In honor of At the Movies, reviews by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips of the new Disney film Tangled. I began this movie with trepidation - Why such liberties with the Rapunzel story? Why so much cheeky modern flourishing and implied sarcasm. Is this Shrek in disguise? Princess and the Frog scatterlogic narrative? Why is the film not called Rapunzel? Oh! No!

However...

The humor is less crass and more balanced with the rest of the film than the trailer might lead you to believe. Sidekicks are charming. Animation is glossy without getting too overwhelming, reminiscent of new classic Disney with nods to old classic Disney - though sometimes I felt like I was in a WOW instance. The music is familiar Menken and still memorable. Plus, the twisted mother daughter relationship puts all the academic theory of Disney films up front and center. My 16 year old dis-enfranchised self, demurred in the onslaught of all this sweetly updated, yet satisfyingly nostalgic honey, and allowed me an hour and some moments of pure, unadulterated, pre-adolescent pleasure.

Sumptuous and slightly cold, I Am Love is marred with fingerpointing in places that  didn't quite need it. Perhaps the director was afraid the audience wouldn't get the point - times gone stagnant, love gone stale, little thoughts and expressions bristling through a dusty tapestry of omerta. Nevertheless, the film features, for once, Tilda being elegant - feminine even, in a reserved way, in fantastic minimalist clothing, with long hair - though not, arguably, presented at her actor-ly best given the material. The real stars of the film are eloquently material - the spectacle of the staid, incredibly luxe, fascist palace juxtaposed with the a la moment, molecularly savvy, and personal food of today's locavore chefs. Ostensibly, the story here is about sensations, but all the gilding says the real battle is between the new money and the old.

Film egghead context aside, watching Copie Conforme is to marvel at the prowess of Juliette Binoche, flagrantly and effortlessly emoting in three languages about the devastating power of the failed relationship. The hesitantly structured film leaves very basic questions unanswered as it erases divisions between people, thoughts, places and time, and thus allows the actors to inhabit archetypes in archetypal moments against one another. Almost a web-of-stream-of-consciousness or an inquiry on the free flowing nature of pathology and thought, the film tangles with the reactive in life, those fleeting hidden recollections and musings that somehow end up defining our outward actions. Motives inside out.