Victory Lap!

Back in 2006, Pixar released Cars, a rather sweet tale of the up-and-coming hotshot getting schooled by a gruff old master and together, the two of them reach the apex of their sport. It also turned out to be race fan Paul Newman's last film and I truly enjoyed the chemistry between Owen Wilson as the full of himself Lightning McQueen and Paul Newman as the Fabulous Hudson Hawk.

Now Cars 3, the third installment of the franchise is out and I'm pleased to report that it's well worth going to see. Newman's voice is still there in a couple of flashbacks and new characters are added. Interestingly, the film also has a bit of a "girl power" thread as Margo Martindale voices an old-time racing great named "Louise Nash," Kerry Washington is a numbers-crunching statistician named "Natalie Certain" and Cristela Alonzo shines as the trainer-racer named "Cruz Ramirez." Yes, the old standbys are here, including Larry the Cable Guy's Tow Mater, but the real story is about Lightning finding worth in himself even if he isn't the fastest car on the track anymore. One of the most poignant lines comes from Lightning's competitor Cal Weathers (who is voiced by Kyle Petty) who comments on his retirement by answering McQueen's question about how to know when it's time to quit, "The youngsters will let you know."

And that's the heart of the story - as a new generation of high-tech, computerized machines takes over the tracks from the "race 'em on Sunday, sell 'em on Monday" actual STOCK stock racing cars, is there room for the old ways? Suddenly, McQueen isn't the hotshot - instead he's the "elder statesman" and he doesn't like it one bit. Now he knows all too well how "Hud" felt. (Confession - referring to Newman's old-school character as "Hud" and McQueen as "Hud's boy" just made me happy. It's a lovely, subtle tribute.)

Nathan Fillion voices the future of sponsorship and branding and brings his own brand of smarmy capitalism to a film that (let's face it) will be heavy of the toys, clothing, and geegaws of the upcoming holiday season.

But best of all are the NASCAR cameos and little history lessons tucked in Cars 3. While NASCAR is usually viewed as a white redneck sport (with enough brand loyalty to make sponsors salivate), there's always been a little more diversity than you might expect. And that's one of the lessons of Cars 3 as well - if you can do the work, where you come from doesn't really matter much.

May we all learn that one.

Plus - be sure you get there in time to see "Lou," the short that plays before the main feature!

Under the Sea

The ever-reliable Pixar has released the follow up to 2003's wildly successful Finding Nemo and I'm glad to announce that it's well worth the overpriced popcorn bucket. Finding Dory has Nemo and his daddy Marlin, but focuses the story on Dory, the blue tang fish with a short-term memory problem. (That element, by the way, is played beautifully. Dory isn't quirky; she's disabled by her condition and she's learned a vast array of coping mechanisms that would be excellent conversation-starters with kids.)

It's Pixar (Disney; doesn't the Mouse own everything yet?), so I don't need to tell you that the film is almost unearthly in its beauty. The underwater world gives the artists so much to play with - color, the play of light on plants and sand, wave and water ripples, shafts of sunlight that cut through the top few feet of water, and animals galore. But what's always set Pixar aside for me is not just the beauty of their work; it's the strength of their stories. While Finding Dory isn't Up, which for me continues to be the high-water mark of Pixar's films, it's a solid movie.

Some of that has to do with the vocal talent. In addition to Ellen DeGeneres reprising her role as Dory, you have Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy as Dory's long-lost parents, Albert Brooks as the long-suffering Marlin and Idris Elba as a quite rude sea lion. Modern Family is well represented with Ty Burrell playing a echolocation-challenged beluga whale and Ed O'Neill nearly steals the show as an octopus who desperately wants to get to Cleveland. Oh, and Sigourney Weaver as herself. Go - you'll understand.

Finding Dory is one of those rare gems - a kids' movie that looks great and has enough going on to keep the interest of the adults in the crowd as well.

You could do far worse for summer!

But please - no matter how much your children like the movie, don't buy a blue tang as a pet. Or a clownfish, for that matter. Leave Nemo and Dory to the salt water they belong in.

Summer Movie Catch-Up!

Summer is a time when studios release, release, release and it's hard to stay on top of everything. For that reason, you need to tune in to Meet Me at the Movies to get the recap on the new Terminator movie. (Hey, we're available through streaming! Go to clevelandcc.edu, pick C19TV at the top of the screen - we're the first show on the top row of programming! Watch at your leisure - and there's a new show beginning each Friday morning!) See, this week Ensley and I split the viewing - he took Terminator and I took Magic Mike XXL. Who got the better end of the deal? Read on.

To complete the "catch up" portion of the blog, let me highly recommend - for two different audiences - both Inside Out and Dope. 

 Inside Out is the latest offering from Pixar and it's a winner. Not quite as transcendent as Up, but a cracking good view. The detail-oriented folks at Pixar consulted a number of actual brain scientists to get things right about how memories are formed and stored, and that attention to detail makes for a movie that will appeal to tweens and adults. At the heart of Inside Out is young Riley, who is dealing with being uprooted from her life in Minnesota to move to San Francisco with her parents. It's a huge change for her and she has some trouble adjusting to the change. Plus - she's eleven, which can be the start of some hard years. To help her through every day, she's got an internal "board of directors" made up of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear. (Well, we all do - stay 'til the end and you'll see what I mean.) The vocal talent is great - casting perpetually-angry Lewis Black as the personification of Anger was genius - and the story is captivating. Plus, Bing Bong. Fun on the big screen and definitely a rental afterward.

Dope seems to be this year's "independent film that could." After screening at Sundance, it was picked up for distribution by Open Road Films (interestingly, a company formed by two movie theatre chains - AMC and Regal). Dope centers on three high school seniors living in a rough area of Los Angeles who are joined together by their geeky outsider love for '90s hip-hop culture. Over the course of the film, we see Malcolm and his friends attempt to navigate staying on the straight and narrow while still being curious teenagers who want things. Deeply moving, laugh-out-loud funny, and uncomfortably questioning some notions of race and culture, Dope is worth seeking out. Please do.

Magic Mike XXL - well. First off, let me admit that I missed the original, although there's no need to have seen that to make sense of this sequel. The plot's thin - basically, it's a buddy-road movie with a lot of cussing and thongs. That I was expecting. What threw me were two things - first, the sheer level of raunch in this film, and I certainly don't consider myself to be a pearl-clutching prude. Let's just say that the dancing scenes are highly - interactive - with the onscreen female audience. This ain't your mama's Chippendales show. While attending such an evening's entertainment would not be my particular suggestive exploding bottle of water, I have to admit that women who do go know what they're getting into, which brings up my next, far more puzzling, point. Strangely, Magic Mike XXL is a celebration of the female. There is much talk about honoring and cherishing women and their desires - and let's face it, most movies see women only as a collection of parts and there's an entire (particularly icky) subgenre of horror films that seeks to punish women for even having sexuality. In this film, not only is desire accepted as natural, it's not limited to skinny white women - sadly unusual in mainstream films.  The lust in Magic Mike XXL is clearly depicted as being all in good fun, and the strippers are both profane and contemplative in turns. Yeah, it's nice to have a thousand women screaming to touch your well-oiled body, but there's nobody to go home to, which pains several of the "male entertainers." Plus, Myrtle Beach on the Fourth of July is apparently all yearning strippers and American flags. Weird, but just maybe worth a rental.

"I'm Gonna Wreck It!"

After 30 years, a guy wants a change.

Disney bought Pixar and boy - does Wreck-It Ralph make that abundantly clear.  Ralph features magnificent vocal talent, including John C. Reilly as the title character, a bad guy who wants - just once! - to be the good guy. He "game jumps" to achieve his goal of earning a medal to show he's really a good guy, which gives the moviemakers a chance to show off a vast variety of game environments, from early 80s herky-jerky movement to today's smooth HD silkiness.  The contrasts are great fun - Ralph is appalled by the violence and scare factor of Hero's Duty and I could feel my teeth ache at the sheer sweetness overload of Sugar Rush.

In part, Ralph has a very conservative message - we all have roles to play and trying to deviate from those roles leads to destruction and chaos.  Ralph is a bad guy - he shouldn't try to be anything else, for people have to Know Their Place for society to function.

At least, that's one way to look at it.  You can also see it as a message about blooming where you're planted and realizing that pastures are perfectly green on this side of the fence.  In this reading, Ralph needs to come to terms with what he is and yes, others should respect him for his "badness."  After all, without Ralph's mindless destruction, there's nothing for the hero, Felix (voiced with pixie perfection by Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock) to repair and therefore, no need for the game to even exist.

A third way of looking at Ralph occurred to me only after I'd left the theater.  Ralph is, strangely enough, a feminist movie.  It has two central female characters who are cast in traditionally male games - Sgt. Calhoun is a tough-as-nails soldier (and Jane Lynch does an awesome job with some deliberately obtuse dialogue here), who was programmed with "the most tragic backstory ever." She leads a platoon of tough-guy soldiers on a never-ending mission to obliterate the deadly "cybugs" in a ultra-violent shooter game.  The other, Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman), is a wanna-be racer in a candy-colored game involving a go-kart bakery, candy forests, and a volatile diet soda swamp.  (There are also about a dozen other racer characters, who are all uniformly horrid little girls, giving rise to one of the great lines of the film where they are referred to as "children of the candy corn")  While the Sugar Rush game is over-the-top girly girl, the ultimate goal is to win a road race - a traditionally male-oriented game.  In the cases of both Calhoun and Vanellope, the gender of the avatar is never seen as worth remarking upon - Calhoun isn't a "female" soldier and Vanellope isn't a "girl" racer - and oddly enough, that's progress.

There's a lot here for viewers of a certain age who will, presumably, be taking the small fry to the picture.  I know that I spent plenty of time in video arcades during my early teens, carefully lining up my row of quarters to mark my pixellated territory before turning my attention to Asteroids, Frogger, Galaga, or (my favorite) Phoenix. For me, part of the joy of Ralph was in locating as many of the avatars of my youth as I could - the oft-overlooked Q*Bert makes several appearances and yes, that actually is Pong in the lobby of Game Central Station.  Plus, I'm in favor of just about any movie that gives Alan Tudyk work - and this role is a doozy!

Visually, Ralph is a treat. I saw it in 2D - I suspect the 3D version of the race sequences would have made me woozy, but it may be to your liking.

By the way, Wreck-It Ralph begins with a short that is definitely for the grown-ups in the audience.  "Paperman" is a delicate and charming story of magic realism that will delight you, even though it doesn't really fit the tone of the movie it precedes.  It's a lovely mix of classic 2D hand-drawn artistry and computer generated techniques.  Ah, animation - how much you can do for us!

Brave

This weekend's new pick for me and my Viewing Companion was Pixar's Brave.  I'll admit, I went in with high expectations - like Ridley Scott, Pixar knows how to make a stunner of a movie in terms of the look of the thing and on that score, Brave is wonderful.  The scenery is so detailed and realistic that I caught my breath more than once.  I wasn't sure of the storyline, though.  This is a joint effort between Pixar and Disney and I've been an outspoken critic of Disney princesses.  Don't get me wrong - I cut my milk teeth on Disney animation and I like it just fine.  However, Disney sanitizes its fairy tales to sell tickets to the Younger Set and the Mouse tends to like weak female characters.  Face it, the stories of Disney princesses tend to be of girls who are sweet and good and gentle who have bad things happen to them and who then need saving.

And don't even bother telling me to lighten up, that it's just a movie, and a kids' movie at that.  What on God's green earth could be more important than the messages we send to children?  As Brave puts it, "Legends are lessons."  We absorb a tremendous amount of identity messages through popular culture.  The rationale behind not having female-driven stories has always been that girls will go see/read stories about boys, but boys won't go see/read stories about girls.

Here's hoping the box office shatters that myth once and for all, for Brave tells a story we can all benefit from hearing.

I will admit that I sat in the darkened theatre as the credits played with tears running down my face.  Now, Pixar's made me cry before (if the first ten minutes of Up don't get you weepy, seek clinical help), but this was different.  My whole life, I've been waiting to see Brave, I just didn't know the title.  Maybe this is just a "girl thing;" I don't know.  But I've yearned to see a girl take charge of her own life.  A girl who demands that she be given the same choices that a boy would have - and the same opportunities to rule her own destiny.  Brave also does some really nice things with (of all things) hair.  Look at how wild and untamed Merida's red curls are as opposed to her mother Elinor's smooth, restrained locks - there's a nice metaphor going on there.  Also, unlike many Disney pictures, there's no evil here (which is often portrayed as female - a witch or a stepmother, for example).  In Brave,  the bad things happen because of poor choices that are made, including the failure to listen, and Merida then chooses to square her shoulders and fix the mess she created.  It's a powerful message to send to children - girls and boys both - and seeing that story told, and told so beautifully, got me to crying.

Nothing wrong with tears.  Madness often springs from the inability to shed them.

All this said, Brave has a few scenes that are probably too intense for very young children.  But they'll be old enough to benefit from this story of a strong girl raised by strong parents and the ties that bind us together soon enough.  And I'm so glad that kids are going to have this movie as a touchstone - girls and boys both will grow up thinking that Merida is pretty darned cool and we'll all better off for that.

By the way, Pixar also included a short called La Luna to go with Brave.  Absolutely gorgeous and another jewel in Pixar's crown of family-oriented stories.  Be sure you see it.