The Lego Movie

Back in the 90s, I was a lucky kid who grew up with a big bucket of Legos.  For Christmas or birthdays I would sometimes get a little construction set and meticulously labor over the instructions until I had constructed exactly what was on the picture.  I took some pride in that.  But nothing was better than taking the bucket, dumping it all over the floor and just building whatever came to my mind.  It was a mess, complete chaos for anyone who dared step near my construction zone and a few small bricks were sacrificed to the vacuum cleaner.  But it was so fun and awesome.  That’s what The Lego Movie celebrates, creativity, fun and awesomeness.

In a Lego city, Emmett is an ordinary construction worker.  He lives every day by his instructions and thinks everything is awesome.  When he stumbles upon The Piece of Resistance, he discovers that he is the chosen one that a prophecy spoke of, and that his world is not as it seems.  Ordinary Emmett and a fun crew of Master Builders have to stop Lord Business from using the Kragle to freeze their entire world before Taco Tuesday.

What I love most about The Lego Movie is not the use of Legos to create an animated film, but the fun and silly tone and spirit the film creates.  The jokes come fast, often, and will make kids and adults laugh together.  The characters talk and interact like how a kid playing with toys would have them do so.  Chris Pratt’s Emmett is the fun unlikely hero that any kid would wish to be.  Morgan Freeman’s Vitruvius is just as snarky as he is mysterious.  Will Arnett’s Batman turns the character on its head who writes his own music (“real” music)  about being Batman.  Alison Brie’s Princess Uni-Kitty is a cute and creative sort of Incredible Hulk character.  And Will Ferrell’s President (and Lord) Business is the perfect bad guy created out of a kid’s view on authority.

One of my favorite scenes is a total spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the movie, just skip this paragraph.  Believe me, it’s better this way.  Newbies gone?  Okay.  Anyway, that moment where the son tells his Will Ferrell dad what exactly Emmett would say to Lord Business just gives me all the feels.  There, it is most clear how the son’s play world interacts with his home life.  Isn’t it wonderful how kids always slip some of their real life into whatever imaginative world they’re creating? Even better is how the father finally realizes how his hobby affects his son and he is willing to change for him…and his younger daughter.  The Duplo blocks beaming in like aliens cracked me up every time!

The fact that The Lego Movie was shut out of the Oscar race for best animated picture shocked and angered me.  Sure, I bet the Academy could argue that everything being made of Legos could hinder the range of animation, but I don’t think so.  Legos are extremely versatile and add to the visual feel of the film.  Perhaps they found it juvenile.  *Insert fart noise here*  Duh, it’s kids’ stuff!  But the way The Lego Movie portrays childhood and a kid’s imagination in action is so great, and not just a rip off of what Toy Story has already done.  At least it landed a nomination for its song, Everything is Awesome.  As silly as that song is, I really do love it, and find myself singing it often.

There is an old bucket of Legos up in my attic, waiting for my son and I plan to get him some toddler safe blocks for his birthday.  I can’t wait for him to be old enough to build, create, play and let his imagination run wild with them for hours.  I’ll gladly join him, help him fish out any certain brick he might need and endure the pain of stepping on a rogue brick now and then.  Of course, I will be adding The Lego Movie to our personal blu-ray collection for him.

“The only thing anyone needs to be special is to believe that you can be.  I know that sounds like a cat poster but it’s true.”

Driving Miss Daisy

Growing up, my dad would often deal with backseat driving by playfully swerving the car and saying, “Look, I’m driving Miss Daisy, woohoo!”  Somehow, this manifested the idea in my small mind that the Academy Award winning film Driving Miss Daisy was a slapstick comedy comparable to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.  Parents have no idea the weird ideas they put in our heads, but I’m so glad this film did not live up to my childhood expectations.

Driving Miss Daisy is actually a film about an elderly woman in Georgia, who after accidentally backing her car into the brush and then down into the neighbor’s patio (a good six foot drop) is given a personal driver.  Daisy (Jessica Tandy) is an extremely high strung woman who will not show her embarrassment over the situation and much less, will not settle for someone to drive her around like she is too rich for her own good.  After her son, Boolie (Dan Aykroyd), hires Hoke (Morgan Freeman) to drive his mother around, Daisy avoids Hoke and treats him like an unwanted person in her house.  To feel like he is earning the money Boolie pays him, whether he drives Daisy or not, Hoke finds other chores to do around the house, but Daisy always finds some excuse to make Hoke stop.

When Daisy finally has to go to the store, she insists on walking, but Hoke drives alongside her, just in case she wants a ride.  What gets her in the car is not the kindness Hoke is showing or tired feet, but a fear of keeping a certain reputation that seems in danger by certain people in a yard ahead.  As Daisy finally accepts Hoke, a bond slowly forms between the two.

Over the years, the relationship between Daisy and Hoke becomes a silently acknowledged friendship.  Daisy is always careful to keep her warm affections for Hoke at a distance.  She gives him a gift just before going to Boolie’s Christmas party, she stresses the fact that she is Jewish and therefore does not give Christmas gifts.

When the two set off for a road trip to Mobil for Daisy’s brother’s ninetieth birthday, it’s quite an eye opening adventure in their friendship.  It’s an era where Civil Rights are just starting to stir and a black man driving a white Jewish woman is bound to raise a few brows in Alabama.  The fact that Hoke cannot make his own pit stop at the rest areas is stressful when he has to pull over in the middle of the night and leave Daisy alone for a while.  It’s here, when she’s alone, in the dark of an area she doesn’t know that she looks so scared, anxious and frail.  It’s clear here that they mutually need each other for support.

The art direction of this film is perfectly wonderful in its simplicity.  The old cars and the details all over Daisy’s house give us a good sense of time, place and personality.  One of my favorite shots is a brief scene in a sun-room full of white wicker furniture.  Nowhere but in the mid-twentieth century south, in an elderly woman’s home would I imagine a room full of white wicker furniture to be so lovely and have have so much life.  And the makeup to transform these characters over the decades is absolutely remarkable and worth of the Oscar.

So why is Driving Miss Daisy the best picture of 1989?  Honestly, it just is.  It has a simple, sweet and elegantly told story that perfectly fits the time and place.  Tandy, Freeman and Aykroyd are an outstanding and heartwarming ensemble worthy of their Oscar win and nominations.  Stories of finding a new and unlikely friendship so late in life are so rare and beautiful that it makes Driving Miss Daisy a film to cherish.

“I taught some of the stupidest children God ever put on the face of this earth and all of them could read well enough to find a name on a tombstone.”

Unforgiven

In Unforgiven, the romantic ideas of the gun slinging cowboy are brought to a much darker light.  After a couple of cowboys cut up the face of a whore, their punishment is just to give the saloon owner a few horses.  The poor girl will be labeled hideous and useless for the rest of her life, so to seek justice, all the whores in the saloon pull their savings together and put a one thousand dollar bounty on the men who cut the girl’s face.  That sort of paid vigilante work attracts a young man who calls himself The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) who passes the news onto Will Munny(Clint Eastwood).

Munny was once one of the most dangerous men around.  He would drink whisky and shoot a man for no real reason.  But when he married, Munny gave up that rough life for her and she bore him two children before she died of smallpox.  Now, with two growing children to feed and the farm work not paying too well, Munny decides to recruit his old friend Ned (Morgan Freeman) and catch up to The Schofeild Kid to ride out on one last job.

The film is set in 1880, where the wild west is becoming more tame.  Guns aren’t even allowed in the town of Big Whiskey.  It’s only the old timers like Munny and Ned who remember the real wild west, helped shape it and have now settled down on their own farms and under the roofs of cabins.  It is the young men, The Schofield Kid and knife-happy cowboys, who seem to want to go back and live out their father’s tales of gun slinging, lawlessness and chaos.

Problem is, I feel like the older men just let this happen, maybe for old-time’s sake.  Munny decides it’s convenient, he needs the money, time for one last run.  Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) is building himself a nice little cabin to settle in and yet he kicks the shit out of English Bob (Richard Harris) in the middle of town.  Later Daggett pushes Munny too far and the wild west explodes with all it’s old violence and destruction one last time.

Perhaps they let this play out to show the young men that being a wild west outlaw isn’t all whiskey, women, gun smoke and riding off into the sunset.  There are some real dangers, repercussions to your actions and pain in your soul you’ll live with all your life.

In the end, Unforgiven is a gritty western that spits on classic romantic ideas of wild west cowboys.  Do we honor Munny and The Schofield Kid as heroes for serving justice or villains for gunning down these men?

“It’s a hell of a thing killin’ a man.  Take away all he’s got, and all he’s gonna have.”

Million Dollar Baby

Let’s be honest, no one wants to watch women fight unless there’s going to be bikinis and jello.  But let’s set that horribly sexist world aside for a moment and dream that a woman who was nothing but trash all her life can become something bigger than herself.  A fighter.  Champion of the world even.  Our Million Dollar Baby.

Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) owns a little no-frills gym where he trains young men to be boxers.  He’s been training most of his life.  He goes to church every day, often pestering the young priest afterward with odd and inappropriate questions about God.  His daughter won’t have any contact with him, all his letters just get returned back to him.  And he won’t let his current fighter into a championship match.  Frankie may not realize he’s in a rut or see what’s right in front of him to help him out.

Maggie Fritzgerald (Hilary Swank) has been practicing at Frankie’s gym for a while.  She’s a spunky woman with more ambition and heart than any man Frankie has trained.  After watching her practice on her own with no training, Frankie and his partner Eddie (Morgan Freeman) can’t take watching her make her little mistakes over and over.  Frankie is dead set on not training her, but after one little talk with the poor woman just trying to punch her way out of her white-trash roots, he starts training her.  To train boxers, you’ve got to be tough, but Maggie hits a soft spot on Frankie.

Training Maggie isn’t just a wash.  With Frankie’s help, she quickly rises to a great fighter and in no time Frankie puts her in real fights.  Her technique is to win quickly, often knocking out her opponent in the first round.  Frankie gives her the Celtic nickname of Mo Chuisle and it isn’t long before crowds are chanting it.

At the heart of Maggie is a fighter, in all walks of life.  It’s only after she bares her white-trash roots to Frankie agrees to train her.  She saves the tips from her job as a waitress to buy her own boxing equipment and as she becomes a successful fighter, she tries to help her family out by buying her mother a house.  The generous gesture is only met with dismay and worry about being kicked off welfare.

It takes some real guts for a woman to portray a boxer.  This is not a glamorous role for Hilary Swank, but she brings all the guts, heart and ambition that make a fighter great.  She has the balls enough to bring Maggie’s winning personality through a broken nose and rise to the occasion with blood flowing through her eye.  Few actresses can do that and this makes Swank completely badass.  And don’t knock her in the later, more tragic half of the film.  That one sentence telling off her lazy-ass mom has just as much gusto as a good right hook.

The meat of the film is that both Frankie and Maggie are lost, lonely and determined souls.  And the impact they have on each other’s lives is moving, heartbreaking and nothing less than astounding.  With this being a beautifully visual film with a huge heart, I can agree with the best picture award.

But just to let you know how close the pick for 2004 was for me, I was awake most of Thursday night with Sideways ready to post, wondering if I had made the right choice.  In the end, it was Million Dollar Baby’s visual style, working in and out of the lights and Swank’s amazing acting that finally let me sleep.  Besides, I believe there needs to be more great films with a woman in a non-traditional role.  And afterwards, I looked up how much it would cost to hang a punching bag in my office, but that’s a dream for a paid writer.

“It’s the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.”

The Shawshank Redemption

Adapted from the Stephen King novel, The Shawshank Redemption tells the story of life in prison for Andy Dufresne (Tim Robins) who was charged with double murder and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.  One for each victim.  Andy is innocent, but that doesn’t make a bit of difference in Shawshank.  “You’re gonna fit right in. Everyone in here is innocent, you know that?” the inmates joke.

Inside, Red (Morgan Freeman) has been in prison for twenty years already.  He’s the guy people go to when they want something smuggled in; cigarettes, posters, playing cards with naked ladies on them, you name it.  He also narrates the film, helping the viewer understand how Shawshank works and how people see Andy.  “I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn’t normal around here. He strolled, like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.”

Andy runs into troubles at Shawshank.  For a while he’s ritually beaten and tormented by a gang called The Sisters.  He’s also subject to random inspections where the guards flip his cell upside down.  But through it all, Andy stays strong and starts seizing opportunities.  When he learns about the prison library, run by old lovable Brooks (James Whitmore), he starts writing letters to Congressmen to get more books.  With Andy’s previous work with banks, he helps the gards with their taxes and even gets his friends to help, breaking the mundane rituals of prison life for a while.

The story grabs our attention right away and gets more interesting as it goes with more depth to Andy.  There’s more to lose, more to gain, a dream of going to Mexico and a mysterious treasure in a Maine hayfield.  But after being sentenced to “the hole” we’re afraid that our good guy Andy is nearing his breaking point.

In my opinion, the ending, after the main action has passed just seems too long.  We see familiar images, understand what’s going on, only a few things really need to happen and it just feel like it needs to end one wary or the other (Freeman narrating a little faster would be a start).  And quickly if you please, I need to piss too, and I hate to ask the film for permission.  Really, it could have been wrapped up in one of those cheesy montages without leaving anything out, but it just wouldn’t feel right.

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”