For the week of November 23rd, Lionsgate Home Entertainment is bringing Shaun the Sheep Movie to Blu-ray. Even if you're unfamiliar with the BBC children series that gave Shaun the Sheep his start, you should find lots to love here; directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzack have created a wry, frequently hilarious comedy that shares a lot of the same DNA as Aardman's other hit property, the great Wallace & Gromit. The plot of Shaun the Sheep Movie is simplicity itself: after a long, tedious stretch of farmland work, Shaun and his sheep friends conspire to take a day off, except their machinations go horribly awry, endangering the life of their Farmer and sending the sheep population on a long, strange odyssey through the city. What elevates the proceedings to a level that includes Pixar's great Inside Out and Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, however, is the execution. With the exception of diegetic sound effects, Burton and Starzack tell their story as a silent movie. I thought of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton while watching this film, and not just because of the silent gimmick. Burton and Starzack share those silent-film comedians' gifts for realizing character and emotion through vivid action - we sympathize with Shaun for wanting a rest, sure, but we also blame him for not seeing any of the potential consequences of his plans, and this complexity stems from fully realized character animations and clean, direct plotting. All the characters have this same richness, whether it's Shaun, Farmer (whose amnesia leads to one of the movie's slyest gags), or Bitzer, Farmer's loyal sheepdog who's trying, against all odds, to restore order to the farm. About the only person who lacks that same nuance is Trumper, a venal animal-control employee, yet he's such a great, sneeringly hateful villain that his single-minded aggression is enough to get laughs. On that note, let me also emphasize how consistently, uproariously funny Shaun the Sheep Movie is. Certainly, the big setpieces are great, from the destructive chase sequences that bookend the film to a fancy restaurant piece that ranks with the best of Buster Keaton, but Burton and Starzack never feel the need to overwhelm us (as too many kids movies do). Some of the funniest moments are the smallest ones, such as a running joke in a city pound that a) ranks as the picture's most inspired sight gag and b) also has a smart, dramatically relevant payoff. Shaun the Sheep Movie has the kind of beautiful simplicity that we don't see in most movies today, animated or otherwise. It's as direct as a sudden belly laugh, and just as satisfying.
In his Blu-ray review, Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that the film "what's already remarkable about Shaun the Sheep Movie is how the screenplay by Richard [Starzack] and Mark Burton makes it effortlessly clear what's going on and what each and every character's motivation is, all without the benefit of any expository dialogue. Farmer seems blithely content to let each day play out exactly as the last, a proclivity shared by his helpmate dog Bitzer (who bears more than a slight resemblance to a certain other Park canine). But both the sheep and pigs on the farm evidently want a little more excitement in their lives. Shaun has a plan (of course), but not so surprisingly, things don't go the way he envisioned...What's so charming and dare I say even lovely about Shaun the Sheep Movie is how winningly innocent it all is. In a time when even so-called kids' movies are often filled with a post-modern cynicism, it's beyond refreshing to see a film built around such wonderfully simple characters. While [Wallace and Gromit creator] Nick Park may not be a hands on creator with this enterprise, his spirit is all over the film, and that's most definitely a good thing."
From Lionsgate Home Entertainment comes American Ultra. This action-comedy has a pretty irresistible premise: what if a lazy stoner (Jesse Eisenberg) was Jason Bourne and didn't know it? Part of the reason Pineapple Express was such a big hit was because of how it mined a similar tension between silly drug humor and violent action, and for American Ultra's first quarter or so, it does a pretty good job of recreating that Pineapple Express feel. Between this and 30 Minutes or Less, I'm not quite sure I buy Eisenberg as a mumbly burnout (he's too obviously tamping down his hyper-kinetic nature), but he's still very appealing as American Ultra's befuddled hero, particularly in his scenes with his beyond-patient girlfriend (Kristen Stewart). Eisenberg and Stewart had wonderful chemistry in the underrated Adventureland, and their obvious affection for one another creates an immediate, natural rapport. I could have watched a whole film of the two just hanging out together. At a certain point, though, you've got to put butts in seats, so we get the big reveal that Eisenberg possesses deadly killing skills that surprise even himself, but even these scenes are funny, for a little while. The problem is, eventually the violence overwhelms the movie, and director Nima Nourizadeh (helmer of the terrible teen comedy Project X) doesn't possess the kind of guiding hand to survive the transition; he's far too content to ladle on graphic violence in an effort to hide his lack of facility with action staging and shooting. However, even more problematic are the nonsensical - and often offensive - plot twists that the script loops itself into. Screenwriter Max Landis often has trouble distinguishing between clever and glib in his other works (he also wrote Chronicle, which is a mediocre screenplay redeemed by good direction and better acting), and the freedom of the film's R-rating allows him to indulge in all his most sophomoric antics. After a while, the transgressive content just starts becoming unpleasant, and you start feeling bad for the sea of great actors (besides Eisenberg and Stewart, the film co-stars include Connie Britton, Topher Grace, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman, Tony Hale, and Walton Goggins) charged with reciting this risible text. What's worse, Landis loses that central bond that Eisenberg and Stewart share, and lest you think that's carping unnecessarily over a piece of pure entertainment, let me remind you that Pineapple Express works because we always buy the connection that Seth Rogen and James Franco's addled potheads share. Even fluff needs a human center - sound and fury doesn't always cut it.
Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that "The laziness of the writing is evidenced by any number of other supposed developments that occur, including a kind of toady-ish CIA operative named Petey (Tony Hale) who has a history with Victoria [Britton] and who initially helps her in her quest to free Mike [Eisenberg] from the invading hordes of killers, but who later supposedly pulls back after being threatened by Yates [Grace]. Guess which side he comes down on in the film's supposed climax? This is one of the more curiously undercooked elements of the film, and the ostensible 'tension' of what Petey is going to do once Yates calls in a drone strike that Petey is in charge of is completely angst free since the character has been so haphazardly introduced and utilized up to that point. A post-climax montage of Petey's reactions to his decision is just flat out silly, another sign of a certain carelessness on either the part of Landis or director Nima Nourizadeh...Though there aren't any deleted scenes included on this Blu-ray release, one gets the feeling that copious amounts of material were either never written, filmed and/or included in a final cut."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is offering two titles this week: a Blu-ray upgrade of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru and a new edition of D.A. Pennebaker's seminal music documentary Dont Look Back. For Kurosawa fans, Ikiru has a glowing, special power; it might be the best film the director ever made, and yes, I have seen Seven Samurai and Ran. Kurosawa never made a movie as achingly human as this; his subject isn't samurais and courtly intrigue, but rather Kanji Watanabe (the great Takashi Shimura), a middle-aged office drone who learns he is terminally ill and becomes seized with the sudden, terrifying need to do one good thing before he dies. The problem is, the world doesn't prove receptive to goodness, a condition Kurosawa depicts on two fronts. Plotwise, Watanabe decides that the only thing he can achieve is to turn a fetid bog into a children's playground, but he faces one crushing bureaucratic setback after another as he petitions the state to create the park (if nothing else, this development gives Ikiru some of the flavor of the saddest, most crushing episode of Parks and Recreation ever). However, this soul-sickness runs deeper than just the vagaries of bureaucracy, and Kurosawa contrasts Watanabe's altruism with his family's spiritual failings: to a person, they're too self-serving or scared to embrace life with the same passion as Watanabe. It's indicative of a theme that Kurosawa would return to time and time again - how the individual's ideals crater under societal limitations - but never with Ikiru's aching well of feeling. This movie is alive to the world, in all its triumphs (Watanabe's chance interactions with a young woman from his office) and agonies (the near-silent scene where he processes his illness takes your breath away just as it does his), and never more succinctly put than in the last scene, a flashback which is as bittersweet and affirming as anything I've ever seen on film. It's a wonder, this picture: as grim and painful as it can be, Ikiru never registers as a dirge. It's too fascinated by life itself, in all its painful complexities.
Svet Atanasov called the film "remarkably cynical at times, but it is undoubtedly the reason why it still feels relevant today. Through a series of contrasting situations one is forced to ponder what truly matters in life and whether the various accomplishments that give one a sense of fulfillment and ultimately a sense of security should define one's existence. Indeed, when Mr. Watanabe is forced out of his comfort zone, he is also expelled from the system that has created his reality - and without it he suddenly rediscovers his passion for life. Kurosawa directed Ikiru in 1952, but his deconstruction of life in post-war Japan is anything but dated. In fact, the cynicism that apparently solidified it is now an integral part of the value system which the Western world promotes. Needless to say, much like Mr. Watanabe many westerners also spend the overwhelming majority of their lives in The Great Race for More, not realizing that what they are losing in the process is far more valuable than the occasional rewards that they earn before the finish line."
Dont Look Back, however, is complex for different reasons. When director D.A. Pennebaker first set off to cover Bob Dylan's 1965 England tour, I have to believe that he didn't expect to capture the kind of footage he got. Sure, the film offers some iconic music footage - Dylan singing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" or "Only a Pawn in Their Game," some musical and verbal tête-à-têtes between him and the likes of Joan Baez and Donovan - but what really sets aside Pennebaker's work is the impression of Dylan that he's able to capture. This Bob Dylan, to quote Roger Ebert, "is immature, petty, vindictive, lacking a sense of humor, overly impressed with his own importance, and not very bright". He smirks his way through London, droning on about his own brilliance to no one in particular, insulting fans and fellow peers with equal aplomb, and making life hell for the press tour following him (he offers the journalists a never-ending string of condescending and nonsensical responses, and rarely do we sense that they deserve his attitude). I can only imagine what Dont Look Back must have felt like for fans that, at the time, thought Dylan was as a peace-and-love avenger; his arrogance and general unpleasantness must have come as a real shock. Sure, Dylan the Genius is still present (anyone unsure of that fact? Watch him and Donovan together, and you can practically see the blood rush out of Donovan's face when he realizes that he's practically the Salieri to Dylan's Mozart), but the shell around him seems harder, more self-absorbed. And all the while, Pennebaker frames this material with his signature vérité style, his documentary camera shaking, weaving, and probing into the callow Dylan's soul. One could argue that after this documentary, Dylan would never allow the public such unrestricted access. Really, can you blame him?