DVD Voice

Planet 51 is a Pixar-like animated movie. It is about a planet full of “aliens” living an idyllic 1950s-like life when a NASA astronaut sets down and plants Old Glory in one of their front lawns. The inhabitants are full of pop culture (like our 1950s space movies) of aliens coming to eat their brains, and naturally are scared of the astronaut who really wants to just get home.

A band of local kids, led by the jr assistant manager of the planetarium (when he’s not in school) help reunite him with his spacecraft so he can return to Earth.

It’s fun, and funny – though arguably not as funny as Finding Nemo, or Toy Story. This one stars Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Justin Long, Jessica Biel, John Cleese, and Gary Oldman. Highly well done graphics, fun to watch, you’ll enjoy the evening just like you were one of the kids.

Watch for references to other pop-culture stuff, such as Back to the Future, 2001, E.T., etc. Look for the intresting things like floating food, well everything pretty much floats!

Good time to be had by anyone who lets themselves be taking away by this film.

Rated PG. 91 minutes (1 hour 31 minutes). Violence – cartoon violence with army weapons and threats of brains being eaten.

This is the big movie version of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. Everyone on the planet has probably read this book — except me. I didn’t really know what to expect it to be about besides it was a little boy’s imagination. I just finished watching it and maybe it’s one of those kind of movies where you need to let it sink in for a while before you really know what you think. I don’t know what I think of it.

As I got into it I thought it would be an imaginative child’s world – and it is – but I didn’t really expect at the heart of it to be about relationships. Honestly. Relationships and how we do little things or say things or don’t say things that someone else doesn’t quite understand what we really feel and so they get upset and want to leave. It was through Max’s eyes and you can see how as child he doesn’t entirely understand what is going on either, but as King he’s supposed to make it better. And I felt for the guy .. honestly, because here I am, pretty old (too old actually) and I don’t understand relationships either! How do you genuinely let someone know you really care and yet not come off as wimpy, or needy/clingy, or any of the other negatively implied attitudes? And then I saw the one character who was smart, Goat, but who no one listened to what he said or wanted to include him – they just treated him like he would always be there because he wanted to be around them. I feel like that, a lot … how should he remedy that? And then there are lots of times that the characters make you feel alone with them. And that gnawing loneliness that saps the joy out of living. I know its important to be ok with being alone, but as social creatures we aren’t supposed to perpetually be alone. So this opens a whole bucketload of questions, and they just remain unanswered. (Yes, you aren’t supposed to let movies answer life’s questions for you, I know). But the whole movie really left me feeling sad. I understand where Max was coming from, I had in some ways a similar childhood experience, I just didn’t run as wild as he did. Which, I guess means I was more easily overlooked.

James Gandolfini, Max Records, Cahterine Keener, and Catherine O’Hara all do a very good job with the voices. The suits that the big giant monster puppets wear are very well done – they look like monsters! The movie is visually stunning and fun to watch. Worth repeated viewings. After I got done I so wished I’d picked up the bluray from Blockbuster instead.

What do you think? If you read the book does it follow it well? Do you get any meanings or messages from this film?

Rated PG. 101 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes). Violence of a kind.

Tonight I needed a break, and Ponyo fit the bill very well! This is a Japanese cartoon, it is distributed here in the US by Walt Disney, but it is a animation by Hayao Miyazaki (of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, etc). The drawings were top-notch. Very beautiful to see and the story was simple and pleasing.

Great for kids – and since I’m not really much of a grown-up (I’m a waste of age) I enjoyed it! The voice cast for the English dubbed version was very good, easy to listen to. Tina Fey played one of the main characters and her husband was voiced by Matt Damon – even though he wasn’t in much of the movie.

The movie is about the underwater keeper of the seas. His daughter escapes and sees a little boy and she decides that she wants to be human. Because she uses a little bit of magic to turn herself human and escape the ocean, it messes up the balance and the world is on the verge of being destroyed. Unless they can pass the test.

If you are a kid, or just a kid at heart, this is an enjoyable evening. Just throw out any ideas before you watch, and don’t make yourself think you have to only watch grown-up movies. Get some popcorn and live a little!

Rated G. 101 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes).

This Robert De Niro movie, Everybody’s Fine, might be the first De Niro movie I’ve seen without explosions or guns. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from this one, especially given the title, but I was pleasantly surprised and thought it a good film. Touching. (Also, FYI, it’s a remake of Stanno tutti bene – an Italian film from 1990 by Giuseppe Tornatore).

This is a film about a retired man who has recently had his wife die and has invited each of his four kids to come and visit. They all cancel. So, next best thing he decides to go visit them. Only his first stop in New York to visit his son David but he’s not there. He then goes to Chicago to see Kate Beckinsale and is shuttled over quickly from her (she can’t let him stay, she has a business trip) to his other son Robert (Sam Rockwell). And after an afternoon he’s sent to Vegas because Robert can’t let him stay and he spends a day with his daughter Drew Barrymore.

It’s thought provoking. How everyone goes about saying they are “fine” when in reality things aren’t going as well as they should be. How we lie to each other and to the people in our lives (family) that mean the most instead of being accepting, sharing, and caring. How the kids, and this could be any of us, aren’t open and honest because we have been pressured to be the best we can be and not being “good enough” will disappoint them. It makes you sad how age catches up to us and there’s things we’ve never gotten to do. How kids treat their parents in this busy world and how parents assume sometimes instead of really listen.

In the end, how hard would it be to have a perfect family like that? Yes, people don’t get along and we have our differences, but family is family and that blood should be strong enough to make up for the differences and disputes and let everyone accept each other for who they really are, not who we thought they should be.

If we are honest and share the disappointments and the failures and support each other, even though maybe there isn’t anything we can “do” to help out everyone will still be pretty much fine.

Rated PG-13. 99 minutes (1 hour 39 minutes). A wee bit of profanity.

A sudden change from the violence of martial arts and murderers in the antartic, as tonight Netflix sends along Holes. This is a Walt Disney movie with Sigourney Weaver, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Henry Winkler, and Tim Blake Nelson. It’s about a camp for juvenile offenders, Camp Greenlake, in Texas on the site of a ghost town and large dried up lake. To teach the boys character they are required to dig a hole, 5 feet deep and 5 feet wide, everyday.

It becomes obvious that they are looking for something and while the movie unfolds it begins telling the back story of Stanley Yelnats’, Shia LaBeouf’s character, family and that of the townspeople of the lake. Not to try to give much away, but Stanley is from a family that has been cursed and is unlucky – part of why he’s in the camp to begin with, even if he is out of place.

The movie is just fun. It’s not an edge of your seat type of event, but a fun enjoyable way to spend the evening. Jon Voight is actually really entertaining as this wild-eyed guard at the camp munching on his sunflower seeds and always looking for the Yellow Spotted Lizards to shoot.

The movie is also full of great little lines, which the little kids will no doubt be repeating for you for days afterwards! It’s a great little feel good story. So stop thinking that you only should watch films for grown-ups, just enjoy it.

Rated PG. 117 minutes (1 hour 57 minutes).