The latest Pixar movie is dazzling, but is it really one of their best? Elsewhere, Amy Winehouse shoots off her mouth, and the "Ocean's Thirteen" crew commit the (almost) perfect crime.
Pixar movies are cherished annual events, one guaranteed bright spot in the release schedule that you can be relatively confident will not disappoint. Ratatouille is the latest, and it’s a wonder. But…
As he did with The Incredibles, writer-director Brad Bird proves himself to be a visual wizard. Of all the Pixar filmmakers, he's the one with the grandest cinematic scope. Not a single second of this new film isn't thrilling to watch. But for all its whiz-bang fun, I find his movies to be a touch impersonal. In two attempts with Pixar, the most memorable character he's managed to create is of a food critic, and his protagonists usually take a backseat to the overly busy plot. Ratatouille is awfully entertaining, but it's at its best in its frenzied set pieces – the few attempts at quiet grace don't work nearly as well. This is an odd, somewhat discouraging development from his first film, a retro work he did over at Warner Bros. called The Iron Giant which was hardly a scintillating entertainment but had lots of good-old-fashioned warmth, soul, and other emotional undercurrents. Is Ratatouille better than other animated films out there? Yes. But this is Pixar, and I'm allowed to nitpick.
Interview (opening July 13 from Sony Pictures Classics)
He's a smug, cynical newspaper reporter (is there any other kind?), and she's a spoiled, seductive actress who makes bad films and TV shows and gets paid a ton because she's hot (is there any other kind?). If you can get around the fact that their film-long interview/dance is completely ludicrous and not based in reality, you can find a certain satisfaction in the way the movie loops through its geographic and time constraints. (It would probably work better as a play.) But its erratic tonal shifts and oh-here-it-comes major revelations are too much to take. And then there's the problem with the fact that the whole film is completely ludicrous and not based in reality.
On my scorecard, this makes three for three. Star power remains an important factor, although some of it looks less interested than in earlier installments. A smart-enough caper helps, too: Even as someone who enjoyed Twelve, when I reread its plot on Wikipedia, I confess that it didn’t ring a single bell. But with Al Pacino looking vaguely confused, Ellen Barkin over-vamping, and Clooney being Clooney, the truth is these films’ greatest asset is its director. Name’s Steven Soderbergh. Shoots the hell out of everything. Got a great sense of pace and suave sophistication. And he’s constantly trying new things. This trilogy is a little too proud of itself, but can you think of a series of studio pictures more grownup? More adult in their sensibility? They don’t make ‘em like they used to, but, honestly, who made a big-budget sequel this idiosyncratic back then? For a movie that has no good reason to exist, Soderbergh makes us suspend judgment long enough. It’s the movie’s best swindle.
Robert Schneider is a music nerd with a Beatles jones. In America alone, he’s not unlike approximately 5,000,000 other people, and while he writes better songs than a vast majority of those crazed throngs, there’s still too much nerd in him. Back from oblivion, the Apples return with an EP’s worth of brilliant pop-rock surrounded by interludes, song snippet throwaways, and dud tracks. Robert Pollard writes more songs than he should too, but his lo-fi tune-sense and dork’s belief that he could rule the world help him enormously. Nerds and dorks. There are important differences.
They Might Be Giants, The Else (released July 10 on Idlewild Recordings/Zoe Records)
Only their most hopeless supporters pretend the two Johns still make amazing records. Not since 2001’s Mink Car or the following year’s No! have they gotten close to the truly transcendent, turning their snatches of cute ideas into fully reliable songs. But even the dull stuff here is inoffensive enough that I just wait patiently for the next track. From the little I known about recordmaking, it appears that the Dust Brothers have tightened their rhythm section. And although you didn’t think TMBG could possibly do it again, they’ve written another great tune about a fictional band.
There’s a reason why even The Reminder’s more glowing notices reference the Starbucks crowd. Feist works the articulate-sophistication angle so rigorously that distracted latte drinkers don’t need to worry over the words: Her sense of sound is her artistic statement. The last album was a jazzy thing; this one works a little more indie-rock into the equation. Between her lush cooing and the songs’ failure to pin down much of anything, she’s a lot of people’s idea of a sensitive, smart young woman – she doesn’t come on like a slut and she puts on airs of having artistic integrity. She’s also blank enough in her melancholy to convince brokenhearted people that she’s singing their song. Does it have some pretty tunes? Absolutely. But anyone not already predisposed to love The Reminder will note its few lovely moments and then move on.
Lily Allen’s main competition for this year’s Shockingly Outspoken Young Lady contest works an old-school R&B spiked with a modern woman’s tart tongue and frank sexual urges. Her voice is not without distinction, and her backing band has its kicks. But with a few exceptions, Back to Black’s recapturing of a classic sound feels like a formal exercise. It recalls I Am Shelby Lynne, Come Away With Me, and other moderately entertaining pastiches aiming for time-capsule status. If she makes a better album next time out, we’ll get a better sense of where she was headed. If not, then I’ll be glad I let the bandwagon pass me by.
Consumables is a biweekly overview of popular culture.
