Toy Story 4 (2019)

OK, so during my analysis of the newest installment in the Toy Story saga, I decided to grant myself a pardon, which allows me to not discuss the animation. At this point, discussing it is basically rote. Yes, it is bright, colorful, and lush, but we're viewing an entry of a franchise, which has been instrumental in building and sustaining the prestige and integrity of an entire film studio, influential on an entire mode of animation, and intriguing to the masses, young and old, simultaneously creating and tapping into our nostalgias.

And...huh? You're asking if I love Toy Story?

Is that even a question?

The first three entries of the Toy Story series equally rank as my favorite PIXAR film of all time. It may not have the flowering, challenging, philosophical conceits of Inside Out or the aesthetic splendor of Coco, but as three films, it exists as a quintessential human interest package. No other PIXAR film compares to these in terms of continuing, bracing narratives, slick, sly, and sprightly humor, and, above all, captivating characters. With any of these films, you are guaranteed one thing: you are going to care about everyone on the screen. Everything is debatable, but every primary protagonist is crafted with more heart, diligence, and ardor than 95% of characters of most live-action films marketed at adults.

And yes, Toy Story 4 has near pitch-perfect levels of cheer, wit, and warmth. It also has a lot more emotional weight this time around...and even produced in me a bit of emptiness.

Que? Bare with me.

The plot starts with all of the toys being well-adjusted to their new life with Bonnie, the child they were donated to by Andy in the last movie. She's beginning kindergarten and, like any child, is very worried and apprehensive of it. She finds succor and joy in a craft she made, Forky, a spork with googly eyes, pipe cleaner arms, and popsicle-stick feet. What starts as the best efforts from Woody to include him in the group quickly transitions into being intensely alert and watchful for him. Forky sees himself as trash and constantly attempts to fling himself in trashcans, with Woody constantly throwing him out and keeping him with Bonnie.

This hits its unfortunate acme when the gang goes on a road trip with Bonnie and Forky throws himself out the moving RV's window with Woody also escaping to save him. While he bonds with Forky and explains to him that he is a toy that makes Bonnie feel comfortable and jovial, they soon divert from going back to Bonnie to an antique store where Woody hopes to find Bo Peep after being given away years ago. There, she meets Gabby Gabby, a vintage doll with a broken voice box who envies Woody's functioning voice box and she ensnares the pair to steal his voice box and become a toy worth possessing.

This leads to a whole journey with Woody escaping but trying to get back to the antique store, reuniting with Bo Peep and her new sidekick, Officer Giggles, and even Buzz stepping out of the RV to find Woody and ending up meeting two aggressive, violence-happy plush toys at a carnival. All in the name of Forky!

Yeah, if this movie sounds all over the place, it isn't. Emotionally, though, I thought that it initially was.

Everything else was on point to me. The voice actors cozy themselves so seamlessly and euphorically back into their roles that I'm surprised none of them recorded in reclining chairs with cups of coffee swathed in Snuggies. Newly initiated voice actors Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, and fucking Key & Peele (!!!!) all delve into these new characters with child-like anticipation and graciousness. Even Don Rickles is brought back from the dead via archival footage. R.I.P.

This film also might be the funniest of all four entries. Several moments had me screaming in laughter, including one moment that showcases the violent plush toys' propensity to mentally craft and detail incipient acts of violence and a subsequent moment that negates and simplifies their efforts. It also manages to get a few chills in, as well. All I'll say is that if you thought the cymbal-playing monkey from Toy Story 3 was unnerving, then you'll be calling it a day with these Edgar Bergen-era ventriloquist dummies.

Think Dead Silence: The Animated Movie! But without the gore.

While every other aspect was on point, this film definitely jerked me around emotionally. Not that it submerged me in various lagoons of emotional power and plaintiveness to where I came out drenched and dripping with unforgettable sadness and monumental joy, but that it lead me on a trek in revealing its emotional purpose. For a while, I feared that this was the first moment in the Toy Story enterprise that would emotionally and mentally alienate me.

Forky enters the story, perceiving himself as trash and only trash. In this era of heightened awareness and layered dialogues of mental health, I felt that this would be used as the best possible analogy and lesson of self-worth. It would be the most consummate method of doing it, given how much time has passed within the narrative and our social climate. Using an object not typically viewed as a tangible toy, but brings amusement and comfort to a child, but yet it itself only views itself as being confined by standard expectations and can't exceed beyond that, or better yet that it shouldn't, could've come around full-circle as a message on how every individual has worth and provides worth and that you can overcome any dictated confinement.

But while it also is revealed that trash makes Forky comfortable, Woody just kinda uses that as an analogy for how he can be a useful toy and then it's kinda just resolved.

OK, well...maybe it'll tap in on the unfortunate reality that you can alter your environment, alter yourself, and invest as much focus and effort into an end goal and still have it postponed and delayed further. This is in reference to a later scene, which I will not give away. However, that is resolved rapidly, as well. Given the new characters, some of which are hopeful to be with a child and all of them eager to be played with, I feared but was almost ready to gruffly submit to the fact, that this would be another simple conclusion where Woody was in the unequivocal right.

In some ways, I thought of this to be derivative of Toy Story 2, what with the internal dilemma of whether security lies in being in a home, but potentially being forgotten, or if it lies in having an ambiguous, yet spontaneous existence outside of a home, and also with Woody receiving a change to his design, which I will also not spoil. And again, with all the new characters, I thought it was going to be even more derivative and everything would be tied up fancily, tamely, and sycophantically.

And then, the twist happens. And I was stunned, emotionally, but yet still felt puzzled and almost beleaguered logically.

Can you deliver such an existentialist moral about purpose and free will and fulfillment and adequately apply it to toys? Clearly, toys are designed to distract or satiate our selfish needs of entertainment, so how can this possibly translate? Easy. These toys, to us, are not just toys. These toys, to our viewpoint, are sentient. They have alive personalities. They go beyond our selfish needs of entertainment and have actually transfixed us with their own quandaries of existence. 

But even beyond that, can this go beyond the deep-rooted affinity created for these characters and actually be germane in the real world? And even in the context of the movie, what purpose can they possibly have? And in the end, my intense pondering and pensive hypothesizing is what brought me to the revelation that, in a subterranean way, they gave us their most daring moral to date: Life is not comprised solely of easy answers. Any question that can be raised about the ending, in my opinion, can be rebutted with, "Who knows?"

And in a way, I guess you can make a connection to the real world. Think about this. The first three films ended by emphasizing the value of toys on a child and how eager toys are to delivering that fulfillment. I'm sure children saw all of these movies and vowed to cherish their toys more significantly. Well...do you really think that that happened in a zealous, overwhelmingly transformative way? To some of their toys, maybe, but they most likely already had something of a bond with them anyways. To all of their toys, hell no!

Now, those same kids are most likely adults or currently in that ragged process of adulting and are, whether they like it or not, having to take steps that will divorce them from some of the comforts of childhood. What's going to happen? Again, who knows? This film is probably the most humane of the four films because, in one of the most subtle, understated ways, it actually empowers that audience. Instead of teaching them to appreciate the simple, pulchritudinous facets of existence, it challenges them to go on step further: to exist as an individual. Even at the coda of Toy Story 3, your investment was still primarily with the toys and not with Andy. But with Toy Story 4 and how everything shifts drastically, you eventually learn that the most valuable aspect of life is its uncertainty. 

Oh yeah, about that feeling of emptiness? I think that's literally a "me" thing. I think that it is a testament to how I have grown with all of these colorful, spirited, admirable characters that a change of the guard like this is not just the end of an arc, but a veritably heartfelt, almost dispiriting ending. To have such a massive motley of characters and be embracing of them and beguiled of them through four movies over a twenty-four year period and still feel such a poignant, intransigent, addicting connection with them just as years prior justifies and denotes the power of a moment such as at the ending. While Inside Out may have the most powerful moral, Toy Story 4 certainly has the gutsiest. Admittedly, that forlorn sense of emptiness kinda detaches me from it ever so mildly, which is why I don't send it up to the same echelon as the first three, but again, that's a "me" thing.

If I'm having such a gut reaction and an unnerved, anxious, quasi-paranoid concern for characters as these, then they will always have a friend in me.

But yeah, go again and make Toy Story 5! See what happens, burros!

RATING: Four out of four stars!

Shazam (2019)

You know, existing in a classification of mammals that are prone to rushing, discerning thoughts and gross, ignorant misconceptions makes me realize how valuable a simple slice of humble pie with a cherry of re-evaluation on top can be. With that said, I'd like to offer an apology to director David F. Sandberg, regarding his newest film, Shazam!

You see, The Tick may not have been the first bit of entertainment on television or on cinemas to approach the superhero genre with a more punctuated focus on comedy, but its placement is so key and unique in the 90s television cartoon renaissance and its influence has endured so prevalently that whenever I see a new bit of entertainment, utilizing a comedic bent for the superhero story, I immediately think of it trying to approach the same territory that The Tick paved. And this is coming from someone with only a base knowledge of the show.

But there's more going on here, because this is a DC property. Or, as I call it, "D-See, We're Marvel, Right? We're Marvel, Right? No, Seriously, Are We Marvel Yet?"

Whatever appraisals you wish to hurl at DC and their head brass trying embarrassingly to compete with Marvel, but having very few efforts approach that same level of commercial viability, artistic audacity, and sheer audience invigoration, I think we all observed the marketing for Shazam and had the same thought it mind: Someone really wants to be Deadpool. Of course, this is DC, so it wouldn't dare have our main character drop a F-bomb or, I dunno, sexualize his college-bound, foster sister. PG-13 for the win, y'all!

So, given how these properties are so inescapable and so indispensable, I figured that this had the potential to be a desperate, comedic disaster, affirming DC Films to be a bunch of Marvel stans and adding on another character in the DC Cinematic Universe in the line-up of DC heroes put through the most desultory, lukewarm stories. Well, to David F. Sandberg, not only do I apologize, but I also grovel at your feet.

Time for movie review mode! Shazam!

The movie revolves around Billy Batson, a child placed in a group home after repeatedly running away from foster care. While he's rapt with the pursuit of trying to find his birth mother, whom he was separated from at a very young age, he forms a bond with the foster children, particularly Freddy, a superhero enthusiast. One day, he is summoned by a wizard Shazam. He is the last surviving member of the Council of Seven Wizards, he is growing more frail, and is looking for a body to carry on his powers, someone pure of heart.

Billy is chosen and he soons embodies the powers, as well as the grown adult body, of Shazam the superhero. Everytime he says "Shazam," he can transform back and forth between a young boy and a superhero. With the help of Freddy, he discovers the extent of his powers and becomes a celebrity. However, a hero's only as good as its villian. Enter Thaddeaus Sivana, who was originally summoned by Shazam as a child, but was deemed to be unfit to inherit his powers because he wasn't pure of heart. As an adult, he manages to confront Shazam, steal the Eye of Sin, and vows to take Shazam's powers for himself.

For superhero movies, there is a bit of a template. In the 2000s, the first act was heavily dedicated to the origins of the superhero. In this current decade, we've already become familiar with these characters, so it seems that nowadays, superhero films, particularly in the MCU, set up the conflict and personalities in the first act. It's always particularly noticeable, as it should, because it's a tried-and-true way to delineate and distinguish the narrative. 

With Shazam, I was surprised how differently the first act flowed. It could be attributed to the fact that I didn't pay attention to the marketing all that intently, but I liked how the film connotes the implications and connections to the plot during the first act. I didn't immediately know how everything connected until the end of the first act. For example, Thaddeus' backstory opens the film, but the conflict and the reasons for villianry are saved until about thirty minutes into the film. By this point, we actually have spent more time on Billy's development as a character, as well as his fair plight of finding his mother, an action that presents some significant and effective pathos, specifically in how that plotline wraps up.

It also doesn't leave the other children out to dry. All of the adoptive children are written appeallingly and distinctly. Eugene, portrayed by Ian Chen, manages to deliver a few spirited quips. Mary, portrayed by Grace Fulton, is not the overly-bossy eldest, but rather a vivacious, yet insecure and wistful young girl preparing for college and her character is handled with a precise tenderness. Darla, played by Faithe Herman, balances unbridled innocence and ebullient awareness, while never treading into overly-spunky grounds. Even the adoptive parents are portrayed so straightforwardly gentle and cheery, but in such a grounded manner that you can't help but like them.

Freddy, however, portrayed by Jack Dylan Grazer is not just the stand-out of the foster children, but possibly of this whole film. Maybe I was impressed by Grazer's unrelentingly hermetic comic timing, which he didn't get to utilitze too much of in It, another strong film he was in. Or maybe I just adored his character portrayal from screenwriter Henry Gayden. On one hand, Freddy's the token nerd character. On the other hand, he's the token smartass kid. The way Gayden amalgamates the two archetypes into one lively, smart-alecky, sharp character is at both times subversive of archetypes and subservient to what we expect both character types to be.

Of course, such a spirited lead character and his older self deserve spirited actors to portray them. Disney Channel actor Asher Angel is the perfect unassuming hero as Billy, portraying him with such ease and earnestness. Zachary Levi makes a welcome return to Hollywood as a leading man in probably the unlikeliest of roles. It speaks to how much a good sport Levi is to be able to dilute his masculinity, whilst maintaining his feeble everyman sensibilities, all in the name of getting a laugh, yet still spritzing charisma off the screen.

Oh, and getting a laugh? This film gets quite a bunch. In fact, the comedy is where the film truly excels, above all. I laughed so many times throughout the film that it wasn't even worth noting all the specific lines and gags. The film is definitely a modern film and it definitely wants to achieve what Deadpool did, but the movie it actually resembles more is Big, right down to a three-second homage to the piano floor bit. In fact, the alchemy between Freddy and Billy and the feel of the school scenes are reminiscent of an 80's John Hughes film. It's kind of refreshing every now and then to see a comedy that isn't gleeful in its tastelessness, but moreso gleeful in its...glee.

On the visual level, DC actually is up to par with Marvel for this movie because the imagery and CGI is alive, colorful, and spirited, shot with some surprisingly welcoming slo-mo cinematography and 3D-esque close-ups, and filmed in sumptuous, gloriously gothic set pieces. The Rock of Eternity is beautifully realized with as much richness, resonance, and mood as the Batcave, maybe even more.

I guess if I had to quibble, I'd say that the final battle went on a little too long. I'd also say that sometimes I thought the story veered breathtakingly close into absurdity. I conceal everything that need be, but despite that the Seven Deadly Sins are portrayed the same in its original comic, I personally found the whole aspect of "releasing the Seven Deadly Sins" pretty simplistic and ludicrous. Plus, the last shot is cringe-inducingly lame and irritatingly meta. However I say "veer," because during the rare occasions that made me roll my eyes, it compensated me and immediately got back on track with enough humor, splendor, and soul to win me back.

And that's what distinguishes an adored DC film from a DC film to be admonished: soul. It doesn't matter that you got to see your pedantic, fanboy wet dream put on the big screen (i.e. Batman v. Superman). It didn't matter how many villians you got together (i.e. Suicide Squad). It didn't natter how many heroes you got together (i.e. Justice Squad). Those movies were seen as turgid tranquilizers of cinema. This movie will be viewed as having portrayed Shazam's soul and having brought soul back to DC Films.

So you see kids, in the end, the black wizard's magic lived on...through a white person.

*cues Childish Gambino*

This is America!

RATING: Three-and-a-half stars out of four

Five Feet Apart (2019)

Foreword: Q: Stephen, what's your excuse for your absence this time?

                 

                 A: Life's a bitch. Next!

OK, I sure didn't except to almost owe someone an apology.

When I first saw the advertisements for Five Feet Apart, I expected it to be another Fault In Our Stars clone; a movie trying to capitalize on the emotional platform that that movie provided, but without the grace and genuineness that inculcated Fault In Our Stars into the zeitgeist. If bombs such as Midnight Sun and Everything, Everything are any indication, then Fault In Our Stars might just be the Love Story of our generation.

Above all, I anticipated that I would be categorizing it as a Just Die Already Movie. Yes, in the same vein Roger Ebert provided humorous sobriquets to narrative types and tropes, I decided to partake in the same practice. When I use the term, "Just Die Already Movie," you probably have evoked memories or ideas of movies involving either a love interest or overall main character succumbing to a tragic illness. And while that is the overall outline, the impetus that sparks a Just Die Already Movie is when a movie is so manipulative, so laborious, and has so little regard for the reality of the illness and more of a regard for bludgeoning the easiest of emotions out of the audience.

Two examples of Just Die Already Movies are 2011's A Little Bit of Heaven, with its smug, haughty, lackadaisical, and treacly approach to the topic of love while diagnosed with cancer, and 1982's Six Weeks, which used a sick child as a lifeless, obsequious figurine for the screenplay to navigate itself through an empty, virtually non-existent story, slathering itself in egregious cliches and shameless bathos.

Quick message for the filmmakers of both those movies and to all others that may potentially make this mistake: being offensive and boring is a lethal combination. So, for Five Feet Apart, I felt that the only distinction would be the disease at hand, cystic fibrosis, and nothing else. Surprisingly, however, the film turns out to be a meditative look into the disease, a portrayal of the delicacy of the condition and how it affects the people afflicted with it and their relationships with others, and a tender, subtle love story between two individuals trying to live before it's their time to die. I'll say it. It won me over...

...almost.

The movie revolves around Stella. She has cystic fibrosis and spends her days in the hospital, awaiting the possibility that she may receive a lung transplant. All the while, she posts vlogs online about her condition and her day-to-day life coping with it and interacting with the nurses, including her most dear nurse friend, Barbara, as well as her friend and fellow patient, Poe. One day, she meets Will, a patient also stricken by cystic fibrosis. While Stella is adamant and obsessive with her daily regiment and making sure she takes her medications, Will seems to be oddly passive of any danger and doesn't prioritize his medical self-care. This leads to a barter between the two: Stella will advise and counsel him on his daily regiment, if she lets Will, an artist, draw her. Their bond becomes thicker, which leads to them beginning a courtship, all done five feet apart from each other. Will they grow closer or further?

First and foremost, I must begin by clarifying and revealing what I'm sure people are anxious to hear. This film, for the most part (we'll get to that later), doesn't trivialize cystic fibrosis. In fact, I was surprised that first-time director Justin Baldoni and up-and-coming screenwriters Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis had the decency to showcase actual details about how cystic fibrosis affects these patients, as far as their routines go. It shows the medications, it shows the scars, it shows the infections and it does this not to sensationalize, but to relay the point that the illness at hand isn't just coughing, brave faces, and nose tubes. There is a death scene in the film, but in a subversive turn, the film (spoilers!) doesn't kill off either of the two leads. This is practically an anomaly in movies of this type, but it is a inspired surprise and a heartbreaking bit of realism. Death isn't timed for a sentimental conclusion. It's unexpected, sudden, and achingly sad. 

The film does have some funny moments, but they never feel contrived or divorced from the film's emotional intent. The comedy is humorous, but is excruciating and elegiac in nature. It's not levity-for-levity's sake, but rather it is adding to the film's impact and investment. Also, props should be given to the cinematography by Frank G. DeMarco. At its nature, the film is brilliantly shot because the location is the hospital. With the exception of one other place during the end, the film takes place solely at this hospital, which adds to the melancholic feeling of entrapment and desperation that all of these characters are feeling in some way. 

Additionally, however, DeMarco manages to add some poetic, poignant visual touches, like when Stella is in surgery to have a new tube put in and she's transported into a colorful painting that she has on her wall. Even better is when Stella and Poe see each other after a front and the camera cuts back and forth between them, but shot far away, further adding to the aesthetic and thematic crucialness pertaining to the characters being at least six feet apart from each other.

Admittedly, most of the film relies on the charisma of the actors, because, let's face it, these characters themselves aren't original. Stella is the sweet, down-to-earth girl, torn apart by a tragedy in her life, who learns to let her guard down and not live a life of excessive planning and restrictions. Will is the detached, quasi-rebel, whose pursuit of love teaches him to value life and gives him a purpose. The film even shoehorns in the gay best friend and the sassy, warm-hearted black nurse. While Kimberly Herbert Gregory is an appealing actress and is perfectly avuncular as Barbara, the black nurse in question, the film merely ensnares her to be solely a cliche. 

However, Moises Arias, better known as Rico from Hannah Montana, continues his streak of effective adult roles, playing Poe. He's frail and sullen, but still manages to hook you to his character with this trademark smile and his joyous warmth. Will's brazen defiance actually translates out to be an extreme embrace and fear of uncertainty, thanks to Cole Sprouse's winning performance (two Disney Channel stars in a film about cystic fibrosis). Up-and-comer Haley Lu Richardson may have just hit breakout status playing Stella, giving a heart and a personality to her frenzied, manic behavior. Her genuine anguish makes it all the more heart-wrenching and convincing. The dichotomy between Sprouse and Richardson is to be expected, but the actors themselves have wonderful chemistry, all the while remaining five feet apart, one foot less than recommended, in order to take something back that the disease stole from them. All of these actors take these archetypes and flesh them out into relatable individuals.

I cared about these characters. I was invested with them. I laughed with them. I was worried for their safety. Throughout the film, I was surprised that, through a barefaced but observant handling of cystic fibrosis and through amiable characters, the film overcame the obstacle of being a Just Die Already Movie. I even suspended my disbelief that hospital security really seems to suck, because half of the actions that the characters do would never be allowed. I was with it...and then it lost me.

It seems that, during the last twenty minutes, the aforementioned screenwriters were worried that they would lose that teen crowd, so they decided to morph into the exact movie I was afraid it was going to be. All of the cliches stormed in like a football team, each as shopworn and mawkish as the next. The writers copped out and opted for an emotional simplicity that would appease fourth-graders. It rushes narrative aspects, while droning on emotional ones. I couldn't believe how rapidly and unconvincingly one crisis was solved. Without giving it away, it boils down to "I don't wanna do it!" "Do it!" "OK."

It actually was at this point when I realized that one problem the movie had was its editing. The film could've used about twenty minutes cut from it, because the emotional moments near the conclusion are so plodding and so padded out. Any glimpse of an emotionally serviceable moment is immediately undercut by something so wishy-washy. The editing is flawed beforehand, too. While the scene where Will and Stella look at each other's scars is certainly a powerful moment, I feel that the movie expected it to be a cultural landmark to behold time and time again, because they hold on it a bit longer than needed. And the way they reiterated the narration from the beginning to recontextualize it in the most obvious of ways was so manipulative that, at that point, I tapped out mentally. At that point, cystic fibrosis transmuted into a game of hot potato, being passed around for each emotional arc it needed to reach. I may have extolled the movie for maturely and naturally handling death, but at that point, after the sluggish, drawn-out final act, I almost felt cheated that the main characters stayed alive. At least, there would've been an emotional pay-off on some level.

But how do you rate a movie like this?

Well, I have a personal principle that an ending can only drop a film one star from my perceived rating at the time. However, there's more to my reaction of this film. A while back, when I reviewed My Little Pony: The Movie and I discussed how there's at least 50% of the film I find enjoyable, I concluded that I was amused, but not entertained. Distracted, caught off-guard, yes, but there was nothing substantial that stuck. Here, I was entertained. So, I guess now I need to distinguished between being entertained and being fulfilled. I was appreciative and magnetized by a lot of the movie, but it didn't fire on all cylinders. The movie gripped me, then let me go earlier than I desired. It's like someone prepared a wonderful hearty meal for me, let me devour my thick, juicy roast beef and then threw out my rice, veggies, soup, and bread before I even got a chance to taste it.

CBS Films may be a mixed bag, producing critically acclaimed works (Seven Psychopaths, Inside Llewyn Davis), forgettable fillers moreso fit for the ether than the multiplex (Extraordinary Measures, The To-Do List) or outright duds (Beastly, The Back-Up Plan), but that means it's not impossible for them to make a solid film. Even if they shaved off ten minutes, they could've had a fine movie with a limp end. However, when it comes to a quality film this time around, much like Stella and Will, it seems they kept a reaching distance from that possibility.

Also, whoever was in charge of arranging the music for this film deserves a demotion. Burn every ounce of those stultifying, lifeless, emo tunes. Burn them! BURN THEM ALL, I SAY!

RATING: Two-and-three-quarters stars out of four