Moana is better than your average Disney princess

Moana and Maui in a scene from Moana. Image courtesy Disney.

The most enjoyable part of the Moana screening didn't come while watching the film, but shortly thereafter while waiting in line to pick up a cellphone. In line were a few women talking excitedly about it, their excitement peaking with the fact that the eponymous female Disney character with royal roots has not one but two living parents. While on the outset it seems like an odd thing to consider, Disney has a historically nasty habit of using dead parents (or the illusion of that in the case of Tangled) as plot points to build female characters from. It's a cheap way of creating the ideal strong, female character, a figure that can overcome the worst loss and succeed with a slew of despites in her way. That Moana didn't resort to killing the lead character's parents is an appreciated change of pace for the folks who grew up frustrated by that pattern.

Better still, the filmmakers didn’t need to do it to prove their central figure's bona fides as a character. Moana, voiced by newcomer Auli'i Cravalho, is shown immediately as a courageous soul who embraces the dangers of the unknown. She’s drawn immediately to the tale her grandmother (Rachel House) tells about cocksure demigod Maui (voiced by the unfairly charming Dwayne Johnson) and is lured by the adventure the legend promises. Life is waiting for her at sea, albeit one conflicting with her status as her island's next queen, a role her father (Temeura Morrison) and mother (Nicole Scherzinger) push her toward through a catchy Lin-Manuel Miranda tune. The tension of the situation could be resolved through a sad song by Moana before the great adventure serving as the film's drawing point begins. But Moana doesn't take the easy route with its decision, instead having Moana see her value on the island and only leave as a means of saving her friends, showing the leadership she exhibits in one song without abandoning the promises she just made in it. The concept is a fairly complex one, and it reveals just a shade of the traits and portrayal, both in the writing and in Cravalho's performance, that make Moana such an interesting, deep character to pull from.

Her role underlines how much of Moana is devoted to women, whether it’s Moana (who pulls off most of the successful feats of daring as Maui watches), her mother, her grandmother, and the island Moana and Maui adventure off to resurrect to save the island. The film even pulls off a third act twist to realign the narrative to fit the concept and emphasize the film's feminine bent, switching up the prophecy at the film's heart to a nuanced resolution that fits the film's themes perfectly. This isn't exactly unknown territory for a film to take, but it remains nice to see Disney at least continue to broaden its characterization of its female characters that has taken the company from comatose damsels to clever and competent seafaring leaders.

Moana's thematic depth extends beyond female role changes to rip into trite narrative shortcuts. This is the kind of film that uses the concept of The Special – the one character destined to be Neo or Harry Potter or Superman – as a plot point and as a way of criticizing the concept at the same time with the idea of fate being limited by free will. In the filmmaker's eyes, a savior has to decide to be one even if the actual ocean itself anoints that person for the role. Moana has a habit of undercutting tropes – Johnson's Maui makes a few cracks about Disney princesses – but this one is the sharpest rebuke and the one that has the most resonance, or at least is taken most seriously by the filmmakers.

Moana is worthy of respect for its layers and intelligence, but it earns its keep through a rather fun plot that excels in its simplicity. There's nothing overly complicated about the hero's journey, and the filmmakers throw in the right level of levity, homages (among them a rather goofy one to Fury Road), Miranda songs and Dwayne Johnson to make the whole experience sing. Add that to some gorgeous animation and you have a pretty strong case for the best animated film of the year. At the least, it is good enough to please a fan base eager for Disney to catch up with the times.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 113 minutes

Genre: Animation

Ask Away

Target audience: Families and people who want a Disney protagonist with two living parents.

Take the whole family?: One sequence is a little intimidating, but overall this should be acceptable for kids ages 5 and up.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater is cool for this one. I'm not entirely sold on the need for 3D though; the regular format was gorgeous as is.

What of the short film at the beginning?: It's OK. Called Inner Workings, the short features the internal struggles the protagonist's mind has with the rest of the body to figure out what's in the best interest of the human. There's enough humor from the awkwardness of the brain tugging along the heart, stomach and other organs to keep everything in line, although the final message is a little heavy-handed. The best of the recent batch of shorts remain 2012's brilliant Paperman.

Watch this as well?: Just about everything from Disney's recent run of good to greatness is worthwhile, but I'm going to step away from the Mouse and recommend another terrific animated film that rips holes into narrative tropes and has an infectious score to boot: The Lego Movie.

Searching for Fantastic Beasts in all the right places

Eddie Redmayne in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

The best thing author J. K. Rowling has done with her beloved and profitable Harry Potter franchise is to effectively start over from scratch with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. She and established Potter director David Yates have taken the adventure away from the chosen one and shifted it from the constraining walls of Hogwarts to the more inviting playground of New York City circa 1926. What results is the start of a new series of adventures with a more interesting protagonist (Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander) and a new angle that only deepens Rowling’s expansive and endearing magical world.

Fantastic Beasts is a fresh start for a series that grew stale as the installments grew and Harry Potter dove deeper and deeper into the dreadful angst that gobbled up the final two films. A melodramatic darkness consumed those later films, the characters (besides Alan Rickman's Snape) becoming less engaging as the series drew to a close and the poorly rendered final scene arrived with a bit of a thud. Fantastic Beasts is much looser with its tone, its focus centered less on the existential dread Harry Potter faced as the boy lived and more on Scamander's quest to become the wizard world's version of an environmentalist. Much of the film is a scavenger hunt, with Scamander, his human companion Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), wizard investigator Tina (Katherine Waterston) and her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) flittering about the city searching for a few creatures that escaped from Scamander's case. It's an excuse to see a few of Rowling's creatures come to as close to life as possible (and the effects are quite effective in conveying their imagined majesty) while engaging in shenanigans and causing moderate to severe mayhem in New York City. Fantastic Beasts is really just a fun movie to watch, something to pop on for kids interested in seeing a magical adventure.

Oddly enough, Fantastic Beasts is the most adult film Rowling's magical cinematic universe has produced to this point. All of the characters are well into adulthood (the four major actors are at least 32 years old), meaning their interactions have a naturally strained vibe to them that comes from meeting new people after a certain age. These aren't wide eyed kids going to school for the first time; these are weary adults with fading hopes and dreams that never quite materialized. There’s also a fair amount of darkness skirts the edges of the otherwise bright escapades of Scamander and friends that, unlike much of the Harry Potter films, is tied to the safety of the humans (referred to as Muggles and No-Majs) in the film. Fantastic Beasts shows the repercussions Rowling characters can have on the world beyond Hogwarts, including death to civilians with no means of defending themselves against powers outside their concepts. It's also kind of horrifying to see how easily Colin Farrell's mysterious wizard Peter Graves can just appear in front of another character (usually troubled orphan Credence played by Ezra Miller) to manipulate him or just because he can do it. Unlike the previous films, the amount of inherent trust in the decency of the wizarding community is reduced greatly, even with the institutional knowledge granted from the Harry Potter series.

Humans (or Muggles or Non-Majs) are the real key to what makes Fantastic Beasts such a nifty little big budget film to watch. Having a character like Fogler's Kowalski to serve as an audience surrogate is a nice touch and a major component to differentiate Newt's adventures from Harry's. It's fascinating watching Kowalski absorb the reality of another universe hidden just behind his own – one complete with biting critters and beings capable of cooking with a few flicks of their wrists – on the fly, picking up the pieces as he gets roped into one zany escapade after another. Fogler sells the experience marvelously – highlighted by a shocked giggle that erupts at just the right moment – and his character arc is the most emotionally engaging aspect of the film. It only makes sense for Fantastic Beasts to end with the lovable schlub following his dream as a smile spreads on his face; Newt and the wizards are the future of the franchise, but Rowling knows the heart of this film belongs to Kowalski.

Rating: Four out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 133 minutes

Genre: Fantasy

Ask Away

Target audience: Folks in their twenties who grew up reading and watching the Harry Potter franchise.

Take the whole family?: It does get a little dark toward the end, although it isn't anything worse than Prisoner of Azkaban.

Theater or Netflix?: Could be something fun to take the family to before or during the holiday shopping spree.

How many films can they get out of this?: Per IMDB, director David Yates is signed on for six in all, so at least one shy of the Harry Potter film series. It is a little worrying to see that many films lined up, especially if J. K. Rowling loses track of what to do with her new protagonist.

Watch this as well?: Prisoner of Azkaban is the highlight of the original franchise and is worth checking out for Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Gary Oldman, and Goblet of Fire is superb as well. Otherwise, you could hit up some Disney and watch  The Sword in the Stone or catch Labyrinth.

Almost Christmas follows its formula to slightly above average results

A scene from Almost Christmas. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

My reaction to Almost Christmas is a little scattered and very contradictory. As a piece of filmmaking there isn't a lot going for it; it's a film easy to nitpick for its contrivances and some rather notable script problems. At the same time, well, I kind of enjoyed it. I got a few laughs out of it and a couple of the subplots are interesting enough to maintain interest through the lesser stories. It’s fine enough, a watchable film with just a hint of interesting to keep it a skosh above average.

It would be nice to have a little more vigor for defending this film, but in the end writer/director David E. Talbert dedicated his film to maintaining the standards of the wicked dire holiday film genre. These are the films in which a family or a group of friends come together after or amid a tragedy to a loved one for the season. Think Family Stone, The Best Man Holiday, and similar films in which loads of bickering occur during a season in which family and/or friends come first. The films are guaranteed to be corny as all heck, skimming the surface for pathos without diving deep into character development while relying on clichés to carry the heavy emotional lifting. That flaw is by design, as these films focus on so many characters none of them receive an adequate amount of time to develop, if any time at all to become proper characters. (Poor Nicole Ari Parker is given so little to do it’s easy to forget she's even there.) Almost Christmas never wants to escape these issues. The film has to fit in time for Parker, Danny Glover, Mo'Nique, Gabrielle Union, Omar Epps, Romany Malco, J. B. Smoove, Kimberly Elise and Jessie Usher to develop their characters and find ways for those characters to grow from their experience. A good cliché is the easy answer, so every problem – from mild drug addictions and sisterly feuds to infidelity and political moral uncertainty – is solvable through just a few days of family time and bonding. Almost Christmas is not an intellectual exam; you're brain will be more focused on the tropes and figuring out why the middle of an election campaign occurs five days before Christmas.

Yet there are a few things “Almost Christmas” does right, or at least well enough to make the less interesting tidbits go down a little smoother. Talbert shows a knack for filming a good sequence, opening the film with a time lapse akin to the infamous tearjerker from Up and tossing in scenes of dancing and a touch football game that feel moderately organic. It's as if these moments, while still attached to the clichés around them, offer a modicum of grounding for the cinematic problems that crop up. The dancing scene in particular is organically silly, the kind of moment that feels common enough for a viewer to connect with the characters, at least for this one moment. It helps Talbert filled his film with a collection of ringers who can sell the malarkey in front of them. Union and Epps in particular exhibit a terrific rapport with each other, selling their tired plotline through force of personality alone. Union also clicks well with Elise as a pair of warring sisters who have the most interesting story in Almost Christmas. That Mo'Nique and Smoove are around to give each other grief makes things a little more fun, as does Glover doing the old man routine he's utilized since Lethal Weapon. Almost Christmas' cast is good and game, and that goes a long way to making this film moderately worthwhile.

I think that is really the selling point for Almost Christmas. It's an earnest film that Talbert clearly wants to be endearing and wants to connect with its audience, despite the narrative confines it opts to trap itself in. Talbert isn't the most talented writer or director, but he cares enough for his viewers to want to relate to them somehow without condescending. Almost Christmas is not a film I would want to watch again, nor is it one that will retain much memory beyond this holiday season. This is pretty solid for what it is though, and in this case that’s enough.

Rating: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 112 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: People wanting to get a jump on their holiday movie splurging.

Take the whole family?: Wouldn't recommend it for kiddos – the content is a little too adult at times and not appealing to that demographic – but a year or two within the rating is safe.

Theater or Netflix?: It's a little too early to see a holiday film, so wait to stream it.

Any truly bothersome issues?: It's Romany Malco's election subplot that keeps bugging me. What doesn't make sense is the timing for the whole thing, given a Congressional election would take place well before or well after the holiday season. The film never mentions a special election, so it really feels out of place for him to focus on a campaign for nothing. Plus it further pushes Nicole Ari Parker to the backburner.

Watch this as well?: The best holiday coming together film of this millennium is the French film A Christmas Tale, which adds a lot more bite to the proceedings than similar American films. Christmas Vacation is always good for a few laughs, and you can flag down the ridiculous but watchable The Best Man Holiday for some laugh. And speaking of Omar Epps, catch the sublime romantic comedy Love & Basketball.

Dr. Strange a problematic, effective head trip

Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange in Dr. Strange. Image courtesy Disney.

It's clear the folks behind the Marvel film series have a some sort of plan as to how they want to build up toward the Infinity War mayhem come 2018. And while it is difficult to argue with the success of their plan given the positive reviews and monetary returns the films have received, the existence of a Dr. Strange film always stuck out as a particularly odd note. Of all the characters for the company to introduce, was Stephen Strange really that far ahead of Black Panther, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, or the cavalcade of other diverse characters riding deep within the company's pockets? And was it necessary to introduce Stephen Strange through his own film while continuing to neglect Black Widow, a frequent source of untapped potential within the Marvel cinematic universe?

The answer is yes and no, at least in the sense of his necessity not to the continuity to the universe, but to the differentiation of the company's otherwise cookie cutter approach to its superhero franchise. Dr. Strange is Marvel's head trip, the experimental, trippy adventure designed to explore regions the company has yet to reach out to thus far. Marvel needs Dr. Strange as a film, and as a character, to add a new dimension to its repertoire. The film is a go at a shot in the arm for the company to mix things up a little bit and step away from the more staid adventures of Thor, the overused Iron Man and Captain America. Dr. Strange is Marvel doing something a little different than what they've had before, although the film itself isn't really that far away from what the company has done for the last decade.

There's nothing inherently inventive about Dr. Strange's narrative. It's a pretty basic origin story featuring Benedict Cumberbatch – copying Robert Downey Junior's swagger and lifting Hugh Laurie's American accent – as the titular doctor rendered useless due to an ego-inflicted auto accident and forced to cure himself through Eastern mysticism. His quest places him smack dab in the middle of a mystical war between Tilda Swinton's Ancient One and a rogue warlock named Kaecilius (played by Mads Mikkelsen). Dr. Strange has a large amount of Iron Man in its DNA, with Strange and Tony Stark each serving as solipsistic geniuses who must reluctantly learn some degree of modesty to reach their true potential. Additional elements, including the potential romantic partner on the periphery (in this case a very wasted Rachel McAdams), a black best friend (Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo) and a loose comedic underpinning that has become something of a hallmark for these films also crop up.

What separates Dr. Strange from Iron Man, Avengers and the rest of the Marvel slate is its visual experimentation. This is a film carried thoroughly by its special effects, from the Inception inspired building folds to some trip Stephen Strange through the mind, dimensions, time and beyond, making it resemble at times a very expensive art film befitting the character. This is the reason why Marvel needed a film like Dr. Strange to move away from the action laden flicks of the past couple of years to something a little more opaque. Marvel needed this idea to work, and the visuals at least come close to justifying a Dr. Strange film.

But Stephen Strange has a few underlying issues as a comic book hero that come creeping up in the film, no matter how hard Marvel and Disney try to scrub it away. The very nature of Strange's character arc involves cultural reappropriation, using the exotic concept of Eastern religion to strengthen a white character that reduces Eastern culture into a stereotypical concept and exists just to make the white male character look better by comparison. At issue too is the casting of Swinton as The Ancient One, in which a lily white woman replaces an older Asian male. While there is indeed an argument to be made for avoiding certain stereotypes related to the aforementioned culture problem, the film still replaces a minority character with a white one, which brings up a whole slew of issues of its own.

All of this makes Dr. Strange a funky step for Marvel to take in its world construction. There is a need for someone like Stephen Strange in the company's current roster, and the aesthetics of the film offer some balance to everything else. Yet the character trappings ultimately diminish what is, by concept, a pretty interesting film. It marks a step forward and a step backward for Marvel, with the hope the backward step is not a prelude of what to expect over the next three years.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 115 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Anyone who has watched a Marvel film since Iron Man.

Take the whole family?: There's nothing overly objectionable content wise, although the film could bother little kids do to some of its graphics along with a couple of swears.

Theater or Netflix?: You'll probably go see it, so if you do pay for the matinee.

What other Marvel characters deserve their own films?: I've vouched for Black Widow and Quasar before, but Marvel could do a fair amount with She-Hulk as a more intelligent, controlled Hulk and Ms. Marvel. It’d be fascinating to see a Squirrel Girl film too, which, if based on the current iteration of the character, would be focused on goofy adventures and a push away from violence.

Watch this as well?: Guardians of the Galaxy, the first Avengers and Winter Soldier remain the cream of the crop of the Marvel films. You could also hit up Inception and 2001: A Space Odyssey to see Dr. Strange's visual influencers.