“Coraline” is similar in style to “Corpse Bride” (co-directed by “Coraline” director Henry Selick and Tim Burton) and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (directed by Burton). These films are beautifully crafted, each one a work of art. I really want to love these movies. But for some reason I find them to be a bit of a let-down. I’ve never been able to pinpoint why.

Do you ever work on a project that involves solving a really hard, interesting problem? And eventually you solve it! But in doing so, you’ve sucked up all the time, energy or budget you need to solve the easier, conventional problems. And so the final product may have been a great expense of creative energy, but it also isn’t as good as you want it to be. I’ve written investigative stories and done online projects that ended up this way. So much good work, so little to show for it.

I think it must be easy for animated movies to fall into this trap. The hard, interesting problem is bringing to life the lifeless. The very act of making “Coraline” is a miracle of patience and hard work. But there are other problems that have to be solved for a movie to be excellent – like story, dialogue and voice acting. In the case of “Coraline,” I should have positively loved a film that includes the vocal talents of John Hodgman and They Might Be Giants (both of Brooklyn, by the way). The children’s book on which the movie is based is supposed to be good. So why do the characters and the story seem so humdrum on the big screen? I think it must have been the script, which somehow doesn’t match the ambition of the animators. But hey, I got a free pair of 3D glasses out of the experience.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

James Bond feels like he’s in a kind of transitional phase, but the movie is still a safe choice: You’re paying for 007, you’re getting 007. Two films ago, the ever-wise custodians of the Bond brand brought in actor Daniel Craig to bring the series up to contemporary standards. So far, this has meant copying the look of the Jason Bourne movies (which have come dangerously close to out-Bonding Bond). The new Bond involves less sex, gadgets, drinking and sleaze – and more noise, quick-cut fight scenes, backstabbing and pain. Judy Dench is the ideal M, and Craig is the best Bond ever. The problem is the villains. The bad guy in this film is the head of a utility company who’s evil scheme involves— [spoiler alert!]

—seizing control of sixty percent of Bolivia’s water supply! Horrors!

One thing remains constant in James Bond movies: There is always a climactic fight scene in the most unsafe building ever designed. This time, it’s a building filled with explosive fuel cells, with minimal fire exits, and dozens of collapsing stairways and catwalks. It is described as a luxury hotel. Bolivian luxury hotel desginers need some schooling on building codes, apparently.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Lately I’ve been paying closer attention to the different ways of telling a story in a documentary. This movie has no narrator, just the voices of the participants retelling the events. The filmmakers interject their own comment and sense of humor using music and editing. This film uses actors to recreate scenes that were never filmed originally, which sounds sneaky but serves the story well.

Any work of nonfiction succeeds or fails based on how good the material is. In this case, it’s a brilliant and simple story with some universal themes. It’s about taking a reckless risk for art, about chasing an obsession, and about craving some intense experience in a world engineered to be safe and comfortable. It’s also about success: He did it!

Unmentioned in the film is what happened to those towers. That seems like a missing piece of the story, but on the other hand, what are they going to say about it that the audience doesn’t already know?

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

(Update: “It’s a film that is just rewriting the record books every day and redefining our notions of what a blockbuster can be.“)

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

The most tragic thing about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is that for millions of kids, this will be their introduction to Indiana Jones. Not the swashbuckling hero movies from the 80s, but an incoherent, over-CGI’d space alien picture. (Spoilers follow.)

Where to begin? Why would the government ask Indiana Jones to examine a dead alien? And if they’d do that, why would they later send a bunch of G-men to follow him who have no idea who he is? If that Russian woman is a mind-reader, why don’t we ever see her successfully read anybody’s mind? If Indy’s son doesn’t know what Indiana looks like, how does he spot him on the train? How did the Russians find Marion? Why does the Crystal Skull look like something that would be sold at a gift shop at the beach? Why is it powerfully magnetic, but only when it suits the scene? If the skull is one of the 13 from the ancient Peru grave site, how did it end up in Roswell? If the aliens control a portal between dimensions, why do they need a flying saucer the size of Rhode Island? Since when are ants predators? Is Oxley’s explanation that the aliens are from “the space between spaces” really the best the writers could come up with? What is George Lucas trying to tell us by making Harrison Ford recite “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” yet again? Why couldn’t they get Sean Connery? Why did they have to end this movie with a wedding? Why the gophers? Why the monkeys? Arrgh!

This film is bad, bad, a thousand times bad. It’s bad like food poisoning. Bad like a traffic fatality. If bad was a drug, this movie would sell it by the gram. Do not go see it. Run away.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

The film starts strong, with an entirely believable and scary urban firefight in Tikrit. Visually, the battle scenes are told with occasional snippets shot on lossy digital cameras, as if filmed by the soldiers. It’s a crafty touch and a smart reading of the iconography of this digital war.

But I couldn’t buy into the main plot point of the film: That an Army sergeant who has just served a tour in Iraq would go AWOL rather than return for another tour. Not this sergeant anyway, who is portrayed as basically a good soldier. He feels like he has failed his men, and he can’t manage to handle the bad feelings about the deaths he witnessed. His fellow soldiers also battle their own demons as they suffer PTSD-like symptoms back home. I’m still with the movie here. But when our hero disobeys orders for the sake of self-preservation, it just doesn’t ring true to me.

Assuming we buy into this baloney, what’s the moral of the story? That the Iraq war is so deeply wrong that it’s OK to abandon your country? That would be an amazing statement for a mainstream film. Of course, that’s not what happens. The sergeant returns to his unit, the men ship off to Iraq, domestic problems are forgotten, and they all live happily ever after. This is a Paramount/MTV movie, and Viacom has a financial interest in maintaining political influence.

Not the best ending, but at least this movie (unlike this war) has one.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.