James and the Giant Peach Review

James and the Giant Peach (1996, dir Henry Selick)

Roald Dahl seemed to understand children. His novels speak to them, both exploring the darker side of life that they are unwilling, or unable to speak about to adults but also to that sense of wonderment that the world has to offer one who has only a minimal experience with it. The best adaptations of his work capture both things and cater to the child watching and not to the adult. This is not to say that adults can’t enjoy those works, but that it’s not the adult that matters.

James and the Giant Peach tells the story of James Henry Trotter (Paul Terry) who is living comfortably with his father and mother in a small cottage by the sea. They picnic, find shapes in clouds and talk about visiting New York City on his birthday. It is in the cloud shapes that the narrator tells us, with the image provided by the clouds themselves, that James life changes when his father and mother are tragically killed by an escaped Rhinoceros.

We are propelled forward in the story and James now lives with his Aunts, Spiker (Joanna Lumley) and Sponge (Miriam Margolyes) who treat him very poorly: He is forced to sleep in a leaky attic, made to do all manner of chores and tasks, and fed fish heads and bits of food that he rescues from the garbage. Spiker and Sponge are detestable Ms. Lumbley and Ms. Margolyes play them in such a way as to not simply make the characters cruel, but downright loathsome.

While rescuing a spider a strange old soldier (Pete Postlethwaite)  finds James and gives him a bag of crocodile tongues. The soldier warns him not to spill the contents of the bag and that they will bring him happiness and adventure. Shortly thereafter James trips, spilling the tongues on the ground next to an old dead peach tree below his aunt's house.

A tree near where the tongues spilled grows a giant peach and Sponge and Spiker proceed to sell tickets for the public to see it. After the crowds have left they send James out to pick up the garbage around the peach. He decides to take a bite of peach and as he does one of the lost crocodile tongues burrows its way into into the handful of peach and is eaten by James. Spiker and Sponge come looking for him and he crawls into the hole  in the peach that he had made. He transforms as he crawls into the peach from a real little boy to his stop motion counterpart and soon discovers giant magical bugs inside.

The bugs: Miss Spider (Susan Sarandon), Mr. Grasshopper (Simon Callow), Mr. Centipede (Richard Dreyfus), Mrs. Ladybug (Jane Leeves), Earthworm (David Thewlis) and Glowworm (Miriam Margolyes) quickly become James’ friends. They cut loose the peach from the tree and then set out to go to New York City.

The movie, like many stop motion films seem to, is a musical. With only four songs, and the closing credits song “My Name Is” sung by Randy Newman, it barely qualifies. Unlike the musical numbers for the film the Corpse Bride, I didn’t feel the songs detracted from this film.

The acting is ok: Paul Terry is charming as James, and both actress playing Sponge and Spiker are perfect. The voice acting in the rest of the film isn’t bad by any means, but isn’t particularly great either, the actors (all of whom are fantastic actors in their own right) just didn’t fully click with me.

The animation is wonderful though. I love stop motion and if the entire film had been stop motion I would have been pleased. It’s not however, but what is there is great. I would love to see more from Henry Selick as he seems to have a knack for stop motion films. Stop motion seems to be going through a small resurgence and I hope with the technological advances made with computers adding the effort of the puppeteers we will see more of them in the years to come.

The live action sequences are very surreal and this fits the film and the story well. There’s never a full sense of time period, but one get’s the impression that it’s long ago. There’s also a dream like sense to the live action sequences.

The question is: should you watch it? Yes. Absolutely! Mr. Dahl’s stories are magical when done correctly and that, to me is in always in disregard to the adults that might be watching. James and the Giant Peach is a magical film for children that adults that haven’t forgotten their inner child can enjoy.

Review of Corpse Bride

Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, Mike Johnson. 2005)

Tim Burton is known for making quirky, darkly humorous films. Some are heavier on the quirky portion: like Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure and Big Fish. While others are more ensconced in dark humor: like his Batman films, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd. Corpse Bride fits somewhere in between: It’s definitely dark, considering the plot and the tone the film sets within it’s animated world. But it’s not sinister in any way (few of his movies are) and has a cheeky feel to it that both embraces the dark elements, while injecting an anachronistic humor into them.

The story is of a young man named Victor Van Dort (voiced by Johnny Depp), whose parents have arranged for him to marry Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson). Her parents have only agreed to the marriage to this young man of “new money” because their own fortune has waned and they’ll soon find themselves in the poor house. They are dismissive of Victoria’s nervousness and concern for love (“What does love have to do with marriage?”) citing that this is likely the only way they have of becoming wealthy again and what she wants doesn’t matter.

Victor and Victoria meet each other for the first time just before the wedding rehearsal, where Victoria peeks in on Victor playing the piano. They timidly fall for each other before they are interrupted by Victoria’s parents. During the rehearsal, Victor falls nervous and is unable to speak his lines, he fumbles the wedding ceremony and is chastised by Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee). Victor goes to the nearby woods where he practices his lines, becoming more confident and more smitten with Victoria as he does. When he finishes the last line he thrusts the wedding band, which he had fumbled and dropped during the rehearsal, confidently onto what appears to be an extended branch. The branch turns out to be bony hand of Emily, or the Corpse Bride. She accepts his vows and takes him to the underworld where the dead reside.

The film follows some fairly standard tropes from there: Victor tries to get back, and manages to return long enough to speak to Victoria before being whisked away to the underworld again by Emily. Victoria’s parents arrange a new marriage to the sinister Barkis Bittern (Richard E. Grant), who originally appears during the wedding rehearsal and looks so sinister as to only be lacking a neon sign around his neck stating that he’s actually the villain. Victor resigns himself to stay with Emily agreeing to make their marriage official. The underworld returns to the surface to perform their wedding ceremony, which will kill Victor in the end after drinking a poisoned wine. During the ceremony Emily realizes that Victor and Victoria belong together and refuses to go through with it stopping Victor from drinking the wine. Barkis crashes the party and it’s revealed that he killed Emily years ago for her dowry and that’s what he intended to do to Victoria until he found out her family was penniless. He ends up drinking the wine while mocking Emily and dying, being pulled into the underworld by the other dead for his punishment.

I am mixed about this film. It’s definitely a children’s film, and should be taken as such, though the themes are more mature though in many ways cliched. The overall tone of the film, the notion of love at first sight, and love despite being forced into the marriage predominate. As do the ideas of willful misunderstanding. Individually all the pieces are that make up the film are good: the voice acting is solid. The animation is fantastic! The music by Danny Elfman is great.

However the movie hovers between a musical and nonmusical, and that’s one of those things that bug me. At first blush, it seems like a musical, the opening song gives it that drive you’d expect, but then another musical number doesn’t happen for some time. In total the film only has four musical numbers. I am not opposed to musicals, and in fact find myself occasionally enjoying them. I can’t help but feel the sort of limbo between musical and nonmusical this movie finds itself in ultimately weakens it. The songs that are there are good and I honestly think it would have been better served as a full fledged musical. Overall it comes across as a half-hearted attempt and just falls flat.

My other issue is with the plot. It’s just not remarkable. I know it’s based on a Russian folktale and is ostensibly a children’s film. Neither fact has any bearing on my thoughts of the plot. I suppose the cliched themes metioned above may have something to do with my issues, but over all just don’t find it that engaging. I think it could have been better served by being a television film or as I stated above, being turned into a full fledged musical. The cliched themes would have fit better, and the musical numbers would have helped keep my attention focussed.

Now with that being said, you may get the impression that I disliked this movie. That is not the case; I actually do like it, it’s just not as memorable as some of Tim Burton’s other work (both written and directed). If you are a fan of animated movies you should absolutely watch this (if you haven’t already). And if you’re a collector of such films then it’s definitely one you should have.

The Babadook review

Starting today we will be doing weekly reviews on things related to the current podcast. We are in the midst of a horror themed run, and so our first many reviews will be on horror films related to the current theme. The current episodes topic (Episode 9: Horror) leads us a review of The Babadook.

(A note on spoilers: When discussing more recent works we will endeavor to keep the spoilers to a minimum, something we do not do on episodes of the podcast. The reason for this is simple, we want the reviews to be either a recommendation or a warning about the topic of review, urging you to either check it out or avoid it. For older works however we will happily spoil them, anything older than a couple of years is fair game.)

 It’s become rare for these days for horror films to take a subtle approach to story telling. To let the tension and anxiety build while still telling a coherent story that is absent of cheap jump scares or over the top gore. American horror films have suffered overall in the last decade by becoming saccharine and absent of truly horrifying elements in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. There have been a parade of remakes from both Japanese horror cinema and European horror cinema, most of which fail simply because the filmmakers didn’t capture what made the original truly frightening. While the horror of Japanese films are often lost due to cultural difference, the horror of European films revel too much in the gore and violence that is no longer accepted by the PG-13 going audience of the U.S. It's no surprise that a film comes along that is truly frightening and engaging while not resorting to cheap gimmicks, isn’t an American film, but an Australian production. The Babadook, directed by Jennifer Kent (her first feature length production) embraces what horror films used to be: a long slow simmer brought to an intense cathartic boil. It shirks expectations simply by being a throwback to more classic horror films, where the idea of the monster was enough to terrify the audience.

   

    The film itself focuses on Amelia (Essie Davis) and Sam (Noah Wiseman) a mother and son who have a strained relationship. Sam, who is only six, has become a burden of stress for his mother, lashing out violently at times and being constantly hyperactive. He’s convinced that the boogeymen and monsters under his bed are real and will eventually come to get him, leading him to build several contraptions to fight them off. Amelia, due to his violent behavior, has felt compelled to pull him out of school early in the film, leading her sapped of what remaining energy she had.

Amelia’s herself is lonely and still grieving in denial for her husband who died taking her to the hospital six years previous to give birth to Sam. It’s not just her grief and her denial of it that define Amelia, but the underlying resentment towards Sam for her husband’s death. It’s subtle but apparent at the beginning of the film, and only serves to intensify as the move bears itself out.

Early in the film Sam asks his mother to read from a pop-up book he finds stashed away in a cupboard. The book, entitled Mr. Babadook, tells of a supernatural entity whose only purpose seems to be to torment the reader and eventually kill them. The book frightens Sam but seems to frighten Amelia more. She hides it, but it does nothing to assuage her or  Sam’s fears, so she tears it apart and puts it in the garbage bin. A few days later it appears again, this time taped up with new writing directed at Amelia depicting her killing her dog, Sam, and then slicing her own throat.

This is where the film picks up intensity. We watch while Sam’s violent anxiety increases and Amelia, even more sleep deprived, begins to act out against him. She takes him to a doctor in the hopes that placing him on sleep medication will help both he and her sleep and help to calm both their anxiety. Her plan fails and the visions and torment of Mr. Babadook soon begin to manifest in real life, becoming more intense as film goes on. Eventually leading to an ending that is both satisfying and laden with questions.

    I find a successful horror films to be one that has a satisfying plot arc, yet still contain unanswered questions for the viewer to ponder. The Babadook succeeds amazingly well in this: The nature of what the Babadook is, is never completely answered. By leaving the nature of the entity open to interpretation, the film manages to put the horror firmly in realm of the psychological. To add to this effect, Mr. Babadook himself is never fully revealed in the real world, only illustrated in the book. There are flashes here and there, but the movie never gives you a big reveal of what, or who the monster is. And that’s refreshing.

    Amelia and Sam play the mother son dynamic incredibly well. It seems to be the constant dilemma, to find a child actor that can actually act, but Jennifer Kent and casting director Nikki Barrett were fortunate to find a very talented young man in Noah Wiseman. He portrays Sam convincingly. Essie Davis as the beleaguered Amelia falls into her role with ease as well. Both actors capture the characters in such a way that there is a palpable fear of what might come next for them. 

  Also successful is the script, the moments early in the film where Sam builds his contraptions, catapults and boobie traps, aren't simply bits of characterization. The script puts these devices in, and their use becomes evident later in the film. The script plays out the subtext of the characters with some intensity. There's never a wasted line.

    As the director Jennifer Kent has succeeded on multiple levels. This is a movie that you can come back to and revisit time and again and still have the sense of unease of the first viewing: because of the deliberate pacing, the fact that it doesn’t rely on either jump scares or simple gore effects, and the fact the monster is in the viewer's mind as much as it is in the characters in the film. Mrs. Kent has succeeded in creating a horror film that actual embraces the horror, and delivers that to the audience.

    I don’t want to give numbered ratings on our movie reviews. It’s a simple guideline and easy to do, but when it comes to film there’s only one question that really needs to be answered: should I watch it? The answer to that question for The Babadook is yes. If you enjoy horror films, even only once in awhile, put this one on your list to view. It’s worth the time. 

The Babadook 

(2014, dir. by Jennifer Kent, starring Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman)