting rolling.
A collection of pre-production video, including audition reels, animatics and rehearsal footage, runs 87 minutes all by itself. There are director's production blogs, music videos, and an Adult Swim cartoon based on Scott Pilgrim.
My favorite goody: "Scott Pilgrim vs. the Censors," a "TV safe" version of the film -- the joke being that it's only four minutes long.
"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is like the entirety of American youth culture crammed into a single package: It's about love, alienation, video games, comic books, chord-grinding indie/punk rock, texting, dead-end jobs and evil ex-boyfriends.
Mostly, video games and ex-boyfriends.
Michael Cera, Generation Y's poster boy of angst-y charm, plays Scott Pilgrim, an itinerant bass player with a Toronto band called Sex Bob-omb.
Say it out loud and fast and the band's name, if not exactly making sense, at least becomes a cool, quirky statement. You could say the same about the movie.
Scott's mission: He must defeat the seven ex-boyfriends of Ramona Flowers, his new-new girlfriend. (As opposed to his old-new girlfriend, Knives Chau. In other words, she's his ex, but doesn't know it yet.)
Each of the battles is played out as an arcade-style brawl of superpowers, with the scrawny Scott able to leap and punch like the avatars of the video games he plays. Why he's suddenly able to summon these abilities for the fights with Ramona's exes, but is an everyday schmo otherwise, is a subject never broached.
Other people can also perform amazing feats when called upon, which makes a little more sense, in the sense that it doesn't. As near as I can figure, it's like everybody in the movie's universe can hit a button on their personal game controller and transform into a super-hero, while never leaving their alter-ego behind.
Other people in this world -- which is populated entirely by those under age 30 -- accept these battles as a matter of course and settle in to spectate, even though they tend to interrupt the concerts and dance clubs they were attending.
I enjoyed myself watching "Scott Pilgrim," at times immensely so. But I wonder if anyone who's not intimately tapped into its peculiar vibe, built largely around the Mario Bros. oeuvre, is going to embrace (or even understand) the film.
(For example, if right now you're thinking Mario Bros. refers to a pizza chain run by siblings, then this movie is not for you.)
Cera has become the unlikeliest movie star -- a movie star being different from a film actor in that while an actor plays many different roles, a star always plays himself. In Cera's case, he's a mumbling, self-doubting drink of water who finds his resolve when the girl of his dreams appears.
His pursuit of Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who favorably recalls a young Winona Ryder) is fumbling and pathetic, but inexplicably successful. Soon he and the pink-haired (for now) Ramona are an item, which is destined to put a damper on the bubbly mood of Knives (Ellen Wong).
The story -- the screenplay is by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright, who also directed, based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley -- is framed around the ex-boyfriend fights. Each one has its own loopy rules and energy, and pop-up messages appear just like in a video game to let us know when people have gained new abilities or earned an extra life (never hurts to have one of those).
The boyfriends tend to be played by recognizable actors like Chris Evans and Brandon Routh (both of whom also moonlight in other movies as super-heroes -- Captain America and Superman, respectively).
There's no real danger to the action, of course -- if you die in an arcade game, you can always drop in another quarter to continue. (I say "quarter" figuratively, since it's been awhile ... what do those things cost now, like a buck-fifty?)
"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" doesn't really add up to much more than high score on a screen. But it achieves it with a fresh, brash style that demands, "Are you really cool enough to like this movie?"
Michael Cera has become an unlikely but bonafide movie star by essentially playing the same role over and over. (Don't knock it; John Wayne lasted 40 years that way.)
In Cera's case, he's always the smart, verbose kid of ironic disposition and dubious social skills who's desperate to win the attention of a particular girl, or just one in general.
"Youth in Revolt" is a refreshing turn for him because he plays the prototypical Cera character, Nick Twisp, but also Francois Dillinger, the "supplementary persona" Nick creates to lend him the bad-boy courage he needs to land the girl of his dreams.
This comes about from Nick's accurate observation, "In movies, the good guy gets the girl. In real life, it's usually the (jerk)."
Francois looks just like Nick, though a bit older, more sallow, with a faint mustache and facial peach fuzz. He's perpetually smoking a cigarette, staring at Nick with disquieting blue eyes while suggesting he do all sorts of unpleasant and usually illegal things.
Nick is naturally so nice and meek that Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), the smart, French-loving girl he meets while staying at the Restless Axles Trailer Park in Ukiah, Calif., has to hurry along their dawdling courtship with the instruction, "Kiss me, you weenie!"
Alas, events keep conspiring to keep them apart. Soon Nick has to move back to his home in Oakland with his mom (Jean Smart) and her ignoramus boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis).
With Francois' help, Nick arranges to get thrown out of his mother's home and move in with his dad (an ill-used Steve Buscemi), whom he finds a job for in Ukiah. But then Sheeni's overly religious parents send her to a private school in Santa Cruz.
Even worse, Sheeni's longtime suitor, the poet/athlete Trent -- who's heard of but not seen -- just happens to be transferred to the same school.
The film was adapted from C.D. Payne's novel (actually, a series) by Gustin Nash and directed by Miguel Arteta, who's mostly been doing TV lately but got his start with similarly quirky indie fare like "Chuck & Buck" and "The Good Girl."
It's funny in an urbane way, and I enjoyed the characters and spending time with them. A few things don't quite add up. Sheeni remains something of a mystery -- she's more a collection of a traits a geekboy would imagine his perfect mate to have rather than a believable character.
The movie also has a habit of discovering and discarding interesting minor characters that we wish would stick around a little longer. There's Lefty, Nick's ostensible best friend, who's in the first couple of scenes, goes away for an hour, comes back and then disappears permanently.
Fred Willard has the beginnings of a nice turn as a kooky neighbor with a thing for helping illegal aliens, but again, by the time he turns up again we'd mostly forgotten about him.
Sheeni's brother (Justin Long) shows up just long enough to get everyone stoned and then leave. Vijay, a fellow sex-addled student at Nick's new school, accompanies him on an excursion to Sheeni's school that seems like it was lifted entirely from an '80s T&A flick.
But the good traits of "Youth in Revolt" outweigh its detractions. Francois steals every scene he's in, which is appropriate for a movie that celebrates, or at least recognizes the usefulness of, bad boys.
Charlyne Yi is one of the those people you're probably vaguely aware of. She's a young (23) stand-up comedienne who's appeared in small parts in a few movies and TV shows, including as "one of the guys" in "Knocked Up." She's small, cute but disheveled, with a penchant for wearing pulled-up hoodies and flyaway hair drooping over her thick black-framed glasses.
Most distinctive is her way of talking, which comes out in a rushed stammer, like the very act of conversing is mortally embarrassing for her. If you've seen any of her stand-up, you know that the painfully shy persona is part of her act. Similarly, her first major film role in the quasi-documentary "Paper Heart" leaves us unsure where truth ends and play-acting begins.
It's difficult to say if "Paper Heart" should be called a mockumentary. Those films, like "Spinal Tap," feature made-up characters and events in order to spoof a particular slice of society. But "Paper Heart" is full of real people, using their real names.
Yi obviously uses her own moniker and persona. The film is about her belief that there's no such thing as love, or at least that she is incapable of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, early in the filming process she stumbles backward into a relationship with Michael Cera, the actor, using his own name and (we think) persona. Complicating matters further, we learn that Cera and Yi were once in a relationship in real life -- although, since this film purports (at least on the surface) to be their real lives, we don't know if what we're seeing is the actual substance of their romance, or some bastardized version served up for the movie.
If I were to guess, I'd bet on the latter. The notion that this whole piece is not a document of reality but an opportunity for clever comedy is further bolstered by the fact that the director of the film, Nicolas Jasenovec, is the third principle character in "Paper Heart" -- but he's played by an actor, Jake M. Johnson.
Most of the movie consists of Yi and Jasenovec (or his on-screen doppelganger, at least) traveling around the country, talking to people about love. There are a number of interviews with older couples who have been together for 30, 40, 50 years or more, and they share the stories of their meeting and romance.
One of the interviews is with a divorce court judge in Texas, with his wife who is an attorney he met on the job, who admits that he pressured his wife's boss to make her go out with him or lose her job. Yi conducts the interview in the courtroom, with the judge on his seat (but wearing a leather jacket instead of his robes) and his wife in the witness chair. This is where the film is at it's best, where we're stuck in this zone that's vaguely icky and uncomfortable, but also with heart-warming notes; the strange combination ends up inducing chuckles at the absurdity of it.
But most of the movie is concentrated on Yi and her relationships with Cera and the director, and at times it gets rather slow and draggy. I have to admit that part of my frustration with these sections was centered on Yi herself -- like Woody Allen, her on-screen shtick gets old in large servings. I never really connected to her, whether she's playing a character or herself, because either way it felt like a put-on. At least the movie didn't wander into obvious territory, with the director realizing that he's in love with his subject.
The live-action scenes are interspersed with nifty animated segments using crude cut-out figures and dioramas, with Yi as the puppeteer. The final one of these, which closes the film, is quite funny without really adding up to much. That's pretty much how I feel about the whole of "Paper Heart."
