I actually never listened to the Intermission about Tim Burton, so I'm not sure what the general opinion of him is around these parts. I’m no great fan, personally. There are films of his that I greatly enjoy (Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd, and Edward Scissorhands spring to mind), but when I look at his work overall I see this insistence on repeating himself over and over. There’s no better example of this than his comedic overuse of Johnny Depp. Look, Depp is a versatile actor, sure, but is it really that hard to at least try different actors in your lead roles? Now, I say that having listed three Depp vehicles as favorite Tim Burton movies, so I’m not saying that the partnership hasn’t worked in most instances. But seriously Tim, maybe you two need to take a break.

Frankenweenie, Burton’s latest film, does not star Johnny Depp, and lo and behold, in my opinion it’s his best feature in nearly two decades. I think that Burton is so ubiquitous because he always has a very specific vision, and that vision often looks strange when translated on screen. So we get these very bizarre movies, with directorial choices that probably made a lot of sense in Burton’s head. However, that only speaks to live-action. In animation, anything is possible, and his visions can be perfectly translated to the screen. In Frankenweenie, every character looks like a Tim Burton sketch. Unlike, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this movie feels very direct and personal. Maybe it’s also the stop-motion, which lends the whole thing this home-made feel.

Victor, the main character, could very well be a young Burton (apparently the dog is based on a pet Burton had as a child), somewhat in appearance, but mainly in personality. The first thing we see in the film is a crude stop-motion monster movie that Victor has made with the help of Sparky, his dog. Right away, we get a sense of who this kid is. That can be said for many of the characters in Frankenweenie, with one or two notable exceptions. Most of the characters are drawn with a broad brush, and the kids are essentially caricatures, but none of them were outwardly annoying, so I’ll let it slide.

Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. The “Igor” character in this film is a hunchbacked kid named Edgar (Edgar “E” Gore. Ha.), and I cringed every time he was on screen. I don’t know if they got a child actor to attempt some unplaceable accent, or if the voice actor was asleep that day, but he was insufferable. The animation on him wasn’t particularly good either. His facial expression never changes from a wide smirk, which you can see him do in the trailer, even when the character is supposed to be anxious, or frightened, or angry. It really bugged me, but at least he’s not in the film that much, so there’s that.

Other than that, of course, the animation was pretty phenomenal. In fact, it was almost too good. I loved Coraline from a few years ago, and while the animation in that film was never jerky, you could always see the craftsmanship that went in to each and every detail of the production. I loved noticing little things like that when watching the movie. Normally, you shouldn’t want to be drawn out of the movie by anything, but I think that it adds to the experience. I never saw anything like that in Frankenweenie, which left me kinda bummed. I love stop-motion, but this felt very CG to me, especially considering some of the very dynamic things that the camera does. I would like nothing more than to learn about all the cool tricks they did behind-the-scenes to make this movie happen, but for now, that’s my assessment.

I think there’s something naturally appealing about the classic “boy and his dog” dynamic. I can’t pin down exactly what that magic spark is, but it almost always makes a story irresistible. Frankenweenie gets it right, by strongly establishing the relationship that Victor and Sparky have. They love each other, so we love them, and we want them to see it through together. Not all of Burton’s movies are terribly well-written, but I think he can handle competent storytelling when he wants to. Frankenweenie isn’t particularly complex or anything, but it knows what it’s about and it sticks to that outline. Luckily for Burton, the outline happened to be his original short film from 1984, which this remake changes little from. Maybe that has something to do with the success of the new version, but I can’t say for sure.

Expanding the story from that thirty-minute short to a feature-length motion picture was undoubtedly a challenge, and the final product is admittedly a tad aimless in its second act. The film introduces and then quickly drops a theme involving the public’s attitude towards science and, though this is subtextual, their attitude towards the teaching of evolution in schools. The word “evolution” is never used, but the town hall meeting where parents complain that their kids are “asking questions” about things they can’t explain sends a pretty clear message. I was happy about the inclusion of that message, and the unusually (for a Hollywood production) smart attitude that the film takes towards scientific study, but it doesn’t have any effect on the ending, so its inclusion is mainly filler material to pad out the second act.

It’s in the third act, thought, that Frankenweenie really comes to life. At heart, the film is an homage to classic B-movies with classic monsters, and in the climax Burton lets loose, and the film really shows its true nature. The references fly fast, with every monster movie from Godzilla to Gremlins getting a nod. That’s right, for twenty-five minutes, Tim Burton turned into Quentin Tarantino, and oh, how beautiful that union turned out to be. The final act was what ultimately sold me on Frankenweenie. Is it perfect? No. There are a few major plot holes and several dropped plot threads, but the movie won me over in spite of all that. I had a blast with Frankenweenie. How could I not recommend you go see it?

Kinda surprised I'm in the minority on this one here on the DiF boards. And this is coming after my disdain for Dredd, which I didn't post my review for for fear of being eaten alive by bullet3.    Anyway, I loved Looper. I loved the clever visuals, the tight storytelling, the smart dialogue, the great characters, the thematic richness, practically everything. Most of all, though, I loved what Looper represents. Here is a movie which showcases nothing if not its creators dedication to his craft and attention to detail. It represents effort, a quality which seems sorely lacking in so much filmmaking these days. I mean, every movie requires effort to get itself made, but it’s that willingness to go the extra mile, to put a little bit of brainpower into creating a film, that makes Looper the instant classic it is.

I hear Looper‘s detractors arguing that the first and last halves of the film don’t really gel, and I totally disagree. Without spoilers, the story goes in a very unexpected direction about halfway through, one which the trailers don’t give away and which may be jarring to a viewer expecting a story which hinges on time-travel. However, I think that the two halves of Looper are two great tastes that taste great together. I understand that this may not “feel” right to a lot of viewers, but I never had a problem with it. And the climax tied it all together so perfectly that I couldn’t fault it. I see where these arguments are coming from, but I don’t think the argument really makes sense.

After all, thematically, Looper is kind of a masterpiece. The way that it uses time-travel as a metaphor for the vicious cycles of violence that we cause is some sort of brilliant, and it makes the ending surprising, but inevitable, a trademark of great storytelling. Is it the twisty-turny mess-with-your-mind movie that everyone kind of expected it to be? No, but that’s clearly not what Rian Johnson was attempting. He wanted to tell a story about violence breeding violence, and time-travel was a good framework to tell that story. Perhaps the addition of telekinesis as a plot device is stretching audience trust a little bit, I’ll concede that point, but I can’t think of a way to tell this story without its inclusion. I’ve walked out of a lot of movies wanting to walk right back in and see it again. With Looper, it was different. I walked out and wanted to buy the screenplay so that I could read it over and over.

And it’s not just the story. Looper also puts a surprising emphasis on its characters. During a lengthy scene, Johnson’s camera lingers on Emily Blunt’s character Sara as she reflects on her past life as a druggie and a lowlife. Blunt plays the emotions of the scene well, even though it doesn’t seem that important to the impending showdown between Young and Old Joe. Johnson’s insistence on her monologue accentuates her embarrassment at the way she led her life (which mirrors Joe’s revelry in his drug use and partying) and her commitment to her son, which both become crucial to the arcs of nearly all of the main characters during the final scenes. In Looper, everything comes back around eventually.

Emily Blunt does a great job, then, but what about our two leads? Joseph Gordon-Levitt does well for himself, playing a character which may be the evil twin of his character in The Dark Knight Rises. Joe is corrupt, violent, and impassive. He pulls off the bluntness of his character with panache, but even more impressive is his spot-on imitation of Bruce Willis. It’s not just the stellar makeup job, which in many scenes is completely spot-on. Gordon-Levitt has nailed Willis’ mannerisms and tics, both physical and vocal. I can’t wait to see a video of Gordon-Levitt’s performance side-by-side with older Willis performances, because those little details in his face make all the difference. Willis himself is pretty good too. I never doubt that he’s putting everything he’s got into a role. It just depends on how much you give him, and he’s got some pretty heavy moments to play in Looper, which he handles with the skill of a man who’s done this many, many times before. Looper isn’t his movie, per se, but it’s the best Bruce Willis movie in at least ten years. Sometimes I wonder if he can tell the difference between something like this and something like Surrogates, seeing as how he took both roles and phoned in neither.

Is Looper all that visually distinctive? On the surface, not that much. It doesn’t look too different from much sci-fi action today, apart from it taking place mostly during the day. Again, it’s the little details that make it. There’s a visual motif involving clouds, reflecting Old Joe’s line that time-travel makes his thoughts and memories “cloudy”. The soundtrack adds an audible motif involving a ticking clock, which has the effect of adding tension to certain scenes, and tying the climax to the opening moments in the minds of the audience. But my favorite moment of all? In the vital scene in which Young and Old Joe meet for the first time, Johnson draws attention to a single, distinctive cloud in the sky above them. It doesn’t affect the story in any way, and none of the characters ever mention it. But it’s so distinctive that my friend mentioned it to me after the movie. “What was that cloud all about?” he wondered. And that’s when it dawned on me.

It was a loop-de-loop. I laughed. Well done, Rian.