Movie Reviews
‘Wonka’ may be the most surprising movie of the year
![‘Wonka’ may be the most surprising movie of the year](https://deseret.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f055507/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1713%200%20144/resize/1461x834!/quality/90/?url=https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3T0fXF0rVSZ0_TVTKewn5irPHkQ=/0x0:3000x2000/3000x2000/filters:focal(1500x1000:1501x1001)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25178108/AP23345646157549.jpg)
I believe one of the bravest things a person can do is admit when they were wrong. So marvel at my courage, please, for what I’m about to do.
Admit that the “Wonka” movie is great.
Like many, I scoffed when I first saw the trailer. Who asked for a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” prequel, I wondered. Why are we constantly dipping into the well of the same intellectual properties instead of creating new characters and stories? And whose harebrained idea was it to involve Timothée Chalamet?
Chalamet is best known for surly and misunderstood characters often played with a forceful undercurrent of irony — AND for dating a Kardashian. Casting him as Willy Wonka seemed like a serious mistake. But actually, much of the success of “Wonka” can be attributed to Chalamet’s surprising and uncharacteristic turn as a magical man with a complete lack of guile.
Chalamet is wide-eyed and earnest throughout the entire run time. But he’s not naive. His performance captures some of the unpredictability and fire behind the eyes of Gene Wilder’s Wonka portrayal in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” He zigs when you think he’s going to zag. He talks quickly and always seems one step ahead of every other character and the viewer.
He also has a pretty decent singing voice, or at least not an outright bad one, which suits the simple melodies of the movie’s musical numbers.
I should have known better than to doubt Paul King, the director of “Paddington” and “Paddington 2,” the latter of which remains one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
Much like in “Paddington 2,” in “Wonka,” King creates a whimsical, gentle and entirely wholesome world where every frame looks like a page from a beloved picture book. The sets, the colors, the score and the costumes create an environment that feels both magical and safe.
Knowing the end from the beginning — this movie is a prequel, after all — and knowing that Willy Wonka will ultimately succeed in building his chocolate empire makes the viewing experience feel less like a thrill ride and more like a comforting stroll.
The stakes of the movie never really go beyond whether Wonka will succeed as a chocolatier, and while there are a few scenes meant to suggest that other established chocolatiers would like Wonka dead, it never feels like anything more serious than Wile E. Coyote setting up another bunch of dynamite for the roadrunner to collide with.
The movie’s villains are Matt Lucas, Paterson Joseph and Mathew Baynton as the rival chocolatiers, Olivia Colman as the hotel proprietor who imprisons her guests, Keegan-Michael Key as a corrupt chief of police with a crippling chocolate addiction, and Rowan Atkinson as a bishop who protects a secret chocolate lair. They are all are cartoonish and played in such a way that suggests the actors had the time of their lives on set. Which makes for very enjoyable viewing.
One person who was clearly miserable, however, is Hugh Grant, who plays an Oompa Loompa and said of the experience at a press conference, “I could not have hated the whole thing more.” But his visible disdain actually enhances the performance. At the same press conference, King described Oompa Loompas as sarcastic, judgmental and cruel, based on Roald Dahl’s descriptions of them in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Wonka” is not a perfect film. Its two-hour run time is a bit too long, especially for kids. There’s a little too much reliance on a child actor to carry the story, and a few unnecessary plot complications.
But King pulls off an ending so moving that I found myself wiping tears away at a matinee showing. It’s a conclusion that both reinforces the movie’s core message: that it’s relationships and not products that ultimately matter, which paves the way for the older Willy Wonka at the center of the 1971 film without shadowing Wilder’s beloved and iconic performance.
There’s perhaps no greater endorsement of this film than that of my children, who saw it with me for their second time because they enjoyed it so much the first.
I am happy to report that I was wrong when I initially thought the movie would fail. “Wonka” is warm and surprising, the perfect family movie for this holiday season.
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Movie Reviews
Movie review: 'Despicable Me 4' fun for kids, nightmare for adults
Movie Reviews
‘Kinds of Kindness’ review: Darkly comedic anthology explores humanity
![‘Kinds of Kindness’ review: Darkly comedic anthology explores humanity](https://i0.wp.com/aiptcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Kinds-Of-Kindness-1.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
Throughout his filmography, Yorgos Lanthimos is interested in themes of love and obsession, often explored with characters, who seem to be living on the edge of normal society, as evident in 2009’s Dogtooth, which centered on a husband and wife who keep their children ignorant of the world outside their property well into adulthood. 2024 is already quite the year for the Greek director as his previous outing Poor Things has been a critical and commercial success that has won four awards at this year’s Oscars, and now his latest feature Kinds of Kindness is finally released.
Amidst the Frankenstein-like science and “furious jumping”, Poor Things is more of a crowd-pleaser through its story of self-discovery within the harsh reality of the otherwise outlandish world. Reunited with his long-time collaborator/co-writer Efthimis Filippou, Kinds of Kindness – set in modern-day New Orleans – is closer to Lanthimos’ earlier work like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, where people are plunged into situations that effectively shake up their lives and lose any touch of humanity in order to get out of it.
Since Lanthimos’ films often challenge you, though not without some dark humor creeping into the mix, Kinds of Kindness is essentially three films for the price of one, with the same seven actors – Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn and Mamoudou Athie – appearing in each one in a different role.
The first of which, titled “The Death of R.M.F”, is about Robert Fletcher (Plemons) who follows every order that is given to him by his controlling boss, Raymond (Dafoe), until he refuses to do an act which causes his life to fall apart. Similar to Lanthimos’ 2019 short film Nimic, it is a darkly funny study of a man who regrets this one decision and how it spirals out of control, with an extraordinary turn from Plemons, who tries to maintain his composure and yet it looks he’s about to break.
Considering the disturbing outcome of the first narrative, it feels tamed compared to the second story, “R.M.F. is Flying”. Left emotionally devastated after the disappearance of his wife Liz (Emma Stone), a marine biologist, police officer Daniel (Plemons) receives a call saying she has been rescued. As she returns home, her strange and seemingly reversed behavior leads to Daniel suspecting her of being an imposter. As well as being more disturbing and ambiguous than the other two narratives, “R.M.F. is Flying” cements a central theme which is somewhat meta to the film’s multiple casting of the same actors, playing characters who are wrestling with their own identity. Playing a married couple that is becoming more about obsessive delusions, leading to horrific abuse, Stone and Plemons are amazing in roles where you can’t tell whose side you should be on, if any.
As great as Emma Stone is in the first two narratives, it is in “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich” where she really gets to shine, and yes, this is where she performs her improvised dance that has been used in the film’s promotion. In this third and final instalment, Emily and Andrew (Stone and Plemons) are two cult members who are looking for a woman with the ability to bring back the dead. Considering this is the closest to a Coen Brothers film, where it almost feels like an enjoyable crime caper, what could easily be a cautionary tale about not joining a sex cult led by Dafoe’s Omi, the story makes a dark implication into why Emily would choose the life of a cultist, as seen in a scene where she revisits her old life as a mother and a wife.
Considering the hopeful nature and visual experimentation of Poor Things, whether consciously or not, it feels Lanthimos wants to return a world where there is no positive outcome of anybody, whilst cinematographer Robbie Ryan, shooting on 35mm Kodak film, presents a stunning, if mundane look of the many settings of New Orleans. Amongst the loose connective tissue between these three tales, including the brilliant cast and similar locations, the only sense of hope that Kinds of Kindness is the dreams that some of the characters have and no matter how nonsensical they are, it is better than the harshness that the real world can throw at them. One dream involving dogs delivers the biggest laugh-out-loud film of the entire film.
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Movie Reviews
“The Boy and The Heron” by Hayao Miyazaki, Movie Review – Signals AZ
![“The Boy and The Heron” by Hayao Miyazaki, Movie Review – Signals AZ](https://www.signalsaz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/The-Boy-and-The-Heron.jpg)
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When Hayao Miyazaki announced that 2013’s The Wind Rises would be his “final” film, many suspected that an artist of his caliber would eventually return to create again if given the chance.
Release Date: 07/14/2023Runtime: 124 minutesDirector: Hayao MiyazakiRotten Tomatoes: 97%iMBD: 7.6/10Where to Watch: Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Fandango at Home, Google Play Movies, YouTube |
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Ten years later, the legendary Japanese animator, known for classics like Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky, and Princess Mononoke presented us with perhaps his definitive work. This new magnum opus combines the finest elements of his previous films into something sure to be considered the greatest Hayao Miyazaki film of all time.
In the story, eleven-year-old Mahito loses his mother in a hospital fire during World War II
His father soon remarries—his late wife’s sister—moving them to the countryside where he can apply his manufacturing profession to the war effort and support his family as they welcome a second child. Behind their new rural home looms a strange, abandoned tower, and around the pond on the estate grounds flies a mysterious heron.
![](https://www.signalsaz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Phippen-Museum_AIA.jpg)
![](https://www.signalsaz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Phippen-Museum_AIA.jpg)
When his new mother enters the forest in the delirium of pregnancy, the entire estate goes searching for her. Only Mahito knows that the path to finding her leads into the tower.
The heron lures Mahito inside, and he soon finds himself in a dreamlike world that would make L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll proud
Unlike The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland, this narrative leads Mahito into a “world of the dead”—not in the morbid sense typical of Western mythology, but a beautiful realm where spirits migrate between planes of existence. From there he finds himself embarking on an adventure deeper into the world of dreams and death, where he ultimately learns to come to terms with the loss of his mother.
Like the greatest fairytales and childhood fantasies, The Boy and The Heron navigates its mythological story with a dream-logic familiar to anyone who’s plumbed the landscapes found in the deepest sleep.
What sets this film apart from similar narratives—in addition to its uniquely Shintoist approach to mythology—is the masterful cinematography and animation displayed across every frame
From beginning to end, this film showcases a master and his team working at the peak of their craft. It’s a childhood adventure on par with other classics in the genre, sure to take audiences of all ages on a journey they won’t soon forget, and one that begs for a second viewing by the time the credits roll.
About our Admit One Author
Isaac Frankel is a freelance writer and content creator specializing in reviews and analysis of cinema, interactive media, and mythological storytelling. He was raised in Prescott, AZ, wrote his first non-fiction book in 2013 after graduating from Tribeca Flashpoint College with a degree in Game & Interactive Media Design, and currently produces content for the YouTube channel: Off Screen.
More of his work and current projects can be found at www.isaacafrankel.com.
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