Coco
This was my favorite movie of the year, and favorite Disney/Pixar movie of many years.
What an incredible movie. I saw it twice in theaters, and as soon as it's on Netflix I'm going to watch it a few more times. (I may have to find a streaming site in the mean time.) It has stunning animation, great humor, a perfect plot-twist, fun music, good characters, and of course, a lot of heart. I cried real actual tears, like, running down my neck both times. I heard an interview with the animators on NPR the other day and I started tearing up just thinking about it.
The theme of the movie is maybe not quite so different than other Disney/Pixar movies -- the main character Miguel does in fact discover the importance of family. But I don't think it feels formula at all, except perhaps in the way that it is impeccably well-crafted. But hey, I like well-crafted movies sometimes. It's nice. But there are many other themes in Coco that are not common in kids' movies; including how people remember us after we die. It's kind of heavy.
I've heard from Mexican and Mexican-American reviewers that the movie is an accurate homage to Mexican culture and to Day of the Dead, and Coco is the highest grossing movie in Mexican history. The movie uses Spanish phrases often without translation, which was nice to see. All the voice actors are Latino/a. This article discusses the success of the Spanish dub of Coco, and includes some videos of some of the songs and dialogue in Spanish. Gael Garcia Bernal voiced Hector in both Spanish and English.
Coco recently won the Golden Globe for best animated feature -- well deserved, of course, if not in a particularly competitive field. It will surely win the Oscar as well, and I hope to see it nominated for best picture. It did not win the Globe for best original song, however, losing to The Greatest Showman... This is complete bullshit. (Scroll down for my unfiltered opinions on Showman!) Coco's song "Remember Me" was used brilliantly throughout the movie as a motif for the central theme, and the tone of the song was altered as part of the big plot twist in an emotionally devastating way. Like actual, tears are coming to my eyes as I'm writing this. So, if there's any justice in the world, Coco will win as an Oscar for best original song.
The Greatest Showman
To be blunt, I did not like this movie, and I have some Things to say. (I saw it with my family because my sister loves Hugh Jackman.) My one sentence review is: "It felt like I was watching Glee." Now, admittedly, Glee is a guilty pleasure of mine and I'll maintain that the first season is quite good. So Showman was a little more like the later seasons of Glee that lacked the interesting satirical tone of the first season.
I love musicals, but in this case all the music sounded the same and whenever they started singing I groaned internally. So many of the songs relied on a final chorus, backing music cuts out, stomp-clap, schtick. It also felt weird to have modern pop-ballad music in a movie set in the mid-1800s. This really struck me with the introduction of the singer from Europe, who they described as the best singer in the world, and based on the setting I assumed she was an opera singer. Then she sang some boring pop song. It would have been smart to explore a variety of musical genres; this would have also supported the message of diversity, and would have been a much more effective modernization.
The social message of the movie was very muddled; I think it's often messy when you lump together a bunch of experiences of oppression and say that they're the same. One particularly clumsy instance of this, one character said "Even our mothers rejected us!" Now, some of the circus performers in the movie are black; not "freaks" or anything. Racism and ableism and (??) being a bearded woman are not all comparable experiences. And then there was the attempt to make modern commentary on immigrants with the circus protesters who repeatedly told them to "go home." This made absolutely no sense. I think the movie could have been helped by focusing more on the unique aspects of their experiences instead of painting all these diverse characters with the same brush.
My final complaint is that this movie broke one of the most basic rules of writing, "show, don't tell." The movie is called The Greatest Showman and the last song literally included the lyrics "this is the greatest show" as part of the refrain, but nothing in the movie led me to believe that. There was very little focus on the actual show. I would have loved to see more rehearsal scenes, or some sort of evolution for the performers. Instead, you just see the fully put together show, complete with wild animals and all these components that we never got to see come together. The audience has no reason to think that the show is great because we have no comparison within the movie, and without seeing rehearsals, we're not rooting for the performers.
The movie instead focused on PT Barnum himself, but even that was not done well. They didn't commit to letting him be a flawed character, because every misstep he made was corrected way too quickly. Oh, is he gonna cheat on his wife? No. Oh, does he only care about himself? No. This can not be blamed entirely on the movie's PG rating; Coco was also rated PG but dealt with a lot of interesting and mature themes very well. And The Greatest Showman didn't have good humor either, which is the least it could have done. The most successful comedic moment came at the very end where it was revealed that one of Barnum's daughters was playing a tree on stage while his other daughter was the star ballerina. That was the only time I laughed during the whole movie.
The Last Jedi
So much controversy!
The only things I really wanted out of this film were:
1) Kylo Ren to not be redeemed.
2) Poe and Finn to have screen time together and... I don't know, maybe have an epic romance.
3) Cool training scenes with Rey and Luke on Skellig island.
So I have to say, I wasn't disappointed. I liked the way that Kylo Ren's character was developed throughout the movie. I was very worried they were giving him a redemption arc but the bait-and-switch was glorious. I was happy to have been duped. I just wanted him to be a villain, and that's finally what we're getting, and it's great.
There were dope action sequences for sure. Kylo killing Palpatine and then him and Rey wasting the guards was really fun. Holdo light-speeding the resistance base into the First Order was also awesome. And the final confrontation between Finn and Phasma was cheer-worthy.
The training sequences with Rey and Luke were not exactly what I'd hoped for, but I loved seeing so much of the island! (I've been to the real-life island where they filmed, which is why I'm excited about it.) I didn't mind the way that Luke was written. The last battle between Kylo and Luke was great.
Now some things that I didn't like...
Poe's conflict with Holdo. It was nice to flip the script and reveal that she did have a good plan all along, and was a capable commander, but... why even have that conflict? She should have just told Poe what the plan was. This whole subplot was unnecessary, and just existed to keep information from the audience.
Some aspect of the trip to casino planet. I didn't hate it all around, but it could have been streamlined. In my opinion: make Rose the hacker. When you introduce a new character you can just do that. It's just as believable as having Benicio del Toro be the hacker. Then she and Finn and, hey, maybe even Poe, go straight to the First Order ship and complete the mission. They can still get captured without having to be sold out, and you end up with the exact same conclusion and shave about twenty minutes off of the ridiculous run time.
The Rose/Finn nonsense... If in some world Finn is not destined to be with Poe, then he should be with Rey. I would be very happy with a Finn/Rey romance as they have loads of chemistry. The kiss was very cheesy and people laughed out loud in the theater. And at the end, when Rey is sort of jealously watching Finn take care of Rose? Miss me with that shit. I already had to endure the Eleven/Max rivalry in Stranger Things this year. I'm so over women hating each other because of a man. They all just need to be friends.
And one last general complaint: I love Rey and Finn and Poe. They are all great new characters, and I loved all the Finn/Rey and Finn/Poe scenes in The Force Awakens. The Last Jedi split them up for the majority of the movie and sent them on separate missions. I just wanted to see them in a room together. Why prevent such a good thing from happening?
J.J. Abrams is directing the third and final movie of the trilogy, and I'm expecting some good things. Pretty much two things:
1) Kylo Ren to not be redeemed, and be killed by Rey.
2) Poe and Finn to have an epic romance.
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