For the week of February 24th, Walt Disney Home Entertainment is bringing the Academy Award-nominated Big Hero 6 to Blu-ray. This action-comedy represents a big first for Disney: it's the studio's first non-Marvel Studios venture to adapt an existing Marvel Comics property, in this case a group of heroes who band together to fight crime in San Fransokyo. Led by young Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) and his medical robot Baymax (30 Rock's Scott Adsit), this team of budding scientific geniuses (Genesis Rodriguez, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr., and T.J. Miller, basically doing a PG-rated riff on his Silicon Valley slacker) take on a mysterious, tech-obsessed supervillain involved in the sudden death of Hiro's beloved older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney). It's a reliable setup, and one that's certainly served Marvel well, yet the end result falls curiously flat. Part of the problem is that Big Hero 6 is so formulaic. Directors Don Hall and Chris Williams telegraph so many of the film's major beats that when they do happen, we're not terribly surprised. Tadashi's fate, for example, is clear from the jump (he's so one-dimensionally supportive that he's practically got "Dead Meat" tattooed on his forehead), as is the technical condition that allows Baymax to fight crime and the ya think reveal of the villain, a reveal I won't spoil, although suffice to say, this person is voiced by an actor who's played this very part in a very different circumstance. Not that predictability is a deal-breaker - many of the best Marvel movies follow an established plot arc, but films like Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Iron Man 3 or Guardians of the Galaxy compensate for their rote plots with vivid action and characterization, and it's in these fields that Big Hero 6 falls short. Hiro doesn't have the spark of the best protagonists, and his group of sidekicks feels like Generic Comic Relief 101. Only Baymax impresses, and as wonderfully a character as he is - and Scott Adsit deserves all the credit in the world for giving nuance and depth to what could be a limited archetype - screenwriters Jordan Roberts, Dan Gerson, and Robert L. Baird cherry-pick his finest moments from The Iron Giant and Wreck-It Ralph. Ultimately, Big Hero 6 isn't bad (it's never boring, and the East-meets-West visual design is often breathtaking), but it's also never essential. It's the studio's own fault, really - with films like Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen helping to redefine the Disney brand, we expect more from them now.
Martin Liebman's Blu-ray review had a more favorable impression of the film, noting that it "leaves no digital stone unturned. It's a masterpiece of technical wizardry that reveals a tremendous level of exacting, nuanced detail in every shot. It creates a vibrant, fully alive world, a familiar world to be sure despite its future setting but with enough distinction to still earn some "oohs" and "aahs," though predominately in just how complex it all appears and not necessarily for any sort of radical forward-thinking vision of some near future world. The attention to detail in even the smallest pieces is wondrous, so much so that one almost wants to stop the movie and soak in every little bit of digital artistry apparent in every scene, along every surface, around each minuscule detail that adds up to a terrifically vibrant experience that comes as close to a living thing as a digital creation currently can be. And it doesn't simply stop at the visual. The movie comes packed with fine little touches in terms of characterization, sound, and score that all merge to aid in the presentation of a breathtaking experience. Better, the movie doesn't settle for serving as a technical highlight reel. Even beyond the core Hiro-Baymax relationship, the film comes to life with a deep, complex, nuanced, yet accessible story that delves into a number of themes such as coping with loss, overcoming tragedy, and the importance of friendship. The picture explores some dark territory but in doing so arrives at a bright end with a central message that builds on the idea of physical loss versus emotional loss and the realization that one does not equal the other, that even in spirit a life can matter and help engender a sense of purpose where the void otherwise says it cannot exist nor any longer be of any value."
Of all this year's Oscar hopefuls, Sony's Whiplash might be the biggest surprise. It's definitely the Academy's little movie that could. On one side of the spectrum, you have emotionally and narratively epic stories like Boyhood, Birdman, and American Sniper, and on the other end, you have this: a small, spare psychodrama about the fierce battle of wills that erupts between a promising young drummer (Miles Teller) and his band instructor (J.K. Simmons). The closest Oscar antecedent that Whiplash has is maybe Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, yet that earlier film's connection to established genre classics (the film is a perfect synthesis of The Red Shoes and Repulsion) gives it a scope that far exceeds that of Whiplash. At its core, Whiplash is scene after scene of Teller and Simmons locked in a room with one another as Simmons keeps throwing brutal training exercises at his young ward. That description might sound exhausting, and it is, particularly given Simmons' devastating verbal tirades (this not a movie for the faint of heart). It's also, hands down, one of the exhilarating movie experiences I've had in a long time. Whiplash might be writer-director Damien Chazelle's second full-length feature, but he conducts with the skill of a far more seasoned filmmaker. He structures the film as a 100-minute suspense exercise, with Tom Cross' razor-sharp editing perfectly complementing Sharone Meir's roving, insistent camerawork, and all the while Chazelle turns the screws on his hero: the film gets more claustrophobic as it goes along, both aesthetically - Chazelle keeps pushing in tighter and tighter on Teller until the film is alternating shots of him with tight close-ups of his drums - and dramatically - the more Simmons pushes him, the more Teller begins to jettison everything that could stand in the way of musical genius, be it his well-meaning-but-ineffectual father (Paul Reiser) or his sweet, unremarkable girlfriend (Melissa Benoist). I thought of Martin Scorsese more than once while watching this, and Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg, too, and like those filmmakers, Chazelle's grounds his technical virtuosity in depths of character and theme. He gets career-best performances from his leads, using Teller's innate prickliness to keep his character from seeming like a wide-eyed innocent - one of the most interesting things about him is his simultaneous awareness and indifference to the fact that his frenzied practice schedule is tearing him apart (a point Chazelle reinforces with Raging Bull-esque shots of Teller sinking his bleeding hands into ice baths after grueling drum sessions) - and giving Simmons the actor's showcase he's always deserved. Simmons is so relentlessly, creatively profane that at times, you're wondering if he's channeling R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, but the part never feels like mere imitation. The scary thing is, Simmons never lets you forget that there's a human being under all that psychological torment, that his conditioning of Teller is, in some elemental sense, an act of love. It's a brilliant performance, and one that's probably going to net Simmons an Oscar tonight. At its core, Chazelle is dealing with an irresistible, disturbing question: to what degree do we excuse the pursuit of genius? To his credit, he never provides an answer, choosing to end the film on the perfect note of blistering ambiguity, and we are left shaken.
Martin Liebman wrote that the film "pushes the audience to a breaking point but never the whole way beyond, leaving viewers in a state of emotional upheaval through most all of it but at the end more in a state of awe considering how fundamentally pure the movie proves itself in terms of pitch-perfect construction and delivery of some of the most challenging material ever to appear on the screen. Damien Chazelle's script is mesmerizingly rich and detailed, and his direction is fully absorbing, both finding intricate, nuanced details that elevate not only the drama but the performances that make the movie work. Miles Teller is terrific as Andrew, finding an inner obsession and evolving from a state of unflinching determination to multiple breaking points and beyond in a performance that's not only physically challenging but emotionally wrecking through the entirety, from the conflicted emotions of his first run-in with Fletcher all the way through to their final meeting. Yet the film benefits most from an absolutely dominating performance from J.K. Simmons who shapes a deep, mysterious, almost wounded character in the instructor who is so complex that even right to the very end one cannot tell if his methods are mad or whether there's some almost evil genius to the way he goes about his business, the way he pushes, and pushes, and pushes some more with seemingly no care for the individual on any level. Does he break with the intention to bring back his student stronger than before, or is he simply a man whose past has somehow brought him to a point of no return where his only satisfaction comes not from molding the next great musician but identifying the top talent and breaking the person to ensure he or she fails to meet their potential? Whatever the case may be - wherever the movie and actor does or does not take the character - Simmons absolutely makes the movie and embodies the film's dual strengths as an outwardly intense drama and an inwardly fascinating exploration of the human condition."
The Criterion Collection is offering up an HD upgrade of Martin Rosen's cult animated favorite Watership Down. The film is an adaptation of Richard Adams' classic fantasy novel, which follows a group of rabbits as they struggle to establish a home in a new warren; led by the idealistic Hazel (John Hurt), the rabbits face rival rabbit enforcers, dogs, and the depredations of human society, and all while trying to stick to the path outlined in cryptic, foreboding psychic visions. If this description sounds slightly darker than your typical animated adventure, you're on the right track: anyone familiar with Adams' literary work (Shardik, The Plague Dogs) knows that he gives his fantasy situations the gravity of real trauma, a condition that Rosen preserves in this film version. The religious tenets guiding the rabbits have the mystic, tribal quality of ancient religions, and the complex relationship between animals and their environment carries all sorts of geopolitical implications about dictatorships and capitalism. And speaking of trauma: Watership Down maintains a reputation as one of the most violent mainstream cartoons ever made. Rosen and his creative team mostly choose not to anthropomorphize the rabbits, and so they have a wild, feral appearance that comes into stark relief during their conflicts with the world, be they a series of skin-ripping rabbit-on-rabbit fights or a ghastly encounter with a snare trap that still maintains its power to shock. A children's entertainment, this is not. But for the right age groups, Watership Down provides, like George Orwell's Animal Farm or Isao Takahata's Pom Poko, a thoughtful, clear-eyed look at how the world's complex social and political systems trickle down to impact even the smallest of creatures.
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that "what makes...Watership Down a special film is its ability to tell a seemingly simple story in a way that forces the mind to think about a variety of different subjects. Kids will like it because it reveals a magical world in which the extraordinary very quickly becomes ordinary and good always finds a way to triumph over evil. There is also depth and sincerity in its characters - the good and the bad ones - that are incredibly attractive. There is even more for adults to like. Behind the colorful visuals there is a fascinating deconstruction of the world we live in and numerous strikingly accurate observations about our strengths and weaknesses and the ways they define us. Watership Down...was published in 1972. At the time the world was divided by political ideologies that are virtually identical to the ones that form the key conflicts in the film. Indeed, the rabbits' journey is essentially a litmus test that exposes a string of flawed concepts of patriotism, loyalty, and treason that years later would crumble the Soviet Bloc much like they collapse the closed system the rebel rabbits abandon. The film's take on religion and death is equally fascinating. In it there is an obvious relationship between the two that imitates the conventional relationships our world's major religions have promoted for years and eventually highlights some of its weaknesses."
Finally, from Warner Home Entertainment comes the The Frank Darabont Collection. This three-film set bundles together the filmmaker's entire Warner-Castle Rock output, and while the set doesn't offer Darabont's full oeuvre of theatrical releases - his fourth film, the cult horror-thriller The Mist, is property of the Weinstein Company, and I'd assume Harvey and Bob wouldn't be terribly generous in terms of licensing The Mist to Warner for the sake of a few completists - Warner's efforts here maintain a strong tonal consistency. If The Mist marked the start of Darabont's current creative phase, which spawned the likes of such down-and-dirty programs as Mob City and AMC's smash The Walking Dead, the films in this set find Darabont operating in a more classical mode. When the first film in this set, The Shawshank Redemption, made its theatrical debut in 1994, critics and audiences found it hopelessly out of step with the present. 1994 was a year that brought about the mind-and-time-bending digital trickery of Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump and the one-film indie revolution of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and here was Darabont with a defiantly square prison story about the relationship that grows between a wry lifer (Morgan Freeman) and an enigmatic banker (Tim Robbins) who claims he's innocent. Working from an uncommonly reserved Stephen King novella (no bloodthirsty clowns or mystical ka-tets in this one, thankee sai), Darabont eschews aesthetic flash (the unfussy, muted cinematography is courtesy of Roger Deakins) for something more straightforward. There's a calm to his work here, both in the performances (Robbins and Freeman underplay material that lesser actors would pitch to the rafters, and they're surrounded by such iconic character actors as Clancy Brown, Bob Gunton, William Sadler, David Proval, and James Whitmore, who's heartbreakingly good as the prison's institutionalized librarian) as well as in the linear plot, which puts a far greater premium on human behavior than on narrative twists (although the film does pull out one humdinger of a rug from under its audiences). To paraphrase Freeman's character, the film is almost a study in pressure and time, and how those two change people and the institutions surrounding them, and it carefully parcels out its hefty 142-minute screen time so that by the time we reach the denouement, a forty-minute stretch of film that has my vote for most satisfying run of cinema ever made, we've reached something resembling grace. A perfect film.
That's an adjective that can't be applied to Darabont's 1999 follow-up, The Green Mile, but not for lack of trying. The source material - yet another Stephen King novel - is pretty silly stuff, and while it approximates a similar prison setting, it trades in the low-key realism of its predecessor for the supernatural, as Tom Hanks' death-row guard learns that his latest prisoner (the late Michael Clarke Duncan) possesses a very unusual gift, the particulars of which I won't spoil, although King and Darabont give up the ghost by naming this prisoner John Coffey (think about the initials...). Where the film ends up is pure hokum, yet we're willing to accept most of the nonsense because Darabont's work is so assured. Again he employs an extended runtime to positive results (189 minutes, and the film never drags because of how well it immerses us in this world), again his visual scheme is refined yet attractive (DP David Tattersall gives the picture the amber hues of nostalgia), and again he employs the efforts of a top-notch cast: the roster here is even more impressive than in Shawshank, with Hanks and Duncan getting sterling support from David Morse, Jeffrey DeMunn, Barry Pepper, Bonnie Hunt, James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson, Michael Jeter, Harry Dean Stanton, an uncredited Gary Sinise, and, as the film's deliciously malevolent rotters, Doug Hutchinson and Sam Rockwell. The Green Mile falls apart the second you start thinking about it, but the journey there is worth the while.
Too bad the same can't be said about the final film in the bunch, the 2001 dramedy The Majestic. As assured as Darabont's technical work is - and The Majestic is, if nothing else, a pretty stunning evocation of 1950s Americana, even if it bears as much resemblance to reality as the 1955 sequences in Back to the Future - Michael Sloane's script is awful, a contrived look at blacklisted screenwriter Peter Appleton (Jim Carrey) who gets in a car accident, suffers amnesia, and starts thinking he's a long-lost WWII hero from Lawson, California. There are a thousand ways to tell this story (for a great example, you can't do much better than Preston Sturges' madcap Hail the Conquering Hero), but Sloane leans heavily on the melodrama, tossing in a kindly wise man (Martin Landau, who can play this part in his sleep) to guide Appleton's moral conscience, a beautiful gal (Laurie Holden, in the film's best, least affected performance) who finds herself doubting Appleton even as she falls for him, and a third-act that lets its hero rail against the evils of the HUAC board. Worst of all, Darabont indulges this saccharine pap, allowing the proceedings so many misty-eyes line readings and soft-focus tableaus that the film should come with a diabetes warning. That said, as misguided as The Majestic is, it still proves worthwhile. Despite the grit inherent in both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile (as uplifting as they both are, the two films earn their R-ratings through fairly explicit language, some brutal violence, and, in The Green Mile's case, a horrifying electrocution-gone-wrong setpiece that presaged the graphic content of The Mist and The Walking Dead), The Majestic is really key to understanding Darabont's creative leanings: he's shooting for Old Hollywood splendor, for the spirit of George Stevens and Frank Capra, for the kinds of movies they don't make anymore. At their finest moments, these three look pretty close to the real thing - squint your eyes, and you can't tell the difference.