Review: "The Huntsman: Winter's War"

And here arrives Hollywood's most unlikely, unanticipated sequel.

"Snow White and the Huntsman" was an execrable piece of garbage, mindless churning of mythology with a heavy ladling of flashy CGI sauce. But it conjured up a cauldron full of money -- nearly $400 million. So a follow-up became inevitable.

Then star Kristen Stewart was revealed to have dallied with the very married first-time director. Both were promptly given the boot. So how to make a Snow White sequel without Snow White, and give the (unnecessary) male sidekick the spotlight?

Apparently, you give the special effects supervisor from the last film, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, his own rookie shot in the director's chair, order up a script from a pair of journeymen screenwriters (Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin) and put the whole thing on a hurry-up production schedule of 12 months from start of shooting to release -- extraordinarily short for a big-budget spectacle with lots of computerized imagery.

Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, right?

Here's the funny thing: "The Huntsman: Winter's War" is actually an improvement on the original. Which isn't to say it's a great film, or even a good one. But it's a breezily entertaining piece of escapist claptrap, breathed to life by some fine actors who make a brave go at some awkward dialogue and plotting.

And Emily Blunt shines as Freya, the ice queen and sister to Ravenna (Charlize Theron), who was undone by Snow White. In an affecting opening sequence set years before the first movie, we witness her tragedy and transformation into a withdrawn, super-powered mistress who steals children and turns them into her army of huntsmen to conquer all the lands of the north.

This was how Eric, aka The Huntsman, came to be. He rebelled against Freya's edict on showing love by falling for Sara (Jessica Chastain), another unwilling recruit. They were punished severely and separated, apparently by death, though I'm not giving anything away in saying that Sara shows up alive and well -- and mightily P.O.'d -- about a third of the way through.

She blames Eric for abandoning her, but they've got bigger issues to tackle. Namely, that the Magic Mirror has been stolen after giving off all sorts of Evil Warning emanations. Freya wants it for herself as its magic would make her unstoppable, so the huntscouple are on the case.

Tagging along are a pair of dwarves, sweetly dim Nion (Nick Frost) from the last movie and his half-brother Gryff (Rob Brydon), a cross bean-counting sort. They're coming with because... actually, I'm not sure why they're there. Or why a pair of female dwarf thieves (Alexandra Roach and Sheridan Smith) are soon added to the troupe, with obvious smoochy possibilities.

Love conquers all, I guess. Even dangerously thin plots.

The CGI is quite good, though Freya's frost attacks are too clearly inspired by Elsa's from "Frozen." The molten gold effect of the mirror's magic is revived, with a twist.

The action scenes are rather discombobulated, with a lot of needless parkour-style jumps and flips. And there's an abundance of "shaky cam" situated too close to the action to make sense of anything -- the hallmark of filmmakers who don't know how to stage properly.

Hemsworth's character is still a sneering jerk whose ability doesn't match up to his attitude. Given his grim upbringing in Conan-style martial slavery, you'd think he'd be a bit darker. So Chastain's Sara supplies the gloom aplenty.

There really wasn't any reason for this sequel to be made. It's a slapdash affair, using special effects trickery to wallpaper over a story made up of spare parts. But I'd rather watch it 10 times in a row than the first movie again.

Video review: "The Boxtrolls"

“The Boxtrolls” was easily my favorite animated film of last year – partly because the stop-motion gem is so visually alive and imaginative, but also because there really wasn’t much in the way of competition. Let’s face it, once we got past this movie and one or two others, 2014 was something of a cartoon wasteland.

This picture, based on a book by Alan Snow, simply oozes with British culture and appeal, from the Cockney accents and damp cobblestone streets down to the diaspora of wonky teeth. Set in the late 19th or early 20th century, the story concerns a secret society of gentle pointy-headed critters who live underground and wear castoff cardboard boxes instead of clothes.

They don’t have a discernible language or even names; they each go by whatever picture is on their boxes, which they pilfer – along with many other things – from the humans above. The exception is Eggs (voice of Isaac Hempstead-Wright), a human boy who was kidnapped (sort of) by the boxtrolls as a baby and raised as one of their own.

Their adventures take them above ground, where the terrifying Archibald Snatcher (a delightful Ben Kingsley) has appointed himself chief boxtroll catcher. Soon most of the troll population has been grabbed up and tossed into his dungeons. The daughter of a local lord (Elle Fanning) provides reluctant help, mostly out of resentment toward her absentee father.

It seems Snatcher dreams of joining the cadre of “White Hats” – genteel gentlemen who run the town, ostensibly -- though they don’t seem to do more than sit around sampling exotic cheeses. By portraying the boxtrolls as a scourge, Snatcher hopes to stoke public fear and use it to springboard himself into their good graces.

Visually arresting and impishly funny, “The Boxtrolls” is a family-friendly treat.

Fortunately, the film is being released on video with a host of excellent extra features. There’s a feature-length commentary track by directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, and a raft of featurettes touching on all aspects of production, from casting the voice actors to creating a fancy ballroom dance scene with stop-motion puppets.

There are also preliminary animatic sequences and much more.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Boxtrolls"

I thought last year a slow one for quality animated films, but if anything 2014 has been even duller. “Frozen” finally came along at year’s end to brighten things up, and this time September has delivered its own wondrous surprise: “The Boxtrolls.”

This stop-motion gem is one of the best of its ilk since “Coraline.” It’s a whiz-bang collection of fun action, Dickensian backdrop, cute critters and one really nasty, yet pleasing, villain.

Based on a novel by Alan Snow, the story centers on the titular trolls, who live underground and wear old cardboard boxes instead of clothes. Though they tend to pilfer things left unattended, they’re more tinkerers who love to build junk than malicious marauders. They go by the names of whatever’s on their box: Fish, Shoe, etc.

I just love the trolls’ look, with pasty skin, pointy ears, tufts of random hair and big liquid eyes surrounded by dark patches like a domino mask, which makes them look like vintage cartoon burglars. They don’t really speak, using a collection of croaks, clicks and squeaks to communicate.

The boxtrolls have gotten a bad rap from the humans after they allegedly pilfered a baby years ago. Archibald Snatcher, a lowlife climber who yearns to wear one of the “White Hats” signifying town leaders, appoints himself chief boxtroll catcher, and sets about exterminating the population.

Snatcher is voiced heroically by Ben Kingsley, in one of the best vocal performances in recent memory. Snatcher chews and growls his words as if they are poison to his mouth – not unlike the fine cheeses favored by the White Hats, which he craves to share despite the fact they make him swell up like a landed jellyfish. And he’s got a buxom alter ego.

He has a trio of henchmen who range in malevolence from reluctant to gleeful – Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan do the voices. The nicer pair proclaim themselves the good guys, but worry they’re really evil stooges.

Isaac Hepstead-Wright provides the voice of Eggs, a human boy who was the baby kidnapped by the boxtrolls, though there’s more to it than that. He’s grown up with them and is convinced he is a boxtroll, despite evidence to the contrary. (He insists his ability to use English is a “speech impediment.”)

Eggs finds himself stranded on the city streets topside, where he encounters Winnie Portley-Rind (Elle Fanning), daughter of the local lord (Jared Harris). Willful and obstinate, Winnie is infuriated by her parents’ continual ignoring of what she has to say, particularly with regard to the truth about the boxtrolls.

Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi are animation veterans without a lot of experience in the top seat, but prove to be top-notch visualists and storytellers. Irena Brignull and Adam Pava wrote the screenplay.

My guess is the stop-motion work has been augmented with some computer-generated effects, since there some things – like smoke dissipating from Snatcher’s various steamworks contraptions – that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.

I’m no purist myself – whatever works onscreen, works. This is a movie of dense layers, from the grimy cobblestone streets and buildings to extreme close-ups of the characters, which are incredibly detailed and facially expressive. (And those wonky teeth – so British!)

“The Boxtrolls” is the sort of delightfully inventive family picture that parents might be tempted to indulge in a second viewing – on their own, with the kiddies tucked in at home.

Review: "Ice Age: Continental Drift"

I was all prepared to dislike "Ice Age: Continental Drift." The series has not captivated me in its three previous iterations. Though the animation from Blue Sky Studios has been duly impressive, the characters and plots seemed decidedly downmarket -- crafted more for obvious appeal to kiddies than genuine amazement and storytelling craftsmenship.

Plus, these movies seem to come out every three or so years like clockwork, piling up reliable mountains of dough, not to mention inescapable toy and marketing tie-ins.

Heck, I'm not even truly sure if I saw the last one, 2009's "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs." Manny, the mammoth lead character voiced by Ray Romano, has somehow acquired a teenage daughter (Keke Palmer) that I have no memory of. Last I recall, he was still wooing wife-to-be Ellie (Queen Latifah).

Along with laconic sabre-tooth tiger Diego (Denis Leary, sounding bored like only Denis Leary can) and goofball sloth Sid (John Leguizamo), this cast of critters has certainly faced every prehistoric peril imaginable. First it was an ice age, then global warming, then the return of the dinosaurs.

I wonder if we'll ever see: "Ice Age: Natural Selection Bites," when the dwindling food supply can no longer feed Manny's bulk, and Diego decides he'd rather have a Sid snack than run with his adopted pack.

So, to sum up, my expectations were pretty low.

Therefore I was pleasantly surprised by a reasonably entertaining bit of family fun. The main characters are still cloying to me, but other aspects overcome the staleness. There's a spectacular action sequence to open things as the planet's land masses start pulling apart from each other -- due to the misadventures of the Scrat, the acorn-obsessed beastie who's sort of the mascot of the series.

All I can say is, the Scrat may seem pathetic but his survivability and outsized impact on planetary development actually make him the most powerful creature on Earth.

The new film also boasts a really terrific villain, Captain Gutt, a baboon pirate voiced with dastardly aplomb by Peter Dinklage. He even gets to sing a clever sea shanty with an assist from Jennifer Lopez, who plays Gutt's snow leopard first mate, Shira.

The pirates ride around on gigantic floating icebergs, stealing booty (food is pretty much the only valuable) and enslaving survivors of the continental catastrophe.

There are several other new additions who add some hot sauce to the mix. Wanda Sykes plays Sid's Granny, who's a combination of every old-person joke in the book, but she sells it and has several very funny moments. Aziz Ansari voices Squint, a hyperactive rabbit on the pirate crew, who yearns to move up the masthead. Nick Frost adds more comedic relief as a dim-witted elephant seal.

And Josh Gad plays Louis, a tiny molehog who's sweet on Peaches -- that's Manny and Ellie's daughter; the prospect of their coupling raises some urgent anatomical issues.

The story's about what you'd expect. Manny and his best pals get separated from the rest of their clan, and spend the rest of the movie trying to get back together. They run afoul of Captain Gutt, foil his plans, and he goes on one long revenge kick. Meanwhile, Manny's daughter has to learn to resist peer pressure and Be Herself.

"Ice Age: Continental Drift" held few surprises for me, but I have to admit that the execution by the filmmakers and voice cast is impressive. For lowbrow distractions for tykes, one could do worse.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Adventures of Tintin"

A crazy quilt of over-the-top action and cartoon wonders, "The Adventures of Tintin" is the first animated film by Steven Spielberg, and hopefully not the last.

This giddy, fast-paced thrill ride defies gravity and logic as the titular character, a boy adventurer, and his pals get into one unbelievable scrape after another.

Spielberg employs 3-D motion capture technology similar to what his contemporary, Robert Zemeckis, has used in his last three films (with results varying from the wonderful "The Polar Express" to the woeful "A Christmas Carol").

The animation is absolute terrific, hitting that sweet spot in between a near-photographic representation of reality and just enough cartoony distortion to keep things above the rim of the "uncanny valley." Peter Jackson, whose Weta studio handled the animations, is a producer and reportedly will direct the next "Tintin" movie with Spielberg producing.

(It is being released in 3-D, and quite a good rendition of the much-overused cinematic trick it is. Though Spielberg has a little too much fun pointing swords, canes and other objects at the audience for gasp moments.)

Tintin looks more or less like a normal boy, except for a swoop of red hair that makes his forelock resemble a mini mohawk. The grown-ups tend to be just a little off, with oversized eyes or noses of dimensions rarely seen outside of clown college. Even though the textures are realistic -- right down to the alcohol-induced crinkles around Captain Haddock's eyes -- we never forget we're watching a cartoon.

The movie is based on the comic books by Hergé, mostly unknown here in the States but a big deal across the pond in Europe. Screenwriting trio Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish combine three of Hergé's stories into a freewheeling yarn that makes hardly a lick of sense, but isn't meant to.

Jamie Bell voices Tintin, a self-described boy journalist who seems to lack a surname or parents. For that matter, he lives by himself in a small apartment with just his rapscallion dog Snowy, has his own money and a gun to boot.

Tintin's specialty is sleuthing out big crimes, and then writing about them. (Though, strangely, all the newspaper clips he has framed in his home are other papers about his latest triumph, rather than the ones carrying his byline.) He combines an encyclopedic knowledge of history and culture with gumption and a whole lot of luck.

The end result is something like "The Da Vinci Code" meets "Raiders of the Lost Ark" meets the Hardy Boys.

Things get started when Tintin purchases an extravagant model of a 17th century ship at an open air market. Right on his heels is Ivanovich Sakharine (Daniel Craig), a peevish professorial type who wants the ship for himself. Before long gun shots have been fired, the ship reveals a clue and it's off to the races.

Tintin's journey brings him to the ship of Haddock, a drunkard whose family traces its roots back to Sir Francis Haddock, heroic captain of the Unicorn, whose vast treasure was lost in a pirate attack by the notorious Red Rackham. Both Haddocks are voiced by Andy Serkis, and a marvelous vocal performance it is, such that one would never have guessed this was the same hidden performer behind Gollum and King Kong.

Haddock's a great character, a man of conviction who doubts his own courage. In fact, in the latter half of the movie he tends to dominate to such an extent that Tintin fades into the background.

The action set pieces are as marvelous as they are preposterous. There's one long chase through the streets and skies of the Arab town of Bagghar, with Tintin and Haddock pursuing a bird while being chased by a motorcycle, a tank and a hotel (yes, really). They fly through the air, tumble and fall, crash through windows and nobody ever suffers more damage than a few scrapes.

"The Adventures of Tintin" doesn't really add up to much more than a good time, but often it's a really, really good time.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Paul"

"Paul" is quite possibly the first extraterrestrial stoner comedy. At least, I couldn't think of any others offhand. I Googled "movies in which aliens get stoned" and got zippo. Maybe I should've used Bing.

The alien and his human cohorts do not actually spend the entire movie getting high, but this film definitely has a crunchy road-trip vibe. Think "Cheech & Chong" meets "Starman," with some "Shaun of the Dead"-type genre spoofing. This latter flavor is not surprising, considering that "Shaun" collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost wrote the screenplay and star in "Paul."

The title character, a buggy-eyed protagonist who can turn invisible and heal people and animals with a touch, is voiced by Seth Rogen in his blowsy, cool-dude mode. We get the distinct impression that on his world, he's the Jeff Spicoli. At least, we hope he is. Paul (a nickname, and later we discover how he got it) crashed his spaceship in the desert more than 60 years ago, and seems to have little ambition or direction in life.

He's been the guest-slash-prisoner of the U.S. government ever since, and would've been content to stay there until he recently learned that he's outlived his usefulness. He goes on the lam, smashes his stolen car and gets a lift from Graeme and Clive (Pegg and Frost), a pair of British nerds taking a tour of Area 51 and other alien-themed hot spots in a rented RV.

There's a lot of funny in-jokes about why all aliens in pop culture have the same general resemblance as Paul. He tells them the government disseminated those images so in case more of Paul's folks show up, people will at least have a frame of reference and not totally freak out. There's even a hilarious flashback where Paul gives Steven Spielberg the idea for E.T.'s glowing magic finger.

Hot on his trail is Zoil (Jason Bateman), a Secret Service agent who's really serious about his job, and seems impervious to humor. He takes orders from a female boss we only hear over the phone, and has to deal with a pair of nitwit rookies (Joe Lo Truglio and Bill Hader) assigned to help.

Paul, Graeme and Clive hide out in a trailer park, where they bump into Ruth (Kristen Wiig), the daughter of a Bible-thumper. She wears those odd glasses with one frame blacked out to conceal an eye condition, and it doesn't take special powers to guess Paul will have something to say about it.

His intervention helps her cling a little less bitterly to her religion, and soon Ruth is tagging along, determined to try out some new swear words and maybe break a few commandments. It's a charming, cheeky and funny role, and underlines the burning necessity that Hollywood give Wiig her own star vehicle, now.

"Paul" is directed by Greg Mottola, who helmed the ridiculously overrated "Superbad," but also the criminally ignored "Adventureland." Together with Frost and Pegg's script, they manag to find a loose, entertaining groove that's way funnier than "Pineapple Express." The humor is generally in well-traveled terrain with a generous helping of dick jokes, but somehow having it coming out of the mouth of a little green man makes it fresh and ironic.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Pirate Radio"

It's a slow time for new films arriving on video -- "Pirate Radio" is about it for the first half of April, until the 800-pound gorilla (aka "Avatar") lands next week.

The name "Pirate Radio" not ring a bell? It's not surprising. This comedy from writer/director Richard Curtis ("Love Actually") barely made it into American theaters, although it did decent business across the pond in its native England (where it was titled "The Boat That Rocked").

It's a hilarious, edgy and thoroughly enjoyable comedy about a forgotten bit of rock 'n' roll history.

In the mid-1960s, it was the golden era of music in Great Britain -- The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones -- but public radio outlets were only permitted to play two hours of it a week. So it was left to a bunch of outlaw stations to pipe the music of rebellion into the nation from ships moored just outside territorial waters.

This highly fictionalized version tells the story of Radio Rock, the leader of the ocean-going music brigands.

A motley ensemble of DJs lead the way, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris O'Dowd, Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost. Bill Nighy is the free-willed boss, Tom Sturridge plays the innocent young recruit, and Kenneth Branagh is the prig of a government minister tasked with shutting them down.

It's as entertaining as it is unlikely, with the boys (and one lesbian) hosting a non-stop soundtrack party.

Video extras are top-shelf.

The centerpiece is 16 deleted scenes totaling 68 minutes of screen time. In the intro, Curtis describes them as self-contained little vignettes. He even jokes that if he'd swapped the scenes that remained in the film with those left out, the movie "might have been more successful. Alas!"

The deleted scenes are quite good; it's almost like getting a whole other bonus movie. Don't miss the one in which Midnight Mark, the DJ whose sex appeal is legendary, is caught with 35 naked women crammed into his cabin.

The DVD comes with the deleted scenes and a funny commentary track by Curtis, O'Dowd and Frost. The Blu-ray also has six featurettes totaling 20 minutes of behind-the-scenes action.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars