Fears Real and Imagined
Awaited at The Multiplex
in a September of Sweet Revenge
Awaited at The Multiplex
in a September of Sweet Revenge
Movies Reviewed:
The Boxtrolls | The Equalizer
The Boxtrolls | The Equalizer
I liked the other Laika Entertainment movie Coraline a fair amount and ParaNorman not so much, but this film … this film is a wonder. Primarily it is some of the most stunningly attractive stop-motion animation that I have ever seen, but it’s not just that. The Boxtrolls is a tender fable about loyalty, love and the beauty of the true outsider. Critics who call it too dark are forgetting their own childhoods and the child’s natural impulse to the bizarre; they are also forgetting every child’s empathy with every rejected, misunderstood oddball hero ever put forth in brilliant children’s fiction just like Egg in the popular source material, the novel Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow. To those mystified by the accent based stratifications of English society I give you Oliver, Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady. The Boxtrolls fits right into the great tradition of those films. Any kid can see who are the scrappy underdogs and who is their dangerous intractable enemy and exactly why. Kids and adults can bask in the sheer silliness of the entire enterprise and come out warmed and laughing. It’s completely charming. Children don’t need to be told what is what in a zany plot like this and most will happily instruct their elders doing voices and funny hand movements in solidarity with The Boxtrolls after the show. Eggs: It's a pleasure to meet you and your adopted oppressed minority of kin, The Boxtrolls - these adorable Lewis Carroll-like gobbledygook-spouting creatures who dress in corrugated boxes. With you I will happily dare to be square.
One note; just do not see this film in 3D. Something in the process darkens and murks the already steampunkish tone of the film making it actually impossible to see at some points. Also, for the littlest people (5 yrs or so) the 3D is just too much, and unnecessary (sort of tacked on) and expensive .. so don’t do it. Do go see this witty wonderful movie though, in standard 2D. |
~~~~~~~~ Buy Tickets: http://www.fandango.com/theboxtrolls_163451/movietimes Rated: PG For What Age Kid: 5 and up (though small 5s and 6s might get overwhelmed in 3D, in fact as I say above - DON’T SEE THIS IN 3D) Metacritic Score: 63 (ignore these idiots) http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-boxtrolls Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 73% (ridiculously low, what a humorless bunch of commentators) http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_boxtrolls/ Official Site: http://www.theboxtrolls.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theboxtrolls Twitter: https://twitter.com/theboxtrolls |
You think you have seen this movie before, and in a sense you have, but I am here to tell you that it just does not matter. Director Antoine Fuqua has taken the very barest bones to the idea of the TV show and hijacked its resonate title to offer up a highly stylized, gripping, tough and tender killing machine of a vehicle for star Denzel Washington and it is a culmination and an explosion of every revenge fantasy ever imagined. Washington is a magnificent embodiment of the methodical, calculated, cool and dangerous accuracy that these fantasies are made of. This time we have tattooed Russian bad guys. It doesn’t matter much who they are, only that they set themselves up as deserving of some comeuppance and that Denzel Washington is there to mete it out to them. Bear in mind that this stuff is not for the faint of heart, but what American filmgoer is faint of heart now I wonder? Not me, I bask in this stuff when it is artfully done. If you are such a person then fair enough, give it a miss because there are Trantino level moments of violence to be had here.
There is a reason why this movie made the most bank of any September opening of an R rated film in history, a reason that audiences gave the film an A- CinemaScore. The reason is Denzel Washington. At 59 years old he could easily play 39. There is a wisecracking expression about the enduring elasticity of African American skin that I will not deploy here, but let’s just stipulate that Denzel Washington is its poster boy. Washington is able to draw into and around himself and express with the tucked down-turned corners of his mouth more than any actor alive the good man’s pent-up frustration and even fear of terrible forces as he straphangs around Boston shrugging off various insults and taunts until he finds that he can not stand to see the vulnerable victimized any more. Even more than one man killing machine Liam Neeson he takes matters into his own capable hands. Both Neeson and solo cottage industry of vigilante violence Jason Statham come to mind, and Washington displays some of the body perfected dancer-like moves of the much younger Statham while glimmering with the kind of seasoned intelligence that Neeson uses in his films; then he takes it all to another higher place.
Though it is true that I could happily live my life without ever seeing Chloë Grace Moretz grace the silver screen again (except maybe in her Kick Ass movie franchise) and her channeling of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver does not help at all here; I simply did not care. Ignore the critics who call this a hollow genre exercise. These are the same critics who now deify Clint Eastwood as though he had morphed into Martin Scorsese; so let them catch up with Denzel Washington in their own time. This sober, silken Washington is as iconic as any action hero has ever been, and watching his coil and strike is a thing of great beauty to behold, a genuine Superman, an übermensch of a hyper-violent lone vigilante. He speaks slowly as if ever mindful of his adversary’s possible learning deficiencies (why else would they be criminal idiots). He hammers down whoop ass on them in scene after scene of cathartic, almost sadistic, gory glory. You will certainly never walk the aisles of a Home Depot again without ingenious thoughts of the uses that can be put to certain merchandise intruding in your mind that’s for sure.
Go see this movie.
Though it is true that I could happily live my life without ever seeing Chloë Grace Moretz grace the silver screen again (except maybe in her Kick Ass movie franchise) and her channeling of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver does not help at all here; I simply did not care. Ignore the critics who call this a hollow genre exercise. These are the same critics who now deify Clint Eastwood as though he had morphed into Martin Scorsese; so let them catch up with Denzel Washington in their own time. This sober, silken Washington is as iconic as any action hero has ever been, and watching his coil and strike is a thing of great beauty to behold, a genuine Superman, an übermensch of a hyper-violent lone vigilante. He speaks slowly as if ever mindful of his adversary’s possible learning deficiencies (why else would they be criminal idiots). He hammers down whoop ass on them in scene after scene of cathartic, almost sadistic, gory glory. You will certainly never walk the aisles of a Home Depot again without ingenious thoughts of the uses that can be put to certain merchandise intruding in your mind that’s for sure.
Go see this movie.
~~~~~~~~ Buy Tickets: http://www.fandango.com/theequalizer_159274/movieoverview Rated: R (duh - not for the faint of heart) Metacritic Score: 57 (I’m going to just have to stop posting these numbers because these guys are wrong so much of the time) http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-equalizer Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 60% (ignore this) http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_equalizer_2013/ Official Site: http://www.equalizerthemovie.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEqualizerMovie Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheEqualizer |