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Babies best babes
The Boss Baby tops this week’s new movie releases
Ghost in the Shell could have used more geisha-bots.
Movie
Boss Baby ***
Surprise! Dreamworks’ latest is not simply an exercise in sticking Alec Baldwin’s Scotch-mellowed tycoon’s rasp in the mouth of a CGI infant and chuckling at the juxtaposition. Instead, this story of a boy’s troubles when his baby brother arrives serves as a rousing defense of familial love as a good that can’t be commodified, and the family itself as a community that can’t be corporatized. Most magical of all, it’s a celebration of childhood imagination — that old-fashioned force that imbues ordinary life with extraordinary significance and wonder, all without the benefit of any sort of digital device. (It’s telling that the parents’ cameras are old-style, and even The Boss Baby’s hotline to headquarters is a corded, rotary toy.) Director Tom McGrath has the good sense to treat all this serious stuff with the lightest of touches, instead guiding the kiddies in the audience to focus on a battle between puppies and babies for human affection, the grown-ups on Baldwin’s quippery, and everybody on the oft-crossed line between fantasy and reality in the mind’s eye of a child.
I like to tell myself that I go into every film with a completely open mind, ready to praise or blame based entirely on what I am about to witness onscreen. But that’s not always true, not entirely. How can it be, in an age when all the talk about a film generally happens before its release? (Everything after that tends to be discussion of box office and sequels.)
So in all honesty I went into The Boss Baby expecting to be disappointed, if only because of the giant eyes, oversized heads, and weird eyelashes of the baby and his brother. A disaster of character design, that. Clearly, they were trying to make adorability distract from aesthetic bankruptcy. Boy, was I wrong. It was a strange thing to go from, “Here we go,” to “I don’t hate this,” to “That was funny” to “This is good!” But that’s what happened.
Movie
Ghost in the Shell *
A hot mess of a philosophical cyber-thriller. The hot is provided by Scarlett Johansson as a government agent (but corporate creation) built from a human brain and a synthetic body, the latter often on quasi-display in a shimmering sort of shell casing that she only occasionally uses as digital camouflage. The mess encompasses pretty much everything else. Philosophical: on the question of what defines us, memories or actions, the heroine explicitly comes down on the side of actions — this after spending the entire film investigating the truth about her past, i.e., her memories. (In fairness, she also investigates a super-hacker — played with remarkable feeling, all things considered, by Michael Pitt — who sounds pretty self-righteous for a guy who brain-jacks lowly garbagemen and builds neural networks from human brains. But it all ties together.) Cyber: the notion that a company would build a robot super-weapon and not include a failsafe is a touch risible. As are many of the implanted geegaws that festoon enhanced humanity. Thriller: Peter Ferdinando puts the “vanilla” in “villain,” sidekick Pilou Asbæk can’t lock down his accent or his attitude, and the film lurches between mayhem and musing. It’s better with the former, which isn’t saying much. Some cool visuals, though. Directed by Rupert Sanders.
I had the opposite experience with Ghost in the Shell. When they posted the opening fight scene on YouTube I got a little excited, mostly because of the creepy geisha-bot. A triumph of character design, that. And the whole “what is a person” issue, combined with the impressive cityscapes and the revered pedigree, made me think it might be Blade Runner for a new generation. Boy, was I wrong.
The Zookeeper’s Wife sort of split the difference. The trailer didn’t move me, but once Nazi zookeeper Daniel Brühl started talking about breeding a better bison (well, auroch), I thought we might have something really bold — the contest over the existence of a Master Race being played out in the animal kingdom, with Jews in the underground cages just to hammer home the point. Boy, was I wrong. Or rather, I was right the first time.
It’s worth noting that The Digital Gym is doing last-chance runs of two films that the Reader liked: Pedro Almodovar’s Julieta and Pablo Larrain’s Neruda.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Babies best babes
The Boss Baby tops this week’s new movie releases
Babies best babes
The Boss Baby tops this week’s new movie releases
Ghost in the Shell could have used more geisha-bots.
Movie
Boss Baby ***
Surprise! Dreamworks’ latest is not simply an exercise in sticking Alec Baldwin’s Scotch-mellowed tycoon’s rasp in the mouth of a CGI infant and chuckling at the juxtaposition. Instead, this story of a boy’s troubles when his baby brother arrives serves as a rousing defense of familial love as a good that can’t be commodified, and the family itself as a community that can’t be corporatized. Most magical of all, it’s a celebration of childhood imagination — that old-fashioned force that imbues ordinary life with extraordinary significance and wonder, all without the benefit of any sort of digital device. (It’s telling that the parents’ cameras are old-style, and even The Boss Baby’s hotline to headquarters is a corded, rotary toy.) Director Tom McGrath has the good sense to treat all this serious stuff with the lightest of touches, instead guiding the kiddies in the audience to focus on a battle between puppies and babies for human affection, the grown-ups on Baldwin’s quippery, and everybody on the oft-crossed line between fantasy and reality in the mind’s eye of a child.
I like to tell myself that I go into every film with a completely open mind, ready to praise or blame based entirely on what I am about to witness onscreen. But that’s not always true, not entirely. How can it be, in an age when all the talk about a film generally happens before its release? (Everything after that tends to be discussion of box office and sequels.)
So in all honesty I went into The Boss Baby expecting to be disappointed, if only because of the giant eyes, oversized heads, and weird eyelashes of the baby and his brother. A disaster of character design, that. Clearly, they were trying to make adorability distract from aesthetic bankruptcy. Boy, was I wrong. It was a strange thing to go from, “Here we go,” to “I don’t hate this,” to “That was funny” to “This is good!” But that’s what happened.
Movie
Ghost in the Shell *
A hot mess of a philosophical cyber-thriller. The hot is provided by Scarlett Johansson as a government agent (but corporate creation) built from a human brain and a synthetic body, the latter often on quasi-display in a shimmering sort of shell casing that she only occasionally uses as digital camouflage. The mess encompasses pretty much everything else. Philosophical: on the question of what defines us, memories or actions, the heroine explicitly comes down on the side of actions — this after spending the entire film investigating the truth about her past, i.e., her memories. (In fairness, she also investigates a super-hacker — played with remarkable feeling, all things considered, by Michael Pitt — who sounds pretty self-righteous for a guy who brain-jacks lowly garbagemen and builds neural networks from human brains. But it all ties together.) Cyber: the notion that a company would build a robot super-weapon and not include a failsafe is a touch risible. As are many of the implanted geegaws that festoon enhanced humanity. Thriller: Peter Ferdinando puts the “vanilla” in “villain,” sidekick Pilou Asbæk can’t lock down his accent or his attitude, and the film lurches between mayhem and musing. It’s better with the former, which isn’t saying much. Some cool visuals, though. Directed by Rupert Sanders.
I had the opposite experience with Ghost in the Shell. When they posted the opening fight scene on YouTube I got a little excited, mostly because of the creepy geisha-bot. A triumph of character design, that. And the whole “what is a person” issue, combined with the impressive cityscapes and the revered pedigree, made me think it might be Blade Runner for a new generation. Boy, was I wrong.
The Zookeeper’s Wife sort of split the difference. The trailer didn’t move me, but once Nazi zookeeper Daniel Brühl started talking about breeding a better bison (well, auroch), I thought we might have something really bold — the contest over the existence of a Master Race being played out in the animal kingdom, with Jews in the underground cages just to hammer home the point. Boy, was I wrong. Or rather, I was right the first time.
It’s worth noting that The Digital Gym is doing last-chance runs of two films that the Reader liked: Pedro Almodovar’s Julieta and Pablo Larrain’s Neruda.
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