Movie Review: Big Hero 6

Entertaining film, but lacks any real depth. While the characterization between Hiro and Baymax is solid, all the remaining characters exist solely to round out the superhero team. They have no backgrounds, real names or anything beyond generic sidekick archetypes. It’s also painfully obvious when they’re introduced that we’re getting some blatant foreshadowing of what their superpowered personas are going to incorporate. The villain is visually cool to look at, but the twist reveal is a bit predictable and his motives are flimsy. The plot takes a while to get going, and works well for a while till the climax, where everything seemed forced together for a big action showdown. The star here is Baymax, whose childlike innocence and non-threatening appearance make him hard not to like. His Iron Giant-like relationship with Hiro has some nice emotional beats, and is almost wasted by making this into super team original story. If you’re one of the small handful of people that read the original Big Hero 6 comic, you’ll find that the only thing that’s the same is the names of the characters and an homage to their super powers. There’s a scene after the credits that might be worth sticking around for.

**1/2 out of *****

 

Movie review: Interstellar

Very deep, breathtaking, emotional, and occasionally, boring film. This movie doesn’t hold your hand very much. You have to pick up pretty quickly on the ways of a famine-stricken, dustbowl Earth, and then take a crash course in astrophysics, the theory of relativity, wormholes and supermassive black holes. The heart of this film is the drama of a father’s sacrifice for his daughter, and the emotional beats that come out of this relationship strike a chord. The acting of Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain and Mackenzie Foy is superb. The entire cast is solid, but these three a given the scenes with the most depth. The effects create sights that humble you and fill you with awe, while keeping everything as grounded as possible. Once the film gets going, the plot is fairly straightforward. However, closer to the end, it gets a bit muddier. There’s tension and characters racing to complete tasks before time runs out, but exactly what needs to be done is a bit unclear. The science here is sound, but like any film with a black hole, there is some somewhat-trippy speculation to how it warps reality. The ending is fairly unsatisfying, which isn’t all that unusual for a Christopher Nolan film.

*** out of *****