Category: Movies

Frankenweenie is a stop motion animated film by Tim Burton.  It was one of three major stop motion pictures to come out in 2012, and all of which were nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.  It is based off a short film with same name also directed by Tim Burton.

Frankenweenie is about a young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) who’s dog Sparky gets hit by a car, and not wanting to be separated from his best friend does what all people named Frankenstein do and brings him back from the dead.  When his classmates hear about his feat, they try and outdo him in order to win the science fair.  The plot is simple, but really works.  Sparky is Victor’s best friend, and it is easy to sympathize with Victor’s loss.

You can tell Tim Burton loves stop motion because every character, and every set is lovingly created and animated.  He also gets to pay homage to all the classic horror characters from the golden age, Victor’s classmates look like, the psychic ghost girl, Frankenstein’s monster, Igor, and many others, so it is fun to pick them out.

They also kept this film from wearing out its welcome.  It comes in at almost exactly an hour and half, which is perfect for this sort of film.  The transfer on the Blu-Ray is great, and it looks amazing.  It is also a good movie to test your black levels on your Hi-Def TV, considering it is black and white it really does amazing things with shades of gray.

This isn’t my favorite animated movie from last year, but I still think it was better then Brave, but I think most films nominated were better then Brave.  If you want a short and sweet film to watch, then Frankenweenie may be your ticket.

Casa de Mi Padre is a Spanish language film staring Will Ferrell.  It is a unique idea, but I don’t think it was fully developed enough, or it at least needed a few script rewrites.

Will Ferrell plays Armando Álvarez the dumb son of cattle rancher, and tries his best to stay out of the way of the local drug cartels.  Unfortunately his smart and good looking brother Raúl played by Diego Luna comes home with his beautiful bride to be Sonia(Génesis Rodríguez), and brings the drug cartels with him, so it is up to Armando to save the day.

I thought going in to this that Will Ferrell was going to play this like an American playing a Spanish part, and do it with a broken accent, and be screwing up his lines and everything, but he did not.  His accent wasn’t good, but it wasn’t awful either.  So pretty much they played it like a serious yet bad Spanish language soap opera, and it was bad, and at times bad enough to be funny, but mostly with their props, they used mannequins as extras or stunt doubles, the animals were puppets, and the backdrops were poorly painted, but that only gets a few laughs here and there.  The main gag was that pretty much everyone was over acting their crappy lines, not that the lines were funny in and of themselves, so it just fell flat.

I think that there was a funny movie to made here, but they didn’t make it.  They were sold on the fact that Spanish soap operas are funny enough on their own, so they just made one staring Will Ferrell.  It is a shame that they wasted so much talent on this movie.  The props make you laugh once or twice, and really hard a couple of times, but it is one of those short movies that feels like you wasted a whole day.

Lockout is a French film staring Guy Pearce.  It is an “original” idea by director Luc Besson.  So did the French make an action movie worth watching?  Yes, but only if you are in the right mood.

The plot behind this movie is Escape from New York in space, and for those that have not seen that movie or Escape from LA it goes something like this:  A framed Secret Service Agent has to go to a maximum security prison orbiting the Earth to save the President’s daughter from the psychopaths that have taken over to win back his freedom. This is why “original” was in quotes above.

Sadly Luc Besson is no John Carpenter, so this movie’s direction is a little sloppy, and uneven, but what is good is Guy Pearce channeling Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken.  He is witty and funny, and the good/jerk that action movies love.  It is a shame that there weren’t better people making this movie around him because it could have been a real action gem.  Maggie Grace as the President’s daughter does her best to be a spring board for Pearce’s jerkiness, and holds her own for the most part,  but Pearce is definitely the star here.

Despite the failings of the production staff around the actors, the action is still good, and the actors do their best with what they are given, and if you are in the mood for a cheesy action flick, then this is a pretty decent option, and it is on most streaming services, so it won’t cost you a dime.

Wreck-It Ralph is a Computer Animated film from Disney Animation Studios.  It was nominated for Best Animated Film in this year’s Oscars, and many thought it should have won over Brave.

Wreck-It Ralph starts with narration from Wreck-It Ralph describing how he feels disrespected, and how thirty years of being the bad guy has taken its toll on him.  It turns out he is at a support group for video game bad guys, and they tell him to tough it out and embrace what he is, but when he gets back from the meeting it turns out the other characters from his game have thrown a thirty year anniversary party without him, so he runs out to try and prove that he can be a good guy, and should be respected.

It is obvious that all the people involved love video games.  They put in cameos from various games as well as the way they designed the games for the movie all show a great understanding of video games.  It is also fun to see this video game take on Toy Story: what happens to your games when you leave the room.

The characters, despite being from video games, are all believable and well cast, and the animation is smooth.  John C. Reilly gives Ralph’s voice a lot of heart and you believe his personal struggle to get a little love.

The Blu-Ray looks great, as most computer animated films do.  With high detail and vibrant colors. Watching a Blu-Ray like this always reminds me that even HD streaming can’t compare to disks yet.

The story may not be grandiose like a lot of other movies try and be, but it is a movie about respect and friendship, and that can be just as interesting as an epic saga.  The non-Pixar part of Disney Animation has been getting better, and Wreck-It Ralph continues this trend.