Toy Story 4 (2019)

The Low-Down: 24 years ago, Pixar’s Toy Story quite literally changed the face of animation as we know it. The film presented an entirely new way of telling a story, bringing characters to life via CGI – pixels over pencils, so to speak. At the same time, Toy Story set a new high standard for storytelling in film, proving conclusively that animated movies aren’t just for kids. In the intervening decades, the franchise has even made a strong case in favour of sequels – demonstrating that they’re not necessarily soulless cash-grabs. Toy Story 4 is very much a part of that grand tradition. This is smart, soulful, sublime film-making: somehow entertaining and profound all at once.

The Story: Sheriff Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) is trying his best to adjust to life with Bonnie (Madeleine McGraw) – the little girl who inherited Andy’s beloved childhood toys at the end of Toy Story 3. Even though he’s forgotten more often than not, Woody remains intensely focused on Bonnie and her happiness. This means going into full babysitter/bodyguard mode when Bonnie creates Forky (Tony Hale), a spork with twists of wire for hands and clumsy wooden popsicle sticks for feet. As Woody tries to keep the trash-oriented Forky safe, he’s swept into an accidental adventure – one in which he meets old friends and learns new truths about who he is and who he has yet to be.

The Great: Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Toy Story 4 is the fact that it feels like the natural, necessary final chapter of a story told in four parts. There’s no way that any of this could have been planned when Pixar first introduced us to Woody in 1995, but the progression in both narrative and character development feels utterly organic. Woody has spent the last three films grappling with his existential fear of being lost, forgotten or replaced, from his first meeting with the brash Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) to the day Andy outgrew him and went away to college. This film challenges Woody – and his audiences – to think hard about second chances, about changing how you look at yourself, about finding and embracing a new purpose in life. As such, Toy Story 4 might be the most philosophical movie you’ll see this year, in the best possible way.

The Not-So-Great: There actually isn’t all that much to complain about. The plot machinations can feel a little clunky at times, but Stephany Folsom and Andrew Stanton weave so much joy and humour into their screenplay that the film still zips along. As this is very much Woody’s movie, fan-favourite legacy characters like Buzz and Jessie (Joan Cusack) inevitably end up taking a back-seat. Even then, however, they each still get moments to shine. You might find yourself both thoroughly amused and mildly annoyed by the antics of Ducky (Keagan Michael-Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele), a symbiotic pair of new characters who were clearly inserted into proceedings for comic relief.

Forking Funny: Give it up for Forky, surely the best new animated character of the year. Voiced with a bewildered tenderness by Hale, Forky is a delight – a walking, talking identity crisis created out of one little girl’s love and imagination. Even better? With his magnetic attraction to all nearby trash-cans, Forky is a fandom meme just waiting to happen. A close runner-up is daredevil stuntman Duke Caboom, who reportedly owes his ridiculously charming posing and personality to current internet darling Keanu Reeves’ commitment to the role. Toy Story 4 even manages to make its main antagonist, Gabby Gabby (Christina Hendricks), both terrifying and endearing – although there are fewer shades of grey when it comes to her ventriloquist-doll minions, led by the determinedly creepy Benson.

Cowboy Blues: Ultimately, Toy Story 4 belongs to Woody, and rightfully so. He is this franchise’s Captain America, in more ways than one. This film pays loving tribute to Woody’s big heart and unwavering, self-effacing loyalty, even as it shakes up his life and world-view when he encounters old friend and possible paramour Bo Peep (Annie Potts) again. (Bo, by the way, is now super-cool and as far away from a fragile damsel-in-distress as anyone can be.) Woody’s decisions and revelations about himself will make you weep with the most complex and bittersweet of emotions. There is joy and sorrow here, hope and heartbreak, final farewells and new beginnings, often in the same moment. In other words, it’s the stuff of life itself, and it’s glorious.

Credits Where Credits Are Due: You’ll definitely want to stay throughout the credits of the film, which are peppered with closing scenes that are essential to tying up the overarching narrative. At the very end, you’ll even be rewarded with a happy ending for one of Toy Story 4’s most minor of characters.

Recommended? In every possible way. Toy Story 4 is a masterpiece of film-making, story-telling and animation. Delightful and devastating in equal measure, it might well be the silliest and most soul-stirring film you’ll see this year.

Side By Side (2012)

Even the most ardent of movie-goers might be unaware of the extent to which seismic technological changes have swept through Hollywood in the past twenty years or so. Of course, they would likely be aware of the debate over film versus digital: the question of whether the trusty, treasured method of shooting movies on celluloid is slowly becoming a thing of the past, with digital technology improving in leaps and bounds every day. But cinema enthusiasts who aren’t personally familiar with the workings of a movie set might not understand just how much the digital revolution has shaken things up in the industry, fundamentally altering the power dynamics, work flow and structure within any given director’s creative team.

Side By Side – a fascinating, insightful documentary facilitated and produced by Keanu Reeves – delves head-on into this knotty issue. Speaking to some of the world’s top directors, from James Cameron through to Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese, Reeves teases out some of the untold joys and quiet tragedies of the seemingly inevitable shift from old-school film to new-fangled digital. He consults, too, some of the world’s finest cinematographers – from Wally Pfister (Nolan’s Director of Photography, or DP, of choice) to Anthony Dod Mantle (Danny Boyle’s go-to guy) – as well as a host of other people affected by the change: editors, colourists, VFX artists, producers and camera manufacturers.

For anyone who loves movies, this documentary is a delight. It’s a treat to hear from the many people who have laboured in dark rooms and behind the scenes to bring us silver-screen magic (itself a term intricately tied up with the old-fashioned capturing of an image on celluloid). Boyle explains how he came around to the concept of manoeuvrable cameras; Cameron and George Lucas plump heavily down on the side of editable, instant ‘immediatelies’ (rather than the dailies of yore); Nolan maintains his commitment to shooting with film. Joel Schumacher, too, who hasn’t made a film since 2011, has a few particularly resonant things to say about the role that technology can and must play in service of art (and vice versa).

But, on top of finding out where each director stands on the issue, Side By Side also looks at how the digital revolution has affected the job of the cinematographer. Once in almost full control of the final image captured – one that had to be processed overnight and could only be viewed the next day, with minimal edits possible (barring reshoots) – the cinematographer had immense power on set. But, these days, feedback is instantaneous, and directors can tell right away if what they’ve shot with digital cameras is good enough. There’s a lot of gentle heartache and nostalgia that can be found in the film as directors and cinematographers alike talk about cameras that can now capture more details than ever before and screens that can display images as they’re being shot.

If you’re not a big fan of tech-speak and finding out the inner workings of Hollywood, Side By Side could prove to be a challenging watch. It’s frequently quite dry, burrowing into technical details and minutiae that might puzzle or frustrate casual viewers. There are a few great tidbits sprinkled throughout – including an absolutely brilliant anecdote featuring Robert Downey Jr and his frustration at losing the downtime afforded by the changing of the magazines in film cameras – but these might not be enough to tide everyone over.

Anyone who’s ever been a tad confused about the film vs. digital debate will find plenty in Side By Side to think about. There are a few messages in the film: one of them, bleak though it may be, concerns the death knell that has apparently begun to ring for shooting on film. It’s lamentable that this particular art form – difficult and frustrating though it may sometimes be – is slowly dying out, but it’s inevitable and, as many of the directors here argue, necessary.

But the core message – the one to take home with us – has to do with the power of cinema and the stories it tells us: everyone interviewed by Reeves participates precisely because they love the movies as much and as deeply as we do, and want to do right by them. In that sense, Side By Side celebrates as much as it mourns the advent of digital technology, while demonstrating that, even as the industry moves towards its future, it will always be inextricably linked to its past.

Basically: A fascinating look at modern cinema as it undergoes its most earth-shaking technological transition yet.

47 Ronin (2013)

It never bodes well for a film when its release date is delayed – much less when it’s been pushed back a whole year, ostensibly to accommodate reshoots that would bump up Keanu Reeves’ completely imaginary role in a Western blockbuster take on a classic, awe-inspiring tale right out of the Japanese history books. That way lies disaster and madness, one would think – and certainly the bland, monster-heavy trailers for 47 Ronin did the film no favours. Smack down your inner critic, however, and this epic fantasy flick – for that’s what it is – turns out to be reasonably palatable fare.

The bare bones of the true story are all there: the kindly Lord Asano (Min Tanaka) is ordered to commit seppuku – ritual suicide by disembowelment – when he almost mortally offends Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano – a nicely ironic name if ever there was one). This renders all the honourable samurai in Asano’s service masterless i.e., ronin. Led by the noble Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), the loyal band of 47 ronin vow to avenge Asano, even though they have been ordered by their Shogun (top military commander) not to do so.

What’s less accurate, of course, is pretty much all the rest of it. Reeves plays Kai, a half-British, half-Japanese orphan who’s taken in by Asano but treated like an outcast by everyone in the household – except, of course, for Asano’s loving daughter Mika (Kou Shibasaki). Kira’s nefarious plans have the support of Mizuki (Rinko Kikuchi), a witch who can apparently take any form she likes: wolf, snake or dragon. It’s all a bit nonsensical, especially when Kai tries to get swords for the ronin from some pretty creepy folk who have gone from society’s outcasts to being part of what looks like a supernatural cult.

In other words, 47 Ronin is a faintly ridiculous addition to the wealth of Chūshingura – fictionalised accounts of the 47 ronin tale – that already exist in Japan. It’s the kind of big, dumb blockbuster in which the good guys literally live to die another day as long as the plot calls for it. These fearless ronin even survive when the villain is protected by a witch with crazy mystical powers! She can set an entire field on fire, create poisonous spiders and turn into a dragon! And the ronin – at least 47 of them – live anyway! It’s crazy!

That’s what makes it all the more surprising when 47 Ronin turns out to be… well, actually not half-bad. Once you’ve accepted the sillier aspects of the film for what they are, it’s easy to get swept along by its very earnest drama and spectacle. Reeves’ storyline is a made-up jumble of nonsense, but is played very straight – this is, in effect, Sad Keanu: The Movie – and it just about works. Casting Reeves as the outsider allows him to do what he does best: play the role with stony-faced reserve, whether he’s levelling up by battling demons in cage matches or pining moodily after Mika. Kai’s restrained love story with Mika is fairly predictable stuff, with the girl fading a little too much into the background (don’t expect much bloodletting from Shibasaki, Battle Royale fans), but it’s salvaged by the rather non-Hollywood way in which it all ends.

For all that Reeves takes centre stage in the publicity campaign, the film belongs just as much to Sanada’s Oishi. He undertakes a more arduous emotional journey: one that takes him from grudging to full-hearted acceptance of Kai’s worth as a warrior and comrade. His relationship with his family is also more fully and effectively examined than Kai’s unwavering loyalty to the Asano clan. As Oishi plots his course of action, one that will bring him shame for disobeying the Shogun even as he avenges his master, he warns his wife and son Chikara (Jin Akanishi) to disavow him. Their reactions provide some of the most emotionally resonant moments in the entire film.

All things considered, the title of the film is a bit of a misnomer – it would more accurately be called 2 Ronin, subtitled Oishi And Kai’s Excellent Adventure – and it suffers from a lamentable lack of humour and historical accuracy. But it’s not the complete travesty that its long-delayed release date might suggest. Tucked away beneath a layer of mystical beasts and witches lies a story with enough heart, nobility and soul to survive even the oddest twists and turns.

Basically: An odd, fantastical twist on a true story – not as bad as you’re expecting, though not as good as history would have it.

Street Kings (2008)

I admit I watched this movie for one reason and one reason only: the fact that Hugh Laurie (that British – yes, British! – actor starring in House) has a minor role in it. I wasn’t expecting much from it, honestly. Reviews were far from uniformly good, and I’ve never thought much of Keanu Reeves’ ability to act, much less carry a dramatic role that requires him to do more than wear sunglasses and/or look impossibly cool/handsome while executing acts of incredible derring-do. (Which explains why the only roles I’ve so far been able to enjoy him in, and ‘enjoy’ is already a stronger term than would technically be accurate, are his incarnations as Neo and Constantine in the Matrix trilogy and Constantine respectively.) This all adds up to my main point, which is that I honestly didn’t expect much out of this film… and as a result, was pleasantly surprised by what I got in the end.

Tom Ludlow (Reeves) is a veteran LAPD cop who’s better known among his peers for being a ruthless, tough executor – devoted to his boss Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker) – but not much of a thinker. He plunges into dangerous situations and displays his own disarming lack of morals when he roughs up criminals… it’s not that they aren’t criminals, per se, but one suspects that his way of handling their arrests (if they make it alive through a confrontation with him) would leave something to be desired in a court of law. Things start to go badly wrong, however, when Tom somehow ends up in a gruesome grocery store shootout in which his estranged former partner is shot dead and events spiral out of Tom’s control… especially with Wander’s long-time nemesis Captain James Biggs (Laurie) dying to bring Wander’s team down by opening investigations into Tom’s culpability led by promising young desk officer Paul Diskant (Chris Evans). Tom knows he’s innocent, however, even as the loyalties of those around him shift and shade into greys he doesn’t recognise.

Now, that probably doesn’t sound like much, but it’s mainly because I’m trying to avoid giving away too much of the plot. It’s the convoluted details and characters that make up the story, as you realise the murky inner workings of the LAPD – motivated more by political power play and bags of cash than the public good. As with other films based on screenwriter James Ellroy’s hard-boiled crime fiction, SK shows us cops as they (probably) really are: human beings at once depraved, clueless and lost, all trying to make sense of shifting moral sands and gaining advantage for themselves from the pain of others. In other words, it’s not much of a cheerful story, and this becomes clearer as Tom starts to uncover the secrets and betrayals that have always been littered around him but that he’s been too drunk or blind to notice. The film also has some truly heart-thumpingly fantastic action scenes – director David Ayer films fight scenes and bullet play almost lovingly, layering in shocks and tension beyond mere shootouts. A scene involving Tom taking Paul out into the streets and actually confronting some of the thugs the latter only monitors from behind a desk is almost unbearably exciting when said thugs start to retaliate with some pretty heavy gunfire.

That being said, SK has its flaws, including an ending that is ridiculously over the top and difficult to swallow – the confrontation between Whitaker and Reeves’ characters, which you imagine should be the best-crafted moment between the two as they resolve issues large and soaked in murder. Well, not so much. If you thought Whitaker was chewing the scenery in his Oscar-winning turn as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, you haven’t seen his performance in this film. And it’s dreadful. For the first two-thirds of SK, he’s fine. But in the last lap, he explodes across the screen with seriously messy energy that just doesn’t work – especially since he’s not given any good lines at all. The writing at this point is simply horrifyingly shoddy, going from nicely convoluted and dark to completely bizarre in the space of ten minutes. The resolution of the plot is treated so hamhandedly that it really ruins quite a lot of what went before it…

Including a surprisingly effective lead performance from Reeves. Aside from impossibly cool hero figures in flapping trench coats, it turns out that he might actually have a future playing against type as a boozy, not entirely respectable or sympathetic semi-crooked cop. At no point during the film (and I have felt this acutely in other performances of his I’ve had to suffer through) did I feel that Reeves was clunking across the screen, a wooden block who adamantly believes it can act but evidently cannot. Here, he lends a slightly dazed determination to Tom, which is appropriate given the character’s slow awakening to all the crap he’s surrounded himself with his entire career as it starts to drag him under. Whitaker is good, aside from that last scene, while Laurie – as American as he is in House – turns in a strong performance as the apparently morally upright Biggs, always ready to offer Tom another way to bring Wander down.

It’s always a treat to be surprised by a film – and surely SK surpassed quite a few of my expectations by turning out to be an engaging, dark film with a good performance from Reeves. I only wish it could have surprised me a little more by pulling off a better ending. It’s salvaged somewhat in the final moments, as Tom contemplates the situation he (again) finds himself in. But that’s not quite enough to save the film, unfortunately…

The Lake House (2006)

First things first: it’s not like you really need much of your mental faculties when watching romantic movies (especially if they’re comedies). Most times, it’s probably best to just go with a minimum of your brain switched on, instead leaving your heart to be won over by the inevitably achingly soppy romance unfolding onscreen. Most of these movies stretch credulity to the limit anyway, employing contrivances like Fate and Coincidence poorly disguised as an old friend or letter or phone call or chance meeting on the street (rinse and repeat ad nauseum) to explain how a couple so intent on breaking up to inject some Dramatic Tension into the film can eventually reunite despite all the Ridiculously Fake Obstacles placed in the way of True Happiness. (Yes, all these concepts require capitalisation, just to make a point about how conventional it all really is and how much ingenuity on the part of the filmmakers and goodwill from the audience is required to make it all work.)

In the case of The Lake House, however, a romantic melodrama remade from Korean sobfest Il Mare, there’s almost too much required of the audience, even one accustomed to the sheer leaps of logic and faith required to digest mainstream Hollywood fare. You don’t need to switch off your brain for this one so much as gouge it out of your head and leave it at the door, because the supernatural element of this story is not only never explained (they can talk across time why?), but so ludicrously wrapped up in the end that it doesn’t even conform with its own internal logic – which is essential for movies that establish their own sci-fi-lite premises. Surely there must be internal consistency even if the whole enterprise is – on close examination – a load of hooey.

Anyway. The movie begins with Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock) leaving the eponymous lake house, a daringly gorgeous edifice constructed over the mouth of a gleaming lake. It’s a wonderful little structure, shot through with light and boasting a tree that grows right through its very heart, cut off from the world save for a wooden walkway a few floors off the ground. She leaves a note for the next tenant asking him to forward her mail to her new address in Chicago, where she’s working as a doctor… and soon she does start receiving letters from a tenant of the lake house, Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves). But it quickly becomes clear to them in the course of their correspondence that they’re writing from two years apart – he is in fact the tenant of the lake house before Kate ever took up residence. Not a whit put out by the time-travelling nature of their pen pal relationship, Alex and Kate start to share more of their lives with each other. From the past, Alex has the advantage of being able to woo Kate in the future. So he leaves her smile-inducing graffiti on a wall when she takes a walking tour of Chicago choreographed by him, or plants her a tree that sprouts overnight before her apartment building, or retrieves a long-lost book for her to rediscover in the future. All very romantic, of course – the problem comes, unfortunately, when Alex and Kate try to meet in the year 2006, and keep missing each other. What is keeping Alex from meeting Kate and keeping his dates with her? Can a love separated by the brutal taskmaster Time survive?

And so on and so forth. Yes, it really does get all smee in the end, if you had managed to figure out what the heck was really going on. Not that it’s that complicated – in fact, since the magical nature of Alex and Kate’s letter box is never explained (screenwriter David Auburn clearly decided there was no need to clarify the premise of the movie for fear of distracting from the romance – and it’s not like any attempt at clarification would have succeeded anyway), the plot should be simple. Unfortunately, it isn’t. The movie becomes one of those whose machinations are so obtuse that you can’t actually focus on them and actually think them through while in the cinema. If you do, they dissolve away much like a house of cards in a stiff breeze – some of the timing plain doesn’t make sense, especially when it comes to the ending, which is so contrived that it hurts to even remember it. Your heart is supposed to soar at the end, I’m sure of it. Mine sunk to my shoes with a groan that was uncharacteristic for me, given what a sucker I tend to be for movies like this. (Honestly, the movie could have salvaged at least a point on my rating system if the ending hadn’t been as hopelessly poorly-written and badly-thought-out a cop-out as it turned out to be.)

I have a feeling that some, if not a lot, of it has to do with director Alejandro Agresti’s inability to decide just where he wanted to go with this pseudo-supernatural, time-stretched romance. While I haven’t seen the Korean original, I’ve seen enough Korean and Japanese movies to know how the movie would have played out to be effective – if you’re not going to explain the central conceit to a bunch of jaded movie-goers, you’d better load up on the heavy emoting, exaggerating the consequences and implications and sheer grandiosity of this relationship by weighing it down with the burden of an entire world. In keeping much of the movie surprisingly low-key, Agresti fails to capture our imagination enough for us to forgive the illogical nature of it all. There are some nicely-framed moments – Alex walking past Kate at the train station, Alex sidling up to a miserable Kate at her surprise birthday party and coaxing her wordlessly into a romantic dance – but these come across as merely sweet rather than profoundly affecting.

When you’ve got a bit of a touch-and-go script, it’s really asking rather a lot to bank on the abilities of Bullock and Reeves to re-ignite their chemistry from Speed to make this movie worth watching. To the actors’ credit, they are the ones who actually render the film halfway watchable. Bullock is great in an underwritten, curiously passive role – her ennui when she first meets Alex way back in 2004, while still saddled with enthusiastic ex Morgan (Dylan Walsh) is palpable. Reeves, usually so wooden an actor in films that actually require him to emote (note that he’s best-remembered for films where he gets to hide behind an implacable, emotionless, handsome facade of cool c.f., the Matrix trilogy or Constantine), pulls his own weight here. Although he looks a shade too old and (heaven forbid!) jowly for his role, he actually very effectively colours in Alex’s earnest devotion, and shades his scenes with his domineering architect father Simon (Christopher Plummer) with something approaching genuine heartfelt emotion. And there is enough of a residual spark between Bullock and Reeves to make it really frustrating that they don’t get anywhere near enough screen-time together. They make tiny moments like Alex and Kate’s first fight amusing, and somehow manage to keep grounded the otherwise giggle-inducing over-wroughtness of the film’s high concept.

A romantic drama in search of a heart to wear on its very exposed sleeve, The Lake House is a muddled, sloppy mess… albeit one blessed with quite lovely visuals (the aesthetics are great, especially when the camera swoops around the dazzling vista in which the lake house is situated) and a leading couple who try their best to lend their charm to a regrettably stilted enterprise.