MidgardDragon99 Reviews

Glee: Journey to Regionals (2010) Season 1, Episode 22

Excellent way to rap up an excellent season.

[10/10 · 11 June 2010]

One review of this says it is the "worst finale in history" and cites the fact that there is no cliffhanger as evidence of this. Have we come to this point, where we even expect musical comedies to have giant cliffhangers that leave us biting our nails all summer? Is there any good reason to want that in a show like this? I say no.

Instead we got an excellent self-contained season with lots of emotion, lots of laughs, and lots of the best music of yesterday and today. The song choices in this episode were all excellent, from the Journey medley with Don't Stop truly cranked up to a 10, to the beautiful (no, not cheesy, beautiful) rendition of To Sir With Love for Will, all the way to the overproduced and soulless but still lots of fun Vocal Adrenaline rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody (no, it's not called BoRap).

The plot lines that the show did move along it moved to where they need to be. Will is at least acknowledging Emma's presence again. And that dumb side-story with Rachel's new boyfriend is over and we can actually see what was promised after Sectionals with her and Finn as a couple. Most importantly Quinn has had the baby, and while the adoption went smoothly and we didn't have to endure the standard TV show pregnancy cliché of "I'm keeping it!" at the last minute, we did get to see a very shocking turn with Rachel's biological Mother adopting Quinn's baby just weeks after pushing Rachel away (is that a *gasp* continuing plot thread....almost even a cliffhanger?) I suspect this will play heavily into the next season, all of this, and I look forward to seeing if I'm right next season.

Congratulations to Glee on an excellent first season. There were bumps along the road (please don't do any more episodes with only one artist's songs and a terrible message that women are the only ones that deserve fair treatment), but there were also great highs (Neil Patrick Harris doing a duet of Aerosmith's Dream On, for example). You just keep doing what you're doing and don't let any of these people who jump on hate bandwagons whenever something gets popular change what you are.

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Pure emotional brilliance, a film for any one who remembers what it's like to feel.

[10/10 · 18 October 2009]

What a hard film to pin down. A fantastical, art-house masterpiece that's main focus is making you feel by reminding you of very real feelings that you may well have buried or suppressed upon growing up. It's not about a grand adventure or any easily digested moral. If you can't put your self in Max's place, warts and all, then you probably won't be able to enjoy this film on the level it's meant to be enjoyed. But if you can, wow, you'll be captivated and blown away.

I imagine this being studied in child psychology classes well before film studies classes. Every beat isn't magnified to glorious effect. It's the overall product with some fairly mundane-seeming pieces that come together to make a greater whole that matters here. I'll come right out and say, this is the first film that I finally let the tears flow in since WALL-E. And surprisingly I wasn't able to hold back until the credits like I was then.

There are so many little moments, almost right from the beginning, that get you in this one. From "Worried Shoes" playing during a scene that pretty much puts us right back there, lying at Mom and Dad's feet as they worry about bills or work or things we don't understand to Max racing home looking for his Mom until she finally pops around a corner and there she is, and it all feels better again.

Perhaps even more powerful is the near-universal feeling and perhaps even theme of the film of wanting everything to be okay, and being powerless to make it so. I'll tell you a secret, I may be 26 but I'm just a little kid. I constantly want to rip at my hair and scream at the world when the little, stupid, everyday things go wrong and there's nothing I can do to stop those little, insignificant moments from existing. This film is cathartic for those feelings. If you're willing to let yourself get swept up in it, then those emotions can, at least for a moment, feel purged by the end of the journey.

Alas, as much as this film should be left in the realm of emotion, it wouldn't be right of me to not mention the pieces that make the whole. First up is the acting, standing out most of all being young Max Records as Max. No other child actor could have pulled this off like he did, in my opinion. He's a little hellion that you strive to avoid and hope his parents have money for counseling in one instance, but still a likable, easy to relate to little guy that is basically a stand in for your inner child and all those feelings that you thought you forgot in another. Catherine Keener does an admirable job as the mother, although it's likely the least she's had to do to be brilliant in a film ever. Then again, to play the part so perfectly of *everyone's mother* might not have been as easy as I think.

The voice actors were also a perfect choice. I can't think of anyone else who could've played any of these characters. While James Gandolfini does an excellent job as Carol, to me it was Lauren Ambrose as KW that really stole the show, although one could argue that's because she was the character everyone most wanted to love and be loved by. On the subject of the creatures, all I will say is they were brought to glorious glorious life by The Jim Henson Company via puppetry, guys in suits, and minimal CGI used in service of emotion rather than for trying to make something "look cool".

And a quick word about the soundtrack. Maybe it's because I've listened to it on repeat for a week, but I'm not at all surprised to say that it's fantastic and fits the film perfectly. I was expecting "All is Love", "Building All is Love", or "Hideaway" to be the standout moments (and in some cases they partially were), but I'm still surprised to say "Worried Shoes" (a cover, but used so effectively) as Max lays at his mother's feet is my favorite moment musically.

So, yes, this can be summed up as, "Boy runs away from home, comes back." in seven words, as the "wise" owls ask of Max when wanting to know what advice he wants. But that is as simplistic as the question he asks, "How do I make every one okay?" But like that question, it's not as simple as it first looks. The creatures are representative of emotions, from rage, to fear, heck even to feelings of inferiority. It's not a straight fantasy adventure and isn't easily digestible. Even as much as I love it I'm positive that I won't fully understand my feelings on the film until a second viewing.

As a final note, I'm sure others will come to feel as I did that the best moments in the film were the build up at the beginning and the running home at the end, for pure raw emotional depth. That does not at all mean that the middle parts or the parts with the wild things were bad or lacked depth. They were much more surreal and require much more examination, however, and so it is far easier to relate to those simple real-world moments.

All-in-all, a fantastic film. A reviewer on Metacritic has already stole my witticism that I'd most love to use about the film, so I will simply be quoting her: "I'd eat it up, I love it so."

PS: This really doesn't feel like an adaptation. Jonze has taken Maurice Sendak's charge to make it his own to heart. But it still feels very much like the book came to life.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Halloween's New Horror Classic

[10/10 · 28 September 2009]

I think by now many, if not most, are aware of Trick 'r Treat's long and winding road to release. To recap, WB killed a potential franchise by not having the faith to release this critically acclaimed Halloween film to theaters. Why? No one really knows. But it's October of 2009, two years after the film was meant to be in theater's, and finally we at least get to see it on DVD. It was worth the wait.

What makes Trick 'r Treat so special? No, it's not particularly scary. It's not the "make you jump out of your seat" kind of fluff we're now used to calling "horror". What it is is an anthology of interconnected Halloween night stories that feel like something you would read in a classic book of spooky stories that you may have read when you were a kid. There's the gruesome, the macabre, the frightening, and perhaps most importantly the hilarious. The film falls in line with Raimi's comedy horror classics like Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, and is even a step or two better than the also-excellent recent release Drag Me to Hell.

I'm not going to summarize the film here. Lord knows I hate having to skip over a summary because I either don't want to be spoiled or have already seen the film and don't need to know what it's about. What I will do is tell you that you need to see this movie if you're a horror fan or someone that loves the holiday of Halloween. This film captures its spirit like no other, even the film by John Carpenter that owns the name. It does so by basing all of its mythos and storytelling around the holiday, rather than just using it as a backdrop like other films have done. The main villain, "Sam" is suitably creepy and the other characters are well-acted and interesting (to say the least).

The sound design, set design, costuming, directing, art direction, and everything else about the film just come together to make the perfect storm of a Halloween film. People will be watching this for years to come to celebrate the holiday, and it's sure to become a Halloween tradition.

Futurama: Bender's Game (2008 Video)

The second best Futurama film so far.

[9/10 · 4 November 2008]

Bender's Big Score still remains the best of the series, displaying all of the emotion, intelligence, romance, and fun of the rest of the series into one feature film. However, whereas I was disappointed with Beast With a Billion Backs (which was the perfect demonstration of why Futurama is at its best not when it's funny, but when it tells a good story like it did in BBS), I was very impressed with Bender's Game. It missed out on the emotion of the first film by a mile, which is why it's not nearly on the same level, but it is still a marvelous love-letter to the fantasy genre and role playing games. Very funny and very entertaining, with Amy on Leela action that will have the fans salivating while they role their 12-sided die, Bender's Game is not quite the impressive feat that the first film was, but is a return to form after the disappointment of BWBB. Let's hope the final film tops them all.