Philomena Review

Here are my cursory thoughts: it's good, and I liked it.  It doesn't stand out, but it's a solid movie that made sense as a Best Picture nominee.  Judi Dench also delivered a solid performance and got nominated for Best Actress, although there were a couple of performances in this movie that I was more impressed by.  First, there were the flashback scenes of Philomena as a teenager, and the actress cast in that role genuinely felt like a younger Judi Dench.  The performance that really stands out, though, is Steve Coogan as Sixsmith, the journalist tasked with covering Philomena's human interest story.  He didn't get nominated for an Academy Award, but his acting deserves some recognition.  Philomena also got nominated for Best Original Score, which is the Academy Award that I probably pay the most attention to, so the score was pleasing, although I can't say that it was hypnotizingly good.

The big thing that I didn't realize until the credits started rolling was that it was based off of a true story.  Given the content of the movie, that's really upsetting.  Basically, Philomena deals with the phenomenon of forced adoptions in Ireland, and how nuns would go out of their way to make sure that adopted children were never reunited with their parents.  The nuns were definitely the "bad guys" in this story, so I can think of a number of Catholics who would be upset by this film (my grandmother wasn't one of the, but I can see my sister having a fit over this), but it's not like the movie made up anything, since the nuns really did do this in real life.  The movie makes sure to point out that they were bad examples of Catholics, though, and make Philomena out to be a good example.  Sixsmith, meanwhile, was an agnostic, and overall the movie doesn't really take sides when it comes to religion, choosing to represent both worldviews sympatheticalkly.  Politics are also lightly evoked, briefly, and the movie also does a good job of not taking sides in this arena as well.

One of the major characters was gay, and he was in real life.  No big deal is made out of it, but it does affect the plot very slightly, so it's not as though it's completely ignored.  I did my research, and the name of his lover was apparently changed, I'm guessing to keep his privacy.  Overall, the movie is actually fairly close to real life.

So anyway, I'd recommend Philomena if you're in the mood for a decent true story, especially if you want something with a BBC atmosphere to it, since it definitely shows that this has a British director.

Storks Review

A couple of friends of mine got married recently, and they called me today with news.  Since I've been living sans Facebook these last several months, I'm late to the party: they're having a baby.  Not only that, but he/she's due in three weeks.  That was pretty big news to suddenly dump on me.

Anyway, so I saw this movie called Storks.  Mind you, not a masterpiece of a movie.  It starts off with stupid slapstick humor, and is abrasive in its pacing.  A lot of stuff gets thrown at you, and it just isn't very elegant.  You're introduced to Junior, a stork, who seems like a fairly normal stork, but apparently he's in line for an incredibly big promotion.  He's about to become BOSS.  I don't know what qualified him for a promotion, and there wasn't any buildup to it, but that's the information that suddenly comes out of nowhere, and it literally (I'm not misusing the word "literally," because there's slapstick, remember) blows his mind.  Apparently he doesn't know what qualifies him, either.  Too bad, you'll never find out.  He's also unlikable, which can be said about pretty much every obnoxious bird in this movie.

There's a human girl called Orphan Tulip who lives with the storks because the homing beacon that was supposed to lead her personal stork to her family got destroyed.  The storks detest her, because she's a quirky person, thinks outside of the box, causes a lot of mayhem with her crazy experiments, and has a heart of gold.  It's a cheap two-dollar characterization, but hey, I found her adorable.  Part of me wonders if I've been manipulated by her adorableness like all of the people who love the Minions, but I'll defend myself here.  The writers seemed to actually have good intentions when creating her character.  She may be the result of sloppy writing, but that's not the same thing as greedy by-the-number writing.  I feel like the writers actually enjoyed writing her character, which brings me to the second thing that distinguishes her from the Minions: her dialogue is good.

The dialogue is probably the best thing about this movie.  It fires off like a machine gun, keeps on going at a rapid pace, and rarely stops.  People often talk over each other, interrupt each other, and quickly backtrack on the things that they were saying in order to adjust to shifts in the conversation.  It's the type of dialogue that I would probably write, actually.  It reminds me a little of British humor in that it doesn't stop to give you time to laugh, but it's still very American in its energy and over-the-top nature.  Something about the humor makes me believe that this story was written by very sarcastic personalities.

Because of this sense of humor, I would say that Storks is tailored toward teenagers and young adults who will find this sort of bantering dialogue funny.  After the credits were done rolling, I remember commenting that it had a lot of adult humor.  That is to say, this humor feels like it was written by adults who didn't bother tailoring their humor for children.  The humorous arguments about what it means to advance in the stork business, for example, and the jokes on parenthood, won't entertain children in the same way that it will entertain more mature audiences.  And by mature audience, I don't mean that it's R rated.  This film is solid PG.  In order for children to really appreciate this film, they need parental guidance.

The concessions made for kids in this film are in its slapstick humor, of which there is a lot, especially if you count the animation style as being "slapstick."  I don't particularly enjoy it.  Most of it was stupid, but that's just me.  It's like like it redeems the film like the dialogue.

The one other redeeming feature of the movie is that it actually has a nice moral.  Getting promoted isn't the most important thing in life.  It's also important, when you're a parent, not to become a workaholic and to be able to spend a little bit more time with your kid while he/she's still young.  It's not profound or anything, but in a world where Minions is the second highest-grossing animated film of all time, I appreciate it for what it is.  Like the dialogue, this moral is for adults.  That isn't a bad thing, so long as you go into the movie looking for a more mature experience.