Review: Rango

Let me get one thing perfectly clear, this is not a kids movie. It's animated, produced by nickelodeon films, and stars Johnny Depp who has in recent year transitioned from more adult fare to kid friendly family films. Your kid is not going to understand at least half of what happen in Rango, hell they might even be frightened by some of it. From a highly detailed dead bug to a straight homage to Apocalypse Now complete with "Ride of the Valkyries", this movie is for fans of film. It's both shockingly funny and brilliantly smart as well as completely head trippy and surprisingly violent.


From moment one Rango doesn't feel like a traditional animated film. Sure there are anthropomorphic talking characters but not a single one of them looks clean and crisp, all of them are just slightly off be it a weird quirk or physical deformation. The opening of the film has our title character Rango, played to perfection by the wild and quirky in his own right Johnny Depp, trying to stage a play wide a half-headless barbie doll, a bright orange mechanical fish and a plastic palm tree. This is a play he wrote, stars, and directs to a group of inanimate objects because he has no one else. That is until the tank he's in comes crashing out of the vehicle it's in and slowly crashes to the hot black asphalt of the open road. He's ventures into the desert and comes across the town of dirt, a town plagued by drought. through a couple of scenes of improvised acting, Rango manages to not only avoid certain death but becomes the town new sheriff. From here the true journey begins and it's one of strange images and adult themes.

Speaking of strange imagery, the wizards at ILM should be given a round of applause for what they have accomplished here. Rango is certain to be one of the most beautiful animated films of the year. Bright colors peer down in the barren desert wasteland to the cold blue that is a fixture of the night, Rango has countless scenes that would not look out of place as a still painting. Combine that with the great score from Hanz Zimmer that takes cues from the best westerns and you will feel transported to the wild world of Rango.

A world that is filled with the great personality and characters voiced by actors Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers), Abigail Breslin (Zombieland), Harry Dean Stanton (The Green Mile), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2), Ned Beatty (Toy Story 3), Ray Winstone (The Departed), and Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest). It's a who's who of actors that all bring life and color to the characters they inhabit.

On top of this is an obviously natural love for film and while I have not seen all of the films that Rango both obviously admires and pays homage to I know enough of them to get by. From the visual cues of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly to Director Gore Verbinski's own Pirates of the Caribbean films, Rango fails to fall into an easy classification which can be extremely hard for some audiences to grab hold of and enjoy. Constantly throughout the film I was shaking my head in utter awe that they had just made a reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or classic abstract art. It gives Rango a feel all it's own, setting apart from the myriad of other by the number kids films that come out in a year. And there is no doubt the Rango will not be the overall crowd pleaser that certain other animated films with talking animals in it will be, but if your willing to let go and bask in the complete and utter craziness being thrown on screen then Rango will absolutely win you over.

5/5

The Criterion Collection #1: Grand Illusion

Grand Illusion

In 1990 Jean Renoir's war classic was finally released on the home video market as the first film in the Criterion Collection. It had been a long road getting there. As explained by Renoir himself the film had been cut, edited, and censored numerous times by many different countries, and with the original thought to have been lost during WWII it seemed that Gran Illusion would fade into the abyss. However the German soldiers had actually saved the film in one of their film archives in Berlin. It was reclaimed when the American soldiers took the city back. The history of Grand Illusion is an interesting parallel to the theme's of the film itself, War and how it effects everything around.

As prisoner's of war, Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin ) experience first hand what war does. For an audience of the 21st century it may be a shock as all the prisoner's are treated exceptionally well as long as they follow the German laws. They even eat better then their captors as packages sent to the camps are delivered without a single item missing post inspection. Maréchal and Boeldieu are about to escape before they are sent to another camp controlled by Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) who finds a kinship with Boeldieu.

In many ways there are almost three different movies going on. The war film that deals with what being a prisoner of war in WWI was like. An escape film with two major plots being shown to the audience, yet we are told that over there 18 month imprisonment both Maréchal and Boeldieu have tried to escape 11 times. And a character study of how different classes of people see war and where they fit in. For the most part this all works well to keep the film feeling fresh and moving, but by the last twenty minutes it slows down to a snails pace with a tacked on love story that could have been completely cut to keep the film going.

That being said as a historical piece or rumination on war, Grand Illusion still stand up in 2010 as a film with enough modern ideas and simple story telling that anyone who like a good war film should check it out.

4/5

The Criterion Collection

They say it's the greatest collection of films ever released in America for our visual consumption. Who are they? No idea. but that doesn't really matter. this blog is primarily going to be a place for me to wax somewhat intelligently about the films i will be watching as I make my way through the entire Criterion catalog. Slowly but surely it will happen. Some of these movies I have already seen and only one of them I disliked enough to never watch it again (The Man Who Fell To Earth), so when we get to that one I will most likely just write something short about my feelings on it from what I can remember of it (not the most fair judgment but this is my blog not yours so there). I hope if you come here and read any of this it will entertain you and inform you of movies you had never thought of trying out before. Until next time, some thing witty/interesting/funny/philosophical/etc goes here.