Kung Fu Panda 3

Poe’s back, with the introduction of the panda’s village. The premise was strong. The great choreography fight scenes returned. But, as always I want to warn the readers that I’m not an expert in 3D rendered animation and “if one wants to create an animation, he/she can create literary everything on the screen.”

The first I want to talk about is the concept. It had a nice concept and very friendly for anyone who consume it. The message of this film was simple, straight, and didn’t need anything complicated. But the simple message of this film effected the ordeal of the film – I’ll get back to this later. The Kung Fu Panda franchise was known to present a question which kept on repeating itself, “who am I?” It was the general concept of the franchise. Each installment only looked at it in a different way.

The antagonist in the film was pretty much like the first installment – works alone, scary, and powerful – I think him as the extreme version, but not yet fullfil my satisfaction. It was kind of disappointing to see the gap between the antagonist from the second installment. The antagonist from the second installment had EVERYTHING (including a whole army) which could conquer whole China. The concept of the antagonist in the second installment was pretty smart – fists v. guns. Whereas the antagonist in the latest installment only had DARK MAGIC. It didn’t look as massive as the second installment.

Poe’s journey was amazing. 3 installments in a row with great reception and fun concept is very hard to achieve. But, I don’t think there will be a 4^th installment. My feeling tells me, if they did a 4^th , it would be forcing.

The verdict:

Great concept and message for the audience, but the antagonist in the film needed to be more larger than its predecessors.

Room (2016)

I haven’t heard the title “Room” if not because of the Oscar and the SAG Award. Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay weren’t known as method actors before this film launched. Brie Larson even got her recognition on 21 Jump Street (2010). The poster of the film looked awesome though. It looked promising. And it indeed promising!

Room concentrated on 2 acts: life in the Room and life out of the Room. This isn’t a spoiler because you can see the 2 acts in the trailer. We weren’t suppose to concentrate on the whole act, but the filmmakers wants us to concentrate on the people acting inside the movie. It explored deeply on the possibilities of the emotions developed by the story.

But, don’t feel spoiled just after watching the trailer. Because the trailer is just a trailer – not the whole movie. There were a lot of surprises in the whole film.

Brie Larson were amazing in this film. She proved that research and experiment were crusial to build the foundation of GOOD acting. Preparing for the role was pretty hard for Larson; she had to locked herself inside her house without phone or internet; even though she consider herself as introvert, she cried at the very last days her own house.

And Jacob. He could be the next star child who we were waiting for all these years. He was amazing! He really knew what he was doing. I’m very excited to see his next movie.

The cinematography looked hard; tight space is a challege to all of us filmmakers. There can’t be so many people inside the set. When they started rolling the camera, I predicted it was only the cinematographer and the director who stayed behind the camera.

The set had a very great mood-building things. It didn’t create that awkward feeling which sitcoms or cheap drama have. I really like the look and the mood, especially in the Room.

The verdict:

The movie concentrated primarily on the emotions that the actors produced rather than the whole story, which was the key-selling of this movie.

Zootopia (2016)

WARNING-WARNING-WARNING: this review only revolves around the idea, concept, and story of this film. I can’t stress enough that I’m not an expert in 3D animation. But here’s my proposed idea, ‘if one wants to make an animation film, everything can happen in that film.’

Another roundup animation film produced by Disney. When I first saw the trailer of this film, there was something unique about it. They use smart phones, in such a way, it made the film had a modern feeling. But I was doubting it would do well, because the film had a bad premise - there was little information.

But..

When I finished seeing the movie, I was happy to see the noir genre was in the latest animation movie. There were only a few noir films in these recent years; some might call me old school, but the noir genre and style is one of the best thing that ever happened on the film history.

I’m going to talk about this film on the noir side.

The movie had a great concept. It was really nice to see an animation film that was aware of the modern globalisation. They really spoof the hell a lot of it into something fun. And Zootopia looked fun as a central city of all animals, but we mustn’t forgot one of the structure of noir genred film was the introduction of the “dangerous” city. In this case, it’s Zootopia.

Beside that, this film had a great story of diversity; it was for the recent awakening of diversity problems – in the US primarily. It was simbolised and great for young generations to consume. Parents, you don’t need to watch this movie first to check if the film is safe to consume. Just take your kids into the movie and you’ll teach more about diversity with this film.

Of course, the noir genre will always have mysteries and fragile main character(s). The characters were amazing in this film; we’re talking about catching your dream vs. your naiveness, redemption, and last but not least diversity. The chemistry of the two buddy cops were slick and smooth. The mysteries of the unsolved problems were really unpredictable.

Also I won’t forget to mention about the easter eggs and references about other things which you need to watch for.

The verdict:

This is a noir film! An animation noir film! I haven’t heard the word “noir” to mention a film – only in style. Noir genred films are hard to find these days.