Inside Out Review
The Plot
Riley is an 11 year old girl dealing with her family relocating to San Francisco. Meanwhile the various emotions that populate the inside of Riley’s head including Joy, Sadness and Anger face their own challenges in preserving her personality and happy state of mind.
The Good
Pixar always deliver the flawless quality in digital animation you would expect from the company that pioneered the technology. However, what makes Pixar films truly special is their ability to consistently tell original stories with subtle emotional complexity that appeal to young and older audiences equally.
Inside Out represents a brave and ambitious effort to explore the inner emotional workings of the human mind in a colourful cartoon way. Though easily Pixar’s most conceptually challenging adventure, Inside Out remains at its core an easily identifiable story about coming of age and the precise moment when the uncomplicated joy of early childhood comes to a reluctant end.
It’s incredibly easy to instantly relate to Riley’s painful experience of moving home and losing friends, both real and imaginary. Much like the Toy Story franchise was really a long metaphor for the painful realities of mortality, Inside Out is actually a beautiful ode to lost childhood innocence.
Director Pete Docter has a proven knack for highly emotional storytelling. After all he’s the man responsible for the heart-breaking and poignant opening 10 minutes of Up. Inside Out is once again packed with characters and sincere moments guaranteed to tug on audiences heartstrings till they break.
Visually, Inside Out has a soft edged dream like quality that playfully offsets the films more serious substance. Pixar does a great job of personifying the most common human emotions as endearingly fuzzy faced cartoon caricatures. The amusing antics of Fear, Anger & Disgust serve as a happy distraction to the main adventure which sees Joy and Sadness fighting to preserve Riley’s identity and treasured memories.
A superb voice cast lead by Amy Poehler add an extra dimension of personality to their emotional characters. Phyllis Smith’s permanently gloomy Sadness and Lewis Black’s perpetually furious Anger often steal the show.
The Bad
Inside Out does a mostly brilliant job of taking its highbrow psychological concepts and turning them into fluffy cartoon fun, however younger children may still find that some of the film’s subtext and Riley’s adolescent anxieties harder to understand. The film treads a fine line between oversimplification and the risk of losing its target audience in the intricacies of the human mind.
The Ugly Truth
Given a recent trend towards easy crowd pleasing sequels and prequels it’s refreshing to see Pixar explore genuinely original territory again with a clever and poignant emotional story. Inside Out has enough colourful fun to keep young children happy and enough sophisticated subtext to capture the hearts of older audiences too.
Review by Russell Nelson
Mission Impossible Rogue Nation London Premiere Pictures
Check out the latest gallery of high quality pictures of Tom Cruise and the rest of the cast and crew of action sequel Mission Impossible Rogue Nation walking the red carpet in London for a special fan screening event at the BFI IMAX.
Southpaw Review
The Plot
When a bitter feud with a fellow boxer threatens to destroy his family and career, fighter Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) seeks the help of trainer Tick Willis (Forest Whitaker) to turn his life around and bring him back on top.
The Good
Director Antoine Fuqua’s follow up to last years The Equalizer packs a much more emotional punch this time around with some incredible performances that are sure to bring a tear to your eyes. Adopting an occasional first person point of view in the boxing match final act is a nice touch that brings the fight right to the audience, almost making us feel every punch.
Considering his noticeably gaunt figure in last year’s Nightcrawler, leading man Gyllenhaal has shown an undeniable commitment to the role with his astonishingly quick bulking up. He certainly physically convinces as a viciously toned fighter fueled by barely restrained rage.
Meanwhile Forest Whitaker’s Tick Willis is a wonderful addition to the cast as Hope’s strong and silent trainer who helps bring him back to his glory days. Praise must also go to Oona Laurence and the amazingly truthful chemistry with her on screen father Gyllenhaal. For such a young actress, Laurence has proven that she has what it takes to go up against Gyllenhaal and even come out on top in certain scenes.
While for the most part it is very formulaic and hits all the expected notes, Southpaw does bring some genuine shocks and raw emotion which comes with themes of family, suffering and anger. Director Antoine Fuqua demonstrates yet again his usual flair for gritty realism. Rocky fans and boxing movie fans in general will certainly leave entertained and moved.
The Bad
Unfortunately if you’ve seen the trailer, nothing is surprising. While the story itself is formulaic enough, the promotional advertising has sadly given everything away and strips a lot of the emotion out of it. With a few smart tweaks the trailer could have easily avoided giving away certain crucial plot points to allow for more shocks. Ironically most of the films best emotional punches are robbed of any impact.
Compared to his Oscar worthy turn in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal’s performance, while undoubtedly incredible, feels almost a little too easy for him. This performance has already been surrounded by whispers of awards season glory, but should he finally take home that best actor statue next year, it’ll be for the wrong role.
The Ugly Truth
If you’ve not seen the incredibly spoiler filled trailer, Southpaw will work much better for you. If you have, it’ll still bring tears to your eyes and works perfectly fine. Brutal, emotional and uplifting, Southpaw is everything a boxing movie should be. It’s not quite Rocky but certainly do.
Jurassic World Gets Sequel
Having rapidly made over $1.5 million at the box office to become the third highest-grossing film of all time Jurassic World will inevitably get a sequel. Stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard will both officially return having proved themselves a valuable addition to the franchises wildly successful formula of CGI dinosaurs and badly managed theme parks.
Colin Trevorrow who directed and co-wrote the wildly successful reboot will also be writing the new sequel, although it’s likely that he have to pass up on directing duties as he’s hotly tipped to direct Star Was Episode 9 instead.
Mission Impossible Rogue Nation Premiere Pictures
Check out a gallery of high quality pictures of Tom Cruise and the rest of the cast and crew of action sequel Mission Impossible Rogue Nation from the world premiere red carpet in Vienna. The film hits cinemas on 30th July and boasts some of the biggest stunts of the famously spectacular franchise.
