MY MOVIE SHELF: Toy Story 3

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 15 Days to go: 12

Movie #425:  Toy Story 3

I’m sure this seems horribly out of order, but I bought the first two Toy Story movies eons ago, and I got Toy Story 3 just last year sometime, I think. Maybe the year before. So obviously I was going blu-ray for it, but since it wasn’t a collection, I didn’t feel the need to replace the other two. Yes, I do think about this stuff way too much. No, I’m not sorry.

It actually took me so long to buy Toy Story 3 because I really liked it, but I wasn’t as in love with it as the rest of the world. It’s great — really great — just like all the Toy Story movies are great. It tugs at my heart-strings and fills my heart and I maybe even tear up a little at the end. But I don’t think it’s the most profound, meaningful, affecting story ever told, or even the best one ever told by Pixar. To me, Toy Story 3 is merely excellent, and everyone will just have to accept that.

The movie brings us to the brink of adulthood for young Andy (John Morris), who is packing up his room for college and trying to figure out what to do with all his old favorite toys. The toys, of course, are having an existential crisis over the idea of being put in the attic, and poor Woody (Tom Hanks) is once again trying to calm them the hell down. Through a series of events and misunderstandings, however, the toys get thrown away and when they are rescued, choose the sanctity of donation to Sunnyside day care. Woody tries to reason with them, to explain the situation, but nobody is having it. (Seriously, despite being the obvious “leader” of this toy pack, nobody ever actually listens to Woody.) So they stay at Sunnyside and Woody attempts to go back home to Andy — where he, as Andy’s most prized toy, will go off to college. Because Andy’s totally going to be racking up the cool points bringing his cowboy doll into the dorms. He gets sidetracked, however, with an unscheduled trip home with Bonnie (Emily Hahn) — a sweet, imaginative little girl who takes good care of her toys — and Woody learns that no one is actually safe at Sunnyside, where an evil stuffed bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) rules it as a fascist state.

The other toys are finding this all out as well, when they are forced into the pre-school room to be tortured and mistreated, then imprisoned when they try to escape. Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles) rebels, but is thrown into the sandbox, and when Buzz (Tim Allen) tries to do some covert recognizance, he’s captured and returned to his factory settings, transforming him into a guard against the usurpers to Lotso’s regime. It takes some drastic measures from Barbie (Jodi Benson) to get Ken (Michael Keaton) to reveal how to reset Buzz — though he takes a delightful detour into Spanish mode — and Woody’s return for them to all work together to escape. Unfortunately, even as they leave Sunnyside, Lotso’s actions find them all plummeting into a garbage truck and heading for the dump, where things get very harrowing.

These are all familiar beats for this franchise by now, and while the sad and loving scene with Andy at the end — too grown up to really keep his toys but playing with them one more time as he turns them over to Bonnie — is incredibly touching, it’s simply another variation on a theme. All the Toy Story movies have been about growing up, growing obsolete, and being left behind. All of them are about finding true loyalty and friendship, sticking together when times get tough, and never giving up on your pals. In a very real way, all of them are about parenthood — not childhood, as most assume — because when your kids are young you are everything to them, and as they grow, new things come along to displace you, until eventually they don’t need you anymore at all. So you’d better have your own friends and loved ones to spend your golden years with, because your kids have their own lives to live. That’s how it works, in and out of Pixar animation.

They are beautiful, wonderful, fantastic movies — and Toy Story 3 is absolutely on par with the other two, not losing an ounce of quality despite being the third in the series. I love them all, I really do. And I’ll watch however many more Pixar has a mind to release.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Superman

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 99 Days to go: 66

Movie #341:  Superman

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen this movie, and with all the other superhero movies flooding the market these days, it’s easy to forget how simply brilliant this one is. Not only was Superman the first of its kind (to my knowledge), it was also expertly executed, making it still one of the best. It is unequivocally the best (and my favorite) depiction of the character thus far.

Incredibly, before they ever knew if the film would be a success, they filmed Superman simultaneously with Superman II, and the entire opening segment of the film is merely a setup of the sequel — establishing the villain General Zod (Terence Stamp) and company, as well as their fate of being sealed in a floating pane of glass hurling through space for all eternity. It’s a fascinating sequence, but it really serves no purpose in this original film — the establishment of the nature and fate of the planet Krypton could be handled entirely by the scenes that come after these three are incarcerated — and it’s quite an ambitious (and expensive) leap of faith by the filmmakers to include it. It doesn’t pay off at all in Superman, so it’s pretty fantastic people were willing to take a gamble on it, because it pays off big time in Superman II.

But enough about that.

Superman doesn’t really feel like an origin story film, and yet it spends nearly half the film on his origin — on Krypton, in Smallville, and through to the Fortress of Solitude. That it doesn’t feel nearly as long as it is, is a testament to its excellent pacing.  The film moves easily from one story beat to the next, each scene serving a specific purpose of characterization or history or plot development. Nothing is really wasted or superfluous. Even the expository scene when Jor-El (Marlon Brando, as committed to this role as he was to any other) is imparting all the history of their planet and people to his son in the Fortress, is very efficient. Set against an evolving space-scape visual, Jor-El’s instruction fades in and over itself as topics change and time moves on, indicating that when Clark (Christopher Reeve) steps onto the streets of Metropolis, it’s twelve years later and he’s a much more mature, confident being. Not that he expresses that outwardly.

I’ve always been sort of fascinated by the nebbish Clark Kent, Superman’s human disguise, who is meant to be quiet, unassuming, and virtually unnoticed. It’s always been a bit of a joke that nobody notices he’s just Superman with glasses on, and yet Reeve really does a great job of looking different in each costume. Superman stands tall and firm. Everything about him, from his voice to his stare, is steady and assured. Clark hunches. Clark twitches. Clark fumbles. Clark stutters. Clark squints. Everything about Clark is unassured and hesitant. In Kill Bill Volume 2, Bill (David Carradine) has a long monologue about the nature of Superman — about how the man in the cape is who he really is, and how Clark is the disguise. He makes the point that Clark is how Superman sees humans, that we’re all a fumbling, stumbling lot. I don’t really think that’s true. It implies a certain condescension on Superman’s part toward the people he’s vowed to protect. Rather, I think Clark is how Superman sees the most invisible of us. He’s us at our weakest. Superman doesn’t want to be found out as Clark Kent, so he portrays himself as less than us, not equal.

Of course, you can hardly talk about Superman without also talking about Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), and just as this Superman is my favorite of all the ones out there, so is this my favorite Lois. Kidder plays the role so breezily. Her Lois is strong, smart and confident, but she also has weaknesses — only not in the typical “damsel in distress” way. Lois is observant and insightful, but also flighty and distracted. She’s a whip smart reporter but a terrible speller. She’s bold enough to ask Superman the color of her panties, but bashful enough to get flustered when he answers. She’s not afraid to yell at someone or complain when she’s upset, but she’s grateful and gracious and in awe of Superman’s help and presence. And when she meets her demise, it’s not passively. She claws and fights and screams to save herself. It hardly matters that she’s not successful.

The rest of the casting is incredibly satisfying and on point, as well, be it Jackie Cooper as Perry White or Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen, both of whom seem to perfectly epitomize their characters comic book personas. And the trio of earthly villains — a delightful Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, a hilariously inept Ned Beatty as Otis, and the beautiful, breathy, somewhat hopeful/somewhat mournful Valerie Perrine as Miss Teschmacher — are murderous thieves who nonetheless are portrayed with a light, playful touch that mirrors the tone of the film at large. (Thankfully, unlike more recent Superman films, this one is not nearly as dark, as brooding, or as depressingly destructive.)

In all, Superman is an extraordinarily fun film — a triumphant story of good over evil. It emphasizes everything we love about the character with his amazing powers and his good-hearted desire to do right by the American people. It’s an overwhelmingly positive message of hope and fantasy and right prevailing over wrong. And even with all the advances in special effects over the years, I still think it’s one of the best superhero films of all time.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Rudy

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 210  Days to go: 147

Movie #228:  Rudy

As I’ve said many times, the point of a biopic (or any movie based on a true story / inspired by real events) is not accuracy. It’s to tell a compelling story. Over the years, I’ve heard various claims against Rudy (and all kinds of these types of dramatized historical events, to be honest) that this or that or the other thing wasn’t really one hundred percent true, if it happened at all. I’m not surprised. Rudy, perhaps more than most, stretches the limits of believable human behavior (he gets a slow clap and a chant and a symbolic gesture of solidarity and a wisdom-spouting black mentor?) in the pursuit of hitting all the emotional sweet spots the story is striving for. But, not for nothing, it’s also gotten me to tear up on more than one occasion, so those emotional sweet spots know what they’re doing.

I’m not saying Rudy is a great movie, because it’s clearly not and it knows it’s not. But it can be an effective movie. In the realm of perseverance toward an impossible dream, in living for yourself and no one else, or even just in the realm of passionately loving a sports team, Rudy is an extremely effective movie. Rudy Ruettiger (Sean Astin) was just one of, like, a dozen kids from a blue-collar Catholic family whose patriarch (Ned Beatty) loved Notre Dame football. He was the runt of the litter by a mile, and yet he got it in his head that one day he would play for Notre Dame. It’s like the very definition of an impossible dream, though I do think everyone in the film is meaner to Rudy about it than they really have to be. Still, Rudy seems to know, deep down, what a pipe dream it is, until his friend dies in a steel mill accident and Rudy has that all-important epiphany about how short life really is.

He hops a bus to South Bend, enrolls in Holy Cross with the help of Father Cavanaugh (Robert Prosky), meets up with D-Bob (Jon Favreau) who becomes his tutor — and eventual friend — in exchange for Rudy being his wingman, and gets a job on the Notre Dame greens team with the aforementioned wise old(er) black man, literally named Fortune (Charles S. Dutton). These mentors and friends coach and guide and cajole and tough-love Rudy into buckling down and getting accepted at Notre Dame, where he turns his obsessive passion for the football team into a religious experience and spends a couple years on the prep team getting beat up as a matter of principle. He fights and works and tackles and preaches his belief of his value to the National Championship pursuits of his boys in blue and gold, but aside from having a lot of heart and guts and will, he’s still not any good. And that’s when apparently everyone at the university rallies behind him and convinces coach Dan Devine (Chelcie Ross) to let him dress and, ultimately, let him play a down. And technically, that last part, at least, really happened.

I’m not a Notre Dame fan, but I do love college football the most. I’ve had huge debates with my husband about whether college ball is better than the NFL. (It is.) I love the passion of not only the fans, but of the players, because it takes a lot of heart to play at that level — a deep desire and abiding love of the game. There is tradition and pageantry and community in those stadiums that can’t be matched anywhere else. I can relate to Rudy on that level, because we both love our teams. Really, truly love them. And whether it’s an entirely true tale or not, I can look up to Rudy, too, and know that maybe it’s not too late to make my dreams come true as well.