"Inside Out", blue is the colour

Inside Out

It's very easy to get carried away with 'Inside Out'. Visually fascinating as always, inventive, pretty entertaining and, finally, a riskier, braver move by embracing a serious issue ('Up' was "there" too, but only for the first 10 minutes): an insight on emotions and growing up through the mind of a child. Anyone who knows me (or reads the Blog) is aware how reluctant I am in what regards to animation. The visual richness and ability to explore/add new effects and techniques is pretty amazing but, imo, it's killing storylines, plot developments and acting. 'Inside Out', I'm keen to say, proves I can be mistaken.

Riley is a very happy 11-year-old kid from Minnesota with loving parents and a passion for hockey. But things are about to change drastically as the family has to move to San Francisco. It's a 360º degrees turn for little Riley and her emotions are going to explode. And that's exactly what are we going to see, as her emotions are the real protagonists of the movie, which try to guide her on every step of the way: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. The quintet live in Headquarters, the control room located inside Riley's mind. Until the arrival to San Francisco, Joy has been clearly the leading emotion, but the struggle of change creates a serious unrest on the kid. A new city, a new place, a new school. The five emotions (excellent work of the voices, by the way) are dealing with a completely different scenario, where tension and turmoil appear. Sadness (the best character hands down, impossible not to love her) in particular keeps getting in the way, mucking things up, transforming pleasant memories into melancholic, sad ones. Things get even worse when Joy and Sadness accidentally get swept away into the far reaches of Riley's brain, a visually stunning, gorgeous landscape of the mind, where beyond the control room are several islands representing Riley's personality.

'Inside Out' then would turn into a more traditional adventure movie for kids, with Joy and Sadness trying to get back into Headquarters... if there wasn't for the fact the two emotions are moving throughout extremely sensible mind areas like Riley's subconscious, and because is a race against time: Riley's crisis are destroying her emotional landscape. There's a slight moment the word depression came to my mind while watching the movie and, although I would say Disney wins and the plot drags slightly from what it could have been, entering a more conventional, funnier "action" ground, far for the complexity it was promising, I can't complain really. The overall feeling is that Pixar wanted to target adults for almost its entirety this time, without forgetting children. Kudos for that.    

Because 'Inside Out' is a wonderful attempt to portray what's going on inside the head of a kid. The moments where we see the adults' head are as funny as revealing (wish there would have been more scenes), as behind the laughs and charming moments there's a rare depth that has to be celebrated. There's a commanding emotion inside all of us, guess formed by the years and experiences we have to face. Young Riley shifts from a life dominated by Joy into something else, with multiple and, many times, conflicting simultaneous emotions, where other colours aside from the bright yellow of Joy might be needed. Isn't that what growing up is about? Acknowledging life is complex? Learning than life has many contradictions, turnbacks and deceptions but it's still an exciting and worthy ride? It's a great lesson to be learnt, for children and adults as well.

SCORE: 8/10

The Bloodbuzzed Jukebox 29

This weekend we are covering the Primavera Club 2014, an exciting little Festival (a comeback after a one year hiatus) gathering some of the most promising national & international bands. That's why we have prepared a special edition of our TOP TEN playlist devoted to some of the bands playing there. Several music wonders to discover. As always, it's all at our Blog's soundcloud. Join Us!

Direct links to the previous Jukebox weeks
Week 1      Week 8        Week 15     Week 22  
Week 2      Week 9        Week 16     Week 23 
Week 3      Week 10      Week 17     Week 24
Week 4      Week 11      Week 18     Week 25
Week 5      Week 12      Week 19     Week 26 
Week 6      Week 13      Week 20     Week 27 
Week 7      Week 14       Week 21     Week 28

Welcome to the Jukebox!

"The Skylab", pleasant family memories

The Skylab (Le Skylab, French original title)

All families are quite similar, and all family gatherings are horri.... just kidding. "The Skylab" uses that simple and recognisable plot to gather an impressive and diverse French Cinema cast, celebrating a family meeting in the summer of 1979, to build a comedy, with several hints of drama, that works also as a personal homage from writer, director and actress Julie Delpy to her family (in particular her mother).

"The Skylab" is built upon a flashback, so these are supposed to be the memories of the adult Albertine, remembering those days when she was 11-year-old and took part of a familiar get-together, celebrating the 67th birthday of her grandmother, matriarch of the clan. Getting picky, from a technical point of view, either the initial/closing scene and the whole premise are quite loose and obviously erroneous (young Albertine wasn't in every scene, so how can she remember them?).

But anyway, that's not really important for the film, who has one of its strongest points in the lack of pretensions and the aim to focus in a nostalgic, mostly kind and warm, take on those familiar days in the French Brittany. Delpy wants to portray her own family memories with affection, care, and a very natural sense of humour. She, thanks to the help of the ensemble cast and her talent for dialogues achieves that goal for almost the entirety of the film.

We all have been part of one of these never-ending get-together reunions, so it's no surprise to see silly/ridiculous situations, even sillier conversations (the one that involves NASA's Skylab space station that was going to fall somewhere that night gives the name of the film), some sex remarks, very different characters dealing with their own stories and trying to catch-up with the other quickly, many communication breakdowns, and the inevitable tensions, all while drinks and food are constantly served, even despite the capricious (and very funny) weather.

As this are Albertine's memories, childhood is a pivotal focus of the film, and Delpy proves she's got a very remarkable talent to recreate with artlessness that age, its revelations and traumas as well it provides several moments of laughs. First love (although she seems quite precocious for her age), death, arts (thanks to her bohemian parents), the transition from childhood to teenager period in particular mark Albertine's evolution throughout the movie. No, she's not a young female version of Woody Allen, although that wouldn't be the first time Delpy has the New Yorker director as a reference.

But I couldn't help thinking "The Skylab" has a couple of "issues" that harm its overall enjoyment as a whole. First, and a common one nowadays, its lack of balance, and directly linked with that, the excessive length: two hours might be necessary to present and expose such a long family and the developing situations, but there are some scenes clearly overlong (and not all of them can be justified as the film is the flashback of one person, therefore completely subjective) while other "matters" are presented just to disappear immediately. And second, when drama appears, in some selected scenes, the tone of the film gets really dark. Political discussions that could end heating-up too much are usual among families. But there's more than that here. These scenes are awkward considering the movie flows as a comedy, and with the aforementioned lack of balance, look also strangely isolated and disconnected from the rest. Maybe Delpy wanted to include too much.

Overall, a lightweight and quite pleasant film, one that you try to be even more indulgent with its flaws thanks to its undeniable charm, that works quite nicely as a nostalgic comedy.

SCORE: 6,25/10

"The Tree of Life", the most self-indulgent film ever

The Tree of Life

Beware of someone qualified as an "author". Not saying that Terrence Malick doesn't deserve the adjective. He is a terrific filmmaker, capable of creating scenes of unparalleled beauty. In that sense, "The Tree of Life" is an achievement again, full of striking visuals and imagery. But a film is not just a collection of gorgeous images with a brilliant photography. I'm very sorry to say there's nothing more than that in Malick's film.

What I criticise with the "author" concept, and to me, the main reason why the film is a complete failure, is that Malick made it exclusively for himself, without caring a tiny bit about the audience. It might be the most self-indulgent film I ever seen.

To me, an artist aims to create a connection with his/her art with an audience. That connection can have different expressions: make you laugh, burst into tears, make you think, blow out your mind, terrify you... It links with your emotions and passions, with something inside of you. It's all about our empathy with the characters and or/the story. I remember how I got deeply moved by Malick soldiers' of "The Thin Red Line". Never been in a war, but their fear of death, their doubts and concerns about what they we're doing were completely human and understandable to me. There's no empathy at all with "The Tree of Life".

Seems the film is vastly autobiographical, so while the recreation of the fifties town is vivid and credible, his memories are just too personal to say anything to the regular viewer. What happens is... trivial, and despite the convincing acting of young Jack (Hunter McCracken) and his father (Brad Pitt) the remembrance of this childhood memories and the relationship with his parents and brothers is not particularly appealing or enlightening. Combine that with the aspiration of making a film of cosmic proportions (literally) that supposedly poses all the important questions about life & existence, and you'll have a chaotic, gigantic mess.

But it is much worse. The structure of the movie is a disaster. Every serious critic rating the film as a masterpiece should, at least, admit something's is not quite right in what regards to a film that starts as a mixture of experimental images and a drama, then turns into a long documentary on the creation of the universe, the planet and life, then moves into a drama about a kid's coming-of-age, and then ends into a surreal, experimental way. All with the addition of an ever-present off-voice, and annoyingly epic music, so you don't forget that's an essential moment of the film. Unnamed characters and yes, Sean Penn's brutally edited role, only adds more confusion to an already nonsensical film.

Enough? If not, we can talk about "THE message" of the film. From the very beginning, Malick puts the Bible as the only reference. Loss, grief, fear, desolation, love, are universal feelings that don't need a religious attempt for explanation. So why Malick only has one (extremely conservative) answer to this questions? In my opinion, because he fervently believes it, or because he needed to exorcise his demons of the past. And both aren't reasons strong enough to film this completely unidimensional, pretentious and self-indulgent movie  and getting away with it. No way. "The Tree of Life" only makes sense in Malick's head, not in the screen. Sorry, but the more I think about, the worse it becomes.

SCORE: 1,5/10

"Black Bread", the monsters of Spanish Civil War

Black Bread (Pa Negre, Catalan original title)

I had two enormous prejudices about "Black Bread".

The first prejudice was the suspicion the film was going to be another one on Spanish Civil War, a recurrent (usually bad and maniqueist, just remember who won the war) topic of Spanish filmography. But it would be a very unfair judgement to consider "Black Bread" as that. No, the film is a pretty disturbing analysis on the worst of mankind, setted in the harsh post-Civil war years' Catalan countryside. Its not about the war, but about the monsters war creates.

In that sense, the exploration of Spanish darkest hour, the film excels. The small rural town portrayed in "Black Bread", an oppresive microcosmos, is poignant, disturbing, sinister and merciless. From the brutal start (hard to remember an opening scene so shocking in Spanish cinema) to the knockout final scene, we see human beings completely carried away by the side they took during the war, with no sense of compassion or understanding. They live miserably, and behave miserably. The visuals and atmosphere director's Agustí Villaronga is capable of create are an outstanding achievement, with several powerful scenes, full of symbolism, in which he depicts brilliantly poverty, the open wounds of Spanish Civil War and the worst part of mankind. It puzzles you. It Hits you.

But then comes my second prejudice, the fear of being in front of another movie with "a kid". Unfortunately, that is the case. Because in my opinion, if "Black Bread" doesn't fulfill its promises is due to the starring character, Andreu, played with fierce conviction by Franscesc Colomer. First and foremost, because it was really hard for me to believe that such a small kid could assume and deal with everything that happens in the film, in particular with regards with his family. His knowledge, determination and quest towards the terrible revelations and lies the world of adults offers him is simply too much for a kid to understand. Won't say anything about the final scene.

And connected with the previous point, as the film is structured around Andreu's search, "Black Bread" becomes a somber, unusual, but at the same time somewhat typical (in terms of sctructure) adventure film where mistery has to be resolved. So there goes the tension scene where Andreu finds something upstairs, next scene he meets that important someone walking through the woods. The script, based on Emili Teixidor's book, at least the superficial script, is ages behind the power of visuals, the imagery, of the movie.

I understand the nine Goyas and recognize the values of subverting the usual Spanish Civil War film, and I applaud the magnificent artistical and visual work done by Villaronga and his crew. The power of "Black Bread" is unparelled in that regard. But it is an unsatisfaying work, mainly because the script wants to be many things at the same time.

SCORE: 6,25/10