Inside Out Review: Reading Minds

Riley's emotions look on in Inside Out

Photo Credit: Walt Disney Studios

Inside Out

A+

A review by Frederick Cholowski

Welcome back Pixar.

After an unprecedented streak of not making a bad film Pixar began to enter a bit of a slump. Cars 2 was a shockingly bad (by Pixar standards), Brave was meteorically generic, and Monsters University was fine but did not have many of the elements that made Pixar films of the past so special. Inside Out, Pixar’s latest, is the studio’s return to what made it special and is a great reminder of what made me fall in love with the studio in the first place. Creative, funny, and full of heart Inside Out is one of the best films Pixar has ever created and one of the best of 2015.

The concept of Inside Out tries to answer the old question of what are people actually thinking. According to the film the mind is broken up into five emotions, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and fear who combined all determine how a person acts. The human at the center of Inside Out is a young lady named Riley (voiced by Katlyn Dias) and her along with all of her emotions (voiced by Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, and Mindy Kaling) must deal with moving away from her childhood home in Minnesota to a new unfamiliar one in the middle of San Francisco. Along the stressful journey both Joy and Sadness get lost in the banks of long term memory leaving only Anger, Disgust and Fear in charge which threatens to ultimately change the base of Riley’s personality.

As with every great Pixar film, the creators use wildly creative concepts in order and tell a story of basic human emotions. The realizations of all of the emotions and their role in shaping memories and personality is so beautifully realized on screen it is stunning. All the ins and outs of how memories are stored and shaped along with how someone’s personality is formed is absolutely magnificent and provides opportunity for amazing looking animated vistas. Every portion of Riley’s mind from the headquarters to the subconscious are explored in such interesting and funny ways giving life to every encounter throughout the runtime of the film.

Of course no Pixar film would be complete without a huge amount of heart at its centre. One of my main complaints with the last three Pixar films was that they lacked any semblance of the heart that defined so many of Pixars’ previous works. Either it felt really forced (Cars 2 and Monsters University) or it really did not connect (Brave). Inside Out is Pixar’s return to the perfectly integrated emotional storytelling of their past, giving us a human story of leaving a place we love behind and adapting to something new while at the same time dealing with our own emotional turmoil. It’s fantastic and heartfelt while never feeling sappy or forced in any way. Inside Out also manages to integrate humor into the proceedings in wonderful ways, throwing in great, mostly adult oriented, Jokes to help lighten up the sometimes heavily emotional proceedings.

The voice cast are all superb and wonderfully cast. Amy Poehler feels as though she was born to play the role of Joy and it even feels very similar to the character she played so masterfully on Parks and Recreation. Phyllis Smith is hilariously melancholic as sadness bringing a lot of humor and heart to the proceedings. The rest of the emotions paly a little bit of a back seat but it is always amusing to see Lewis Black get super angry, or Bill Hader freak out about random things. The voices of the human characters are also perfectly done, Katlyn Dias is magnificent as the central character and her parents voiced by Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan do perfectly in their reactions to the new stressful situation.

As per usual with Pixar the animation here is stunning. As mentioned earlier, the realization of the mind and all of its elements are beautifully realized and unlike anything I have ever seen before. Everything in the film just pops off screen, every idea is so colorful and creative at every turn. It really makes for a fully fleshed out world that looks pretty from its first frame to its last. The score is also wonderful outlining each element of the film with the perfect emotion. Pixar’s technical performance has always been a strong suit and Inside out is no exception.

Inisde Out is one of Pixar’s finest films and a spectacular film to bounce back with. The film succeeds at being beautiful in both a visual and storytelling sense in a way only Pixar at their peak can capture. If you only want to see one animated film this year I have a good feeling that nothing will surpass the wonderful Inside Out.

Game of Thrones “Hardhome”: Winter has come

Are you not entertained? The image that has been making the meme rounds from Sunday's Game of Thrones

Photo Credit: HBO 

Some quick bullet point thoughts on what is perhaps Game of Thrones’ finest hour as soon as I drink every drop of water on the floor…

“He always comes back”

-Sam

Holy Crap!

Beyond that I don’t have too much time today so let’s get straight to the bullets…

• I’ve very much enjoyed this season of Game of Thrones and believe it is the best the series has done yet. Being a reader of all of Martin’s novels I’m finding that the more and more that Benioff and Weiss are deviating from the source material the better and better the show is getting. What works in Martin’s novels at times hasn’t worked in the show particularly keeping the characters so far apart and having the overall plot move as slowly as the books let the character development stew. A lot of that does not work on television and it seems as though the writing crew has begun to speed things up a little bit. Characters are going through plot and meeting each other on a great frequency. There have still been flaws, evil Ramsey does not seem to have any point or any other characteristics then being evil, and the show uses rape or attempted rape with a surprising frequency without ever really paying it off with all that much emotional significance, but there have been so many exceptional elements that the flaws often feel marginal in comparison.

• Speaking of, how about the final 30 minutes of this episode. Game of Thrones often feels like it has a pretty large budget for even a big HBO drama but boy this takes the cake. Jon and the wildlings’ confrontation with the dreaded white walkers is perhaps the greatest action set piece in television history. The jaw dropping CGI, and camera work were second only to the simple amount of storytelling that happened in one 30 minute sequence. One of the flaws of last season’s big penultimate episode action sequence was that I really did not care about much of anything going on throughout the sequence despite it being filmed and beautifully put together. That was not a problem here as the sequence focused on not only creating a grand sense of dread and tension but  focused on small character arcs within that gave the sequence a little extra punch. The death of the main wildling woman as she couldn’t kill the undead children with the setup of her loving her own daughter more than anything else in the world made it extra special and devastating when she woke up as an undead at the end of the episode. In all it was completely jaw dropping on a scale that we haven’t seen before and has become the new gold standard of what an action sequence can accomplish on television.

• The rest of the episode was much quieter but almost as fantastic. As mentioned earlier many of the show’s character interactions have been made better with many characters coming together and that is no more evident with the interactions between Tyrion and Daenerys. Sure we are only at the very beginning of the arc but the two awkward dynamic sequences between the two really popped throughout the opening half hour of “Hardhome.” Peter Dinklage lights up every part of the show that he is a part of and these two sequences suggest nothing different with the mother of dragons’ portion of the show. Daenerys’ arc was always my least favorite part of Dance of Dragons and the infusion of Tyrion into the fold on the show is a very welcome touch.

• Cersei’s imprisonment is also working in a very good fashion and being bit by the hand that she thought would feed her is a great arc for her as the show progresses. While it’s hard to not rout against Cersei for all the chaos that she has caused the show has done a wonderful job of making her captors almost equally as terrible which creates a nice quandary for viewers.

That’s it for me for this week! As I said earlier this has been a pretty awesome season of the show and “Hardhome” has been its crowning achievement. I’m hoping to write a bit about the final two episodes over the next two weeks but it honestly depends on what the work schedule looks like and how quickly I am able to see the coming episodes.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

Mad Men Series Finale “Person to Person” Review: A Shakespearean Comedy

Pete and his cactus get say goodbye on the series finale of Mad Men

Photo Credit: AMC TV 

A review of the very final episode of Mad Men ever as soon as I sleep with you and try to steal your money…

“It will get easier when you move forward”

-Don

It may Don it may, but boy am I ever going to miss this show. Anyways on to that finale.

In his final hour with Mad Men Matthew Weiner decided to go full on sappy, and I loved every last second of it. Maybe sappy is not really the word, but maybe it’s more that Weiner decided to do the ending to a Shakespeare comedy. This is a show that’s had so much of everything, drama, comedy, tragedy, sadness, happiness etc. and really the final note of the show is where its final tone will be decided. Weiner went the happy, nearly everyone gets married route, and in this day and age of constant mostly depressing finales to big television drama it was a breath of fresh air to see Weiner go for the Shakespeare comedy ending rather than its tragic counterpart.

Of course, despite all the pure happiness found in the finale, Matthew Weiner could not let the very last episode go by without a chance to mess with us one more time. Don is on his final soul searching journey throughout the hippy retreat in California and finally hits perhaps his lowest point followed by what seemed like the potential “come to Jesus” moment. Along the way we get him finding out and then coming to drunkenly accept the death of Betty and the fact that despite how much he does love his children that he really hasn’t and ultimately wouldn’t be a person who could be their full time father, and seemingly gives in to Betty’s plans and wishes one more time. He also gets to meet up one final time with Stephanie, only to have her, really the final piece of his “old life” stripped away from him. Then there is the wonderful breakdown to Peggy on the phone (which as we’ll get to later gives her her own kind of funny “come to Jesus” moment) as his life seems to have hit a final rock bottom, and the ultimate lifting up of the great monologue from a man who seems to be the only one who in a strange way understands his warped feelings. Don seems to be on the way towards the road of redemption and that little smile on his face while doing the mystical heeling that is yoga…

…and then that damn coke add plays to close out the episode and makes us potentially question everything that has come from this big moment for Don. It doesn’t have to really Matthew Weiner could have presented the add entirely to convey the mood of the moment, or to ultimately relate the big final scene of the show back to advertising. But let us not kid ourselves here, the reason why Matt Weiner put that add as the very last moment of his masterpiece of a series was to twist the knife a little bit. It was to spin a great and wonderful sequence where Don finally finds himself and give people the idea that maybe Don was only really in that moment taking just enough inspiration for a trip home to come up with the Coke add. That can be seen as a really cynical way to look at the ending, Don after all this time may just never change, he may just be destined to be the same old Don Draper forever.

But on the same token even if he does end up coming home like Peggy suggests in her call, and ends ups getting lured in by having the chance to write for Coke, Don is ultimately happy in that ending sequence. There does seem to be change that occurs in the mind of Don as he is going through this trip, and it is entirely possible that he can return to the world of advertising, a man with a different view on life. The suggestion that Don wrote the add does not have to be negative and like so many more of the endings on the show could be it could be Don’s perfect Shakespeare Comedy ending. It may be a choice of either or between an old life and a new but maybe a combination of the two. As we’ve seen so many times on this show the answer does not have to be clear and simple, the choices that these characters make and their ultimate consequences are not binary in the way that some are interpreting those final moments.

Don’s story may be the driving force of the finale but it certainly isn’t the only ending that we get. I was wrong to say last week that we may get an entirely Don centric finale as there are many characters who get to come in and say their final goodbyes in their own beautiful ways. Never this late in the series would I have envisioned a phone conversation in which Peggy and Stan both profess their love for each other at nearly the same time but that’s what we got in “Person to Person” and every second of it was marvelous. I’m glad that Peggy got to have a good happy ending that had absolutely nothing to do with work which is something that she has arguably been partaking way too much in for at least the last several seasons. It was a sudden ending for the two characters but the way it played out was so beautiful. Just the reactions of both characters as they both individually talked through it and just came to the realization that they loved each other, along with Elizabeth Moss’ just wonderful facial expressions made the sequence so great even if it was something that may have come out of nowhere.

Joan also gets a great little send off as well, just in an opposite but equally happy and satisfying. Through the power of Ken and his eyepatch Joan gets to get into the producing business and ultimately gets the thrill of finally getting to pull of the “starting her own business” game. Sure she has to ditch Mr. Leisure suit and his cocaine but I’m glad that the show got to see her finally fully give in to her amazing business instincts that she has developed throughout the show (and arguably had the whole time). It’s a nice little send off for Joan and a great way to send off a character that I really did not expect to see in the finale.

Oh yes and Betty is not dead yet. The whole sequence of Don finding out that his ex-wife whom he still loves a whole heck of a lot, was pretty devastating. Their final conversation, as so many of their big emotional conversations looking back have been, was a dynamite sequence that really showed where these characters are and have been throughout the series. From Betty calling him out on the fact that he hasn’t really seen the kids in forever to the just gradual devolution of the conversation to tears between two people who still have a wonderful connection. January Jones was again marvelous, and while Betty sadly had to be the one sad ending in a litany of happy, like last episode the arc proved to be incredibly powerful.

“Person to Person” marks the beautiful Shakespearian comedy style ending to this amazing television show. Whether Don does go back to advertising and never changes or if that smile is a sign of the true change so many have been clamoring for this finale was so brilliant and wonderful, paying off so many arcs and giving all of these characters a chance to say their own individual goodbyes. I am very much going to miss this show.

Final musings for Mad Men:

• Yes I noticed (and saw confirmation on Twitter) the similarity between the pig tailed woman in the Coke add and the pig tailed woman at the desk at the retreat. Matthew Weiner does not do this by accident folks.

• Pete and Trudy doing their walk to the private Jet needed to be in all of the slow motion ever.

• Roger also got a great little happy ending here with Megan’s mother. I laughed out loud at the way he explained to Joan just exactly who he was getting married to with her claiming “I guess somebody finally got their timing right.” It’s great to see Roger not only realize that he is aging and maybe not going to any longer be a relevant part of the business but to fully embrace it and just be legitimately happy in a marriage for the first time ever.

• Hey if Don does go back to the office then Meredith does get to keep her job after all.

• The interaction between Sally and Bobby is both heartbreaking and super sweet. These two will do a fine job taking care of their little brother Gene no matter who they end up with.

And there we go so ends this marvelous show. Mad Men was a hell of a show and a hell of a ride through the happy and sad, and old and new of the 1960s. It was the show that I consistently enjoyed writing about the most week to week once I started doing weekly reviews for the last few seasons and a show which I will always cherish. This one ending hurts but at the same time I love how it has progressed and ultimately ended. This is one of the best ever, one that I will remember for the rest of my days.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?