Robert Zemeckis Proves He Can Direct With Allied

I didn't know what to expect before I saw Allied. I didn't really know much about the film except that it looked like a more serious version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Brad Pitt plays a spy who is ordered to kill his wife who he also believes is a spy. We were even treated to the same media tabloid story surrounding Brad Pitt's person life with Marion Cotillard swapped out for Angelina Jolie (albeit the story is not true in the present instance). So when the film ended, I was shocked to see the name "Robert Zemeckis" emboldened in huge white letters across the screen. Not only is Allied not your typical Zemeckis film, but it's actually very good.

Now obviously the title of this blog post is excessive and a tad click bait-y, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Allied is a Robert Zemeckis joint. It's almost like finding out that The Social Network was directed by David Fincher. Both films are very good and directed by someone who clearly knows their stuff, but don't contain the typical tropes and visual stylings of the director. And very obviously Robert Zemeckis can direct. Not only is he responsible for the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but he directed one of the greatest films of all time: Forrest Gump.

The Lobster Movie Review

“What’s worse: to die of cold and hunger in the woods, to become an animal that will be killed and eaten by some bigger animal, or to have a nosebleed from time to time?”

This is a question posed by The Limping Man, played by Ben Winshaw, to the main protagonist David, played by Colin Ferrell in the Indie film The Lobster. The film itself, written and directed by Greek film maker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), is an odd, satirical take on relationships, and is summed up perfectly by the question posed by The Limping Man. It’s weird, it doesn’t quite make sense, yet it’s truthful to how we should view courtship and love.

In the film, all adults must be in a committed relationship, and if you’re not, you are sent to a hotel where you have 45 days to find a mate. If you fail to do so, you get turned into an animal of your choice. Some people refuse this model, and live as loners in the woods, only to be hunted by the people in the hotel in an attempt to earn extra days staying at the hotel. Desperate to find a mate, The Limping Man gives himself nosebleeds in order to connect to a young woman who naturally gets nosebleeds often. Based upon this physical attribute, the two are set up as a match to be paired together forever. When questioned about his lie by David, The Limping Man gives the aforementioned response.

Disney Almost Erases Decades of Misogyny with Zootopia. Almost.

Early on in Disney's newest animated feature Zootopia, our hero, a bunny named Judy Hopps, voiced by Gennifer Goodwin, enters the police station in which she'll be working for the first time. She's greeted by a huge (pun intended) cheetah named Clawhauser, voiced by Nate Torrence, who comments on how cute Judy is. Judy responds by saying that only other bunnies can call each other cute, but not other animals. Clawhauser sheepishly apologizes for his ignorance and helps direct Judy to her first ever police briefing.

In a way, Zootopia is an apology for the decades of both overt and latent misogyny its released in the world over the past decades. Whether it's one of their earlier films like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which taught girls to sit quietly while you wait for a man to save you, or one of their later films like The Little Mermaid which teaches young girls to actively be quiet while you attempt to lure your crush with only your looks, Disney studios does not have a good track record of helping to mold the minds and attitudes of young females. Which is unfortunate considering how instrumental they are in their development.

My Review of Finding Dory

Generally speaking, all movies from Pixar studios are the same two movies. It’s either an adventure film where characters have to get from Point A to Point B (Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, The Good Dinosaur, Inside Out, Monsters Inc.) or it’s a coming of age film where the main characters stay in one place and fight (Cars, Ratatouille, Monsters University, Toy Story 3, A Bug’s Life). Sometimes the film is a combination of the two (Wall-E, The Incredibles), but more often than not, the plot and the story of a Pixar film is something you’ve seen many times before, often times from a previous Pixar film. However, Pixar remains the top of the animation mountain- both in terms of box office success as well as quality of work. Pixar has been able to consistently churn out great film after great film for over two decades. Even a decent film like Finding Dory is lightyears ahead of most of the animation crop.

Yet there are clear tiers within each individual Pixar films. The tiers used to be “Holy cow, that’s friggin one of the best movies of all time” and “That’s very good, but it’s not one of Pixar’s best”. Films like the Toy Story franchise, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles fall into the former while other films like Cars, Ratatouille, and A Bug’s Life fall into the later. Unfortunately, ever since Cars 2 came out in 2011, we have unfortunately needed to create a third category for Pixar: “wow, that surprisingly was not a good movie”. Films like Cars 2, Monsters University, and Brave has unfortunately taken their place among the Pixar lore and semi-hurting the legacy. Since 2011, Pixar has made some Friggin Best Films of All Time movies like Inside Out and Toy Story 3, but for the most part, the films are either Surprisingly Not Good, or just bordering it. Pixar’s last two films, The Good Dinosaur and Finding Dory are good films and films that I would give a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes if I had a vote, but clearly rank among of the worst films the studio has ever produced.

A Review of The Jungle Book (2016)

The best music covers tend to be songs that improve on a song with great lyrics but mediocre music behind it. Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” has amazing lyrics because it’s a Bob Dylan song, but so-so music behind it, well, because it’s a Bob Dylan song. Jimi Hendrix was able to take those lyrics and, using his incredible talent as a guitar player, give Dylan’s lyrics the appropriate music they deserved. The Byrds version of Dylan’s “Tambourine Man” is a similar situation. The same rule for remaking songs should also be the same rule for remaking movies. A movie should only be remade if the original is subpar, but has some good stuff in it.

Disney’s 1967 animated classic The Jungle Book is not a good movie, certainly not by today’s standards. I have fond memories of the movie from when I watched it as a kid, but kids are dumb and their tastes can’t be trusted. Re-watching the 1967 film, I realized what a jumbled mess it is. The film starts off on the right foot by having the panther Bagheera watch over a “mancub” Mowgli that he found when the boy was just a newborn that he then has to protect from the evil tiger Shere Khan. However, the film quickly devolves as Bagheera and Mowgli set off on their journey out of the jungle and away from Shere Khan. There’s an extended scene between Mowgli and a pack of elephants that makes absolutely no sense, Mowgli meets a group of vultures that weresupposed to be voiced by The Beatles, and Bagheera comes and goes as he pleases.

Disney’s live action version takes the same basic premise of their 1967 film, Bagheera and Mowgli journey to find humans to escape the wrath of Shere Khan, and makes a coherent story out of it. The 1967 animated movie is like a Bob Dylan song, a sub-par whole with excellent parts in it, and the 2016 version is like Jimi Hendrix who made an excellent whole that improved on the good parts of the original.