Review #1,473: 'Monsters vs. Aliens' (2009)

When it comes to big-screen animation, it's pretty widely accepted that Pixar frequently mines critical and commercial gold whilst their biggest rival, Dreamworks Animation, provides the fluff. Pixar certainly possess the largest awards cabinet, but Dreamworks know how to attract an audience, with the likes of Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon all developing into successful franchises with memorable characters. With the market now aggressively over-saturated with animated efforts for the whole family, a few of their titles have flown under the radar, and sometimes unfairly. 2009's Monsters vs. Aliens is one such example: a fun, funny and heartfelt throwback to 50's B-movies that spawned some spin-off shorts, but wasn't successful enough to warrant a sequel.

In California, Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is waiting to marry her vain TV weatherman fiance Derek (Paul Rudd), who has just announced the news of a job offer in another state. Before the wedding ceremony kicks off however, a huge asteroid crashes down on top of Susan. and although she appears unaffected at first, the mysterious energy given off by the rock causes her to grow to enormous size. With her head now peaking through the roof and the guests running for their lives, the military are quick on the scene, capturing Susan and taker her to a secret government facility ran by General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland), who has been hoarding a collection of strange monsters for decades.

There she meets fellow captives B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a boneless blob of blue goo; Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), a genius half-man, half-insect; The Missing Link (Will Arnett), a hybrid of sea creature and ape, and Insectosaurus, a gargantuan mutated bug. Their futures look increasingly bleak, but when alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) arrives on Earth in search of the crashed meteorite, US President Hathaway (Stephen Colbert), gives Monger the go-ahead to put his freaky prisoners to the test and straight into battle with the intergalactic invader.

B-movie fans will spot the homages immediately, and there's enough of a modern twist to the rag-tag gang of 'monsters' to delight any children watching. The references are obvious: there's Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Blob, The Fly, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Mothra, but the characters are so lovingly crafted and terrifically voiced by a talented cast that they feel more love letter than straight rip-off. Although there are a few laugh-out-loud moments, Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon's film, working from a script by no less than five writers, fails to be consistently funny, and the arrival of Gallaxhar is a one-note plot device designed to bring everybody together. But there are some exciting set-pieces, particularly whenever the weirdly adorable Insectosaurus is involved, and there is enough heart woven into its fabric to make Monsters vs. Aliens one of Dreamworks' most underappreciated animations.


Directed by: Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon
Voices: Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, Paul Rudd
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #893: 'Inherent Vice' (2014)

Following in the footsteps of Raymond Chandler and the Coen brothers' Chandler homage The Big Lebowski (1998), Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel of the same name, Inherent Vice, has its permanently perplexed gumshoe trying to navigate his way through a labyrinthine plot that never really makes sense. Joaquin Phoenix's mutton-chopped 'Doc' Sportello is rarely too far away from his next joint in a hungover 1970's, where free love and hippydom is starting to fade and Richard Nixon reigns in the White House. The plot plays second fiddle to the hazy atmosphere and distinct sense of place, so if you find yourself constantly scratching your head as the story 'unfolds', it really doesn't matter.

If Paul Thomas Anderson's work is noticeably divided by 2007's masterpiece There Will Be Blood, when his work seemed to transform from absorbing, oddball ensembles (and even an Adam Sandler comedy) into sweeping, completely hypnotic works of art, Inherent Vice is a curious combination of the two era's. While never spilling over into full-blown comedy, the film makes frequent use of slapstick and moments of surreal absurdity, all delivered with perfect comic timing by its extremely talented cast. However, there's something else going on; a bigger picture that Anderson never really grasps (and doesn't really need to), and an eeriness that may or may not be fuelled by Doc's drug-induced paranoia and bewilderment.

The story kicks off when Doc is visited by old flame Shasta Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), who informs Doc of her affair with real estate developer Mickey Z. Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) and a possible plot to kidnap and commit him to a mental asylum. Doc's investigations force him into constant conflict with former colleague Lt. Detective 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), a buzzcut-donning hippy-hater, who assists Doc with the news that Wolfmann has disappeared without a trace. Doc is also tasked with locating two others - a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who owes money to Black Guerilla Family member Tariq (Michael Kenneth Williams), and missing husband Coy (Owen Wilson), whose wife Hope (Jena Malone) has been informed of his death. The cases all may be linked by a mysterious boat known as the Golden Fang.

The head-scratching antics and doped-up conversations can cause extreme brain fatigue at times, so this is far from Anderson's best work. But Inherent Vice is still distinctly the work of Anderson, who wraps the film in an unpredictable and unsettling atmosphere at times, with the favouring of close-up's, a technique adopted in The Master (2012), heightening the deliriousness of the experience. The real find here is undoubtedly Waterston, whose twist on the femme fatale is played with a free-spirited seductiveness that would drive most men crazy. Phoenix is predictably convincing as the permanently red-eyed and well-meaning private dick, and Brolin overshadows anyone in the same room as him with his intense and idiosyncratic stiff, demanding waffles in bawled Spanish and deep-throating a popsicle much to Doc's disgust. Anyone expecting to be satisfied come the climax may be disappointed, and, like The Master, it can be difficult to love at times, but Inherent Vice is a one-of-a-kind experience; constantly baffling, funny, frustrating and beautiful.


Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Martin Short
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #661: 'Mud' (2012)

Similar to his excellent 2011 feature Take Shelter, writer/director Jeff Nichols delivers another exceptional slice of small-town Americana. Mud's story is small, and its characters hail from some backwood town in rural Arkansas, living on makeshift boathouses on the Mississippi River. Yet although the focus is on these small people and their ordinary existence, there seems to be something larger and grander in its execution. Take Shelter showed a man's (possible) mental deterioration as he envisioned the apocalypse. In Mud, a very grown-up tale is seen through the eyes of two 14 year old boys, and theme that runs throughout is love. Yet there's always the feeling that the fate of the eponymous Mud (Matthew McConaughey) and Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) could somehow have global consequences, and that if they are doomed then so are we all.

After hearing about a boat that lies at the top of a tree as the result of a flood, two teenage boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), travel to an island on the Mississippi River in a speed boat. They find the boat, but they also find Mud, a rugged drifter with a gun, who asks the boys to get him food in exchange for the boat. It becomes evident that Mud is an outlaw, but the boys stay true to their word and deliver the food. Mud tells them the story of Juniper, the woman he loves, and hands them a note to deliver to her. As the boys seek her out in her motel room, they find her being abused by a man who is the brother of a man that Mud murdered. Despite the dangers, Ellis stays loyal to Mud and carries out the tasks he is asked to do.

There is more than just a hint of Mark Twain to the story, but Mud is successful in combining a number of genres - Southern gothic, coming-of-age drama, and sometimes even your standard man-on-the-run thriller. Cinematographer Adam Stone, who worked with Nichols on Take Shelter and his debut Shotgun Stories (2007), captures the Mississippi River immaculately, portraying its mythic qualities so lyrically that you may think it was capable of washing Mud up on the shore of its empty island. The world seems both peaceful and violent, two themes so contrasting that we can only be seeing this world from the viewpoint of Ellis' naive and innocent mind.

The cast is stellar. McConaughey seems well on his way to redeeming himself for his years of service to terrible rom-coms with an impressive performance, harking back to his early appearance in the magnificent Lone Star (1996). Small roles for Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon round off an impressive cast, and Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson (both former Deadwood actors) inject raw emotion into their roles as Ellis' separating parents. But it was Tye Sheridan that stole the show for me, giving a performance way beyond his years as the honest and headstrong Ellis. The scene in which he is humiliated by the girl he thought was his girlfriend, the expression etched across Sheridan's face becomes something more profound than simple confusion. Although it dips into a slightly disappointing and generic shoot-out climax, Mud is a fine film, and one that reminds us what it is like to love, as ugly and unpredictable as it can be.


Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Reese Witherspoon, Jacob Lofland, Sam Shepard, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Michael Shannon
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie