Inside Out (2015)

My son is two years old and my wife and I decided it will be a good idea on a random Saturday afternoon to take him to go see “Inside Out”. His first movie theater experience. That was one of the best ideas of our lives! No one could have planned a better movie to watch with your calm and pleasant toddler. Parents and film critics will both agree that this film is entertaining, lovable, and full of wonders to get you thinking about how the brain works. This film will get you feeling every emotion possible. That’s a lot for a movie to do, but it does it!

Joy, (Amy Poehler) one of the five emotions inside a pre-teen girl’s head named Riley, sets out on an adventure to try to stop the pre-teen from making life-altering mistakes. She tries to keep all of the other emotions calm, but emotions tend to get the better of her. Literally! It’s really funny how that happens. Everything Joy does affects the pacing, and everything in this film affects our own emotions. I sound like a broken record, and I don’t care. This film is a huge success with getting us to laugh and cry at the right and appropriate moments. Pixar! You always do that to me!

This next paragraph is a spoiler. Beware! Bing Bong (Richard Kind) comes into the plot halfway into the film and plays a pivotal role in helping Joy in her journey to save Riley. Bing Bong plays the imaginary friend who is part elephant and part cotton candy who is the happiest and silliest creature known to man. But his grit comes into play when he sacrifices himself so Joy can succeed in her mission. What makes “Inside Out” so moving and hits the heart big time is that Bing Bong doesn’t come back. His sacrifice is permanent, which makes this movie feel all the more real.

Inside out is real enough to love over and over again. And my son will watch it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. And I will too.

“Inside Out”

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

To say that “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is an action-packed film would be an understatement. There is a lot of it in this film. Hovercraft ships fall from the sky. Chase scene after scene with bullets going everywhere. And a lot of visual effects. I pretty much expected that when I walked into the movie theater and sat in my seat with my popcorn and lemonade. With all of the visual effects and action scenes put aside, the story holds up. It kept me entertained with the acting and clever dialouge between Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). I was quite pleased with them on screen together. It balances out fairly well with Robert Redford playing the business executive Alexander Pierce.

Now that the good notes are done, I need to get down and dirty with some of the major faults of this film. I’m really getting tired of seeing people die on screen and then come back. Spoilers ahead. Nick Fury gets ambushed by Hydra and is presumed dead. For more than half the film I was thinking that Marvel had finally accepted to kill off lead protagonists to create life-like tension. It wasn’t meant to be. Fury faked his death so he could find out who the real villain was within S.H.I.E.L.D.. All of the pain and weight of the tragedy in the film was gone and not part of my psyche anymore. I was very disappointed that Marvel messed with my feelings.

Marvel didn’t stop there. A character who we watched die from “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011) comes back in the sequel messing with my mind a little more. I really doubt that anybody is really dead in Marvel. Just watch “Thor” (2011) and “Thor: The Dark World” (2013) and you’ll see what I mean. Marvel films aren’t the only films guilty of this “not really dead” movement. It’s moved to “Star Trek: Into Darkness” (2012) and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014). TV has sinned more in this category than anyone else. This is why I love Quentin Tarantino films so much. Dead people stay dead and death is no respecter of protagonists or antagonists. It makes it more real. Something Marvel can use before it’s too late.

Chris Evans in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”