It always wins

2019 has seen the two biggest movie franchises come to their conclusions. (Or perhaps more accurately, to their end-of-an-era moments). Of course, this meant that the heroes of these movies were set against their biggest foes, and of course, good won in the end, because with Disney, Hollywood and blockbusters in general, it always wins.

Nothing wrong with that, except that, at least in the times we are living, it is so predictable and expected that it does not have the same emotional and inspirational impact that it used to. It just feels like running through the same familiar script, enjoying the visuals and the witty dialog of the protagonists. It's just not relatable.

Let's start with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thanos was such a great villain not only because he was the most powerful one that the Avengers have had to fight, but because he was always right. What ever he said, it had truth in it, even though the others didn't like it. And you cannot defeat truth. You can fight it, hide it, ignore it, hide from it, but it will be always there, haunting you.

Or you can use some magic stones and snap your fingers to make it go away. Yeah, that always works.

If you ask me, the perfect end to the Marvel saga would have been the first scenes of Endgame, where people are coping with their losses. Some better than others, some worse: Captain America, as always, doing what is right, leading the way, showing others and helping them go on with their lives; Tony Stark, settling down, realising he cannot put a suit of armour around the world; Banner, accepting what he is, Thor not accepting he is and becoming a hobo; Hawkeye not dealing so well with the loss of his family.

But I can see why this could not be the end, as the franchise needs to keep rolling, and offer a satisfying conclusion to the heroes of the last decade. Obviously, the status quo is not satisfactory, and they couldn't lay back and do nothing about it. And this brings them back to fight Thanos, who bluntly summarises their ultimate flaw:

You could not live with your own failure.

Indeed! That is basically the story of the whole franchise, or at least of the Avengers movies. Because of them, Earth almost got occupied by aliens. It wasn't, but the aftermath was incredible, changing the lives  of millions of people in dramatic ways. Then they thought of solving the problem once and for all. And that led to Ultron, another walking-talking lesson, that they "solved" with even more tragedy and destruction, ending with a not so friendly break-up between the world's most loved superheroes. Surely, after more than 20 instalments, they would have learned their lesson. Surely now, when the lesson itself is talking to them directly, staring them in the face, ready to crush them once and for all, surely now they will learn to live with their failure.

Nope. Because Iron Man. And because, like I said, that was pretty much inevitable.

Well... if we think about it deeper, Thanos may have been defeated, but the good guys didn't win. Because you can't win against truth. You cannot ignore it, for it will always come back to haunt you. (Where did that bring you? Back to me. - IV Avengers 128:11-16) And if you do fight it, you will not come out triumphant. Tony Stark, who was instrumental in the whole reverting things to how they were plot, whose core simply could not accept the truth - that he failed (over and over) at protecting the world, would pay the price for his sin. Not being able to accept his family life over his failure, he payed the ultimate price for it. Captain America on the other hand, accepted that things are not as simple as they were in the good old days when you could always punch evil in the face, and that you can live with not always having to fight just because you're right. Perhaps the most endearing of all, Banner has learned to live with the Hulk. Like I said, you can fight the truth, you can hide it, ignore it, and that's what Banner always did. But it will always come back to remind you of it. So it's much better to just accept it and learn to live with it.

Hmm, now that I've thought about it, I guess the writers actually did a great job.

Let's move on to Star Wars, where the evilest being in the Universe is back. And gone in like 16 hours. Phew! And millions of worlds probably didn't even know about it.

So the big twist about Episode 9 is that JJ Abrams wanted to have his "No, I am your father" moment. Well, I don't know if he wanted that or not, but the reaction to that scene was more like "She's a Palpatine. Oh, ok, whatever." Well, I loved the idea of The Last Jedi, that you don't need to have the privilege of your ancestry in order to be special, but this setup does make things interesting.

Just like Hulk, Rey is now confronted with what she is. There is something dark inside her, but since she wants to be good, she now has to deal with it. And the climactic moment of this decision is when she confronts Palpatine himself, just like Luke Skywalker did. And both are put up against similar decisions: Luke should kill his father, but doing so he would have given into his negative feelings, while Rey should strike down Palpatine as the only way to stop all of the incredibly bad going on around, but doing so she would inherit the throne of darkness. (Don't know why there needs to be a ritual involved for something that is just giving into your instincts and acting out of impulse, but whatever.)

And it's the same sort of threat that Thanos poses, only more direct. Here I am, all the evil in the world, yet you cannot defeat me, because I represent the truth about yourself and doing so in this case would just mean that you are also evil. And not doing it would just mean that I kill you and nothing has changed. That is the inevitable truth. You can fight it, ignore it, hide from it, but it will always be there. And that's why Luke never defeats the Emperor.

He was feeling pretty smug when Darth Vader brought him to face Palpatine. "Oh, this is going to be so awesome." he was saying to himself. "I'm going to convince my father to turn good, we're going to kill the Emperor together, Han and Leia will bring down the shield and the Rebellion will blow up the Death Star. Live happily ever after, for ever and ever and ..."

Ooops! Just a reminder from the TruthEmperor that being arrogant is not so nice, and that you're still an animal driven by your emotions and before you know it you're smashing your own father with a lightsaber. And all because you could not accept failure above your precious Jedi principles.

Of course, Luke does realise all that and stops himself just in time and does the right thing. He accepts his defeat, and therein lies his victory. He throws away his lightsaber (ghasp!) and proclaims:

I am a Jedi, like my father before me.

You should note the subtlety: it's not just that Luke didn't kill the Emperor. That would have just been hiding from the truth. He openly accepts the truth, thus showing Anakin that there is another way. Yes, Anakin, the one who could never accept the loss of his mother, nor the fact that you cannot stop all suffering, that you cannot stop death, the one who has fought the truth, and then just ignored it and hid from it under a mechanised suit. Yes, Luke has shown him that acceptance is the way, and Anakin is the one who kills the Emperor, redeeming himself and his life of neglect. But Luke could never have defeated the Emperor himself, lest he go down the same path as his father.

Well, turns out Luke didn't really learn the lesson himself, as he thought that evil can be defeated for good, and that good can live on by itself and he can happily train good Jedi forever and ever. Except he couldn't and once he realised the truth, how did he confront it? He ran away to hide from it.

But luckily Rey showed him the way (in The Last Jedi) and he could advise her (in The Rise of Skywalker) not to make the same mistake as he did and act out of fear. Although I'm not sure how necessary that advice was, considering that the biggest threat of the Universe is ready to strike and if you don't act upon it, no matter the consequences, there will literally be no place to hide!

Anyway, Rey inevitably stands in front of her eeeevil grandpa, given this impossible choice of striking him down and taking his place, or not doing that and letting him destroy his friends and everything she ever cared for. So what does she do? Strike him down, of course! Ok, she reflects his lightning with her lightsabers and the power of all the Jedi, but that still counts as striking him down! And it seems she didn't take his place after all. I guess that ritual was really important, huh?

Well, you could say that the point actually is that Rey was confronted with having evil inside her but choosing to be good. In the final scene when asked her family name, she says Skywalker, instead of Palpatine, showing that she chose to be a Skywalker, rather than a Palpatine. Yeah sure, I guess one family of Universe-level mass murderers is better than the other one. Good on her for listening to her heart. I guess that also means that Luke's failure in defeating evil for good is due to not changing his own name to Luke Kenobi.

Sarcasm aside, that's not the way things work. It's not just choosing who you want to be. It's not the same as being born in a family of gangsters and choosing to become a cop and arrest them. Being the ancestor of a force-wielder is more like being born with a disability (or a super-human ability, but the disability analogy fits better in this case, because it's something that Rey would rather do without). If you're born deaf or mute, it's kind of hard to choose to be a musician. If you're born with something like the Down syndrome, you can choose to be a better person, but it's more than just choice. You have to accept your flaws and deal with them. And, once again, dealing doesn't mean fighting them, ignoring them, or hiding from them. It means living with them and becoming better because of them, not despite them.

If you ask me, the best plot for the next Star Wars trilogy would be that Rey is driven mad by her inner conflict which she obviously does not even understand nor is even aware of, and actually becomes Empress Palpatine, only instead of being driven by an urge for absolute power, she's just demented and does irrational things. Sometimes for fun, sometimes out of anger, or hatred. And when someone confronts her, she just tells them that they're talking nonsense, that she's a Skywalker, and she's all good. Who would save the galaxy this time? Don't know. Many people. The kid with the broom from the last scene of The Last Jedi would surely be involved. The first two movies wouldn't even have to show her. Maybe keep some mystery about who the Empress is at first. And where the hell is Rey? The gang of good guys could have an adventure to some unknown world, where they find her true ancestry (because no one besides her knows, right?). Anyway, I'm just blabbering here. But in the end, they face her. And they persuade her to admit the truth. And then she crumbles inside. And she commits suicide, finally accepting the truth. Because it always wins.

Movies of 2010

I've decided to make a list of the movies released in 2010 that I've seen, order them and write a few words about each. For future reference.

12. Inception

Inception is the most idiotic movie I have seen that's in this list. Just like in the movie, there are 4 layers to this, and I'm going to go through them.

On the very first level we have what is the main theme of the story. Lead character Cobb has to deal with the memories of his wife, his own guilt and has to succeed to get back to his kids. However, in the relationship with his wife we are never shown more than the fact that she is a psychopath; all we get is Cobb whining about how much he loves and misses her. This is the main point of the movie - everything Cobb does is related to this woman, and everything that happens is because of her, be they Cobb's decisions, or her projection interfering with things. We are supposed to follow with his conflict, yet every time I see the woman I want her gone as fast as possible. Whenever flashbacks or projections of his family appear, all we are treated with is a blank stare. Also, the whole predicament he is in is quite ambiguous. He can very well travel all over the world, meet his father, phone home, but he couldn't have taken his kids with him. Considering all this, how then am I supposed to cheer for the character to succeed when I don't care about his goal?

Stripping all that away, what we remain with is a heist action movie. I've already dismissed the fact that the purpose of what they are doing has any interest to me, so I'm going to go deeper - to the second level. The consequences of their mission is irrelevant to the movie. We don't care whether mister Japan gets to rule the world, and what would have been very interesting to follow - the Fischer father-son relationship is moved to the state of pretext, and is superficially treated. Just watch the scene where Fischer wakes up, shaken by his revelation and tell me that's not ridiculous, since it has no relevance to the main part of the movie.

Granted, the whole plan to convince Robert is interesting to follow and is backed-up by delicious three-level action scenes, a brilliant gravity shifting fight (the best part of the movie) and good, innovative special effects. But towards the end the action is shredded to bits by the moral conflict of the story, or rather the other way around. When Cobb finds his wife, and we are about to get some explanations to this whole deal, almost after each few relevant lines we cut to some men in white shooting or a guy placing yet another explosive.

The movie even tries to show us a bit of team spirit and build some character relations with some brief commentaries and cheap tricks. When I've got to deal with an ambiguous conflict, and a confusing story, the last thing I care about is a bunch of background people with little character to show.

And I really hate Nolan's directing on a large level. The details are great, but the movie is just a bunch of scenes coming one after another without any coherent train of thought, a structure to it, or any build up. The first hour was excruciating to sit through, having to sift through many details, and unknown characters, that you can't tell if they are going to be relevant in the rest of the movie or not.

There are also so many external references and movie homages, that just show how bad Inception is when compared to them.

Moving on to the third level, we deal with the movie's Sci-Fi under layer. In Inception this element is there for the sake of things and not to provide much significance, even though it tries to. We get the technical details - lots of them. This does provide us with some incredible effects, but this is just showing off, as they become almost irrelevant for the rest of the movie. The whole dream "technology" is basically the world the characters have to deal with, the laws that govern it. And they all accept it, for good or for worse. Rarely do they try to delve too deep into any of the consequences. The deepest the movie does go is to imply that the dream is just a trap, from which one should escape. What is the consequence of getting out or staying in? The movie doesn't say.

Finally, into limbo world, we sink into Inception's reflective layer. The ending wishes to send out a message that we have just witnessed something awesome and that we should be asking questions, that there is something profound there, an eye-opener onto the real world. However, for me, it's just smoke and mirrors, offering us several possibilities, none of which make much sense with what we have just seen. Up until the end we are not provoked to question the validity of what we are seeing. Simply showing a symbol is not profound. The ending could have simply been Nolan shouting "Cut!" and the camera panning back to reveal a filming set. That would have had the same effect.

The movie does not put an emphasis on discerning dream from reality, although those are supposed to be its major points. Simply wording it does not count. I cannot tell whether it's best to be in a dream world, or in reality, as there are no emotions shown from the characters part tearing them from one or the other. Our answer to the question "Is it a dream? Is it reality?" is not what's important, more intriguing would have been Cobb's reaction. If he found out he was still in a dream, what would he do? Does he accept it or not?

Rather than asking him, the movie is asking me: is this reality or a dream? It's a movie! I don't care what it is in the movie. It has no repercussions on how I see my world. The dream world is a construction that engulfs the movie world completely, because the movie doesn't want to tell me anything about its repercussions. It just accepts it as a natural fact, just like I accept my world with all the gravity and stuff. If you ask me, it was just one of Nolan's strange dreams in which nothing makes much sense when you think of it, but when you wake up sweaty you have the feeling that it's something great. With that shot of the spinning top, Christopher Nolan has implanted us with the idea that his movie is something great and profound. Do you choose to accept that? Or do you choose reality?

11. Tron: Legacy

This is a bullshit of a movie. Despite being a sequel to the original Tron, it's actually a remake, even though the story is different. Everything that was in the original, is redone here using the latest graphical effects. First we get the Recognizers, then Disc Wars, then we get Light cycles, then the lead gets out of the bounds of the race track, the heroes have to go to someone to help them reach the portal, and to get there they use the Solar Sailer where the guy and the girl can share an emotional moment.

Everything else about the story in this movie is totally irrelevant. It didn't make sense to me, and I couldn't care less what the final outcome was. In fact I think the creators themselves approached this movie by pushing the story to the background. All they wanted is to entertain us with special effects, cool music, hot chicks in hot outfits, cheesy references to the original and to have Jeff Bridges duplicated on screen as a young CG version of himself. Which is exactly what I liked about this movie.

10. How to Train Your Dragon

A movie with dragons and vikings! How cool! But among the cheesy modern teenage dialogue and some mildly interesting action scenes, this is a missed opportunity. Not very much is remarkable or memorable here, except maybe the kid and his relation with the other characters, especially with the dragon and with his father. It's nice to see intelligence being praised in such a movie. Other than that I think I would have like this more if was a kid.

9. Alice in Wonderland

Another not very memorable movie, apart from the incredible scenery and stylistic effects. The wonderful shots, Tim Burton's freakish touch and the empowering score made for a very thrilling experience. Who would have thought this is how Wonderland is like? It had the most immersive 3D effects that I've ever sat through, the height of which is represented by the scene where Alice falls down the hole. Another of my favourite scenes are those with the Cheshire cat, especially the moon turning into the cat's smile. I also enjoyed the ending when Alice dons the stylish armour and sword for the final battle, ending wit the dragon's head falling down the spiral stairs. That's Wonderland, heh!

8. Megamind

The whole first act is exceptional. I was so thrilled that I thought this movie would be as amazing as Up with the great storytelling and homage to previous great works, but then it went from a movie with deep moral meaning to a generic action animation. Such a waste!

7. The Social Network

Great movie: great acting, great directing and great screenplay. Without these three you wouldn't be able to sit through the scenes in this film: people talking really fast and witty, people coding, people talking in a loud bar, lawyers talking and so on.

But.... there is a big problem. And since nobody seems to see the elephant in the room, I'll just point it out. This movie has no point! It tries to touch different aspects, but never bothers to stop on something meaningful and it is shallow in everything it deals with. As far as character development goes, it's like turning slightly to the side. Watching "The Social Network" gains you nothing whatsoever, and it does not offer anything emotionally or intellectually provoking.

For a movie with "Social Network" in its name, it's exactly the social interactions that are its weakest point. All of the relationships are soft and superficial, uninteresting and not very believable. The friendship between Zuckerberg and Saverin is never proven on screen, only taken for granted, with lines like "Friends don't do that". Even the conflict between them is weak and artificial, rather than emotional. The reasons behind it are vague and ambiguous, so I for one can't really understand the Saverin's outburst towards the end. I can't understand why Zuckerberg is doing what he is doing, as we get no insight to his emotions. He is simply a jerk, and nothing changes throught the whole movie.

I didn't expect to see the actual history behind the founding behind Facebook. But this is one of the most successful companies in all of history, which would have surely greatly affected its founders and people involved. Instead, we get some vague conflict regarding jealousy over acceptance to some exclusive douchebag club and a great conspiracy which involves a mistreated chicken (the highlight of the movie in my opinion!).

The other conflict, between the Facebook founders and the twins is just as weak, as they do not pose much threat to Zuckerberg's success, neither throughout the movie, nor in the end as we find out. In fact, they have their own story - one of morality, team spirit and boat racing. What that had to do with the founding of Facebook.... who knows?

The movie even turns into melodrama, in the scene where Saverin's girlfriend overreacts. A moment ago she was just some hooker who approached him because of his popularity and gave him a blowjob in the bathroom, but now the relationship is serious, and we find out she is overly jealous. This is soap opera material. In fact, I think the soap opera format would have suited this story much better. Zuckerberg's relationship with Erica is just as fake. From the movie I gathered she didn't matter much in his life, but the end would have us believe otherwise - not to mention the irony behind how meaningless the ending is. That sums up perfectly how little The Social Network has to offer.

Also, from the title you'd take it that the movie is in some way about social networking, a phenomenon so great that has opened amazing new opportunities, and has changed the way that most of us interact. What do we get? A bunch of silly people prancing around, arguing about their meaningless problems, with some cheap insertions of references to social network interactions. I mean, my girlfriend would kill me if I didn't set my relationship status, people get hooked to each other on Facebook, some people spend so much time on Facebook it's scary. But all we get is a few references that have nothing to do with the story whatsoever.

I'm guessing "The Social Network" was supposed to be a snapshot of modern social interactions, portrayed through the relationships of several people involved directly or indirectly in the founding of Facebook. Well, it's not a portrait, it's not a caricature, it's not even a sketch. I'd say it's something in between a sketch and stick figures. And no matter how good you make the lines of the stick figures, it's still not going to be a masterpiece, it'll only be superficial.

6. The King's Speech

The best actor movie on the list. Every scene is wonderful to watch because of this brilliant trio: the stammering king Colin Firth, the comical Geoffrey Rush and the loving wife Helena Bonham Carter. While the latter two have a quicker impact, as the movie progressed, I was drawn more and more by Colin Firth's character, as he could perfectly portray both the fear inside the man, and the power that he inherits through his royal blood, in a manner to which I could relate.

I liked that they tried to tell an inspiring story, but that didn't catch substance and it seemed to me like a just a setting for the brilliant talent of the cast to unfold in. The directorial touches are too obvious, too intrusive and some of the technical details are just superfluous.

Some scenes are way overacted. The first scene felt like I was being punched in the face to accept the larger than life tragedy of this poor man who stammers. Luckily the rest of the movie is nothing like this, making said scene seem taken from another production. In fact, I appreciated the light, merry tone all throughout, even in the more serious moments. Unfortunately, this too is stretched too much in the end, when the king's war speech matters more than the fact that war has just been declared. But all in all, it's just delicious British self-irony. And can you dig that ridiculous Churchill played by Timothy Spall?

5. Piranha

This is one gory movie that I really enjoyed! Rather than just showing would-be frightening or gross scenes, Piranha wants to thrill us, to engage us. The victims are tossed around and mutilated in spectacular ways, with an impression that some more powerful force is punishing them. I think, or like to believe that this movie has some moral message behind all the gruesomeness and blood, although sometimes it does appear to be radical. The scenes are well built and directed, and generally show off that there is some artistic feeling being put in there. I was surprised by the creativity shown at some points. (no spoilers) I also liked how the director even went out of the movie's way, reaching out toward the ridiculous, having something like a lesbian mermaid dance involving two naked girls. I really don't want to give anything away, but I can say that I've barely touched on all the things I've liked about the scenes. The ending shot is great - funny, but I think it also gives another perspective to the whole thing. All in all, a very good, fun, thrilling, artistic, gory movie.

4. Kick-Ass

3. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

I'm putting these two together since they are very similar. First of all they're both comic book adaptations, and second, they both have originality as strong points. This can be seen in Kick-Ass's thrilling action scenes and extraordinary characters. And I mean that last part literally, especially when you think of the star of this show - the 11 year-old killing machine called Hit-Girl. Both movies use innovative narrative devices. While present in Kick-Ass as well, this is more evident in the video-game inspired effects used in Scott Pilgrim; which is just a modern way of telling a teenage get-the-girl story.

But all that originality wouldn't be shit if the movies didn't have bigger than life characters (really - these are the most interesting movie characters in 2010), captivating stories, humour and thrilling action scenes, making them really enjoyable to watch. However, while entertaining, Kick-Ass is just a superhero action-flick and Scott Pilgrim is just a romantic comedy. Nothing too deep or thought-provoking - just fun. That's why these movies won't be any higher on my list. A plus for Scott Pilgrim because it actually has the main character evolve and learn something about himself and his relationship with The World, giving the movie an overall meaning.

2. Toy Story 3

It was really hard to rank this movie. I've moved it back and forth, and finally decided to place it at this spot because of how deeply impressed I was by the ending, it's as emotional as you can get, and Pixar knows how to do it best. It's not really that good as a movie as the previous two, but since this is a subjective list, that doesn't count.

The big problem is that Toy Story 3 looks as two separate movies. It continues where the last one left off with the problem that Andie has grown up and needs to make a decision as to the fate of the toys. In any case it's not going to be a good one. Then, using the common plot device of a simple misunderstanding (present in the first two Toy Stories as well), the movie makes a hard turn into a generic action flick, that has nothing to do with what was shown up to now.

It is interesting to watch, but it just feels like to completely separate parts, and a motive to show something going on and to give all the toys a few moments of peril and togetherness. That is good, as each toy has its moment and backstory, unlike Toy Story 1 or 2 where mostly Woody or Buzz were in the spotlight. Especially interesting is the side story of Ken and Barbie.

The main villain is quite uninteresting and poorly sketched, with an unconvincing background. But at least we have his sidekick, one of the sweetest evil characters ever. And I mean sweet not as in touching, but in the pure evil, creepy way.

I think it's clear that this installment was created especially for the 3D, but I'm very glad they didn't dismiss the rest and put all efforts into making a good movie especially if it's the last one in the series, unlike other franchises that have had comebacks just for the 3D. I also regret not seeing it in the cinema, because I think the effects were really good.

Apart from a slow moment in the middle, the movie's pace is mind boggling, as it has been in the previous two movies in the series, with the heroes being thrown from one peril into another. I must say this is the first time that I see a plan going off without a hitch all the way to the end, when the bad guys just show up. It just adds to the feeling that the writers knew that this part isn't important and that we should go through it as quickly as possible.

But at least they offered us monumental climactic scene, in which the whole movie team seems to have brought its outstanding contribution: the direction, the animation, and the music make for a masterpiece of a scene.

The deep impression this movie left in the end is more than enough to make up for the bad structuring.

1. Black Swan

For me this is by far the best movie of the year. To quote the ending, it's perfect. I don't have anything to complain about this.

The story builds on a couple of age-old myths and the movie wraps around it like a glove. It stems a few side stories, it gives a bit of conflict and some character development, but all these act towards the build-up of the main thread, expanding and evolving it towards the climax and ultimate message of the movie.

Even though the characters are given some personality, they are just avatars to carry the artistic vision and message of the story. All the secondary characters are different faces of the main character and what they symbolize and their role within the story is more important than any individual traits.

The orchestration of camera, lights and music is perfect, and all that remains is solid acting, and I think that Natalie Portman has outdone her self in an emotionally and physically exhausting role. I was afraid that she couldn't offer the transformation needed for the ending, but it just blew me away.

All that plus the salt and pepper added by Aronofsky in the form of surrealist introspection (without overdoing it) and (uhm... what's a nice euphemism for sex scenes?) artistic sexuality make for a very delicious viewing. This movie is thought provoking, mind stimulating, emotionally binding and .... yeah.

Final Thoughts

• If you're wondering why "The Social Network" gets the award for most overrated movie, and not Inception, that's because Inception got the most idiotic movie award.
• In case you missed it, click on the "Scrooge" Inception poster to find out what's the deal behind it and a higher-detail image of the poster.
• Did you notice how the people in "The Social Network" keep a running tally of emails and messages they send, so that they can spontaneously come up with lines like "we've exchanged 52 emails", "you couldn't answer any of my 47 texts", and it took me 52 words to write this line?
• Also, if you can't tell that a website is the next big thing just by glancing over one of its pages for a few seconds, then that is why you are not a billionaire yet.
• Once again, the best animation comes from Pixar. Heh!
• Enough with the comic books already!
• It's nice to find a good diversity in the movies I've seen.

Up: Movie of the Year

There's no doubt about it in my mind. Up is the best movie of 2009. No hippie blue cats, nor soldiers in Iraq, nor some Illiterate Basterds, not even a fat whining black bitch, and unfortunately not even the clueless Prawns can beat the 78 year-old man on the adventure of his life.

This is not just a movie, not just a work of art, it's an ode to all art created by man. It brings together the beauty of many different works such as the Wizard of Oz (the house gets caught in a storm and then almost magically appears in the fabled land), Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, Odyssey, Jules Vernes' books (obviously), Carmen, C. M. Coolidge, Dexter (as in Dexter's Laboratory you psychopathic serial-killer lovers! - see the episode where he makes a dog talk) and so on.

"Up" has everything! Adventure, action, battle scenes, a deep secret unknown to the common world, symbolism, witty humour, SQUIRREL!!!, tension, chase scenes, tough decisions (like in Matrix - the living being or your quest), a great story that actually makes sense, cool, lovable and smart characters, profound meanings and it's about The Meaning of Life.

When something happens in this movie, it doesn't just happen. It captures you and you move along with it. The opening part is a polished diamond in movie making. It's 15 minutes that not only narrate the whole life of a man and a woman, but sprinkle it with auditory and visual delight. The scene with old Carl waking up and coming to his porch, with Carmen playing in the background - it alone could be considered a masterpiece! If you are so stubborn as to not watch the movie, at least look at these first 15 minutes. If you watched it and were too blind to notice the brilliance, then watch it again.

The whole soundtrack is excellent. Nothing cheesy, besides that Carmen bit, it's basically the same frenchy "beginning of the cinema era" tune, but it works great with the movie's balloony narrative. There are bits here and there that you will notice, because they actually convey something to the atmosphere and are not just bolted to the movie because you need to have some music.

What I found interesting about the secondary characters is that they aren't typical. Usually in such animations, they are doofuses, that only cause havoc and somehow in the end their clumsiness saves the day. Not here. They are actually smart and do useful things. Sure, they are clumsy and say or do stupid stuff, but the creators of the movie took special care to give them another dimension as well.

The fat Asian kid, while annoying (as any child can be to an old man) actually helps a few times - he can apply a bandage, can see the storm ahead, and can even come up with such profound introspective thoughts as "I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most". Dug is probably the dumbest, but not that dumb at all if you pay attention. And he is terribly funny and lovable. SQUIRREL!!!! And finally, they gave Kevin a deeper role, of a mother lost from her children, which gives her a meaning in this whole picture, and is not just a pain in the ass, that one side wants to get rid of, while the other puts all his effort in catching it.

And now, the amazingness again. They basically took great action scenes from iconic action movies and transplanted them into the humorous world of cartoons, while keeping the tremendous joy of adventure from the originals. Does the scene where they flee from Muntz's dogs, swinging from a rope between the stone pillars look familiar? That's Indiana Jones and the Nazis. Then they took Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and turned it into a grandpa battle of epic proportions of comedy. I can't think of a single person who won't laugh when they see this scene. And what about that canine X fighter squadron, with squishy bones for gun triggers? That's pure comedic brilliance!

Finally, I'd like two end with some amazing shots from the movie, which I think alone should be regarded as masterpieces. (yes, I know, I'm repeating myself)

Compare these two:




And then these two:




I'm beginning to like this:



(If you don't what the second one is, it's from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Ok, last one:




Stunning!

Ah, yes. One more thing. Catchphrases. "I see you"? Who the hell is the marketing genius who thought that one up? I'm laughing right now. Probably there wasn't enough budget because of all the state-of-the-art IMAX filming and they just jotted that one down. "Cross your heart". Now there's something all of us can relate to!

I could really dissect each and every frame of this movie, but I'm aware that I can't give the movie enough credit. Not barely! It's really that stunning, inspiring, relaxing, funny and profound!

But in the end it's just:

Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust,
Houses in clouds....