... FOR "MOVIES AS METAPHORS"

Disney/Pixar's Inside Out tells the story of 11- year-old Riley Andersen, uprooted from her home in Minnesota and carted off to San Francisco, where her father just landed a new job. On the cusp of adolescence, Riley is completely unprepared for the mental and emotional turmoil the move is about to cause herself and her family; her parents, likewise, can't understand why their little girl, once so bright and open and the light of their lives, suddenly turns so irritable and distant. Ultimately, Riley is able to reconcile her feelings and make up with Mom and Dad (SPOILER), and they live in perfect harmony together forever after. All this, of course, is just the springboard for the really interesting stuff, in which we learn that Riley's emotions are sentient beings operating a giant control room inside her head. There's Joy, green-yellow and eternally optimistic; Anger, who's always on the verge of blowing his red brick top; Fear, a bug-eyed purple nebbish; Disgust, who can barely hide the look of disdain on her face; and Sadness, mopey and morose and blue. So far, Joy has been Riley's dominant personality trait, until circumstances force Sadness to challenge that position, and when both Joy and Sadness are ejected from headquarters and plunged deeper into the recesses of Riley's brain, it's up to Anger, Fear, and Disgust to keep up appearances - with often disastrous results.

Suffice it to say Inside Out is unlike anything Pixar has ever attempted before - eye-popping and funny and heartfelt, yes, but clearly conceived as a metaphor for the way our emotions sometimes get the better of us... and how our children learn to cope with those emotions during their formative years, much to the chagrin of their parents. It's an idea rife with dramatic possibilities, which director Pete Docter (Up) and co-screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley are consistently able to mine for comedy and visual gold. (I haven't even begun to describe Riley's "Personality Islands," or the color-coded translucent orbs in which her memories are "stored" and then carted off to Long Term Memory when she sleeps, or Bing Bong, or the stopovers in Imagination Land or - my personal favorite - Abstract Thought, where the characters are rendered as cubist shapes that would make Picasso proud.)

... FOR "CINEMA STAPLES AND THE PECULIAR POSITIONING OF NAMES ON MOVIE POSTERS"

While we're stuck on a movie poster kick, I happened to catch a 10-minute featurette on Ridley Scott's The Counselor the other day, which, among clips and talking-head interviews and the like, also featured red-carpet footage from the movie's October 3rd UK premiere. As they questioned star Michael Fassbender for the camera, I couldn't help but notice a peculiar poster for the film in the background (note: this photo is obviously from an Entertainment Tonight report from the very same event, and not, obviously, from the featurette I watched on the TV the other night, since I couldn't find a photo from that):

It's nothing special as far as posters go, just your typical mishmash of the actors' profiles to let you know who's actually in the movie, except for one particular problem: their names don't line up with their faces! And it took my brain a moment to process it (Why, that isn't Fassbender - that's Cameron Diaz! And that isn't Cameron Diaz - it's Brad Pitt!). Here's a closer look, so you can see what I'm talking about:

... FOR "LOWERED EXPECTATIONS (PART 2 - 'MEGAMIND' EDITION)

Another entry in a (potentially) long list of titles that aren't quite as bad as their reputations would have you believe. Or vice versa, for movies that fail to live up to the hype.

I'm not the biggest fan of DreamWorks Animation. On average, I find they're too "hip" and self- referential for their own good. Unlike, say, Disney/Pixar, which practically oozes "quality entertainment" each time out (and sometimes even surpasses those expectations), DreamWorks' track record is a bit... splotchy at best. While the folks at Pixar divide most of their attention between pesky things like "theme" and telling an actual "story," the geniuses at DreamWorks worry instead about cramming as many in-jokes and pop- culture references into their movies as possible, to be "of the moment," as it were – too eager to cash in on current trends.

... FOR "THE BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE" - PART 2

Genre:
 

COMEDY

Defined:

Send-ups. Satire. Slapstick. A Comedy's primary goal is to make you laugh - to provide you a cathartic, emotional release from everyday life. Characters and situations are often exaggerated for comedic effect. Popular trends of 2000-2009 included spoofs (the Scary Movies, Meet The Spartans), expletive-heavy sex comedies (The 40-Year Old Virgin, Superbad), and Will Ferrell. Of course, what actually qualifies as "comedy" depends on you, the viewer - because what's funny to one person may not be quite so funny to someone else. Whatever your personal taste, it all comes down to one rule: If it doesn't make you laugh, or the humor doesn't at least reveal a few recognizable truths about life, then it fails as Comedy.


The Top Five:

5. Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001)

One of the decade's great entertainments – and a testament to the virtues of star power. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle, Elliot Gould, Carl Reiner – it's almost too much for one movie to handle. Yet director Steven Soderbergh manages to juggle multiple character threads without ever losing his audience, so that we know exactly who's doing what, and where they're doing it. What's more, he remembers that movies, at their core, are supposed to be fun. Ted Griffin's script is a treasure trove of snappy dialogue exchanges, and the actors have such an easy rapport you get the sense they really enjoy each other's company – the spark is palpable. Critics blasted Soderbergh and Co. for relying too much on style, not enough on substance. To which I say: What's the problem with that? When a movie's as effortless and enjoyable as this, that's substance enough.