Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003) - Sylvain Chomet

Quirky yet beguilingly beautiful debut feature from Chomet. Packed to the gills with the strangest characters this side of a Miyazaki film, with an equally oddball plot to boot. It's hard to say just what this is about really since the plot is at best wafer thin, but let me give it a go anyway. Three Tour de France cyclists are snatched and shipped off to Belleville by some underworld types. Why? Well that would be telling. The important thing is that one of these cyclists is Champion, and it's his orthopedic shoe wearing grandmother and dog (Bruno) who set off from France to rescue him. On the way they come across a myriad of strange characters (including a literally spineless maitre d) and of course the titular trio.

As I say it's a strange one this, being quite dark and grim in places although in contrast to that it is a beautiful film to watch, although it's probably not best suited to preschool nippers. The animation style is an odd mix, computer aided animation rubbing shoulders with the more traditional style to achieve a look that is very much Chomet's own. Belleville itself is based on New York in much the same way as Gotham City is. The streets heave with overweight people, but Chomet is equally viscous with his fellow countrymen. So lardy arse Americans are contrasted with frog eating Frenchies, the later turning up in one of the films most memorably queasy scenes.

Another thing that really sets Les Triplettes de Belleville apart from your average animated film from the past ten years is it's sublime soundtrack. With the musical highpoint being the trio of crones playing a vacuum cleaner, fridge and newspaper, kind of like an OAP version of Einstürzende Neubauten. Best of all for me though is just the sheer variety of characters that are wedged into this. Doddery old Bruno who barks away at every passing train is easily my favourite, the scenes where we're allowed into his subconscious are the best in the film for me. Nice to see a nod to Tati too, since like his films the dialogue in this is not at all important.

It's films like this that you want to ram down the throats of the dullards that constantly hark on about the death of ye olde fashioned animation. The same people I'd imagine that have told me for the past 15 years that vinyl is dead, and yet… Highly recommended.

L'illusionniste (2010) - Sylvain Chomet

No, not some French reimagining of the Edward Norton film that finally proved beyond all doubt that he can't do tricky accents. Rather this is a gentle animated take on a previously unfilmed script by Jacques Tati. Chomet rewrote the script himself, changing the setting from Prague to Edinburgh. Like Tati's best films this could easily be classified as a silent film, what little dialogue there is, being of little consequence.

The Illusionist is a slight tale on paper. Tatischeff (Tati's real name) is the illusionist of the title, unable to find work in his native Paris he travels to London to look for it instead. Here he finds that the once popular variety circuit has been taken over by British Rock 'n' Rollers. So he's packed off to the highlands of Scotland to earn a crust instead. It's here in a small Scottish village that he meets Alice, a young local girl who quickly becomes enamoured with him, convinced that his illusions are in fact real magic. She stows away with him and they head to Edinburgh. Upon arriving it becomes obvious that what was once one of the most popular nights out is fast heading for the skids, as Tatischeff takes on a variety of non variety jobs to make ends meet. 

So typically Tati in as much as it's that old world clashing with new world theme that crops up again and again in his work. The hotel our couple stay in is populated with other debris from the world of music hall, there is a suicidal clown, a creepy ventriloquist and best of all a trio of acrobats. We don't get to see any of these people perform on stage, what we do see however is them doing their act in the real world instead. Throughout the film we witness the window of the local pawnbrokers (Brown and Blair, nudge nudge, wink wink), filling up with various props from these characters acts. The sad thing is that each time we return they haven't been sold and their price has been reduced still further, just like the performers themselves no one wants them. In terms of mood and themes it reminded me of a couple of other films, mainly De Sica's Umberto D. with the main character fast realising that he is a relic, and that the world has moved on without him. 

The relationship between Tatischeff and Alice is like that of a father and daughter, very innocent, very old fashioned. This is enforced with the closing shot of Tatischeff holding a photo of Tati's real life daughter, Sophie. It's this air of melancholy that hangs over the film, that makes me begin to understand why this was never made by Tati. For a Tati film it's just too sad, I can't see how he would have managed to bring his light touch to this story.

Chomet, who not only wrote and directed but wrote the music too, manages to really capture Scotland and the harsh beauty that is in abundance there. It comes as no surprise to hear that he'd relocated from his native France to Edinburgh prior to embarking upon this film. He also clearly has a love of the great man too, just the animation of Tati alone is good enough to trick you into forgetting that it isn't him up there on the screen. I'm so glad that someone with his track record (Les Triplettes de Belleville) was given this project. Imagine this being CGI style animation, or even worse live action, it just wouldn't work.

As it stands this is a worthy addition to the Tati canon. It feels old fashioned both in style and pacing, and is filled with loads of lovely little touches, such as having a station porter be played by Tati too, since Tati regularly took on multiple background roles in his films. Best of all though is Tatischeff walking into a cinema showing Mon Oncle, thus seeing himself on screen and his own role in the downfall of music hall. How very post modern.

Toy Story 3 (2010) - Lee Unkrich

I still remember being absolutely blown away all those years ago by the first Toy Story. It wasn't just the animation (although I'm always a sucker for that), it was more that Pixar had managed to hang those lush visuals onto a decent story, a story that didn't involve characters breaking out into bloody awful songs every five minutes. Along with the added bonus of it being about a gang of toys that you actually cared for, as much as you would if they were 'real' people in a 'real' film. The biggest thing for me with any sort of animated film, be it hand drawn, CGI, motion capture or whatever else, is that you quickly accept that the squiggles with voices up on the screen are real. For instance in Where the Wild Things Are, after the initial step back of just how cool the Wild Things themselves looked, it didn't take long at all to see them as real and allow the film to drag you in. Otherwise you'd spend the whole running time thinking about how fake they look, or how did they manage to do that, and end up missing all the nuances that make a good film, just that.

So anyway the first two parts of what has now become the Toy Story trilogy had the above in spades. I've always tried to see films aimed at kids, in a cinema full of that target audience. They talk and scream all the way through the film and it's a fantastic experience. The best moments for me are when the cinema falls silent and you know that the film has the little devils by the balls. It was Disney's Beauty and the Beast that really made me notice how great kids are to watch films with. When the Beast died they were in tears, but when it was revealed that he hadn't snuffed it, the cinema exploded with cheers and kids ran down to the front of the cinema and started dancing and singing, all this despite the fact that the film hadn't ended. You don't get that when you go and see the new Polanski now do you?

Anyway I didn't manage to see Toy Story 3 at the cinema. You see I loved Pixar at first, A Bug's Life was just a glitch I thought, besides it wasn't that bad. But in recent years after re-watching Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. I've discovered to my horror that Pixar are the ultimate animation auteurs, remaking the same film over and over. Their formula is a simple one, take a character and place them with another character that will rub them up the wrong way, send them both off on a journey where they will learn a valuable life lesson and of course become the bestest of buddies. I don't need Pixar to give me life lessons, I gleaned all I could from George Orwell novels and Bowie LP's, back in my teens. So I've been giving Pixar films a wide berth as of late, having seen both Wall*E and Up and found them both so over rated (I don't think reviewers dare say that Pixar is anything less than wonderful), great for the first twenty minutes then downhill all the way after that. The exception (there's always one isn't there), being the exceptional The Incredibles - which had to be seen since it was directed by Brad Bird the man behind the seminal The Iron Giant.

Toy Story 3 then, well I wasn't expecting much, it's not even helmed by original hawaiian shirted geek director John Lasseter. Plus it's another part of the 3D bandwagon (which is as off putting as a pool of vomit outside a restaurant you are about to eat in). On top of that it's the third part of an unplanned trilogy. Funny things film trilogies, they basically fall into two camps;- planned (Lord of the Rings, Red Riding Trilogy) and unplanned (Godfather, Back to the Future). Planned trilogies are for the obvious reasons normally the better of the two, since there are threads that run throughout the films with ease, this doesn't happen so much with the unplanned kind so you end up with lots of loose ends and unanswered questions (take a bow George Lucas), and normally films that become worse and worse with each entry (cough cough The Matrix). So high expectations weren't going to weigh this film down unfairly with me.

Right so after all that, we finally get down to it. Toy Story 3 is an exceptionally brilliant film, and without a doubt one of the better films to arrive during 2010. Exceptional because it should fall flat on it's beautifully rendered face, but doesn't. In fact it just makes the two previous Toy Stories shine just that little bit harder. This film has so much going for it, it works well for the little 'uns (although there is a scene towards the end which could be a little tough for them emotionally), but is equally decent for those of us that have a little more of an adult sensibility. For a start it riffs away on some of the better film trilogies. The opening sequence is from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there are references to Mission Impossible and just like Toy Story 2 the original Star Wars trilogy.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, the story this time round is that Andy (the boy who owns the titular toys), is now all growed up and leaving home for collage. Obviously not being the type of man gimp that would work at Pixar he isn't going to take his toys with him, so he opts for the lazy bugger option of bunging them all in a bin bag and heaving them up into the loft. Except (drum roll), things don't quite pan out that way, and a series of events see our toys end up in a play center run by a big old cuddly teddy bear called Lotso. Now of course things are never simple and it turns out that Lotso is in fact nutso, and the TS gang need to hot foot it back to Andy's house before he leaves for collage.

So straight away Toy Story 3 sets up a tension filled plot, the ticking clock plot device being one of the better ones to use to propel things forward. The whole film zips across the screen at perfect speed, the tone and pacing being spot on. Most of our favourite characters return, although I have to say I did miss Wheezy. That was more than made up for with (for me), a heart stopping moment when Totoro from My Neighbour Totoro makes a cameo. Best moment of the film for me that was. Of course there are a whole stack of new characters, all carefully written and voiced, so that even if they only have one line, it's a killer line. Just to slip back to that earlier thought about Star Wars references, Big Baby is the Darth Vader to Lotso's Emperor - don't worry it makes sense once you've seen the film. As I said this was a wonderful film, from the opening shot right the way through to the last, where the (virtual) camera pans up to a blue sky dotted with white clouds, which echoes the first shot from the original Toy Story. Perfect, just perfect.

Paprika (2006) - Satoshi Kon

Whatever way you look at it I'm always behind when it comes to watching films. It can take me years to get around to watching something that I ordered with the express purpose of watching as soon as it landed on my doormat. Plus how on earth are you supposed to justify watching one film over another? Just what is the criteria for choosing a film to watch when you get in from work? There have been times when I have spent half a day wondering what to watch when I get in, only for me to change my mind as I'm about to put it in the DVD player and stick in a Laurel & Hardy film instead.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make here is that I love anime, Japanimation or whatever it is the hipsters are calling it this week. This was recommended to me years back by a friend who is up on all of this stuff (along with jungle/desert based action films), and here we are all this time later and I've only just watched it, and of course it was every bit as good as he said it was.

As per usual with this genre it's as mad as David Lynch and Terry Gilliam on hallucinogens, and then some. Marching frog band? Check. Wheelchair bound bloke moving around the room with plant roots instead of legs? Check. Nudity, but no sex organs? Double check. In a nut shell it's all about some little gizmo called a DC Mini, that allows you to share your dreams with friends. Now in time honoured tradition said gizmo is half inched by some wrong man mental, who wants to destroy the world/create a new world/or something, I didn't quite catch what his dastardly plan was in the end. So plenty of 'are we dreaming or aren't we?' shenanigans crop up along with some massively far out visuals. The weird thing for me is I was able to follow the plot without the slightest difficulty. I say weird since I find anime pretty hard to follow since I tend to allow it to wash over me and just sink into the glorious images. So much so that when something happens that needs my brain to be firing on all cylinders, I get caught out and feel more than a little stupid.

Now you know you are onto a winner with a film when it finishes and you wished you had the time to just put it back on and watch it again. Even better than that is when you're only half way through and you start to think about when you can squeeze another viewing in. That's exactly how I felt when watching this, and of course the only down side to this film was the fact that now there is another director on that already huge list of mine, whose films I need to see. Oh well, one door closes while another opens I guess.