On the couch

I hate to have my heart warmed. It’s one of the few cinematic experiences that really disagrees with me. Terrify me, thrill me, revolt me or amuse me, I don’t care what you do so long as my heart-strings remain unplucked.
This detestation most likely stems from sub-par heartwarmers fumbling at my feelings like a blind man with no thumbs trying to unravel a knot, throwing the kitchen sink and its cute but cancer-riddled puppy at the screen in a desperate attempt to squeeze a tear out of the audience.
While it was borne in the arms of lousy films, this cynicism has infected my appreciation of many more modern classics. ET annoyed me. Wall-E bored me and both Finding Nemo and March of the Penguins made me want to buy a novelty film tie-in stuffed animal and kick it out the window.
In short – I don’t like cute.
This made the prospect of sitting down to watch Pixar’s latest opus, Up, something of a wearisome chore. Made worse by the fact that I stood up from my sofa 96 mintes later with a heart as warmed and satisfied as a cat after an afternoon perched atop a particularly comfortable pile of laundry.
Up opens with a condensed history of Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) as he grows from a shy young boy obsessed with exploration to a recently bereaved old coot whose life, while happy, never allowed him to fulfill his promise to take his departed missus, Ellie, to the fabled Paradise Falls.
Now a widower, and a grumpy one at that, Carl takes a final shot at happiness by attaching hundreds of helium-filled baloons to his house, rigging it to be an impromptu flying machine and heading to the Falls.
The perfect plan falters when he finds a  young cub scout, Russell (Jordan Nagai), stowed away on his porch. A storm and a crash landing later, the pair find themselves faced with adventure in Paradise Falls and the usual feel-good lessons that Disney/Pixar films drum into you.
So far, so blah? I’m afraid not. Up triumphs in its tiny, personal moments that are littered like gold nuggets throughout the film. While the story is a fairly rollicking good time, the quiet bits when Carl has a sad moment remembering his missus actually make you care. It’s easier to empathise with a man, even a cartoon man, who has felt some loss than, say, a talking car or a toy cowboy.
Pixar seem to have taken up Disney’s mantle of elegant spectacle with Up being the film company’s crowning achievement – a simple story with true warmth, character and humanity.
And it’s heartwarming to boot. There, I said it.
From that world of wonder, adventure and wholesome good fun to, as Monty Python might say, something completely different.
A Perfect Getaway is a tension-laden honeymoon frightmare that manages to exceed any and all expectations you might have of it, thanks to excellent performances from Steve Zahn and Timothy Olyphant.
Newlyweds Cliff and Cydney (Zahn and Jovovich) are celebrating their honeymoon with a romantic ramble aroud the islands of Hawaii.
While on Oahu to go hiking to an isolated beach, the pair have a bit of a nasty meeting with another couple and hear about a brutal double murder on the main island. Rattled by both the news and the antics of the other travellers, they consider abandoning the trip altogther before hooking up with mouthy ex-soldier Nick (Olyphant) and his sweet as pie girlfriend Gina. Initially charming, both start to reveal characteristics that wouldn’t be out of place in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – fondness for knives, familiarity with gutting animals – and Cliff and Cyndey start to worry that they’re trapped in the forest with a pair of killers.
What’s most impressive about A Perfect Getaway is the amount of tension heaped upon the viewer and the manner in which it is created and maintainted. No easy shocks are exploited and instead the shiftiness of Nick and the Cliff’s suspicious nature make even the briefest “peeing behind a bush” scene a fraught affair.
Simply and effectively shot, director David Twohy makes good use of the spectacular locations in Hawaii and a cast ranging in talent from competant to excellent. While the film’s ending mightn’t come as a surprise, there’s enough tension along the way to make a bit of predictability a welcome end to a nail-biting ride.