Tag Archives: Fantasy

Capsules

CAPSULE: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Freddie Highmore, David Kelly,  Annasophia Robb, Julia Winter, Jordan Fry, Philip Wiegratz, ,

PLOT: Poor, good-natured Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore) wins a coveted Golden Ticket to visit the fabulous chocolate factory owned by the mysterious Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp); once there, Charlie discovers that all of his fellow school-aged winners are hateful brats, and Mr. Wonka seems to have a few screws loose himself…

Still from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Although it’s deliciously weird in the usual Tim Burton manner, this is probably the most benign and family-friendly of all his films. Even Frankenweenie is scarier.

COMMENTS: When Tim Burton’s visually sumptuous film of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened in 2005, there was much discussion of how the late Mr. Dahl felt that the earlier, classic 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory had toned down his often mean-spirited material. (This opinion was a little strange, considering that Dahl had written the screenplay.) The new film, it was said, was much more faithful to the book. Truth be told, both pictures hew very closely to the novel; but, although this might sound like sacrilege, Burton’s film is more impressive in almost every way than the earlier Gene Wilder movie. (Incidentally, the 1971 film was not very popular with anyone when it originally opened; it was only later that a whole new audience embraced the movie on television.) The 2005 version is by far the better directed and designed of the two films, but, although Johnny Depp’s Wonka is utterly delightful, he doesn’t come close to projecting the genuine menace, and, ironically enough, the fatherly warmth that Wilder did. Wilder gave a full-fledged, three-dimensional performance; Depp, while he is great fun to watch, is basically playing a cartoon. Of course, for those of us who saw the earlier film as children, Wilder made a tremendous impact. Who knows what the kids of 2005 felt when they saw Depp?

Mr. Depp looks and sounds something like Michael Jackson here (although he has Anna Wintour’s hair), and all the color has been digitally drained from his face. This Willy Wonka hates kids, and with good reason. Burton’s film makes it clear that the brats all survive their punishments in Wonka’s factory (another reason why this won’t make the List), while the 1971 version left their fates up in the air. The 2005 film does include some sequences from the book not in the earlier film, like the memorable bit where the tiresome Veruca Salt (Julia Winter) is attacked by nut-cracking squirrels, and the adventures of Prince Pondicherry (Nitin Ganatra). But some of screenwriter John August’s all-new additions, such as the revelation that Wonka’s estranged father (Christopher Lee) is a dentist, feel unnecessary. (The flashback to the young, candy-loving Wonka’s bad teeth and increasingly grotesque retainers are grisly fun, though, like something out of Little Shop of Horrors). Thankfully, Depp and Highmore, who co-starred together a year earlier in Finding Neverland, have good chemistry. The fact that Highmore is now playing psychotic killer Norman Bates on TV’s Bates Motel makes it look like another collaboration with Tim Burton would be a good idea.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The wondrous surfaces have a weird undercurrent that won’t go away… Before the trip is over, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ has gone from delectable to curdled, and Depp’s performance has shrunk from bizarrely riveting to one-note and vaguely creepy, turning Willy Wonka into yet another of Burton’s antisocial weirdoes. But then this is scarcely the first time a Burton film has started out great only to lose its way with fanciful doodlings and lack of secure moorings.”–Todd McCarthy, Variety (contemporaneous)

Canonically Weird (The List)

202. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946)

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La Belle et la Bête

“Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things.
I ask of you a little of this childlike sympathy…”–Jean Cocteau, prologue to Beauty and the Beast

Must See

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jean Marais, Josette Day

PLOT: A merchant who has fallen on hard times wanders onto a mysterious estate and plucks a single rose to take back to his daughter, Belle. He is suddenly faced with a bipedal Beast, dressed as a nobleman, who says that the penalty for the theft is death, but who offers to spare the old man’s life if he will send his daughter in his place. Against her father’s wishes, Belle volunteers to be kept as the Beast’s prisoner, but the longer she stays in his magical castle the more she sees the noble heart beating underneath the bestial hide.

Still from Beauty and the Beast (1946)
BACKGROUND:

  • Jean Cocteau considered himself a poet who dabbled in filmmaking, although today he is best remembered for his contributions to cinema rather than literature. La Belle et la Bête was his first narrative feature film after making the 55-minute Surrealist film Blood of a Poet [Le sang d’un poète] in 1932.
  • This version of the story is based on 1756 fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont; it was a faithful adaptation, except that Cocteau invented the role of Avenant.
  • Cocteau suffered from a painful skin disease during shooting, and even had to be hospitalized once while filming continued (technical adviser Rene Clement directed in his absence). At times he wore a mask while directing to hide his inflamed countenance.
  • Jean Marais, who played Avenant, the Beast, and the Prince, was Cocteau’s lover. It is rumored that he convinced Cocteau to take on the project, thinking the role would launch his career as a French matinee idol (it did).
  • Minimalist composer and frequent film scorer Philip Glass composed an alternate soundtrack for the film (conceived of as an opera).

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Although it’s difficult to disregard the Beast’s magnificent makeup, it’s the candelabras made of living human arms lining the castle’s corridors that have made the strangest and most lasting impression over the years.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Handelabras; statues that watch you; the steaming Beast

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: There is no movie before or since that manages to strike the same tone of dreamy believability as Beauty and the Beast. It’s a spectacle picture wrapped in the trappings of high art, mixing conventional storytelling with a smattering of Surrealist visuals. Too dry to entertain the very young, Cocteau nonetheless begs us to look at the film as if we were children; to surrender to the Beast’s enchantments and enter his mysterious halls lined with arms and statues that calmly watch us as we watch them.

Trailer for La Belle et la Bête

COMMENTS: Jean Cocteau argued with his cinematographer, the Continue reading 202. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA (2013)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Isao Takahata

FEATURING: Chloe Moretz, ,  (English dub)

PLOT: A bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl in a bamboo shoot; he raises her and trains her to become a noble, and eventually a princess, although she has other ideas about life.

Still from The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s a gorgeously animated fantasy film, but not exceedingly weird until a final act push that’s too little, too late.

COMMENTS: Kaguya is an extremely beautiful film. At times it looks like it was drawn on rice paper scrolls in cherry blossom ink. A serious, reverential, and yet generally light-hearted treatment of Japan’s oldest written narrative, it will not appeal to young kids, who will stick with it through the opening but get bored long before the credits roll after 137 minutes. Girls setting out on their teenage years may identify with poor Kaguya, pressured to be a lady against her own heart; but, despite its fairy tale structure and youthful protagonist, this is reflective animation aimed at adults.

The tale can be broken into three parts. The opening describes how a humble bamboo cutter discovers tiny Kaguya nestled inside a bamboo shoot. The miniature child grows at a magically impressive rate, and even induces lactation in her surrogate mother (who declares “I’ve got milk!” in a breastfeeding scene that I’ll wager will be cut from the U.S. release). After discovering more treasures in bamboo, including fine silk robes, the cutter is convinced the girl is a gift from heaven and destined to become a princess, which sets the second act in motion. Here, Kaguya is taken from her rustic friends and trained to be an Edo-period lady. Despite chafing at the regimented lifestyle, her instantaneous mastery of the koto is taken as further proof of her divine origin and noble destiny. Conflict arises when a series of noble suitors seek to win the girl’s reluctant heart, and she sends each of them on a series of seemingly impossible quests. After escaping this trap, Kaguya’s true celestial origins are finally revealed, and the tale wraps up on a melancholy note.

Kaguya embodies a longing for things past, starting with the nostalgic preference for nature over culture. Kaguya’s days romping through the bamboo forests with her friends are an idyllic paradise, while she submits to the pressures of civilization morosely and only to please her status-climbing parents. A scene where the foundling sheds a single tear as her natural eyebrows are plucked out so they can be replaced by painted smudges reveals all. Thematically related is the film’s sadness over forsaken childhood; Kaguya’s assumption of the responsibilities (absurd as they may be) of a noblewoman represents the loss of innocence. From nature and childhood to civilization and adulthood, and last, the final trip home back from where she came: Kaguya spends a lifetime in her tale. The finale is a dreamlike elegy, with flying lovers swooping over meadows of wildflowers and a cloud-borne procession of krishnas and buddhas obliterating consciousness. The ultimate message is surprisingly humanistic and anti-religious; “life” in the heavens, cloaked in forgetfulness and free of grief and care, is a pitiable state compared to being alive on Earth and feeling both joy and pain. And yet there is also resignation beside the rage: “the waterwheel goes round,” the final choir sings. “Lifetimes come and go in turn.” Princess Kaguya may have been born of the moon, but she’s an earthling at heart, and her fate is the same as ours.

‘s retirement left Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) as the star of the Studio Ghibli stable of animators. His works have always proved popular with Western critics and connoisseurs, but he has yet to have the sort of crossover success with popular audiences that Miyazaki made look so easy. Kaguya won’t change that pattern, and it could be the last film the 79-year old Takahata makes, leaving Ghibli looking for fresh blood. (There are sad, sad rumors going round the Ghibli may close up shop permanently).

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is screening in very limited venues across the U.S. The DVD/Blu-ray release date is not yet set.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…cryptic in story and minimalist in form, this brave new offering from Studio Ghibli quietly dazzles… an embarrassing flop in Japan… [i]t may be better received by Western audiences, who will appreciate its strange qualities as innately Ghibli.”–Andrew Blackie, Film Ink (contemporaneous)

Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: UNICORN BLOOD (2013)

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Alberto Vázquez has been featured here before when we highlighted his short Birdboy. I had the pleasure of seeing “Unicorn Blood” when it was featured at Slamdance last year. With the impression it left, there was no doubt it would be shared on this site as soon as it was available. If you don’t speak Spanish, be sure to turn on the subtitles by pressing the “cc” button.

Content Warning: This short contains nudity and graphic violence against unicorns.

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE FRAME (2014)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: David Carranza, Tiffany Mualem

PLOT: The (literally) separate realities of a thief and a paramedic intersect.

Still from The Frame (2014)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Try though it might, The Frame can’t entirely escape the sophomore slump. Jamin Winans’ first film, Ink, was a budget original and a Certified Weird success. This followup has interesting ideas that prove Winans’ talent is not a fluke, but it doesn’t capture the imagination the way the debut film did.

COMMENTS: The production team behind The Frame has been stingy in revealing details of the film’s plot, and after watching it I can see why. The movie does benefit from surprising twists (the first of which is revealed fairly early), and although I don’t think the intriguing concept completely pays off at the film’s end, it’s still a good idea not to spoil it. So, this is as much as I’m willing to say about the plot: it involves Alex, an illegal immigrant and reluctant thief working with a crew who boosts cargo from sixteen-wheelers, who’s looking for a way out of his criminal lifestyle. It also involves Sam, a dedicated paramedic with a troubled personal life and a weekly date with a blurry therapist. The two characters live separate lives in realities that exist at right angles to each other—not parallel, since parallel storylines never intersect, and these two lives do connect, in a very strange way.

I can’t say that the two stories resolve themselves in an emotionally satisfying way, but things do get weird by the end, especially when Sam crashes a film production studio and finds herself stuck in a loop with a self-typing typewriter. There’s also a low-tech, but bold, special effect with Alex that looks simultaneously silly and cool; it’s the kind of thing a Hollywood film would never dare try for fear of looking foolish.

The rigorous father-daughter allegory of Ink is here replaced by a free-form rumination about free will, about the (im?)possibility of escaping from your “frame” (whether that’s a self-limiting frame of reference, or a literal frame of celluloid). Whereas Winans’ debut was a dream/puzzle film, here he opts for a Twilight Zone-y scenario set mostly in the “real” world that feels, at times, unfinished. Each story contains a mysterious pseudo-omniscient figure lurking around the film’s edges whose significance is never fully explained; in Sam’s case, it’s her therapist, while Alex sees visions of a steampunk tinker in a raggedy tophat out of the corner of his eye. The latter character was memorable enough to make the DVD jacket, and to make the viewer wish he’d appeared in more scenes. The ultimate resolution, unfortunately, is arbitrary; the script too cleverly writes itself into a corner, and has no way out except deus ex machina.

All in all The Frame is a mixed bag, a film with pretty big ideas, some of which work and some that fall flat. One thing that can definitely be said in its favor is that it’s a professional looking film that belies its budget. Denver, Colorado is not known as a hotbed of movie talent, but the technical aspects of this film—editing, camerawork, lighting, acting—equal indies made in New York or Hollywood. The Frame makes an excellent calling-card for young leads David Carranza and Tiffany Mualem; both prove capable of carrying an indie drama. They’re flatteringly photographed and show emotional intensity (if not a lot of range, given the quiet and downbeat mood of the story).

The career arc of Jamin Winans reminds me of ; ((One difference between the two is that Jamin has a collaborator, producer, publicist and wife Kiowa Winans, who probably deserves more credit for the finished products than she gets)). both are obsessive fantasists who work slowly, meticulously control their films (including writing their own scores), and eschew commercial compromise. The upside to that methodology is independence; the downside is they refuse studio resources that could help them to realize more elaborate visions. As long as these guys keep coming up with creative ways to reveal the fantastic in the everyday, though, no one here will complain.

You can download The Frame directly from the filmmakers.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a metaphysical urban fantasy that fills the heart and mind equally…”–Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects (contemporaneous)

A digital copy of this movie was provided by the distributor for review.