Up (2009)

Carl, an elderly loner, having grown old with and then lost his wife, decides to head off on the adventure they had always planned but never embarked upon - a trip to South America to visit Paradise Falls. He takes his house, care of thousands of helium balloons and, unwittingly, a stowaway in the shape of young Russell, a Wilderness Explorer keen to complete his set of badges with one for helping the elderly.

*****

I came to Up knowing quite a lot about it. It was supposed to be for the most part a little inferior to more recent Pixar high water marks as Wall-E and Ratatouille and apparently contained an opening montage as heart-breaking and affecting as anything in modern cinema. What I found with Up was what I feel to be an almost peerless achievement in modern animation. Rarely have I enjoyed a film as moving, involving and, yes, heart-breaking as this one. For sure, some of the pacing once Carl and Russell arrive in Venezuela is a little off and although the concluding airship/biplane set piece is exciting enough, it falls sort of the spectacle and adrenaline wallop of the finales of Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Toy Story to name a few. But that is entirely beside the point. Firstly, the protagonist for the final showdown is in his 70's, making it unlikely that he is going to be sprightly enough for terribly physical confrontation. The physical exertions and slips, falls and fights are entirely in keeping with the characters, which is part of what makes it so compelling. Rather than a hero of limitless strength and ability, we have a relatively frail man, straining every sinew to prevail. Secondly, the film is not intended to be a set-piece showcase. It is intended to be about a man enjoying a long-postponed adventure and giving a young boy a sense of belonging and being needed. On these points it emphatically succeeds.

That opening montage, as we see Carl and his wife Ellie meet, fall in love, marry, find they cannot have children, settle into domestic life, decorate their house, constantly postpone their trip to Venezuela and culminating in Ellie's death is indeed moving in the extreme. Not a word is spoken, yet everything is so effortlessly portrayed. It is not sentimental or saccharine, rather deeply and enduringly affecting. It is quite simply one of the finest sequences of animation ever committed to the screen.

Beyond the montage the film is packed full of great ideas - dogs with collars that translate their thoughts into speech ("squirrel!", "point!"), moving house by helium balloon, a crazy, chocolate-loving bird called Kevin, the "collar of shame", on and on we go and yet there is no sense of showing off, no halting of the flow of the story to wink and show us how funny and creative they all are. It is seamlessly woven into the fabric of the film, making you smile the whole way through until at the end, as Russell receives his one missing badge and looks around in vain for his always-travelling father, Carl steps up behind him and says "I'm here for him". Your hearts breaks and melts at the same time, you cry and smile in equal measure. A truly incredible achievement from an already peerless studio.

Monsters (2010)

A photo-journalist is tasked by his boss with escorting the boss's daughter back to safety in the US, a journey which involves traversing the infected zone, an area of the southern USA and northern Mexico inhabited by aliens who have begun to breed and spread following a crash-landing NASA probe. As they travel, they connect, encounter aliens, witness devastation and come face to face with death.

*****

Debut feature director Gareth Edwards handles scripting duties, cinematography, direction, production and SFX and considering all that he has taken on it is remarkable that any film at all emerges, let alone one with much to commend it. It is well-known that the budget was minuscule, that Edwards and his two (count them) cast actors filmed on the hoof with whatever backgrounds and locals they could find to play along and that the two principals were (and still are) a real life couple. The relationship that plays out between them is well played and develops with admirable naturalness, given the extraordinary back-drop. They connect over an evening's eating and drinking, share a night at the home of kind-hearted Mexicans, travel by boat together into the heart of the infected zone and spend a night atop an ancient pyramid. As they come to love one another, it feels organic, unforced and authentic.

The sights they see as they travel are extraordinary - a large boat half way up a tree, a rusting fighter jet lifted out of the water than dragged down by dark tentacles, bloody hand prints on the side of a stricken ship, pulsating electro-luminescent egg-sacks on the trunks of trees and then finally what is perceived to be an alien attack on a convoy of vehicles that shows just how powerful and dangerous these strange tentacled creatures really are. Edwards uses his money shots sparingly and this is surely of necessity, lacking the budget for War of the Worlds style set pieces. Nonetheless the film never feels cheap and he deliberately makes the film a road trip about a growing relationship in the context of an alien invasion, rather than an alien invasion film with a romantic sub-plot. There is not much to criticize about the acting, script or Edwards' ambitions - these are all relatively accomplished. What seems to be missing is a greater sense of pace - of propulsion for their journey. Despite the apparent danger posed to them by travelling through the infected zone, they rarely seem to feel any sense of peril. To an extent that may be Edwards' point, that the creatures are more benign than the US authorities would have them believe, but it does at times feel that the creatures could benefit from being foregrounded a little more. As convincingly rendered as the central relationship is, the film itself is at times sluggish and the emotional heft of some of what are clearly meant to be key scenes remain less affecting than intended. An abrupt conclusion is more frustrating than anything else and left me a little disengaged.

*****

Nowhere near the masterpiece many have hailed it as, but impressive in scale given the budget Edwards worked under. The core relationship is well played but excessively foregrounded amidst pacing issues. A promising debut by multi-tasker Edwards, but no without its flaws.