'Wreck-It Ralph' review:

Jeez! This blog - and its humble author - just can't catch a break, gentle reader. Since making my hubristic turn-of-the-year pledge to update more regularly (10 times a month, said I!) I have been beset by horrid seasonal flu-like illness and (as of tomorrow) a major house move - complete with lack of internet for the immediate future. So I can't see my output improving any in the near future. So it goes. Anyway, this confluence of events also meant that I haven't yet seen award season hotties 'Zero Dark 30' and 'Lincoln'. Anyway, I did at least see Disney's latest home-grown animation, 'Wreck-It Ralph', whilst at a customarily dry 2013 slate presentation in London last month. So here's a review of that film, seeing as it's just now on general release on this side of the pond.

'Wreck-It Ralph' is to the video game arcade what 'Toy Story' was to a kid's bedroom, in that it takes place in the imagined downtime of the various game characters, after the patrons have left the arcade. Our hero is one game's villain, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly)  - whose daily routine involves smashing up a brightly coloured apartment building so that Fix-It Felix ('30 Rock's loveable Jack McBrayer) can save the day: earning glory and the love of the game's citizens. But Ralph is frustrated by his lot. Why shouldn't he be the hero? Especially as, by some cruel quirk of sociology, his in-game villain status leaves a very real impression on his neighbours in the game. Understandably, Ralph doesn't want to be the bad guy any more. He wants adulation and sometimes a bit of birthday cake. And so he quits his game to see if he can make it as a hero somewhere else.



It's this quest that takes Ralph through various colourful and amusing game worlds, some based on actual games and others excellent facsimiles, with the most of the film taking place in one of the latter: Sugar Rush, an adorable candy-theme go-karting game featuring the genuinely cute Vanellope von Schweetz, as voiced by the great Sarah Silverman. It's after meeting Vanellope, a peppy little girl with a sad story and can-do attitude, that the up-to-now selfish Ralph starts to re-evaluate his priorities and discovers what actually being a hero means. It's a familiar arc, but it plays out here with real warmth and doesn't feel forced or hackneyed.

It's sweet and tells its story smartly, but where 'Wreck-It Ralph' really sings is with the sight gags, inspired puns and myriad of game references. It's an out-and-out comedy in an age where a lot of the classier animated movies - vintage Pixar, 'ParaNorman' - are increasingly dramas-with-jokes (not a criticism) and it converts an unreasonably high number of jokes to actual laughs. (More than most live-action comedies released in the past decade - though I realise that isn't necessarily too much of a yardstick.) It's a joy from start to finish. A little slice of happy, but without being overly saccharin... well, the least it can be considering it's a Disney movie set predominantly in a candy land featuring an adorable little girl teaching a surrogate father figure how to be a better man. But it pulls it off, without being too earnest and without smirking. It's a very genuine little movie made with obvious love of video games.

'Carnage' review:

A sharp and bitterly funny attack on middle class social mores and attitudes, Roman Polanski's 'Carnage' is the kind of movie I'm easily smitten by: a tight little film which primarily takes place on one location (in real-time, no less), peddles deft social satire and zips by in a welcome 79 minutes. It's to the veteran director's credit that it never feels paired down or non-cinematic, despite being based on a stage play: French playwright Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage. Tight close-ups develop a sense of claustrophobia and Polanski's camera seems to relish the few occasions where the characters nearly escape their setting, eagerly rushing out into the hall and returning to the apartment with an air of resignation.

The film hinges around an event briefly glimpsed (from a distance) during the opening credits as one young boy hits another with a stick in a New York park. Then, in one intense, unbroken scene that ultimately seems to find equivalence in the actions of adults and children, the rest of the film takes place in the apartment of the assaulted boy's parents - Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) - who have invited the other boy's parents - Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) - over to discuss about what happened between their kids. It doesn't take long before the mood shifts from one of reconciliation to recrimination (and back again) as the couples turn on each other and feud amongst themselves.

Michael's overbearing attempts to play the good host and considerate husband conceal deep resentment and nihilism that are soon exposed (memorably with the bitter revelation that his wife dresses him as a liberal). Penelope is far less concerned with acting "civilised" and resolving differences than she is with asserting her moral and parenting supremacy over the Cowans. Alan is hyper-rational (or, depending on your point of view, cynical) to the point of seeming cold, aloof and more than a little rude - taking work calls throughout their meeting to the annoyance of everybody. Nancy seems to be the only one entering the situation in genuine good faith - something that's tested by extreme feelings of nausea as a result of the slightest confrontation and, later, by some potent Scotch.

The whole thing is as much about the futility of trying to bring order to chaos as it is about peering voyeuristically underneath the veneer of the characters sense of well-bred respectability. Whilst all of them interact in interesting and ever-shifting ways, the central confrontation is really between Alan, who believes in the inevitability of animalistic, amoral behaviour, and Penelope, who believes with absolute certainty that those in need should be saved and those who do wrong must be punished (according to her own uncompromising standards). Yet these extreme points of view are as easily compromised as anything else: when his phone is broken Alan is less indifferent about human cruelty and suffering, whilst Penelope is more concerned with cleaning up her coffee table books than Nancy's well-being after she suffers a fit of vomiting.

Each of the four actors are superb and wring the most from the script's faultlessly well-observed, caustic humour, though Waltz is again the stand-out performer. Several times in the last year the Academy Award-winning Austrian has been the bright spot in sub-standard films, but here he steals the show in more exalted company. His Alan is deliciously cruel and somehow intensely likable with it. You certainly want to see him get the better of Foster's shrill and conceited Penelope. Winslet gives a very subtle and believable performance, in spite of being given some of the more extreme stuff to do (throwing up and playing drunk). Reilly's innate likability and sensitivity - as the perennially put-upon schlub - are also well deployed and cleverly subverted, providing some of the funniest moments.

'Carnage' is out now in the UK, rated '15' by the BBFC.