Author: Tim Lilly

I am a videographer and editor based out of the Washington, D.C. area. I write movie reviews and occasionally host a podcast with Mason Manuel of MasonMD.org. I currently work as a Live Event Operator at Verizon.

The Jungle Book (Film Review)

The Jungle Book (dir. Jon Favreau), is pretty much the gritty reboot of the original 1967 animated movie.  Honestly, though, that’s not a bad thing.

For the people who have never seen either movies, The Jungle Book follows the adventures of Mowgli (played by newcomer Neel Sethi), the “man-cub” that has been raised by wolves after being found by Bagheera the panther (Ben Kingsley).  After a tiger named Shere Khan (Idris Elba) discovers this, he vows to kill Mowgli, due to his hatred of men.  What follows is an adventure through the jungle as Bagheera and Baloo the bear (Bill Murray) try to return him back to the man village.

First of all, this movie is a visual treat.  From the first second into the movie, I could not for the life of me figure out what was computer and what was real.  This is the movie’s greatest strength.  When you’re looking at animals talking to each other, you know they’re fake and yet you can’t help but believe they’re real.  They look and behave just like how animals should except for the fact that they talk.  In fact, as I watched Bagheera interact with the world, I couldn’t help but think of my own cats and how they acted.  It was uncanny.  Even how they fought other animals.

The cinematography is simply a wonder to behold.  You feel like you are Mowgli running through the jungle.  I whole heartedly believe that this movie will most likely get a academy nomination.  You feel every hit and every shot is breathtaking.

As further proof of the power of the visuals in the movie, I actually wanted to know more about the animals.  They seem to have so much history and we’re given a lot of information that Mowgli, the main character, doesn’t know.  Yet, there are certainly things left unanswered.  How do Bagheera and Baloo know each other?  What exactly is the nature of their relationship?  Why would Akela take in a man-cub to be part of the pack and protect him so fiercely?  How does Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) hypnotize people like she does?

These questions only add to the mythos and yes it is now a mythos in my mind.  These characters take on a fantastic and mythological standing and the less we know about them, the more we want to know about them.  The only character we actually know about in detail is Shere Khan.  A fascinating story  to be sure but I hope we have more stories in the future.

The only bad thing about this movie is the rather strange and awkward singing number from King Louie (Christopher Walken).  Of course, he sings the song “I Wanna Be Like You,” because it’s the Jungle Book and you need this song.  Actually you don’t.  The song you need is “The Bare Necessities,” which is woven in quite well.  It serves more as character development between Mowgli and Baloo.  “I Wanna Be Like You,” however, comes out of nowhere and is just bizarre.  King Louie was more or less introduced in a rather threatening light and to have him suddenly break out into song is just a complete 180.  It’s jarring and I found myself scratching my head at the absurdity of it.

That is just one bad thing in a movie that I had a great time watching.  It’s fun but also dark, which works for the fairy tale theme, which this is.  This is absolutely a fairy tale and if you remember, fairy tales have darkness.  They are absolutely intense, but they are also fun adventures with happy endings.  The Jungle Book is the epitome of fairy tale made into the visual medium.

Zootopia (Film Review)

As an Asian-American man, I am aware of prejudices and stereotypes.  On my first day of high school, a girl asked me, in all seriousness, if I was a “Jap” or a “Chink.”  She then commented on how my english was “very good.”  I responded by thanking her, as I had been practicing for 15 years.  I guess it should come as no surprise to anyone that I responded very well to Disney’s newest animated movie, Zootopia (directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore).

Zootopia is set in a world where predators and prey of all shapes and sizes live together in harmony.  Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a rabbit who dreams of becoming a police officer for the grand city of Zootopia.  She faces opposition of all kind from her peers, mainly because, well, she’s a rabbit, in a police force mainly populated by lions, rhinos and other large animals.  In an effort to earn her rightful place in the force and prove herself worthy of being on the force to her boss, Chief Bogo (Idris Elba), Judy finds herself trying to solve a series of missing animals with a smooth-talking fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman).

The movie setting is as typical disney as it can be with anthropomorphized animals, while the genre can most readily be described as a mix between buddy comedy with elements of detective neo-noir.  An odd mix to be sure but the movie never shies away from it.  In fact, the one thing I can say about this is that this movie is never subtle.  For underneath this detective fiction is a story about prejudice and stereotyping.

Judy Hopps, being a rabbit, is thought of as weak and small.  Nick Wilde, being a fox, is seen as being sly and a liar.  And this is something that the movie never talk about subtly or mention in passing.  These are things that have shaped these characters lives, and something that they live with and in certain instances, forced to confront.  Though Judy Hopps says that not all foxes are bad or are liars, she still finds herself initially suspicious of Nick, even though he had at that point in the movie not done anything wrong.  This internalized prejudice shapes her personality in a way that even she doesn’t realize.

And if hearing talk about this kind of social issue surprising to hear in a review of a Disney film, you are absolutely allowed to be.  I was absolutely surprised by how unflinching the film is when addressing these issues.  And, in my opinion, that is the correct way to address it.  Children are a lot tougher and smarter than we often give them credit for.  They do tend to understand certain things when we think they shouldn’t or can’t.  Zootopia does something that can make or break a film: talking about the issue in a way that everyone, and I mean everyone, can understand.

I feel that in the future, Zootopia will still be remembered as the animated film with animals that bravely talked about prejudice and stereotypes in a way that most other films would have been too afraid to.  They used a medium as a tool to teach kids an important lesson about it and how best to fix it.  And more importantly, it gave an Asian-American man hope in the human race in general.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (Review)

Kung Fu Panda 3 follows the adventures of the titular Kung Fu Panda, Po (Jack Black).  In this iteration of the series, a villainous water buffalo (I assume) escapes from the Spirit Realm where he was banished in order to steal the Chi of every Martial Arts master in the world and in so doing, become the strongest in the world.  Meanwhile, Po comes across his biological father and leaves with him in order to better understand himself.

I’ve been a long time fan of the Kung Fu Panda series.  The first one I thought was a fun romp in a brand new world of martial arts and animals.  The second is by far my favorite with a surprisingly dark backstory coupled with the lesson that even though “your story may not have a happy beginning, but it doesn’t make you who you are.”  I felt the second movie had the most catharsis for Po as a character, with the conflict of him not knowing who he is to finally realizing that he is who he chooses to be, to me, being a very satisfying arc.

It is sad to say that in my humble opinion, I feel that Kung Fu Panda 3 takes a step backwards from this.  A lot of it stems from the fact that I feel like we’ve been here before.  Again, Po is trying to find out who he is but this time, by trying to find out what it means to be a panda.  Am I the only who feels that this negates the lesson learned at the end of the last film?

In the beginning, Po is sort of forced into the role of being a teacher, which he has great difficulty doing (to hilarious results).  Then the movie takes a left turn by introducing Po’s biological father, Li Shan (Bryan Cranston) and Po goes off to learn about being a panda from him.  Meanwhile, Kai (J.K. Simmons), the aforementioned villain, is wreaking havoc and stealing the chi of several martial arts masters.  Why?  Who knows.  He’s just evil.

The film feels unfocused.  I’m not entirely sure what kind of lesson it’s trying to give because the story meanders about a bunch.  There are a lot of emotional moments and the movie does those moments well, however, I’m not entirely sure how those moments are supposed to connect.  Or maybe its that the conclusion it comes to amounts to pretty much the same conclusion Po came to in the last movie.

Not to say that this movie is terrible.  It is an extremely well done piece of film.  The environments and the action scenes are as breathtaking as the previous films.  Bryan Cranston plays the part of a father trying to bring his family back together to perfection. You can tell that J.K. Simmons was having a lot of fun with the character of Kai, despite the fact that the only thing that made him interesting was his sense of humor.  Otherwise, he’s pretty much the same villain from the first movie.

My favorite part of the film took place within the Spirit Realm, a realm where space and color combine to make a beautiful parallel world.  It is a realm dictated by the spirit of the martial artists that reside within, with Kai’s decaying green energy fighting against Po’s lively golden energy.

This film is not terrible.  It is simply serviceable.  It does the job it set out to do and nothing more.  It didn’t break new ground, but at the same time, I wasn’t expecting it to.  What I got was a fun adventure featuring several characters I enjoy very much in a world I love being in.  What I was expecting, however, was a continuation of the growing maturity the last film showed me.  This was what I was missing when I viewed this film.