The Good Dinosaur

(PG) ★★★½

Director: Peter Sohn.

Cast: (voices of) Raymond Ochoa, Jack Bright, Sam Elliott, Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn.

Acid was way better back in the day.

IF any of the other animation houses released The Good Dinosaur, you’d consider it a hit.

But by the lofty storytelling standards of Pixar, it is merely good. Really good, but still just good.

Being released the same year as possibly Pixar’s greatest film – Inside Out – means it’s impossible not to look at the two movies side by side, which puts The Good Dinosaur at a disadvantage. Next to the remarkable script of Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur feels so simple, conventional and even clichéd.

Thankfully, like all Pixar films (bar Cars 2), The Good Dinosaur has so much heart and integrity and so deftly handles its jokes and emotions that you can overlook the plainness of the story.

The set-up is intriguing – in a bizarro world where the asteroid that wipes out the dinosaurs misses Earth, we end up with a dino-society of sorts.

The herbivores are crop farmers, the carnivores run cattle, and the humans are not that different from the other non-sapient mammals running around.

Our hero is Arlo (Ochoa), a scared little apatosaurus desperate to “make his mark” but haunted by a family tragedy.

A run-in with a human child, who Arlo names Spot (Bright), whisks the pair a long way from Arlo’s home, and the two must work together to make it back.

The Good Dinosaur’s plot is of the Homeward Bound variety, with a boy-and-his-dog dynamic thrown in – the twist being the boy is actually a dinosaur and the dog is actually a boy.

Once Arlo and Spot team up, the film finds its feet as it gets a much-needed sense of humour and stops labouring its message about overcoming fear in order to make your mark in the world.

It’s still a very normal story dressed up in some rather eccentric clothes, and at times the movie almost feels too weird for its own good. We get cowboy tyrannosaurs, storm-chasing pterosaurs, and raptor rustlers, but weirdest of all is the look of the dinosaurs, which takes a while to get used too. The photo-realistic world they live in is visually stunning, but it makes the cartoonish, plasticine-like characters seem out of place.

Despite its formulaic story, it still manages to the push the right buttons. There will be a few happy tears at the end, and there are a couple of decent laughs.

In the wake of Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur could be seen as a deliberate attempt at a simpler film that’s more kiddie-friendly and less cerebral and inventive.

As such, The Good Dinosaur is good enough, even if it’s not as Pixar perfect as we’ve come to expect.

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Inside Out

(PG) ★★★★★

Director: Pete Docter.

Cast: (voices of) Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Richard Kind.

"They elected who as president?"

INSIDE Out is proof positive that when the Pixar brains trust puts its collective mind to an idea, they can do anything.

The thought of doing a film largely set within the head of an 11-year-old girl and where the principle characters are her emotions would send every other animation studio reaching for the metaphorical paracetamol before immediately turning its attention to another Madagascar/Ice Age/Shrek/Despicable Me sequel/spin off.

Not Pixar. Having already pushed the boundaries by using a grumpy elderly widower as a hero, making a largely wordless enviro-centric sci-fi flick, and celebrating the joys of food with a cast of rats, the concept at the heart of Inside Out is a bold yet natural progression for this game-changing institution.

But the fact that they pull off this hair-brained idea so brilliantly and beautifully is enough to make you want to stand up and applaud.

The 11-year-old girl in question is Riley (voiced by Dias) and the emotions in charge of the control room that is her mind are Joy (Poehler), Fear (Hader), Disgust (Kaling), Anger (Black), and Sadness (Smith). All are tested when Riley and her folks (Lane and MacLachlan) sell up their Minnesota home and relocate to San Francisco, triggering something of an emotional breakdown for the girl and her anthropomorphic feelings.

Director Docter (Up, Monsters Inc), the screenwriters, and Pixar's brain trust reportedly spent three and a half years getting the story of Inside Out exactly right, and it shows.

The script sets up Riley's internal world with an ease that belies the amount of thought, research and sweat that must have gone into it - in the charmingly simple opening, we're introduced to the emotions, their roles, and the creative way the film demonstrates such intangible concepts as making and storing memories and the things that are important to Riley in her own mind.

At its simplest it's a journey story - two of the characters are trying to get from one place to another - but that journey takes us through some fascinating locations we've never seen in a family film before. Abstract thought, the subconscious, the imagination, "the dream factory", long-term memory - these are all shown in inventive ways, as are the critters that populate these areas.

But this is so much more than just a journey. There is a level of depth, heart, reality, beauty, honesty and, of course, emotion in this film that is astounding for any type of movie, let alone something that's largely marketed to kids.

At the lowest age bracket, which is lower primary school-age children, there is enough light and movement to keep them interested, plus they're bound to have a basic enough grasp of different emotions to keep track of things.

At the "tween" level (and for early teens), the subject matter is bound to resonate, as they've just gone through these kind of pre-pubescent mental shifts or are just about to go through them. It's dealt with so simply and truthfully that it has to hit the mark.

Realistically though, this is a movie for the parents. This film is a grown-up wolf in kid's clothing, or mutton dressed as lamb, to labour the sheep analogies.

It's bright colours and cartoonish characters may make it look like its targeted at the young'uns, however the beautifully nuanced ideas such as the loss of innocence and the importance of sadness reveal this as the mature think-piece it really is. It's a movie about kids trying to understand who they are, and as a result, it's about and for parents trying to understand their kids.

Inside Out is also laugh-at-loud funny, cry-out-loud moving, and genuinely thrilling, exciting and fascinating.

Picking the greatest Pixar movie was already difficult, but the arrival of their latest effort just made it all the harder.

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Interstellar

(M) ★★★½

Director: Christopher Nolan.

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow.

McConaughey took a wrong turn in the produce aisle.

FILM-MAKERS have long tried to predict the future.

One of the most intriguing of these sci-fi predictions is 2001: A Space Odyssey - a film that's now confusingly set in the past - and it is the obvious reference point for Christopher Nolan's own attempt at prophetic cinema.

Just as 2001 wanted to explore the possibilities of space and beyond, Interstellar aims to go to the final frontier and further, all the while exploring the nature of humanity and the unknowns of the universe.

Even the structures of the two films are similar, which makes it even harder to avoid these comparisons - it's impossible not to think of Interstellar as Nolan's Space Odyssey.

As such, this film is incredibly ambitious, even for the director who took us into a dream inside a dream inside a dream with relative ease. However, this might be a starbridge too far.

As fascinating and scientifically intriguing as it is, Interstellar asks a lot of the viewer in terms of endurance (it's almost three hours long) and whether you will buy into the plot twists that come with its cosmic destination. And after just one viewing it's not immediately obvious how successful it is.

The film spends the first hour on Earth sometime in the possibly not-too-distant future, where climate change has wiped out billions of people and ruined most of the world's crops, leaving the planet a dusty husk of its former self.

Among the farmers struggling to keep the world's mouths fed is Cooper (McConaughey), a former test pilot who turns to corn farming after the government shuts down non-essential programs, and while he still secretly yearns for the adventures of his youth, Cooper is mostly content to raise his two kids.

That is until some weird happenings in the family home inadvertently lead him into space as part of a mission to find a new home on a new planet in order to save what remains of humanity.

Obviously there are some major plot points removed from this synopsis, but you're better off not knowing them and just enjoying the surprises. Nolan's typical secrecy meant the trailers gave away little about this film in the lead up other than "McConaughey goes to space to save dusty world" and that's one thing of the key things Interstellar has going for it - it's a journey into the unknown for the characters and audience alike.

But is it an enjoyable one? That's the question you might find yourself asking as you walk out of the cinema after three bum-numbing hours.

Interstellar is definitely fascinating. It's filled with amazing ideas, stunning visuals, great performances, and what is apparently a level of scientific theory that's interesting if you're so inclined.

But after all this brain fodder and some genuinely awe-inspiring moments we finally reach the third act - and it's a long time coming - the story takes a turn that will either leave you tearing up your ticket or glued to your seat.

My initial reaction was the former but the more the film went on and the more I think about the film in the hours since watching it, the more I am willing to forgive it. Maybe. To be honest I'm still undecided.

And that's the general feeling I'm left with after seeing Interstellar - a sensation of indecision.

Large parts of the film are stunning, such as the depictions of blackholes, wormholes and space travel, but other bits are not so great, such as some of the dialogue, the lack of characterisation, and that plot twist. There are questions unanswered - some deliberately so but some seemingly ignored - and while this does make me want to watch it again to dig a little deeper into the film, its length is kind of off-putting. At the same time, the fact that I'm still thinking about it so much is probably a positive.

Interstellar is ambitious, perhaps overly so, and it's engaging and intriguing, perhaps at the expense of being truly entertaining. For now, the best I can say is that, yeah, it's pretty cool and particularly impressive on the big screen but not quite the five-star classic that Inception or 2001: A Space Odyssey is.

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Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

(M) ★★★★

Director: Matt Reeves.

Cast:  Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Judy Greer.

"Grapes? That's not what I thought you sent me to the shops for."

ONE of the biggest cinematic surprises in recent years was Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes - another unwanted reboot/reimagining/prequel that turned out to be one of the best films of 2011.

So here's the sequel to that movie no one wanted and - surprise, surprise - it's also really good.

While not as tautly scripted as its predecessor, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (known as DOTPOTA from here on in) is another great balance of emotional punch, great characters (all apes), and action thrills.

Eight years after chief chimp Caesar (Serkis) led his fellow chemically enhanced apes to freedom across the Golden Gate Bridge, the world is a very different place. A virus has wiped out much of humanity, with the survivors eking out an existence in small communities, such as one in San Francisco.

At the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge, Caesar's colony is thriving, unaware any humans remain alive.

However a run-in between Caesar's forces and a small group of human survivors led by Malcolm (Clarke) sets in motion a chain of events that will lead the two species to either mutually beneficial peace or bloody war.

DOTPOTA pulls a few of the same tricks as its predecessor (which we will call ROTPOTA), but it's a very different film. Its misty forest and dark broken city settings give a suitably ape-ocalyptic (sorry) vibe to proceedings that's a stark contrast to the warm homely tones and bright clinical labs of the first film.

This is also very much the apes' film. Whereas Caesar (a combination of Serkis' motion-captured performance and some CG wizardry) and his simian sidekicks stole the show last time, this time they own the show.

The interplay and relationships between Caesar, the tortured human-hating bonobo Koba (Kebbell), the wise Bornean orangutan Maurice (Konoval), and Caesar's son Blue Eyes (Thurston) are far more fascinating than those of the humans. While Clarke gets a lot to do as a sort-of go-between for the humans and the apes, Oldman does little but give vaguely rousing speeches and mourn for the past and Russell is a plot device disguised as a doctor.

This doesn't matter though because the apes are the reason to watch. They are wonderfully realised characters built from nuanced performances (particularly from Serkis and Kebbell) and some near flawless special effects.

The moral questions raised, the themes of trust and power, and the emotional moments are no less effective for being provided by a cast of CG primates.

As with ROTPOTA, DOTPOTA (yep, it's ridiculous but stick with me here) takes us to a destination we're expecting - a planet of, well, apes - but does so in an unexpected manner. It's this that helped make the first one so enjoyable and intriguing and the feat is impressive once again here.

While the humans are the weakest link, the apes more than make up for it, creating a sequel that's well worth watching.

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Man Of Steel

(M) ★★

Director: Zack Snyder.

Cast: Henry Cavill, Michael Shannon, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne.

"What a beautiful day. Be a shame if someone were to destroy it in a blizzard of CGI."

FOR DC Comics, there is a lot on the line with this reboot of the Superman saga.

If Man Of Steel flies like a bird or a plane, it will open the door for DC's own shared universe, which they hope will rival Marvel's ongoing Avengers' adventures.

Bad luck, DC. Man Of Steel sinks like a massive chunk of kryptonite.

It's ambitious, yes, grandiose, yes, and sure to be a hit at the box office, but in almost all other aspects, it is a $225 million turkey.

This rebirth of Superman, which literally begins with the birth of Superman, retells the story many of us know and love - the alien child, sent to Earth just before the destruction of his homeworld Krypton, raised by the kindly Kents of Kansas, and growing into a near-invulnerable superhero.

The twist in this version, as compared to Richard Donner's 1978 groundbreaker, is an attempt to imbue with the story of Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent with deeper themes and a more realistic look at the implications his arrival would have. It also ramps up the Christ allegory and picks at the relationship Superman has with humanity.

It's all part of the "Nolanisation" of Krypton's favourite son. Having turned DC's other heavy-hitter - Batman - into a real world concern with a dark edge, Christopher Nolan was attached to this project in the hopes he would help do the same with Superman.

It doesn't work. Man Of Steel comes off as utterly humourless, pompous, melodramatic, dumbed-down, repetitive, and even sporadically boring.

The film makes similar mistakes to that other DC bomb Green Lantern - it tells us everything we need to know in the first act, only to tell us everything again when the main character needs to find out. More editing is badly needed.

And while they were undertaking some more judicious editing of the first half, the filmmakers could have done away with the frustrating non-linear storytelling. Not only is it annoying to have the story jump back and forth between Clark's childhood, his teenage years and his nomadic adulthood, but it continually breaks the emotional flow of the film. Much of that heart comes from a nice turn by Costner as Clark's dad Jonathan, but the fractured storyline gets in the way of the audience connection with him.

Worse than this is the dialogue, which almost entirely falls into one of three categories - "Now I must explain my actions", "This is what just happened" or "This is what's about to happen". There is no subtlety, nobody talks like a real person, and the characters don't develop naturally, if at all.

This dumbing-down goes for the grandiose themes of the film as well, which are boiled down to infuriating obviousness, giving the audience no credit what-so-ever.

And I never thought I'd get sick of explosions and destruction in a movie, but I finally found my limit. It came with about 20 minutes left to go in the film - I actually sighed with relief when the final confrontation was over. And I've seen Roland Emmerich's 2012.

It's all a shame because the cast is great. Cavill makes for a great Superman/Kal-El/Clark, capturing that mix of nobility and humility that Christopher Reeve nailed. Shannon is menacing as Zod, Crowe brings gravitas as Jor-El, and Costner and Lane work well. Only Adams, as Lois Lane, feels out of place, but poor writing hampers her more than anyone.

Are there highlights aside from the cast? Some of the fight sequences are quite good before they become numbing, and the flashbacks, despite being jarringly scattered throughout the film, are nicely done. Snyder makes the film look good, particularly in the flashbacks.

These are slight redemptions. And maybe with really low expectations this will have a brainless charm to it. Maybe this is exactly the Superman movie some of the comic book fans have been waiting for.

But for all its ambition, this Man Of Steel fails to soar, instead crashlanding in a humourless, melodramatic mess of explosions.

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Monsters University

(G) ★★★

Director: Dan Scanlon.

Cast: (voices of) Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren.

Mike was just minutes away from being used as a hackysack.

AMID the heavy hitters of Pixar's back catalogue, Monsters, Inc. is the under-rated gem.

Often unfairly overlooked compared to the Toy Story trilogy, Up, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, the tale of scare-mongering duo Sully and Mike Wazowski was a wildly original, creative, hilarious and surprisingly touching comedy caper.

This is why it pains me so much to say this prequel is a major disappointment. Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible film - it's still mildly enjoyable - but it feels so stock standard and flat compared to its dazzling predecessor.

As the title suggest, Monsters University covers Mike and Sully's college years, where Mike is the dedicated student following his dream of becoming a scarer and Sully is the naturally talented slacker expecting to coast through his degree.

A rivalry develops between the two, leading to college head Dean Hardscrabble (Mirren) kicking them out of their scaring course.

The only way to get back into the course is through a foolhardy bet between Mike and Hardscrabble - if Mike, Sully and their geeky fraternity can win the inter-fratenity competition known as the Scary Games, they can return to the scaring course. If they lose, they're out of Monsters University for good.

If all this sounds familiar, it's because the plot plays like a lazy mash-up of "college romp" movies such as Animal House and Revenge Of The Nerds.

The typical college life provides plenty of opportunity for the monsterised sight gags of Monsters, Inc., but again, it feels all too easy. Even the Scary Games feels like a tired trope despite being transplanted into Mike and Sully's world.

The silly sight gags are what is likely to keep the kids entertained because the plot appears aimed at an older audience, ie. one that grew up watching Monsters, Inc. and is now at college. This might make it a cult hit at universities, which is strange for a G-rated movie and makes you wonder if Pixar have completely missed their target on this one.

On the upside, the charms of Mike and Sully, voiced by Crystal and Goodman, that make this mildly enjoyable. Pixar have always been smart enough to realise that making the players more than just pixels is the secret to success, and here we get some heart and soul between Mike and Sully and the rest of their fraternity of misfits.

They all get some good lines, especially Crystal, and there are a few really solid gags and an endless array of adult-aimed nudges.

Best of all is the final act, when the film finally stops being a college collage and heads into intriguing territory. That's where Monsters University finally becomes surprising and interesting.

But it's almost too little, too late. The film predominantly coasts along a slacker student, doing only just enough to get by.

Of course, kids aren't going to mind. This will probably serve as their introduction to the college movie, and in years to come they may realise what Monsters University was riffing on, but in the meantime, it's likely most of it will fly over their heads.

Pixar have played with pre-established genres before, whether it be subverting the superhero ideal (the brilliant The Incredibles) or going weird on the spy movie (the misfire Cars 2).

But this dabble with the college romp feels stale and lazy, and only gets across the line thanks to nostalgic goodwill and some decent gags.

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Cloud Atlas

(MA15+) ★★

Director: Tom Tykwer & The Wachowskis.

Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, James D'Arcy.

Rainbow Serpent Festival was really going off this year.

DAVID Mitchell's tour de force novel Cloud Atlas is a sprawling, epoch-spanning marvel that's as entertaining as it is ambitious.

It's also one of those books that was always going to be difficult to turn into a film.

As a movie, Cloud Atlas is as bold as the novel. However, it is predominantly a noble defeat - compressing Mitchell's six segments and endless interwining themes into a streamlined narrative proves beyond the grasp of The Wachowskis (The Matrix trilogy, Speed Racer), Tom Tykwer (Perfume, Run Lola Run) and a willing cast.

The six stories span almost five centuries and in Mitchell's book they run sequentially forward, then back again to the beginning, but in the film they are edited together into a mass of parallel stories that jump back and forth between each other.

In 1849, lawyer Adam Ewing (Sturgess) is battling illness on a trans-Pacific voyage. In England, 87 years later, musician Robert Frobisher (Whishaw) is reading Ewing's journal while helping composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Broadbent) write his symphonies. In San Francisco in 1973, journalist Luisa Rey (Berry) discovers Frobisher's letters to his lover while she investigates corruption at a nuclear power plant.

Luisa's story ends up as a manuscript in the hands of publisher Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent) in present day England, where Cavendish is fleeing unhappy clients only to end up trapped in an old folks' home. His story is eventually made into a movie that transfixes Sonmi-451 (Bae), a clone in Neo Seoul in 2144, who is whisked from her regimented life by a freedom fighter (Sturgess) with the intention of using her as a figurehead and catalyst for social upheaval in the corporatocracy they live in. And finally there is Zachry (Hanks), whose people worship Sonmi in a post-apocalyptic 2321.

As you can likely guess, jumping back and forth between these tales is disconcerting, distracting and disruptive. Despite the best efforts of the directors and their editor, Cloud Atlas struggles to maintain momentum or allow an ongoing connection with the characters.

It does allow the film to play up the links that run through the segments though, which are tied together by ideas about past lives, reincarnation, and an undying spirit of survival and determination that runs through humanity, as well as themes of prejudice, love, regret, redemption, freedom, and oppression.

It's these ideals and concepts that give Cloud Atlas a depth that may come to be appreciated over multiple viewings (if you can handle the 172-minute running time). Moments fly by, narratives are set aside almost randomly, and the individual vernacular and style of each story thread can take some time to adjust to, particularly Zachry's post-apocalyptic tale, which is told in a pidgin English that is a struggle to follow at times. But going back to soak it in again and again could make this film a rich experience that rewards over time - it's likely this is destined for cult status.

Watching it first time through, however, will leave many cold. It's scattershot approach is distancing, despite the best efforts of the cast, who appear in multiple roles though some ingenious make-up work, further highlighting the links between the different time periods, albeit in an occasionally distracting and slightly confusing way.

There's a lot to like about Cloud Atlas and the effort to adapt Mitchell's novel should be applauded. Unfortunately it doesn't quite fit together - it's big ideas and ambitious plotting fly by at the expense of having an engaging story that builds emotion and connects to an audience.

Ultimately, it's a scattershot film that courageously tries to incorporate as much of the novel as possible, only to find it doesn't translate well from the page.

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