Showing posts with label Zachary Levi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zachary Levi. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 April 2022

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

Year:  2022

Director:  Richard Linklater

Screenplay:  Richard Linklater

Starring:  Milo Coy, Glen Powell, Zachary Levi, Jack Black

Running Time:  98 minutes

Genre: Coming-of-age, animation


Houston, 1969:  Nine year old Stan (Coy) lives with his family near the NASA complex, and, like everyone else, is fascinated by the impending Apollo 11 Moon launch.  As lift off approaches, Stan imagines himself as an astronaut travelling to the Moon.


Loosely based on the childhood of writer, director and producer Richard Linklater, the film interweaves a warmly nostalgic look at being a child in 1969 with a fictional story of a nine year old boy who is persuaded by NASA to be the actual first person on the Moon, because they made the space capsule too small for an adult.  Narrated by Jack Black as an adult Stan looking back, the film is at it's best in it's look at Stan's daily life in 1969 and the hype surrounding the Moon landing, which is ever present.  Stan's family live in the shadow of NASA, and his Dad works on the Apollo 11 mission, and most of Stran's friend's parents work at NASA at some capacity.  It does acknowledge some of the troubles in America at the time: protests, assassinations, riots and the constant presence of the Vietnam war.  It also touches on the fact that the Moon landings were controversial, a lot of people thought that it was a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.  Also there is the fact that Stan's world is quite dangerous.  There is frequent corporal punishment, from teachers, parents and friend's parents, and the kids live a kind of carefree existence where they are exposed to risks that would be unthinkable to 21st century parents.  However, for the most part, it depicts the world of the 1960s as an idyllic time.  The film is animated in a technique called 'rotoscoping' where scenes are shot with live actors and then the animation is traced over the footage.  Linklater had previously used the technique in Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). The animation is particularly effective in the frequent clips from movies and TV shows, as well as news footage.  The performances are good, and, mixing the historical with the personal, the film is a warm look at a very particular time and place.


 

Milo Coy in Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

Tuesday, 23 April 2019

Shazam!

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  David F. Sandberg
Screenplay:  Henry Gayden, from a story by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, based on a character created by Bill Parker and C. C. Beck for DC Comics
Starring:  Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Djimon Hounsou
Running Time:  130 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, action adventure, comedy, superhero

In present day Philadelphia, 14 year old foster kid Billy Batson (Angel) runs into trouble with the law while searching for his birth mother.  He is placed in a group foster home, run by kindly Victor (Cooper Andrews) and Rosa Vasquez (Marta Milans).  Billy reluctantly befriends nerdy superhero fan Freddy (Grazer), although he is wary about getting close to anyone.  One day, while on the subway, Billy is transported to a strange temple run bay an ancient wizard named Shazam (Hounsou), who has been searching for one truly good person who is "pure of heart" and who can become his champion and defeat the powerful Seven Deadly Sins.  When Billy says the name "Shazam" he is transformed into an adult superhero (Levi). 

This is an enjoyable superhero film, which comes across at times as a superpowered remake of Big (1988), which is referenced in one scene.   It adopts a lighter, more comedic, tone than most of the other recent movies based on DC Comics.  However it is darker and more gritty than it initially appears, and has surprising emotional heft at times.  There is a lot of fun in the scenes where Billy is testing out his new superpowers, and the story is enjoyable and satisfying.  The performances are good, and the child actors really work well together, with Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer being particularly good.  Zachary Levi is fun and charismatic as Billy's superhero form, and Mark Storng makes a suitably menacing villain.  Djimon Hounsou provides the appropriate gravitas as the ancient mystic. 
With a running time of over two hours, the film does feel stretched, and the climax does fall into the almost inevitable trap of superhero films of feeling like an extended special effects showreel.  It also has the problem of being a superhero origin story and having to hit the prerequisite beats to establish the characters, their powers and their world.  Another thing that I liked about the film was that, while it is set in the shared DC Comics Universe, and there are references to the other characters, the film is pretty much self-contained.  You don't need to have seen any other films in order to enjoy this.   
Just a note:  There are two post credit sequences.  One in the middle of the credits and one at the very end.

Jack Dylan Grazer and Zachary Levi in Shazam!