Big Hero 6

If this were Star Wars it would be Big Hero
5, because droids don't have souls or rights.

*fist bump* "balalala"

Hello all, welcome back to The Tagline! Where sometimes we don't have taglines at all because poster makers can't even be bothered to half-ass their job. Instead they like... quarter ass their job. If you guys are wondering "From the makers of Wreck-It Ralph" is not a tagline! Do you even need a tagline anymore... I don't know did we ever? It's just sad, because it gives me one fewer thing to taunt for being terrible. Regardless, today is a brand new day and we'll be talking about a brand new movie! While I visited the NYC, and before I succumbed to the inevitable sickness that overtakes me as soon as I return, I went to the movies with my friends to go see Big Hero 6, because it looked fun and I like movies about robots fighting bad guys. Even robots that look like fat marshmallows! Who am I kidding, ESPECIALLY robots that look like fat marshmallows. So Big Hero 6 was a no-brainer for me, and I have to say I was not disappointed. So here's a little background. In this confusing post-comic future we live in, where Disney owns Marvel, the lines blur and even as people complain about the movies being full of nothing but sequels and remakes, the possibilities to me seem to be expanding. This is the case with Big Hero 6, a movie made by Disney, based on a Marvel comic of the same name (albeit pretty loosely). The movie focuses on Hiro, a 14-year old super genius who uses his talents mostly to hustle people out of their money in robot fights. Tadashi, his older brother, is concerned that Hiro is wasting his talents, and so helps to convince him to apply to the robotics program at his university. Hiro comes around to the idea pretty quickly, and submits an innovative microbot system as his application project to the university. This is great but certain events (that I don't want to spoil too much) derail his attempts to enroll and Hiro's bots end up being lost/destroyed. Hiro ends up befriending the medical robot his brother created, Baymax, and then accidentally discovers that his microbots still exist, and are being mass produced towards some nefarious end by a mysterious man in a kabuki mask.

Small Soldiers

He looks kind of sad actually.

"The few, the proud, and the small."

Hello my fair friends, welcome back to the Tagline, a land of whimsy and wonderment. Or profanity and boobs. I never remember which one it is, I need to work on that. It's not important though, because it is time for more movies! Today I am going to dip once more into that deep well of inspired cinema, the Netflix. I couldn't HELP but notice that Small Soldiers was cropping up in the like... popular with stoners on Facebook feed or something, and I mean, really how could I say no? So I loaded it up (the movie duh) and sat down to relive one of history's greatest cinematic triumphs, a movie with a action figure that sounds like Tommy Lee Jones attempting to kill the kid from Everwood. It's sort of like a Terminator thing, robotic being goes back in time to try and kill Gregory Smith before Everwood can ever even happen. Just like Terminator though, the robots were doomed to fail (spoilers the main character kid in this movie is not brutally murdered by action figures). Small Soldiers was a 1998 movie aimed at I am not honestly sure who, kids I guess, but like, slightly older kids... tweens? I guess so. Anyway it features Gregory Smith as a reformed-ish juvenile delinquent named Alan whose father runs a super lame toy store. In an effort to drum up some sales, he conducts a shady deal with a delivery truck driver to "acquire" some new fancy action figures. What baby Ephraim doesn't realize is that these toys are totally fucked. See Jay Mohr is an idiot who works for Denis Leary, who is in this movie Gil Mars, owner of Globotech, which is a massive corporation that has recently opened up a toy division because petrochemicals and military weapons weren't keeping him entertained or something. Did I mention Jay Mohr is an idiot? Well he is, and he decides to make the toys super cool by installing crazy learning military grade microchips in all of them. This is swell and all, except that their programming makes that sort of... let's go with problematic. That's nice.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Why do I still have no dragon.

"THIS SUMMER THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO FLY"

Hi all, welcome to a brand new, uncomfortably humid, blisteringly hot week at the Tagline, which is located in a claustrophobic basement that has no air flow or windows or any real environment control other than this stupid box fan I keep knocking over with my damned computer chair. I'm not here to talk about the lacking circumstances surrounding my living conditions though, nor my displeasure with the fire orb that's constantly exploding in the sky. No today I'm going to be talking about explosions that happen in a considerably closer region to our persons. I'll be talking about How to Train Your Dragon 2, the sequel to another movie with that name, minus the 2 (obviously) about a young boy outcast who decides that people could coexist with dragons instead of murdering them with ballistas and such. This lad, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, the Sorcerer's Apprentice) befriends a fearsome Nightfury, that he names Toothless. This creature is essentially what an adorable pet cat would be if it were also a dragon, and so is the cutest creature in existence. At the opening of this second movie (about five years after the first movie, in-universe) Hiccup's home of Berk has greatly changed, as now everyone there has their own dragon pretty much (or almost everyone at least maybe there are some sad dragonless losers off-screen). While Hiccup's dad Stoick (who is Gerard Butler somehow and that is really confusing) is all about him finally owning up and taking his place as chief-in-waiting, Hiccup is less than enthusiastic and spends his days flying around mapping the surrounding lands, and generally shirking his duties. This is sort of a nice sequel setup I thought, because it shows viewers (young and old) something that a lot of movies choose to gloss over. In the first movie Hiccup learns that he's good at befriending dragons, and he is no longer utterly ostracized by his home. That detail not-withstanding, finding a way to not be an outcast doesn't mean you've found your place in the world forever. Not being a disgrace doesn't mean that you feel like you've found your place in the world, and I found that refreshing.

The Lego Movie

ITS WRENCH TIME?!

"The story of a nobody who saved everybody."

Hello friends and felons, it's Thursday and that means that you're all one day away from a weekend of drunken debauchery maybe, or maybe you don't do that. Also maybe you work in the service industry, and so your toil will end only in death. I can relate. You know who else can relate, and meets their bitter fate with exuberance? The Lego workers in The Lego Movie. After all, I have it on good authority that everything is awesome, and everything is cool when you're part of a team (that song has been stuck in my head since I watched the movie and I realize now that I will have to use a power drill to get it out. A sacrifice I am willing to make to just be free from it). On that chipper note, today I will be talking about The Lego Movie, a film that I would say was unlikely to ever happen, and further than that was even less likely to somehow be good. As you might guess from the title, this film is about Legos, and Lego stuff. It stars Chris Pratt (who is having a pretty big year I guess, between this, his ongoing appearance on Parks & Rec, and his upcoming appearance in the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy film) as Emmet Brickowoski, an absolutely average Lego construction worker, living in the land of Bricksburg. Emmet is a boring loser, but one day he accidentally stumbles upon the Piece of Resistance, a thing that supposedly will save all the Lego lands from being destroyed by the ruthless Lord Business, who wants everything to be neat and orderly, and so plans to glue everyone in place. Emmet is found by super cool ninja lady/maybe some kind of DJ Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks, also not doing bad for herself this year), and together they set off to find the wise wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) so they can try and stop Lord Business.

Frozen

FROM THE CREATORS OF MICKEY MOUSE.

Hello all, The week is half over and that means it's time for more movies! It's cold as hell here and I figured that would make it an appropriate time to talk about Frozen, a film all about being cold and maybe dying from exposure to extremely low temperatures, and also living in a world devoid of warmth, left out alone in the snow, or locked away where no one can see you. SOUNDS LIKE FUN RIGHT? Well yes and also maybe not so much, but we will get to that in a bit. For starters, Frozen is the latest Disney film that is computer animated and about princesses who live in castles. This particular film concerns sisters Anna and Elsa, one of whom is super outgoing and energetic, and the other of whom has been hidden from the world her whole life because she has icy frost magic. The king and queen of Arendelle die, and so Anna and Elsa are left mutually alone, as Elsa shuts everyone out, to try and protect them from her unholy frost witchcraft, probably gifted to her by the devil (well that's how they treat her anyway). Elsa is eventually to become queen, and on the day of her coronation there's a big hullabaloo and a fancy party. There, Anna (Who is voiced by Kristen Bell, I actually have a really weird and awkward movie with her in it to talk about some other time) meets Hans, who seems like the handsome and kind prince she has been waiting to fall in love with at first sight (As we know, that always works out SO WELL) Anna wants to marry him right there on the dance floor, but Elsa isn't as thrilled as her (Elsa by the by is voiced by Idina Menzel, who previously appeared in Disney's Enchanted) and won't give her blessing. They fight, Elsa gets emotional, and then maybe she shoots some icy magic, is chased out for being a witch, and then accidentally blankets the kingdom in unending winter. Oops.

Whisper of the Heart

FIRST TIME ON DVD OH WOW.

"Suki na hito ga dekimashita."

Hello all, welcome to Thursday's edition of THE TAGLINE!!! (look how excited I am!) Today as promised, I will be talking about an animated movie that is in content the exact opposite of Tuesday's Perfect Blue, a movie about fantasy, madness, and violence. Today I will be talking about Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart (originally Mimi wo Sumaseba in Japanese) a movie that is also about finding oneself, but with markedly less nude corpses and blood in low-rise apartments. Whisper of the Heart is, I think I've mentioned in previous posts (maybe when I reviewed Arrietty?) my favorite Studio Ghibli movie, which may make me some kind of iconoclast because it was not directed by Hayao Miyazaki (though he did write the screenplay). Instead, Whisper of the Heart was directed by Yoshifumi Kondo, an animator at Studio Ghibli who at the time was expected to eventually succeed Miyazaki and Takahata as Ghibli's pre-eminent animator. This was not meant to be however, as Kondo died of an Aortic dissection (or possibly an aneurysm) as a result of overwork (this is cited perhaps as one of the reasons why Miyazaki began to work at a more relaxed pace afterwards). Kondo was only 47, and Whisper of the Heart would unfortunately be the only movie he directed before his death. Given how good Whisper of the Heart was, I can say honestly the world was robbed of a great animator much too soon (the same could be said of Satoshi Kon, and I AM saying it now, gosh I didn't mean to review two animated movies by directors who died young. Sorry guys). Anyway, that's enough of the macabre, let's instead focus on Kondo's charming movie, which I absolutely loved.

Perfect Blue

Looks like a healthy girl right?

"The color of illusion is Perfect Blue."

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Tagline! Today I decided I would take a break from psychologically disturbed movies soaked with violence and twisted sexual motifs, and talk about an animated movie that is... all of those things I just said. Written and directed by Satoshi Kon, who's final theatrical length work Paprika might be better known to my writers, Perfect Blue was released in 1998 and is about a J-pop idol named Mima who decides to become an actress. This seems to be going well until she is cast in a role that includes a rape scene (that she assents to despite some hesitation), and then spirals into psychological confusion and madness, while being stalked by a 'fan' calling themselves Me-Mania. To make matters worse, someone claiming to be Mima is keeping a detailed public journal of her life, leading Mima to question whether or not she is going coocoo batshit crazytown. This situation is complicated still further when everyone around her start dying grisly deaths, as the result of an unknown killer, possibly the aforementioned Me-Mania. While the primary plot's affinity for violence and sexualization might at first blush seem unrefined, the direction of the plot is nuanced and pointedly raises questions about certain aspects of Japanese pop-culture.

The Secret World of Arrietty

Arrietty, aka The Secret World of Arrietty aka the Borrower
Arrietty aka a lot of French words on a poster.

"Do not be seen by humans. That's been the law of children of the underfloor."

Welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Today I'm talking about Studio Ghibli's Arrietty, which has like three different names but I will refer to it just as Arrietty, because that is shorter. The most recent of Studio Ghibli's efforts and a film from the post-Miyazaki era, Arrietty follows a teeny tiny girl (named Arrietty) and her adventures. The film is based upon The Borrowers, a novel by English author Mary Norton, (and a book which previously received an American film adaptation in 1997... a bad one) and centers around the Clocks, a family of borrowers living underneath a small country home. These tiny folk are called borrowers because they take things from the house they live under (little things like a sugar cube or a tissue) of course 'borrowing' seems like a cute way of saying stealing here. I mean, I'm not saying I'd miss single tissues or anything, but I hope to god they don't give them back when they're done using them, that sounds pretty gross.

Redline

Look, time is dilating around him, you know it's extreme.

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I thought I'd do something a little bit different, and talk about an animated film I watched over the weekend. I don't normally talk about Anime on this blog, but I figured it was a movie, and I do talk about American animated films, so why not right? Redline is a movie that's relatively unremarkable in plot, but remarkable in execution. The movie is a science fictiony futuristic racer movie (basically like if they made an M-rated movie about the F-Zero games) where a racer with an enormous and ridiculous pompadour named JP makes the cut for the Redline Race, the most dangerous and prestigious race in the galaxy. The race is supposed to take place on the militant cyborg planet known as Roboworld, despite the violent (literally) opposition of the Roboworld government. This is all the better to spice up the race, as it just wouldn't be as interesting if certain death weren't on offer for a single mistake. Along with JP, a varied selection of weirdos is also competing in the race, including a giant robot Frankenstein man, magical sex-princess idol twins, a crime fighting bounty hunter duo (with their own theme song) and some other freaky aliens. Also JP's love interest, who is the only other not weird looking human in the movie pretty much (because having two tone pink/green hair or a massive blimp-sized pompadour is relatively normal). The racers gear up, prep their vehicles (mostly they are hover cars full of dirty tricks) and set out for what will surely be the most intense race ever.

ParaNorman

Stop animation at its finest.

"You don't become a hero by being normal."

Hello everyone, welcome to another exciting week of The Tagline! over the weekend, between naps, I managed to stay awake long enough to watch ParaNorman. If you managed to miss it (and the numbers would suggest that many folks did) ParaNorman is an oddity, in that it is a stop motion film, using full color 3D printers for a large portion of the puppet creation. The fact that it is stop motion at all (and not using the normal 3D format cameras) is remarkable by itself, and watching the fluid quality of the animation, it's no wonder that the filming process of the movie took a total of two years. ParaNorman stars Kodi Smit-McPhee (who also starred in the American vampire movie adaptation Let Me In) as the voice of Norman Babcock, a boy who is very unusual. He's unusual because he can see dead people (obligatory Sixth Sense joke here). Among these is his grandmother. Suffice to say, Norman's family, especially his father, aren't super excited about the fact that Norman watches slasher flicks with his dead granny all day. Norman also for all intents and purposes doesn't have any friends. He gains one, the incredibly goobery ginger Neil. After being assaulted in a public place by his creepy distant relative, the smelly beardo Mr. Prederghast (voiced by John Goodman), Norman is drawn into a frightful situation involving a witch's curse, and some zombies. See in Norman's home town, there's this myth involving a witch who was put to death, and subsequently put a curse on the members of the town government that put her to death, that involved them rising as zombies. Scary stuff!

The Lorax

This is just... creepy to me. I'll explain why below.

"He speaks for the trees."

Hey gang! today as threatened earlier in the week, I will be talking about The Lorax, a full length movie based on the animated Seussian musical of '72/children's book about not killing the environment. This film follows the same basic premise, only with a few changes to the basic premise. Namely, the Once-ler (voiced by Ed Helms) is only half of the story, told in flashback form. The other story is about Ted (Zac Efron, yuck) who wants to romance Audrey, and figures the only way to do it is to get her a real tree (in his city there are no real trees). Audrey by the by is voiced by Taylor Swift, and I'll address that further later in the post. So Ted leaves town and finds the Once-ler, who is supposedly the only person who knows where trees might be. The Once-ler tells the story of how he made some really stupid thing called a Thneed out of Truffula trees against the urgings of the Lorax, who if you didn't know speaks for the trees. He does this in the voice of Danny DeVito, and when I talk about things in this movie I found odd and unsettling, we'll address that too. Long story short, the Once-ler told the Lorax to get bent, and then paved over the Earth to get rich, but at some point became a creepy smelly hermit. Ted vows to use the last Truffula seed to replant a tree, but the short asshole who rules the town's industry wants to stop him, so he can sell bottled air to people. Antics ensue, and also there is some singing.

Rise of the Guardians

He looks like kind of a creeper to me.

"Legends unite."

Hi everyone! How was your Christmas? Today I'm going to talk about the seasonably appropriate Rise of the Guardians, which does prominently feature Santa Claus (Only a big sword wielding Santa, voiced by Alec Baldwin). Mostly it is a movie about Jack Frost (Chris Pine, aka Kirk in the recent Star Trek movie) though, a young (appearing) spirit who likes to freeze stuff and be a dick to everyone by freezing their stuff. Jack is depressed because no one can see or believes in him, and he doesn't know why he was dragged out of a frozen lake by the man in the moon (who never like... talks he just sort of... shines at people.) Meanwhile, the scary mean spirit Pitch Black (aka the Boogie Man, voiced by Jude Law, who's good at sounding evil) sets out to wipe out all the good dreams and hopes of children and replace them with fear and nightmares, because he is a real jerk-off. To do this, Pitch plans to knock off the four guardians, who include Santa, the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher, who I really liked as that psycho in Wedding Crashers) The Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman, the australian bunny, who recently appeared when I reviewed Real Steel) and the Sandman (who has no actor attached to him, he's weird and animated and never talks). Around the time Pitch begins his attack, a new guardian is chosen by the moon to protect all the lil' chilren of the world: Jack Frost. Not everyone is on board (especially the Easter Bunny, he's a contentious sort) but Jack goes along with it, in the hopes that he will find out who he is, and why he was chosen.

Wreck-It Ralph

Looks like John C. Reilly to me. Giant fists and all.

"Get ready for a new kind of hero."

Hey y'all, welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Tagline! I finally got to the movies to see Wreck-It Ralph, so I want to give my immediate impressions and feelings about it, while the movie is still fresh in my mind. Wreck-It Ralph Stars John C. Reilly (did anyone else like Walk Hard? I thought it was funny in a really intensely stupid way) as Ralph, the bad guy in his game, Fix-it Felix. Ralph is sick of living in the dump while Felix (Jack McBrayer, best known for his role in 30 Rock as NBC Page Kenneth Parcell) is showered in medals and accolades. In an attempt to turn his fortunes around, Ralph goes to the modern shooter game Hero's Duty, where he's heard he could get a medal himself (settling a bet he made with one of the supporting characters of his game). This doesn't go the way Ralph hoped, and he ends up blasting off into the world of go-cart racer Sugar Rush, where he meets the diminutive and annoying Vanellope Von Schweetz (played by Sarah Silverman, a funny lady who I am both attracted to and legitimately scared of). Ralph unfortunately trails a cybug from Hero's Duty into the world of Sugar Rush, and that is... well not good, because those bugs are real bad. Sergeant Calhoun follows after the bug (Jane Lynch, probably best known currently as Sue Sylvester on the TV show Glee) to try and stop its rampage.

The Worst Animal Movies (Animated or Otherwise)

It's Saturday, and that means its time for another very special update from The Tagline. Today I give you, with a mild cringe and some regret:

THE WORST OF ANIMAL MOVIES

Brave

"Change your fate."

Look Will O'Wisps. FOLLOW THEM.

Ok after futzing around with blogger's obnoxious formatting for ten minutes I can begin! Brave, the latest effort by Pixar is set in ye olde Scotland, and when I say that I don't just mean that's where it takes place. I mean, they are not subtle about what a bunch of Scots from Scotland all the Scot characters are Scot Scot. This will probably be my biggest criticism of a movie I otherwise liked, but seriously, they were laying on the Scotland pretty thick, and did not shy away from being really stereotypical about it. Pretty much everyone in the movie is a kilt-wearing Braveheart extra, and while I grant that they're trying to keep a theme going here, I think they maybe went a little too over the top with it. Putting that aside, This movie is about Merida, who is a princess who is typically un-princesslike in disposition. She doesn't want to get married to one of three imbeciles (also not the most original thing to ever happen) so she tries to use magic to change her fate and that goes typically awry as well. It is not the world's most original tale I'll grant, but what it does it accomplishes in a charming way.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

"Open your mind. Unlock the secret. Experience the fantasy."

Unleash a new reality? Harsh.

In 2001, something that had not happened before in film occurred. Squaresoft, under the ill-starred Square Pictures imprint, made a feature length film that was entirely computer generated. The intent at the time was that this would be the first but not last film they made, and the main character, Aki Ross, was supposed to be a recurring figure in more movies. Alas, the Spirits Within proved to be a catastrophic undertaking. It was a disaster at the box office, grossing half of the 136 million dollars that went into its production. Squaresoft took such a bath on this movie, that their pending merger with Enix almost fell through. Square wouldn't make another feature until their Final Fantasy VII film Advent Children (more on that in a bit). There is a long grocery list of reasons why this movie tanked in a massive way. I will recount some of the better ones for you now.

Ponyo

"Welcome To A World Where Anything Is Possible"

Fishy Fishy in the sea.

      They aren't kidding either. This is a world where anything can and does happen!  This is the story about a little boy, who meets a little fish, that becomes a little girl, and her dad is Liam Neeson, a magical sea wizard. This boy lives on a terrifying cliff near the ocean, with his mom, who I suspect was actually a street racer. It is very possible she was a character in Initial D that I forgot, I'm not ruling out that possibility. Anyway, this movie focuses mostly on the Sosuke finding Ponyo, and the ensuing adventures they have. This movie is the world viewed through the lens of happy magic, but lets not miss out on how frightening this movie would be otherwise.


     A huge deathstorm strikes around where Sosuke lives, which is incidentally next to the freaking ocean. So that's cool. When I say he lives next to the ocean, I mean on a cliff right next to it. So after the storm calms down a bit, Sosuke's mom decides its cool to leave a strange girl from the ocean and her son, who is about 5, and to rush off into the storm. When Sosuke and Ponyo awake, she is still gone, and the whole of the surrounding land is submerged in water. Water full of terrifying Cambrian aged sea creatures, brought back by the sea wizard who wanted to wipe out mankind (but changed his mind halfway through the movie). Well I guess this is a Miyazaki happy movie, so an ending that turns the planet into waterworld is probably unlikely. 


      Visually this movie is soothing and very pretty. The hand drawn scenes are something you really notice and appreciate over the maybe cleaner, but more... empty looking computer drawn animations. You can expect lots of cute moments and a lot of beautiful art out of this movie, but don't expect profound introspection or anything. Just a movie about a kid who falls in love with a fish girl.

A different fish girl.