Film Works

Toy Story 3 Film Review: Toys to Infinity and Beyond

Like the first two films, Toy Story 3 simply captures you with emotional magic in film form. Entertaining, well-crafted, and emotional, this third film of the historical animated film franchise is powered by fun, fueled by intellect, and driven by heart. It is a fitting finale for a Pixar animated trilogy perfected in tone, delivery, timing, humor, and drama. Its charm goes to infinity and beyond.

Toy Story 3 Photo Slideshow courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

List of the New Toy Story Characters Featured in Toy Story 3

List of the Toy Story Classic Characters Appearing in Toy Story 3

This film can bring you back the old memories of your toys and literally wonder where they are now. Whether tears come out from your spectator eyes or not, its ending offers an undoubtedly heart-wrenching moment that grabs the child in you. And this can simply be described as “cinematic magic.” By taking a bunch of animated toys teaching people about the mystery of human lives and struggling through it, Toy Story 3 becomes a sentimental journey with a heartfelt mix of sugar and spice. Every scene is delightfully engaging and there is so much to be absorbed without straining its theme and story. The gags are all set in the right places until the film wraps up with an enchanting finale.

The well-embraced Pixar tradition of a short film preceding the main feature attraction is nothing but clever and enchanting. Day and Night directed by Teddy Newton, also the voice behind the toy character Chatter Telephone, is a masterpiece on its own and it perfectly complements Toy Story 3.

This third motion picture from the franchise comes full circle. It’s a rare sequel that clearly endures the test of time. Like its theme and story, it mixes joy and sweet sadness for the complicated choices about staying in the comfort zone and embracing change. It emphasizes the relationship between toys and a child’s imagination. It’s about the inevitable moments of having to leave some things behind. It’s about the feeling of abandonment that comes with age and passage of time. And it’s about accepting how changes in life can sometimes be harsh and unfavorable.

Toy Story 3 has a basic plot and a simple, straightforward story orientation. What makes it stand out from the rest? The filmmakers know what they want, they know what they’re doing, and they know how to do things with utmost sincerity. It has such a simple formula, yet the delicate combination of the various aspects of film production goes beyond being objective and quantitative. The challenge in reaching such level of cinematic marvel requires careful choices and bull’s-eye decisions for the script, choice of shots, animation requirements, audio requirements, and voice performances. It’s a candid story that delves about living life, feeling outdated, getting misunderstood, and facing things beyond your control. It answers the question about what happens when “playtime” is over in a figurative and emotional way that is surprising, self-realizing, and considerably hurting while still being gently comforting.

While it celebrates consumerism with its many brands and product placements, the genius in Pixar impressively manages to keep the film’s innocent pleasures of imagination. Toy Story 3 succeeds beyond its glossy and gleaming pixels both in 2D and 3D. It has a valuable script with animated characters as real as a child’s sense of wonder. It balances rollicking adventure, wrenching pathos, and brilliant humor in an exceptional package. Exuding with enough emotional resonance, it creatively ties up the first two films at a very suitable time: without having to rush things as how the mainstream filmmaking bible dictates it (think of how studios rush sequels for the sake of commercialism). It took years and years until the new technology now enables 3D films and how this era showcases a new age of toys to add up to the Toy Story collection. Even the actual voice behind the little Andy character of the past now renders his voice as a grown up young adult himself.

This third worthy installment kicks off with a brief playful sequence of breathtaking mastery, evocative detail, wonderful camera work, all aptly resolved in a true little boy’s eyes. It impressively opens up with a scene that reminds people of what Toy Story really offered more than a decade ago. And as the fun treats of the film progresses, it carefully blends the moments of sadness and ache that come along as life shifts towards another direction. On a lighter note, there is an appreciation for Pixar’s brilliance in making a nice, long gag reel side by side its closing credits. Aside from bringing a satisfyingly intelligent but fun resolution to the movie, it offers additional time to wipe away those tears before the screening finishes.

Pixar’s now trademark of “ingenuous storytelling” serves up yet another exceptional animated treat that doesn’t surpass its predecessors, but simply continues its virtuous tradition. The studio simply knows how to tell a brilliant story in an animated movie format without resorting to brainless gimmicks and cheap sentiments. It winds up its way gently towards its serious themes without grabbing desperately on them.

With inspired homage to jailbreak movies, director Lee Unkrich presents a thoughtful story about regret for the past and fear of the future. It’s nothing but worthy to mention much of the people behind this masterwork: writers Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich; producer Darla K. Anderson and executive producer John Lasseter; music composer Randy Newman; and the very long list of animators, production artists, and film crew who made the film what it is. As a clever piece of storytelling magic, this family-friendly movie illustrates a natural progression melding with ease in many levels of thematic resplendence.

On the technical side, Toy Story 3 lives up to the expectations. The characters design and animation are spectacularly detailed and well rendered. From Barbie and Ken’s robotic moves to the almost palpable strawberry smell of Lotso as how this gets established in the film, this emotional cinematic treat employs technical wizardry in par with its storytelling. The cinematography and production design are so vivid and fitting in every sequence and scene.

The vocal performances coming from a mix of the old cast and the newcomers create such powerfully emotional characters. Whether a major or minor role, each one really brings his/her character to life. Tom Hanks as Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear lead the pack of toy characters with such brilliance. Buzz’s Spanish mode is a hysterically fun treat. Aside from these two best buddies of the franchise, the audience shall remember such iconic performances from the many human and toy characters. To mention some: John Morris as Andy; Joan Cusack as Jessie; Ned Beatty as Lotso; Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head; Estelle Harris as Mrs. Potato Head; Jodi Benson as Barbie; Michael Keaton as Ken; Wallace Shawn as Rex; John Ratzenberger as Hamm; Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants; Jeff Pidgeon as Aliens; Blake Clark as Slinky Dog; Emily Hahn as Bonnie; Jeff Garlin as Buttercup; Bonnie Hunt as Dolly; John Cygan as Twitch; Whoopi Goldberg as Stretch; Laurie Metcalf as Andy’s Mom; Bud Luckey as Chuckles; Beatrice Miller as Molly; Javier Fernandez Pena as the Spanish Buzz; and Lori Alan as Bonnie’s Mom.

There is so much to absorb in this animated opus for a viewer of any age. Watching it over and over again further makes a strong bond between the film and its viewer. Best advice: Buy the Toy Story Blu-ray collection once it hits the market. Such a release is truly worthy of anyone’s collection. It doesn’t sell just with merely crappy marketing materials and bonus features. It’s the actual film that hits every button from laughter to tears, from adventure to realizations, from audio-visual flair to earnestness. It’s “magically deep, sweet, painful, and real.”

Like its characters, the Toy Story films are to be treasured forever.

Shrek Forever After Film Review: Ogre Forever After

Ogre Forever After
By Rianne Hill Soriano

Shrek Forever After is technically fine, but it’s only mildly entertaining. While the pleasant nostalgia is a given that it renders something familiarly successful, the monstrously good fun has already faded for this fourth and last installment of the Shrek franchise. In comparison, it goes “far, far away” from the first two of the now four Shrek movies. It is not exactly “cat-astrophic nor ri-donke-lous,” at the least. Its saving graces are the solid performances for the movie’s bankable characters that breathe life into this commercially mandated and creatively bankrupt effort.

The quick wit and pop-culture referencing that made Shrek a fun movie doesn’t feel the same anymore after a decade down the line.  It falls flat when it comes to the supposed one-liners and adorable critters. It still maintains some appeal, but the fun and energy feels kind of forced already.

Director Mike Mitchell and scriptwriters Josh Klausner and Darren Lemke are all new to the franchise, yet the movie looks so derivative. There are only simple and minimal changes on a distinctly surface level (primarily a darker mise-en-scéne), but deep down, it’s just a tired offer.

Shrek Forever After is very much a recycled treat that bases everything about it for the fad on 3D technology. As a last dance for the profitable green ogre, this one last hit for the marketable business franchise is clearly a cash cow product. Yet, it has undoubtedly captured a steady audience after establishing an impressive past and setting a new trend in mainstream animated films during its heyday. Now, after almost a decade, it keeps its general charm and viability amidst being narratively overcooked and comically undernourished. While this final attempt to profit on the Shrek motion picture fame is a rather modest affair that barely exerts an independent quality and charm for itself, the characters viewers have learned to love through the years keep this movie hanging. Add up the expensive tickets from 3D theaters and everything really goes into the Dreamworks cash register.

Interestingly, after three movies aimed at children and adolescents, this final Shrek movie is aimed more or less at middle-aged men than attracting new younger recruits. Perhaps, Shrek Forever After is really aimed just for its “grown-up followers” (both the grown up kid and adult fans from the past films, but with more focus on the middle-aged adults). Its theme even centers on adult issues and concerns more than trivial children stuff. With this part of the film, it works in the sense that it allows adult viewers to relate to Shrek’s own midlife crisis, Puss’ obesity, among other things.

Mike Myers and company pull the interest to it when scenes fall flat in the other departments.

With a business kind of thinking, Shrek Forever After is a pretty good deal. After the box office profit, it has a very good market in home video sales together with the rest of the Shrek movies. Indeed, for a Shrek collection with four films to boost, it can live a long and prosperous life for the general collection of most households, and it is expected to be one of those movies meant for babysitting the kids inside the homes.

Shrek Forever After Movie Review: Happily Ogre After?

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For its long-time followers, Shrek Forever After is passable entertainment. It’s for those who have grown with the franchise’s predecessors and not the type that can add any new toddler fans.
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Movie Review: Masterful, Moody, and Magnificent

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This sixth installment in the Harry Potter film franchise is of the right mix for the specific needs of the story. It is never dumb and yet it is not pretentiously profound. It is smart as it is honest. It is dark as it is funny.
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Alice in Wonderland Movie Review: Overwhelming Visuals, Underwhelming Storytelling

Alice in Wonderland Movie Review: Overwhelming Visuals, Underwhelming Storytelling
Tim Burton’s individual stamp of masterful storytelling doesn’t seem to register here. And with its wavering tone, Burton and company should really dig a lot deeper if they soon decide to make a sequel.
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James Cameron’s Avatar Breaks DVD Records During Its Earth Day Release

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The initial DVD and Blu-ray releases of James Cameron’s eco sci-fi epic Avatar further proves its high market value as fans rushed to purchase the video copies of the film during its Apr. 22, 2010 release.
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Avatar Movie Review: Avatar is What Jaw-Dropping 3D Can Be

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As a feat of fearless imagination and audacity, Avatar is a bold eco-opus examining technological wonders and morality.
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Dawn of the Dinosaurs Movie Review: The Dino-Ice Adventure

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And as an adventure-packed ride, it provides an astoundingly eye-catching animation built on the fun foundation given by the old characters. Some scenes may feel repetitive, but for the needed surface-level fluff, this kiddie flick generally works.
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The Top 5 Best 3D Movies List

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In the era of IMAX and Real 3D, the worldwide resurgence of 3D films hit the theaters with what stereoscopic 3D technology can offer
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The Top 5 Worst 3D Movies List

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There are actually many movies (both animation and live action offers) that are made into 3D flicks for the heck. And not all stories or film style or cinematic treatment are best suited for the 3D medium.
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Behind the Making of Louis Leterrier’s Clash of the Titans

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Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2 and Incredible Hulk) directs this motion picture based on the 1981 film of the same title.
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U2 3D Movie Review: A Concert Experience for the Price of an IMAX Ticket

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This concert film features cutting-edge technology that gives the viewers a better-than-front-row seat experience as it establishes an uncommonly intimate and occasionally surreal bond between the legendary band and the audience.
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Zemeckis’ Beowulf Movie Review: Making a Statement

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Beowulf takes tremendous artistic license to blend CGI and motion capture technology, then renders it in IMAX 3D to bring a level of hyperreality for the audience to savor.
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Deep Sea 3D Movie Review: An Underwater Magic Inside the Movie Theater

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This IMAX experience lets you sink way down for an amazing experience that blends the grandeur of the deep seas with the spectacular IMAX 3D underwater cinematography.
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Film Review: Alice in Wonderland

I am a big, big, big fan of Tim Burton. And “Alice in Wonderland” is one movie I’ve looked forward to for all these months. In as much as I totally love the dark, Expressionist Burton trademark (which is one of my top reasons of falling in love with the filmmaking spirit of Mr. Burton), “Alice” is a pretty disappointment.

Stylish but dispirited, style over substance, great visuals but lacking story, a feast for the eyes but not for the heart, teeming with marvelous sights but hollow at its core, overwhelming visuals but underwhelming storytelling, great canvas but not a great film… whatever I call it, this Disney movie is definitely not the masterpiece I hoped for. It looks more like a coffeetable book showcasing CGI greatness than cinematic storytelling at its finest. It’s not within the caliber of “Edward Scissorhands” nor “Big Fish.”

A Tim Burton interpretation of the Lewis Carroll classic is something intriguing and exciting. But shockingly, it just doesn’t work. It lacks the energy and emotional power to create the story more than just a vision inside the filmmaker’s head. Maybe it’s because of the pressure from the producers having to live up with that Disney or maybe mainstream mark that Burton loses his authentic touch to it. Interestingly, Burton is one of the producers as well. Needless to say, those shelling out the big bucks are the ones on top control, of course.

It’s still a feat given the visual effects, production design and art direction. The visual splendor is there. The other departments turn out mediocre. Generally, the dialogue can’t live up to the films look. Empty, atmospheric and lacking a soul, some individual pieces actually work at times, but it never works as a whole.

I appreciate Burton’s love for the character designs as he expresses them with such creative wizardry. The amazing offbeat aesthetics as individual pieces are whimsically great in its own dark and bizarre fashion. Ken Ralston’s visual effects are pleasantly surreal; Robert Stromberg’s production design is dazzling and fun. Dariusz Wolski’s photography is wonderfully magical. Yet all these can’t cover up the screenplay’s loopholes. It has its moments, but everything doesn’t fall into one coherent piece. Danny Elfman’s musical score has some magical parts, but it doesn’t transcend to wonderful heights. Chris Lebenzon’s cutting is considerably fine, but it doesn’t reflect the supposed marriage of a Burton vision and a Carroll story.

The performances are sometimes spot on, sometimes out of range. Overall, they don’t translate into a firm grip to let the audience relate to and sympathize with the characters. The film falls short in engaging with the motivation needed to drive the character arcs. From frequent Burton collaborators including Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, to first-time Burton collaborators Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, they provide characters that work more on solo flights.

About its 3D version, unlike with a movie such as “Avatar,” this film doesn’t really work well for that immersive 3D experience. It seems to follow the path of “Up” (though “Up” is a very emotional, honest, and almost perfect film unlike this shallow visual feast) which is unable to give enough on the 3D aspect of it. It works at its best in 2D. And this could be attributed to the utilizing of the film language by all the film collaborators set to what they’ve been accustomed to way before the sudden demand for 3D stereoscopic productions. In the same way, this is another aspect to look into when considering the possible reasons why “Alice in Wonderland” is not able to go beyond the mere provision for atmosphere and visual splendor. It lacks that captivating spirit in 3D maybe because this format requires a specific sub-culture of storytelling standards to live up to its own immersive film sub-language. And to add to this is the fact that the technical requirements for filming in 3D is not entirely the same as the conventional filmmaking process done in 2D. The 3D here doesn’t look absorbing enough to recreate a new mythmaking factor for the film.

Burton’s individual stamp of masterful storytelling really doesn’t seem to register here. And with its wavering tone that is as uncertain as Alice’s decision-making, Burton and company should really dig a lot deeper if they soon decide to make a sequel.

Film Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

A Slick and Solid Family Slapstick
By Rianne Hill Soriano

Catch colorful candies and marshmallows from the sky. Play around ice cream snowballs. Hop around nacho cheese fountains. Slide onto a giant gumball hill. Go gaga with a palace of Jell-O. Get endless supply of jellybeans. Then there comes the massive pancakes, tornados of pasta, pools of nacho cheese, hailstorm of jellybeans, ice cream blizzard, pizza flurries, and deadly gummy bears… Suddenly, it’s raining steak and gumballs! It’s “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”

The story is engagingly ridiculous. And it’s fun. And it works.

This eye-popping and mouth-watering film cooks up a veritable buffet of the bland and the bizarre, the sweet and the sour, and all other tastes generously offered on screen. It serves up a riot of glee, color, and absurdity. And it actually looks fresh and witty beyond the expectation for it.

With a solid gag ratio and a pretty good animation, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” serves as a commentary on the potential perils of genetically engineered food and the downside of “overabundance.” It makes a social point about how people now have too much of what they need. It’s a culture of excess where wastefulness seems next to coolness.

This impressive film from Sony Pictures is a downright odd family flick with exuberant animation, quirky humor, and plucky characters. It’s a slick and solid slapstick made with technical sophistication and engaging storytelling. This animated venture from writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have utilized the popular children’s book by Judi and Ron Barrett into a nice movie feature.

The filmmakers know how to play with their food. And at the same time, they capitalize well on the universal compulsion for stomach-filling delight. As a computer-animated 3D extravaganza, it provides entertaining food fights and pleasurable food trips. It amusingly expands the book for the big screen. It provides whimsical detail through: increasingly surreal weather activities, in a way that climate change in the real world suggests a call for action; and a hunger for more when everything is too much already, in a way that capitalism and consumerism in the real world becomes an alarming concern for every nation.

From the gloriously surreal buffet of predatory giant chickens to the psychopathic gummy bears fighting to death, things are quite weird but really wonderful. Mutated food isn’t that far from the reality of junk food and some unwholesome fast food stuff. And all these are actually best seen in 3D splendor. Technically, this 3D food adventure makes terrific use of the format. Things really look stunning, but that doesn’t mean that its conventional 2D counterpart is of no good value. In fact, the film is a good DVD collectible. It’s just that, dining on 3D is another cool treat. It looks natural for the format and it enhances the story. And it’s good to know that the excellent animation is a veritable feast for the eyes and doesn’t overwhelm the storytelling.

As a computer-animated flick, it is bright, cheery, and at times flat-out hilarious as it provides winsome sight gags involving giant food, references to disaster film clichés (including “Independence Day” and “Twilight Zone”), and endearing characters that vividly come to life. The running gags are pretty neat clichés. It’s mostly slapstick yes, but it’s a pretty charming kind of slapstick that works well for its intended commercial value.

The sophisticated presentation doesn’t look pretentious, and it doesn’t sweat the message. As a family-friendly movie, it provides a frenetically tasty offer. It’s insanely funny and at times wonderfully weird. Things work well with the gastronomically hilarious pace and tone of the comedy. It’s visually inventive and can be swallowed very easily while serving some serious food for thought on the side.

Unlike most children movies being insipid and lowbrow, this film doesn’t insult its audiences. It’s light on its feet and it’s quick-witted. It is silly and surprisingly enjoyable – not to mention, a little trippy. It bursts with random sight gags that boast intricate design and goofy humor. It has some grown-up gags to keep the adults amused as well. The characters are likeable amidst the fact that in terms of character development, they don’t render something of the caliber of Pixar’s “Up.” Yet, this movie really assures the audience with such a tasty adventure.

As a hyperbolic exposé of human greed, abusive behavior, and environmental destruction, this food revolting spin of the 30-page children’s book into a 90-minute bountiful big screen buffet is something that the general viewer won’t regret sinking his/her teeth into. Its delicious and imaginative concept takes flight with a real tasty family delight. And while it rains big food, it also rains big laughs and sheer fun.