Not Toying About, Not Winging It, Better Than The Sum Of Its Parts and Other LEGO Based Puns - The Lego Movie Review

Commercial toy movie tie-ins suck. I mean there are no two ways about that.  Battleship... Transformers... GI Joe...

I'll stop right there because you know where this review is heading, sweeping the rug from under your feet and telling you how, yep, AWESOME, it is.  Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been building a solid resume with 'Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs' and '21 Jump Street', although i'd be the first to say they that although they weren't straight up classics they were enjoyable in their own way.

Emmet, is an ordinary lego man/pawn who does everything by the book (literally).  He's the guy who is one in a countless LEGO team.  No one remembers his name, while he remembers everyone else's.  One day he..blah blah blah backstory blah.  From then onwards its backdrops aplenty, characters both hilarious (Batman, Spaceman) & hilarious (Good Cop, Bad Cop) and visual swish upon visual swoosh.

'The LEGO Movie' has a narrative sure, but smartly that's just a vehicle for the film's overall message, creativity vs rules and boundaries.  There are plentiful pop culture references and in-jokes all the very opposite of cynical.  Many Lego mini-figs also make appearances (with one half way through the movie particularly hilarious).

I'd rather not give too much away as half the pleasure is in finding things for oneself.  Looking to the background for gags which will sate the palate of adults beyond the physical comedy (which is also playful and inventive) which will keep the kids entertained.  Beyond that I'd certainly say that the film has something to say on society, politics and the place of art, a showcase for an individual's voice, as a force to be cultivated or contained.  I think that rhethoric is best to wash at the back of the mind while there is so much boundless fun on screen but it's certainly a relevant factor for those seeking it.

The ending is also a part of the picture that will perhaps divide audiences, but I think most will have been charmed and seduced within the first 30 seconds of the start and so most will go with it with an open heart, almost forgetting that this IS a toy-related movie, that WILL ensure that LEGO will be laughing to the bank in all sorts of ways.  I have concerns that the hastily announced Lego Movie 2 will suffer from an inevitable backlash as the mindset will change for that film but for now this is a magnificent surprise which I can't wait to watch over and over and over again.

For a film that seemed like it would be a passing irrelevance only a month ago thats a rare magic indeed.

Rating: 8.5/10 (B+/A-)

5 Years, 50 Films: The Conversation

Anyone who has been to film school 101 will be able to tell you about Francis Ford Coppola's great works of the 70's. Three of those have, it seems, an automatic place in the great pantheon of cinema.  I love the fourth the most.

'The Conversation', positioned between the first two chapters of the Godfather trilogy, is that very rare breed of cinema that resonates in greater volumes the more the years pass. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), plays a wiretapper caught in the crosshairs of an hour long conversation between a couple as they amble around a congested square mumbling words and phrases to one another laced with fear and secrecy.

Being "the best bugger on the west coast" isn't particularly what makes this film so great.  Ostensibly, this is a taut thriller with a big twist (a dirty word these days), but and its a big but, this is a character study dressed in a thriller's clothes.  Caul is a private man, one who prefers his own company and is awkward around women.  The privacy and the paranoia over protecting it is the very same as those whose he is detangling.  This is someone who is truly great at his chief skill but tragically lacking in every other department.

Considering the great performances by Gene Hackman (of which there are many) this is certainly on the opposite of the end of the spectrum dynamic wise.  Here is a man whose inner turmoil speaks louder than any external rage.  At any moment there is a tension that remains for the viewer that everything could boil over and a clattering of violence would be laid upon all in front of him.

Without overstating the obvious connections to the modern world and our evergrowing fastidiousness in protecting what we believe to be ours, battling against the 'open and connected',  a fascinating angle of this film, not withstanding Hackman's performance, is that here is a man at the very centre of the society in which he operates who understands the world via a technological standpoint.  It would seem to me that Harry Caul was a precursor for me, you and much of today's world;

Ordinary people making our point through a mask; filtered voices trying to make sense of it all.

5 Years, 50 Films: Pom Poko

 With the BFI announcing just yesterday that it will be running a two-month 'Complete Studio Ghibli Feature Season' in April and May (leading up to the release of Hayao Miyazaki's final directorial effort 'The Wind Rises' on 9th May), I thought there not to be a more apt to start my '5 Years, 50 Films' than on a lesser known but not lesser loved (at least by me) member of the Ghibli family tree.

Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pon Poko, literally translates to 'Heisei-era Racoon Dog War'.  The Heisei era part is key here.  For over 60 years, Emperor Hirohito had reigned over Japan through Hiroshima and Nagasaki, via Manchuria. Hirohito's legacy was one left shrouded in controversy, with trials on war crimes for one.  Up to that point in history, the Emperor was seen as 'arahitogami', a deity taking form as a human being (important to a certain extent in Pom Poko). 

Hirohito passed away in 1989, passing the throne to his son Akihito and so began the Heisei (all-consuming peace) era.  Due to one of the strongest economic periods in modern Japanese history, Japan, through Tokyo, went through a two year period of great wealth and in turn a burst in the infrastructure of its work force by redefining transport links to reflect the weight and expectations of a modern urban city.  On top of this,  Tokyo was tempting a new form of 'intelligentsia' to help build a widescreen economy that would take on the world as well as serve it.

From the post war period, the population of Tokyo has shifted from around 3 million to above 13 million today.  However the City of Tokyo itself had over-bulged.  Creaking at the seams, the first government of the Heisei era led by Toshiki Kaifu, instigated a housing boom which would mean that domiciles in high rises sprung up further and further from the city's nucleus.  This is where Pom Poko comes in.  

Pom Poko is the story of a nursery of racoons (a posse! a gang! a riot!) losing their way when their habitats, and with it food and livelihoods, are taken away from them due this population and economic shift.  Directed by Isao Takahata, who had by then already helmed 'Grave of the Fireflies', 'Poko' feels like an amalgamation of the 'comedy with a twisted heart' that Takahata would continue with 'My Neighbour the Yamadas'.  Here it's a combination of an observational style dipped in satirical flourishes all bedded in a physical comedy arena that is breaks darkly as a juxtaposition to the annhilation and breakdown of the racoons' lives.  

Studio Ghibli sometimes is pushed on the back foot, with critics arguing that their representations of post-war Japan are fantastically anti-imperialistic.  So much so that an overidealized, socialistic becomes a flagrant oppostion on western ideals.  I think in the case of 'Pom Poko' however that viewpoint is irrelevant and misdirected.  

This is a film about identity and the fight to prevent the loss of it.  On top of this, the picture represents the racoon as dual personas, but always as a creature in front of humans.  The viewer is able to empathise with multi-faceted characters whereas the humans see only greedy, ravenous creatures looking to cause chaos and steal food.  As seasons pass, the young racoons become adolescent activists, giving way to blossoming fathers and mothers for whom priorities have changed.  Without giving much away to those who haven't seen it, there is a truly memorable sequence that recalls the golden age of surrealism, works of Yamamoto and especially Matta seem to be referenced.  

Inevitably I don't think it's too much to say that there is a hope in these characters that remains even when the credits roll (which makes sense for a PG certificate) and as an entry soiree into the works of Ghibli it's not suggested.  For that i'd still suggest 'My Neighbour Totoro' or 'Kiki's Delivery Service', perhaps 'Spirited Away' but it remains one of my favourites from a sensational collection and I urge all to watch it when the time is right.