Skyfall Review

Sam Mendes' Skyfall is not only one of the best films of the year, but it is also the best James Bond film of the franchise's 50 long years.  The film is a masterwork of action, drama, and emotion that simmers over the nearly two-and-a-half-hour run time, to a crescendo that is simply stunning.  Skyfall manages to pay homage to the franchise's long history with winks and nods while moving it forward, all while bringing Daniel Craig's Bond more into line with the Bonds of old.

That may come across as a bit confusing, but it is wholly true.  Skyfall is as much a commentary on the actions of M and MI6 as it is the Bond franchise as a whole:  does today's world need mega-intelligence organizations with actual boots on the ground when everything is easily tracked digitally?  The roots of the franchise are embedded deep into the Cold War and the espionage that was so prevalent at the time.  Does today's world still want/need films that revolve around spies?  The answer to both questions is yes.  The new Q (Ben Whishaw) and Bond have a similar conversation during their first meeting.  Q posits that he can do more in his pajamas in a week than Bond can do in a year.  Its this theme of irrelevance and outdated-ness that permeates Skyfall to its core.

The films villain, Silva (played masterfully by Javier Bardem) is out to show MI6 and M herself that her methods and means are outdated - rather than work for a government or agency, Silva would rather choose his own targets and missions.  His ultimate goal is to shake MI6, M, and Bond to their core.  He is essentially the perfect antagonist;  Silva attacks our heroes both physically and mentally and is quite successful.  His overall plan is to slowly chip away at the symbols and ideas of MI6 and Bond; as Q puts it, it's "less a random killing machine and more of a personal statement."  That comment pertains to Bond's new Walther PPK but it applies brilliantly to Silva as well.

It is with regards to Silva's methods and goals that I compare Skyfall to The Dark Knight.  It was no secret that the screenwriters looked to Christopher Nolan's masterpiece for inspiration - in many ways Silva is an adaptation of The Joker.  He's going after the legacy, the ideas behind MI6 and the way it operates in today's world.  There are many themes at play that are reminiscent of TDK and even Batman Begins.  Hey, if you're going to borrow from someone, borrow from the best?  Amiright?  I just cannot convey how amazing of a villain Silva really is.  He is incredibly intelligent, resourceful, diabolical, and very deliberate.  He has a plan and he executes it brilliantly.

The film, on the whole, just works on so many levels.  As a result I have only one gripe - nothing in the story really surprised me all that much.  I suppose this is my fault alone; by watching the multiple trailers and digging for details online I didn't necessarily spoil the film, but I was definitely able to see where things were going and what set-pieces were coming up.  That said, there were still plenty of moments where I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen; with the stakes so high, and with an antagonist as villainous as Silva, nothing was certain.

Without spoiling anything, Skyfall harkens back to the Bond films of old, both subtly and blatantly.  When the traditional Bond theme kicks in I got chills up my spine.  There are plenty of winks and nods that longtime fans will pick up on and appreciate.  This is, after all, the 50th anniversary of the release of the first film, Dr. No.  It's this long legacy that Skyfall both moves away from and catches up to.  That's really all I can say.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough.  It just works on so many levels: the acting it fantastic (Craig is steely and tough as ever as the titular hero), the music blends the original theme and Adele's throaty "Skyfall" beautifully, and the visuals are just eye-poppingly gorgeous.  I saw the film projected digitally in IMAX and I honestly couldn't imagine seeing it any other way.  Action sequences and beautiful location shots just pop off the screen with a resounding vibrancy of their colors.  Please, just go see it.  You know you will.

Skyfall beautifully moves Bond forward while calling back to its roots, all while managing to be the franchise's best.

The Bearded Bullet 

Trick r Treat Retro Review

I unabashedly love Trick r Treat.  I was first introduced to this fantastic film back in 2010.  I and some friends watched it as part of a Halloween movie marathon that year.  We’ve since done two more marathons (for each subsequent Halloween) – the only film that has stayed consistent is Trick r Treat (Red State, The Evil Dead, Drag me to Hell have been amongst the rotating cast).  It is a fantastic blend of horror and comedy that brilliantly weaves together four separate storylines into one helluva anthology film.

The four storylines could, on their own, act as short films.  Each is wildly different and manages to buck horror-film tropes in their own special ways.  The main through-line of the separate stories is the idea of respecting Halloween (or Samhain) and what it stands for.  This concept is represented physically by a character I’ve come to call “sack boy” (Sam).  Not the cute, cuddly Sack Boy from the LittleBigPlanet series of PlayStation games; this sack boy wears orange pajamas and covers its head in burlap.  He’s an example of what you can’t see being more frightening than what you can see.  Late in the film you find out what’s under that sack, and while it may not be as terrifying as the faceless burlap, it is just as disconcerting and unsettling.

There are some fantastic performances peppered throughout the film.  Dylan Baker is absolutely perfect as the twisted school principal Steven.  Brian Cox is nearly unrecognizable as the crotchety old Mr. Kreeg, Steven’s neighbor.  Anna Paquin is wonderfully cast as a shy virgin with some pretty wicked secrets.  Leslie Bibb and Battlestar Galactica alum Tahmoh Penikett have very small but entertaining roles.  The entire cast overall is just superb; everyone is just so well cast.

I don’t want to get into the actual storylines themselves because part of the joy of watching TrT for the first time is watching the mini mysteries unfold before your eyes and how they all blend together.  The one thing that bugs me just slightly is sack boy himself.  We have no idea where he/it came from and if this is the first time he’s shown up.  I’d like to believe that he sort of travels from place to place, making sure that All Hallow’s Eve is properly respected; if the amount of deaths that occur in this one night occur annually I am quite certain that the parade/celebration depicted on screen would be shut down immediately.  At the same time I just absolutely love the concept and character design of sack boy that I wholly embrace the mystery surrounding his character.

I just cannot recommend Trick r Treat highly enough.  It is quite a shame that this film was never released theatrically; having Bryan Singer attached as a producer wasn’t enough to bump it from direct-to-dvd status.  If you like Halloween themed films or just horror in general I suggest you pick it up immediately.  Here’s to hoping for a sequel (that will most likely never happen)!

Trick r Treat is a fantastic Halloween-themed anthology films that just works on every level.

The Bearded Bullet

 

Flight Review

Flight is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year and features two of the best performances of the year…and is a veritable return to form for Robert Zemeckis.  I say “return” because I wasn’t the biggest fan of his motion-capture series of films (although I am quite the fan of Beowulf).  With this release, it’s as if he’s throwing down a gauntlet that says “I’m back 100%.”  In fact, Flight is almost the polar (see what I did there?) opposite of his animated films – it is a very mature, adult story that deals with alcoholism, drug addiction, and death.  And nudity.

Indeed, the first scene of the film features full-frontal female nudity.  I have no problem with this, but it was quite a shock to see Zemeckis throw that in right out of the gate.  The nudity and the scene in general serve a dual purpose: to show us that he can still tell adult stories and that our pro/antagonist, Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), is a very messed up individual.  Whip is an airline pilot who has a penchant for alcohol, drugs and a very attractive flight attendant.  It is within this very first scene that we’re introduced to all three of these elements that will shape and impact the rest of the film.

See, Whip didn’t sleep at all the night before we’re introduced to him.  He then goes on a 9am flight, still drunk/high from the night before and flies his plane.  Mid-flight, while Whip was napping, the plane begins malfunctioning, resulting in one of the most gripping and intense plane-crash sequences I’ve ever seen, rivaling LOST, The Grey, and Zemeckis’ own Cast Away.   Whip decides to invert the plane.  Yeah, his idea is so crazy that the flight control operates asks him to repeat his statement.  Inverting the plane allows it to stabilize and glide to an empty field where they can land.  Whip successfully lands the plane, losing only six lives of the 100+ passengers and crew, including the flight attendant (Nadine Velazquez) he was romantically involved with.

What follows is a fantastic film revolving around the fallout of the crash, including the discovery of alcohol and cocaine in Whip’s blood after a post-crash toxicology screening and the eventual NTSB investigation.  Whip falls for a recovering drug/alcohol addict (Kelly Reilly), who tries to get him clean (he is almost continuously inebriated during the course of the entire film.  It’s this behavior that almost turns Whip into an antagonist; while I was rooting for him the whole way, his alcoholic tendencies had me questioning my support of him.  No, his abuse issues didn’t cause the plane to crash, but the mere fact that he would fly a plane while drunk/high makes us question his moral code.

Denzel Washington puts in one helluva performance as Whip.  His charisma and charm just flow off the screen.  Whip experiences the gamut of emotions over the course of the film, and Denzel’s performance makes us feel them too.   Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, and Don Cheadle are perfectly cast and complement Denzel’s performance beautifully.  The other real standout is John Goodman’s Harling Mays.  He’s an old friend of Whip’s who happens to be his drug dealer.  He has a relatively small amount of screen time (in just a handful of scenes), but when he shows up in the third act the shenanigans that follow make for one of the most memorable moments in any film this year.  I was literally on my feet with shock (don’t worry, it was just me and a friend in the theater).  Goodman’s had quite the run in the last year, putting in stellar turns in Red State, The Artist, Argo, and now Flight.  Here’s to hoping that this great streak continues in the years to come!

I just really cannot praise this film enough.  From beginning to end I was engaged and entertained.  There really isn’t much more than I can ask from a film.  Welcome back to live action, Mr.  Zemeckis.  If Flight is any indication of what we can expect from his future projects, to say that I am excited would be an understatement.  Please just go see it.

Flight is a brilliant return to live-action for Robert Zemeckis, featuring one of the best performances of the year.

The Bearded Bullet

The Man with the Iron Fists Review

If The RZA set out to make a fairly cheesy, campy, over-the-top kung-fu action film with some cringe-worthy performances and dialogue, then he succeeded in droves.  And I’m fairly certain that that is the point of The Man with the Iron Fists.  For the most part that vision shone through, with some incredibly well-executed fight set-pieces featuring copious amounts of blood.  There are two issues with Iron Fists that keep it from becoming something special (a la Black Dynamite): an uneven tone and a story that is just all over the place.

I have no problem with films that are intentionally bad; the aforementioned Black Dynamite is a personal favorite – it knows exactly what it is and what it’s trying to do and embraces it wholeheartedly.  The issue with Iron Fists is that some of the time the film’s self-awaredness shines through during insanely terrible dialogue and acting.  Then, halfway through the film, it gets very serious during a flashback to the Blacksmith’s (The RZA) past as a slave in America.  The flashback is actually very cool; it’s shot in black and white with splashes of color here and there.  The problem is that the film grinds to a complete halt during this sequence.  The pacing and editing was pretty fast-paced during the first half when the focus wasn’t on the Blacksmith.  After the focus shifts back from the Blacksmith to other events, the film picks up its pace again.  This sequence is one of the more “serious” moments in the film; the rest is relatively light-hearted and fun.  I take no umbrage with introducing serious elements, but when it’s the only part of the larger film…well then it just feels out of place.

The story itself is just all over the place.  One would assume that a film called The Man with the Iron Fists would be, in fact, about a man with iron fists, and that he would be the main protagonist.  In reality, there really isn’t a main protagonist.  There’s more a collection of good guys that we’re rooting for.  We aren’t really introduced to the Blacksmith until that flashback sequence.  Before that he was just a character that we saw make some weapons.  The real focus of the narrative revolves around a shipment of gold being transported to northern China.  Several factions want the gold, with the Blacksmith getting caught in the middle.  The veritable iron fists don’t show up until the last 30 minutes of the film, and even then they aren’t the main focus.  Yes, they’re featured in a cool fight against Brass Body (Dave Bautista) in the finale, but I honestly cared more about the gold and Russell Crowe’s Jack Knife than the Blacksmith and his mission of revenge.

The film really should’ve been called Jack Knife, because Crowe’s character is the most interesting and intriguing character in the film.  And he carries a ridiculous spinning knife/gun thing.  He’s a lone gunman who just shows up and eviscerates a dude to free up a prostitute.  We don’t really know who he is and why he’s there until the third act, and even then he was still the best character in the film.  There should’ve either been an entire film devoted to his character OR the Blacksmith’s, not an amalgamation of several storylines that just get jumbled together.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast with Iron Fists.  It’s cheesy and over the top in all the best ways; Crowe just chews scenery as Jack Knife.  The kung fu set pieces are akin to something like Kill Bill; heads are uppercutted off of their torsos, chest cavities ruptured, and arteries severed ad naseum.  Rick Yune’s Zen Yi wears a badass black suit of armor that has retractable spikes on almost every surface.  Lucy Liu gets in on the action, decapitating bad guys with a spinning blade-tipped fan.  There is just so much fun to be had with this movie if you don’t take any of it seriously (except the parts where they want you to take it seriously).

If you’ve seen any of the trailers then you know pretty much what you’re getting into here.  Despite some major hang-ups with its jumbled story and iffy acting, Iron Fists is just plain, gory fun.  Check your higher brain functions at the door and just sit back and enjoy.

The Man with the Iron Fists is a flawed but incredibly fun kung-fu action film.

The Bearded Bullet

Cloud Atlas Review

To say that Cloud Atlas is a triumph of cinema would be an understatement.  I have never seen a film quite like it and I probably never will again.  Based upon the book of the same name, Atlas weaves together six separate narratives into one relatively cohesive film, dealing with issues such as freedom, love, and happiness.  I experienced such a wide array of emotions that few films are able to evoke within their run-times.  You can go from joy to sorrow to anger in the matter of just a few scenes; the type of tonal balance that is found within Atlas is incredibly difficult to pull off - and the directing trio of Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer pull it off with aplomb.

It is incredibly difficult to find a good starting point to discuss my thoughts and feelings regarding Cloud Atlas.  There is just utterly so much going on over the course of the film that I would say its damn near impossible to remember everything.  And that's okay.  The point of the film isn't to remember each character's name or every little detail - it's the themes at play that are the center of the film.  Atlas has many things to say, but perhaps the strongest idea at play is that of upsetting the status quo.  The six timelines all deal with this idea in one shape or another; in 1849 its about helping a stowaway slave earn his freedom; in 1936 about a homosexual composer dealing with societal views while finishing his masterwork; and in 2144 about escaping a life of pseudo-slavery and exposing the truth to the world.  It is beyond fascinating to see each timeline unfold in their own unique way, all while managing to share similar arcs to one another; the directing trio masterfully blend each timeline so that we're bouncing from one to another, one scene at a time, within a matter of minutes.  Climax moments are melded together to keep the energy and pacing alive; rather than just experience one intense scene or moment, we bounce between multiple events that may be occurring hundreds, if not thousands of years apart, that share similar themes or events.  Dialogue spoken by a character in one story will beautifully complement the on-goings in another.

I just cannot applaud the directors enough for how well Atlas turned out.  With all the moving parts involved it could've easily devolved into a rancid mess of a film.  Instead, the film is surprisingly comprehensible and gets just about everything right.  Yes, the beginning of the film is a bit jarring, considering the time-hopping that is in play, but what is brilliant is that there comes a moment, one that I can't quite pinpoint, at which everything just starts making sense.  I was able to distinguish the varying timelines and their respective characters from one another.  And that's even with the entirety of the main cast putting in up to six different performances each.  Yes, the acting chops on display here are just out of this world.  I never thought I'd see Hugo Weaving play an authoritative woman, but I can wholeheartedly say that  I did and it was amazing.  The directing trio were not afraid to ask their cast to change their gender or ethnicity for characters this film; in one timeline Halle Berry plays a white Jewish woman, and in another a Korean man; Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, and Jame D'Arcy all play Korean men in another; while other actors (Jim Broadbent, Tom Hanks, and Hugh Grant) are utterly unrecognizable in the fantastic makeup and accents in which they are hidden.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg.  Cloud Atlas is so incredibly layered with depth that my mind can barely comprehend it all and produce coherent thoughts about it.  Everything just works on every level.  Without even delving into the deeper meanings, the film at its basest level is a visual powerhouse; to say that Atlas is gorgeous would be understatement.  In every timeline the world just feels tangible and incredibly real, whether we're dealing with 1936 London or a post-apocalyptic Earth hundreds of years in the future.  It's no surprise that Neo-Seoul of 2144 is the most visually stunning, considering the impressive future-tech on display (seriously, can we please have holographic displays for watching TV - that you can swipe away - now rather than waiting 100 years??), but each timeline has its own distinct visual tone that helps you distinguish one from the other.

As is quite obvious, I absolutely loved Cloud Atlas; it utterly and completely blew me away from beginning to end.  There are a plethora of verbs to describe me during the film: enthralled, engaged, mesmerized, angered, overjoyed, saddened.  Only very special films can make one feel so much in such a short amount of time.  There are only two minor gripes that I had with the film: the 1849 storyline was a bit one-note for me, and some of the elderly makeup in other eras was iffy at times.  Other than that I really have nothing to complain about.

I understand that this film is not for everyone; I can foresee it being very confusing and difficult to follow for some.  Fortunately that wasn't a problem in the slightest for me.  Atlas is one of the very best films of the year, and will most certainly wind up very near the top of my list (if not in the first spot).  I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

Cloud Atlas is a true cinematic masterpiece that simply must be seen.

The Bearded Bullet.

Paranormal Activity 4 Review

Horror movies are not my thing.  I don't like to be scared.  My predilection towards open-mindedness of the various cinematic genres is the impetus for seeing such works.  Of all the horror franchises that I've been exposed to over the years, none have grabbed me (yes, pun intended) as much as the Paranormal Activity saga.  If you've been living under a rock for the last few years, the Paranormal films are found-footage horror/suspense films about a family and the demon that follows them throughout several decades.  While this latest entry into the franchise does some interesting things, it ultimately falls short of the fantastic Paranormal Activity 3.  A quick warning - I'll keep the spoilery bits for the second half of my review - many of the issues I had arose from the content, not execution of the film.

Paranormal Activity 4 is scary.  Maybe not as scary as its predecessors, but still incredibly tense.  The formula is the same as the previous entries; weird stuff starts happening and a member of the family (who no one else really believes) starts documenting the behavior.  Where PA4 differs is in the characters; the film revolves around a new family to the series - a couple with their two kids, Wyatt and Alice.  Their female neighbor is rushed to the hospital one night and her son, Robbie, is sent to live with our protagonists while she recuperates.  Cue scary stuff (that maybe isn't quite as scary as in the previous films).

If you've seen the other films you know what you're getting into.  That said, PA4 does do some interesting things to keep it fresh; the first film featured hand-held cameras on tripods; PA2 predominantly used home-security camera; PA3 used video cassette camcorders on oscillating fans etc; this entry uses built-in webcams on various laptops around the house to capture the strange events.  It makes sense and is a pretty clever way to capture footage all the time.  Granted, handheld camcorders are still used throughout the whole film, but when bad stuff starts happening after 3am we switch to the laptop views.  A Microsoft Kinect (as seen in the trailers) is used quite effectively (if not potentially inaccurately).

Where I mainly take umbrage with PA4 is the narrative.  The acting is terrific (and believably realistic as ever), pacing and tension as gripping as the previous entries, and the use of found-footage engaging and believable.  However, the story just doesn't live up to what I wanted.  I'll save my main complaints for the spoiler section, but the base-level questions that needed to be answered just weren't.  I was left with many more questions than answers.  PA4 does nothing to advance the mythology of this family and their pact with the demon, Toby.  It's really just a shame that certain basic ideas and facts just weren't explored or dealt with.  I understand the constraints of a film of this nature, but there were certainly ways in which my issues could've been addressed.

If you don't want to be spoiled, I suggest you stop here.  If you've seen the previous films and dug em then go see Paranormal Activity 4.  You may be slightly disappointed, but its still a fantastically gripping, tension-riddled horror film.

***Full spoiler warning for the entire Paranormal Activity saga is in effect***

My absolute main beef with PA4 are the characters of Robbie and Wyatt.  Robbie lives across the street from our protagonists with his mom, Katie.  For those of you keeping track at home, Katie was the woman from the first film who was possessed and killed her boyfriend, Micah.  In PA2, she kills her brother-in-law and her sister (after the demon Toby was exercised from their house just days prior) and kidnaps their son, Hunter.  It would seem as though Katie and Hunter relocated to Nevada after the events of 2 (the previous films all took place in California).  When we meet Robbie he's creepy as hell (probably due to the fact that he's bros with Toby).  He strikes up a friendship with "Wyatt," the youngest child of the new family.

It would make complete and obvious sense for "Robbie" to be Hunter, right?  Well wrong.  It turns out that "Wyatt" is actually Hunter; Robbie tells him that his "old family wants him back" - we also see him talking to Toby, insisting that his name isn't Hunter.  It is an oft-mentioned plot point that Wyatt/Hunter is adopted.  If Katie kidnapped Hunter because Toby wanted the first-born male child of the family, why would she give him up for adoption?  It makes no sense.  What would've made complete sense was for Robbie to be Hunter.  It just makes no sense that Katie would give him up for adoption.  She's clearly possessed by Toby during this film, meaning that the adoption bit would be because its what Toby wanted.  Then why would he want that?

In the middle of the film, our two leads, Alice and Alex, begin to research the triangle/circle symbol from PA3.  They discover a three-step process that involves a "preternatural" child; I honestly don't remember all three steps, but sacrificing a virgin was in there somewhere.  If Toby needed a virgin to sacrifice for some ritual with Hunter, why wouldn't they just go to a house with a virgin, kill everyone else, and then sacrifice him/her?  Why let a nice family adopt Hunter, then move in across the street from them, send a creepy kid to live with them, begin f'ing with them, and then ultimately kill them all (including the virgin)?  It just doesn't make sense to me.

Who is Robbie and why is he with Katie?  Only five years have passed between the events in the first and second films to the fourth.  Katie couldn't have conceived and given birth to him in that time; Robbie is around 9 or 10 years old.  The final five minutes of the film are somewhat confusing and frustrating as well; while incredibly (in)tense and terrifying, the final moments left me with virtually no questions answered and raising even more.  Our lead, Alice, is attacked by Toby in her house and flees to find her father, who was over at Katie's place looking for his wife and Wyatt/Hunter.  Alice runs across the street and encounters Katie in full-on demon mode (last seen in the final moments of the first film), busting through a door to get to her.  Alice escapes out a window to find her brother, entranced.  She turns around and in the yard are dozens of creepy-looking women, most likely part of the Coven that Katie's family belongs to.  She turns back to see demon-Katie come at the camera.  Cut to black.

Who were all those ladies?  If they're part of the Coven they sure didn't look like the women we saw at the end of PA3 - those were all older women dressed all in black.  Granted, earlier in the film we did see several of these black-wearing Coven ladies at Katie's house, but these ladies didn't look quite the same.  Plus there were dozens of them.  My assumption is that the whole town is a hub of Coven activity.  Maybe I'm completely wrong.  Who knows?!  It's just incredibly frustrating to have such a thing raised at literally the last possible moment with a potential explanation left for the inevitable sequel.  Plenty of films do this sort of thing, but usually they wrap up their own plotlines before introducing a new one for another film.

Before I wrap this up I feel I need to bring up the use of the Microsoft Kinect.  The Kinect is a motion-tracking peripheral that you use in conjunction with an Xbox 360 to play certain motion-controlled games.  The Kinect projects infrared tracking dots onto the environment so as to track movement.  Many times throughout the film, when the lights are off, the tracking dots are displayed and picked up via night-vision on a webcam.  And its pretty damn cool.  The dots allow us to see a child-like demon in several scenes (also, there are now multiple demons?  In one scene, Wyatt/Hunter is talking to Toby while this smaller demon creeps up behind him) and is just fun to watch.  The problem is that (as far as I know) the Kinect only functions when the 360 is on.  This means that this family leaves their Xbox running 24/7.  First off, that's just bad for the console.  Second, 360's auto-shutdown after a certain amount of inactivity.  Unless the Kinect still projects the tracking dots even when the system is off, this is a gross inaccuracy on the filmmaker's part.

The issues that arise from the Wyatt/Hunter situation keep Paranormal Activity 4 from surpassing its fantastic predecessor.  While I was on the edge of my seat for the duration of the film, I still feel that PA4 is lacking just a bit in the actual scare department.  There are maybe two moments that really, truly frightened me.  The rest of the time I was just moderately frightened.  As I said before, if you liked the previous films, then you'll probably enjoy this one on some level - it just doesn't do anything to garner new viewers.

Paranormal Activity 4 is still incredibly thrilling/chilling/intense, even if it doesn't quite live up to the previous films in the franchise.

The Bearded Bullet.

ParaNorman Trimmed Review

I am not the world’s biggest animation fan.  That said, I tend to prefer DreamWorks Animation over Fox or Pixar (blasphemy, I know).  How to Train Your Dragon and both Kung Fu Panda films are some of my favorite of their respective years.  Stop-motion animation also intrigues me; I enjoyed Coraline (some of the best 3D I’ve ever seen) and The Fantasic Mr. Fox, not just for their animation style but their witty and smart writing.  Thankfully, ParaNorman falls into that category.

There is only one word to accurately describe ParaNorman – incredible.  From beginning to end, Norman is intelligently written and beautifully animated, mixing fantastic stop-motion with more modern CG effects.  The narrative is paced quite well, blending horror and comedy with aplomb.  I can see smaller children getting very scared by the events of the third act of Norman; it goes to a pretty dark place.  Some of the greater themes on display will most likely be lost on the children that this film is marketed to, but adults will be able to appreciate the narrative arcs incredibly.  Same goes for the dialogue.  Norman isn’t afraid to throw around some sexual innuendo or crude humor that will fly right over the heads of kids.  One of the main character’s sexual orientation is turned on its head with a throwaway line of dialogue – and it’s brilliant.

ParaNorman is just a fantastic film on almost every level.  The dialogue, story, animation, and voice-acting are all top-notch.  If you enjoy animated films that are intelligent and witty, I cannot recommend Norman highly enough.  Just maybe don’t take small children to it.

ParaNorman is an incredibly engaging, beautifully-made horror/comedy that’s just as smart for kids as adults.

The Bearded Bullet