Hex Demented

So, it finally happened. After managing to write a couple of normal, reasoned pieces for the Hex Dimension, I've slipped back into my old ways and written a couple of preposterous rambling essays too. It barely took a month!

The first of these is a review of Sanctum 2 - but it's also a comment on the Wii-U and asymmetric gaming - but it's also a treatise on gaming as an aspect of marriage! It sounds pretty stupid and it probably is, but it's still less rediculous than my second piece, which is a review of a film that doesn't even exist. It's basically Spider-Man fan-fiction. You should read it!

In slightly less demented news, we're continuing our weekly recommendations. Here's some of our favourite comics and books and, if you want to see me completely embarass myself, you can also read my defense of Michael Bay in this week's action movie picks.

Thats it I'm afraid. Just realised this is the first post in a month. I'll try to be more thorough from now on and link to every Hex piece when it goes up, rather than three weeks later. Next up is a piece on Agents of SHIELD and, as always, you can subscribe for more.

A Few Minor Updates

Hello everyone, I'm back!
Just wanted to throw a quick update out there before I get properly back into things. Hex Dimension have got a lot of cool stuff going on at the moment, and I wanted to highlight some of it.

First up is our new recommendation features. Every week the team get together and each write something about the stuff we've been watching, reading or playing. For me, with my notoriously low writing-speed and tendancy to go on a bit, these bitesized recommendations are a godsend, and I'm having a lot of fun with them.
You can check out the first three posts here: dealing with books, films and games respectively. I've written stuff for two of those, but I'm not gonna tell you which.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the new Hex Dimension newsletter. Now you can keep up-to-date with all the site's best content in one handy weekly email! There really is some awesome stuff on this site, and I hope you'll check it out.
For your regular helping of deep-fried geek, you can sign up right here.

That's it for Hex-related stuff, but I'm sure there's something else I wanted to mention. What was it? Hmm. I think it was something pretty major...

Oh well, I'm sure it'll come back to me.

The Lego Movie Review

Do you want to see a grown man explode with joy over a film about little plastic bricks?
If so, you've come to the wrong place.

Not that I didn't do that - that is exactly what I did. And you can read all about in my review over at Hex Dimension!

Read my review here!

NerdTech in 2014

Frequent visitors to this blog (all four of you) have probably noticed that there's not been a lot going on since November, and that what little has been happening has been happening late. The reason for this, as I'm sure my friends (all two of you) know, is that I am getting married.

It turns out, shockingly, that weddings are a hell of a lot of work. We've barely had any time for ourselves amid all the paper-folding, food-tasting and horrendous arguments about shoes. Any free time we have had we've mainly spent panicking that we were forgetting to do something else. Blogging, let alone going to the cinema, has been out of the question, if only because we haven't had the energy. Like a black-hole, this event is swallowing up every moment of our lives, and nothing can escape its pull.

However, as we approach the event horizon of that black-hole - the terrifying 22nd of March - time itself is beginning to warp and bend. We keep finding extra hours here and there, and we even rediscovered something called a "weekend". With most of the big stuff either out of the way or yet to begin, I can finally sit down and write some of the things I've wanted to write all year. I still don't have time to really do them justice (I am an incredibly slow writer) but hopefully I can get a few of the main ideas across.
So here, without further ado, is a taste of the blogs I might have written if I wasn't so blissfully in love:


Most Interesting Film of 2013

This is something I started last January as a companion piece to my Film of the Year stuff. I gave the award to Prometheus, an insane contradiction of a movie that I haven't stopped thinking about (or loudly deriding) since.
You might think, based on the number of pieces I've written about it, that Man of Steel would be the equivalent film of 2013. And you'd be dead wrong. Being interesting is the one thing Snyder's punchfest can't be accused of - it's just way too boring.

No, the 2013 award actually goes to Star Trek: Into Darkness. I only wrote about this film once, when I gave it a very positive review, but my feelings since then have become a bit more complicated. Its clear, on reflection and certainly on a second viewing, that this film simply doesn't make sense.
There's a bunch of reasons why - ranging from a dumb character reveal that doesn't actually affect the story, to a violent disregard for Star Trek lore and, indeed, science - but the main problem is that there are people in the torpedoes.

There are people in the torpedoes.

Everything that stems from that is just nonsense. Why Khan puts them there is nonsense. Why Marcus puts them on the Enterprise is nonsense. How the Enterprise is supposed to fire them with no fuel-compartment is nonsense. Why everyone expects them to use all seventy-two is nonsense. Why anyone would want them to use all seventy-two is nonsense. It's all nonsense.

But the interesting thing - the reason it gets this award - is that, somehow, Into Darkness still works. The film thunders along at such a pace that you don't notice this stuff at all, and even if you do notice, it doesn't detract from the enjoyment. It's a film with serious problems - deep, core, fundamental problems - yet it plays perfectly, every time. I have no idea how that dichotomy works, or how it's even possible, and that puzzle is what's so interesting!
What is clear is that, while JJ Abrams may have an unhealthy fascination with unopened boxes and incompetent writers, he's a bloody magician of a director.


The Year of the Doctor

2013 was the year I fell out of love with Doctor Who. But, after the excellent anniversary episode, it won me back. After such a rocky year, though, I was very wary that the Christmas episode - not to mention Matt Smith's final appearance - could easily go in either direction.
Happily, The Time of the Doctor was far more in line with November's offering than with the lacklustre series before it. Like the anniversary, I felt it was a fitting end to a particular era and a respectful nod to the history of the programme.
Also like the anniversary, we finally got a few answers about longstanding questions. Not least of which was the actual Question. The explanations of the Silence, both as a species and as a religion, were also pretty damn clever and never felt like the handwaves they probably were.

The only real problem I had (other than Clara continuing to be Clara) was that this episode completely altered a Fixed Point in Time. That's pretty much the cardinal sin of Doctor Who. We'd seen the Doctor's grave on Trenzalore - very very important things had occurred there - and now it never existed. That planet should have been crawling with Time Reapers long before the credits rolled.
But even that, huge bugbear that it is, wasn't enough to bother me when the rest was so good.

As for Matt Smith's big ending, which I've heard quite a few people complain about, I thought it was pretty spot on. I would have loved it even more, though, if they'd been ballsy enough to end it with the explosion. If that shoe had been Capaldi's, as we all thought it was going to be, it could have been almost as perfect as Eccleston's farewell (I don't think they're ever going to top that). But I understand that we needed our last moments to be with Smith as he was during the series, not buried under Prometheus makeup - and at least it wasn't as obnoxious as all the fanservice bollocks we got with Tennant.
Speaking of the makeup, I've heard a lot of complaints that the defeat of the Daleks was anticlimactic - that it was just an old man yelling at the sky. Well, yes, that's exactly what it was. That's exactly what it always is. The Doctor is, and always has been, just an old man shouting defiantly at the stars.
That's exactly what Doctor Who is about; and that's why I love it.


DreamWorks' Daddy-Issues

Over Christmas, I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 for the second time, and came to a shocking revelation about DreamWorks Animation:

Shrek is a film about an ogre breaking free of fairytale convention to rescue a princess and defeat a prince. Shrek 2 is about Fiona's parents.
Madagascar is a film about the institutionalisation of zoo animals, and how unsuited they are to their natural habitat. Madagascar 2 is about Alex's parents.
Kung Fu Panda is a film about a group of lost souls, who all just happen to be kung fu masters, coming to accept themselves in different ways. Kung Fu Panda 2 is about Po's parents.
How to Train your Dragon is a film about one single friendship leading to peace and understanding between two eternally warring races. I'll give you one guess what How to Train your Dragon 2 is about.

Mr Katzenberg, sir? I think you may need help. It's obvious that you have some deep-seated issues regarding your parents, and I worry that this hangup is doing more damage than good; both to you and to your films. With Kung Fu Panda 3 looking like it will also focus on Po's parents, I urge you to speak with somebody. With time and counselling, perhaps you can escape from this repetitive (and frankly lazy) storytelling cul-de-sac.


Sherlock and the Mystery of the Missing Mysteries

Now, this is where things get interesting.
I didn't like series three of Sherlock very much, and I wanted to write a piece explaining why. The thing is that, unlike the other stuff I've mentioned, I actually did write this one. I just didn't write it here.

In a shocking twist of fate, I have been assimilated into the Hex Dimension; the same sinister hivemind that consumed my brother and a bunch of my friends. I put up a fight for a while, but the offer of a larger audience - of more people to shout my grumpy opinions at - eventually won me over and I quietly succumbed to the beast.
So when I finally did write about Sherlock, and what bothered me about this latest series, I did so at Hex Dimension.

Read it here!


Onwards and Upwards

You've probably noticed that my stuff tends to ramble and meander and generally go on for too long. This is a particular problem with the wedding swallowing up all my time, but it's an issue all on its own, too. Hex Dimension has a tight framework of style-guides and word-limits which, frankly, is something I probably need in my writing, and certainly need right now. Not to mention that it just feels great to be part of a bigger, busier, more vibrant site.
As a result, I'm hoping to keep writing for Hex. I'm working on a couple of pieces about gaming (something I've never really written about on this blog) and I'll be reviewing The Lego Movie in a few days (squee!).

That doesn't mean this blog is ending, though. While I'll be posting short opinion pieces and reviews to Hex, anything that's too long or too ranty or simply too personal will still be posted here on NerdTech. On top of that, Mangaphobia will not be going anywhere (I'll be writing about Death Note after the wedding) and I'll endeavour to post a link to anything I write elsewhere.

In the meantime, though, all the action is over at Hex Dimension. The site has a great new look, a great team of writers, and tonnes of stuff on comics, games, TV, books, and any and all things nerdy. I'm enjoying it there and I hope you will too!

Come and join us!

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Review

The second Hobbit film is such a massive improvement that, now we've seen the film it leads into, the first one will either seem much better than we remember or much worse.
I actually really like An Unexpected Journey - it was one of my favourite films of last year - but there's no denying that it doesn't even come close to the heights of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Desolation of Smaug still hasn't reached those magnificent peaks, but it at least feels like it's in the same mountain-range.

Where Journey, with its multiple extended intros, tried to ease us back into Middle Earth gently, Desolation plunges us straight into the world of the original films. I knew where we were before the title card even came up - we know this place, we've been here before, we recognise that guy with the carrot.
By the end of this opening flashback, I was already more immersed and invested in this world than I had been for the whole first movie. Last time felt like visiting an old stomping-ground - this one feels like coming home to family.
It's not just a matter of familiarity - though that's certainly a part of it - it's more about tone. New locations like the dwarf city of Erebor or the elf halls of Mirkwood feel more like Lord of the Rings than anything in Unexpected Journey. Even though we've never seen them before, the flooded slums of Laketown have the same tactile feel as Edoras in The Two Towers. It feels like the same world, in a way that Goblin Town never quite managed.

This new depth stretches to the characters, too. My big complaint last year was that I felt nothing for any of the thirteen dwarves - they were so weakly characterised that I couldn't tell most of them apart. In Desolation, as the group begins to argue and split (much like the Fellowship) each dwarf gets their own distinct character-moments and traits.
Did you know Oin is a medic? Or that Gloin is hoarding money for his family? Neither did I, but we do now!
We even gain some real insight into Thorin, who was just a bare archetype in Journey, as we see him struggle with his legacy. Richard Armitage was always great in the role, but this time he actually gets time to breathe and explore who this dwarf is.

New characters, like Bard the Surprisingly Welsh Bowman and Stephen Fry's slimy Laketown mayor, also feel more fleshed out and real, despite lacking the oh-so-drawn-out introductions of the first film. Evangeline Lilly is excellent as a new character who wasn't even in the books, melodramatic subplot and all, and Orlando Bloom is actually pretty great returning as Legolas. Though he clearly looks older, it's fun to see him as a younger elf, totally prejudiced against the race who would produce his best friend.

But the most important new character, of course, is the dragon. Chances are that's what you came to see - whether you're a full-on Tolkienite or just a casual film fan, this is the big one.

First, a caveat: I hate when films give dragons two legs. I hate it. They look awkward and they walk stupidly and they don't have the regal, powerful quality that dragons are supposed to have. Technically, they're not even dragons; they're wyverns - an entirely different species!
Everything from Harry Potter to Skyrim gets this wrong and it annoys the hell out of me. But it really looked like the Hobbit would be the one to break the cycle. Tolkien said Smaug had four legs, and he has always been represented that way - in fact, we see a drawing of a four-legged Smaug on Thorin's map in the first film, and in the Erebor flashback we actually see his forelegs!
Yet, at some point between the release of the first film and this one, they changed his design. Smaug is a wyvern now, with rediculously long pterodactyl arms that look even more stupid than usual. As he lumbered gracelessly around on his wing-joints I was hugely disappointed and annoyed.

So please understand that it is a big deal when I say, despite all this - despite not strictly even being one - Smaug is the single greatest dragon ever committed to screen.
Smaug, as Bilbo himself says, is stupendous. The effects are stunning (as you'd expect from Weta) and, beyond the insulting lack of legs, the design is pretty much perfect. His face is beautifully expressive, with horns and spikes that bristle and flatten with his mood. It's rare for a dragon to give a performance at all, but we've certainly never seen one this good. At least some credit goes to Benedict Cumberbatch, who not only voiced but also motion-captured the part, and his excellent work clearly shines through Smaug's reptilian features. He's proud and vain and greedy and jealous and just wonderful.
Smaug, like Gollum before him, becomes just another character in this film. You forget that this towering monster isn't real; and that's incredible.

His first scene - a tense standoff with Bilbo atop his mountain of treasure - is the film's standout moment and, were it not for Gravity, would be easily the best sequence of this, or any year. It's perfect - ripped straight from the minds of anyone who's read the book - and if Desolation had ended there, as it easily could, it would have been a perfect movie.

Apparently someone decided that the film had to end with an action scene, though, because there's a whole half-hour after this that feels unnecessary and tacked-on. The dwarves battle Smaug through what looks like the droid factory from Star Wars: Episode II. The scene is messy and chaotic, with nothing properly explained, and it ends in a way that's completely bizarre. It didn't need to be here and it really undercuts the fear and wonder of that treasure-hoard scene. For me, it spoiled the whole film a little, which is a shame because it got everything else so right.

What compounds this is that the rest of the movie's action is excellent. When they're fighting orcs and giant spiders early on it's fast and frantic, but it's always clear and structured. There's some really good stuff with the elves too, with Legolas getting a lot of great action gags.
The centrepiece is an incredible sequence where the dwarves, in barrels, tumble down a raging river. First they're chased by elves, then they're attacked by orcs, and it's always finding ways to keep the action fresh and inventive. Heads are stepped on, axes are passed back and forth, and the least-likely dwarf unexpectedly steals the show. There's so much going on but, despite the manic creativity, we never get lost - the execution is spot on. The whole sequence is pure joy from start to finish.
Chances are that the barrel scene was envisioned as the ending of the first movie, back when they were only planning two. Tight and thrilling - what an ending it would have been!
Unfortunately it now only serves to highlight how the Smaug fight, presumably a rushed addition to tie up this new middle film, feels sloppy and underdeveloped. The last twenty minutes really don't do the preceding film justice.

But that's the only chink in Desolation's armour; the single hole in Smaug's diamond waistcoat. Otherwise, this movie is impeccable.
Peter Jackson has a stronger grip on his tone this time, delivering a much more solid experience and a far more textured world. The action is terrific (with that one exception), the characters are finally compelling, and the dragon - dear sweet gods, that dragon - is everything you ever dreamed.

NerdTech's Film of the Year 2013!

It's been one year, give or take, since this site randomly turned into a movie blog for no reason. The first stuff on here was the 2012 Film of the Year awards so, naturally, we're marking our first anniversary with the 2013 awards!

The rules are the same as last year: this is not the best films of the year, it's the films that had the biggest effect on me - be that emotional, exciting, hilarious or terrifying. The best film I saw this year, objectively speaking, actually is on this list - but, because it's an intentionally subjective list, it barely made it into the top 3.
Gut reactions are the order of the day.


5: Iron Man 3 - Shane Black

It's been a pretty crappy year for blockbusters. Star Trek was fun but, in retrospect, indefensibly stupid; Man of Steel was a boring, self-serious mess; and GI Joe was just plain terrible. Even Pacific Rim, much as I loved it, peaked too soon and sagged at the end. Thank Odin, then, for Marvel.

Of their two offerings this year (three if you count Agents of SHIELD) Iron Man 3 was the clear winner. Shane Black made a superhero movie that breaks all the rules and never does what it's supposed to; at once both a part of the Marvel universe and its own crazy thing.
Iron Man, the guy in the suit, is barely in it - his biggest villain, likewise - and somehow that's actually to the movie's benefit. Black's film goes out of its way to be different, and the result is a fresh and unusual take on an overplayed genre. Even if it did upset a few people.

Many franchises this year split their fanbase down the middle, and Iron Man was no exception. Man of Steel and Star Trek both delighted and disgusted fans in equal measure. But where they caused divisions with their plotholes and problems, Iron Man 3 did it on purpose, with a pitch-perfect reveal that flipped everything on its head.
It's that mischievous nature - true to the comics yet completely subverting them - that earns it a place on this list. The fact that it also has a great script, brilliant action, and is often really funny is just the polish on this shiny metal suit.

Read the full review here!


4: Monsters University - Dan Scanlon

I can't say I was thrilled when I heard that they were making a prequel to one of my favourite films. Prequels tend to be a Bad Idea - I can't think of the last one that actually lived up to the original (X-Men: First Class maybe, but that's actually more of a reboot).
And, if we're being honest, MU can't match the pure magic of Monsters Inc. either. But it's different enough and funny enough and, as it hits its final act, clever enough that it never actually matters.

At first glance it's a pretty generic collage movie story, but the specifics of the film and its world make it far more unique and, more importantly, flat-out hilarious. Every moment of the film boasts a joke of some kind - be they tiny visual puns in the background or huge set-piece gags - and every single one lands.
It's Pixar's funniest film but, in true Pixar fashion, they don't let that get in the way of the great characters and their surprisingly heartfelt story. If nothing else, it's great that it keeps surprising us, even though we already know how it ends.

It's quite possible that Monsters University would have made this list merely for being the funniest film of the year but then, in a final act as dramatic as it is unexpected, it cements itself as one of the year's absolute best.

Read the full review here!


3: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Peter Jackson

For a number of reasons - including Christmas, and something you'll see in a moment - I still haven't finished my review of The Hobbit. Because I don't want to spoil that review, which will be up first thing next year, I'll keep this brief.
Just know that, even though I've given it the same ranking, Desolation is the film we all hoped An Unexpected Journey would be - a lighter, less serious tale than Lord of the Rings, but still recognisably set in the same world. Middle Earth is alive again, and everything from the characters to the locations has the depth and texture that the first Hobbit seemed to lack.

But none of that is why it's on this list. It's on this list for Smaug, and that's all you need to know.

Full review soon!


2: Gravity / Rush - Alphonso Cuarón / Ron Howard

This second position was originally going to go to Gravity alone; but then I crashed my car. Suddenly I'm jumping out of my skin every time I see break-lights, and Rush is very much at the forefront of my mind.
Since then I've been trying to rank them properly - to figure out which is better - but it's an impossible choice. Rush is probably the better film, but Gravity is the more powerful experience, and they both work so perfectly. In the end I've decided to cheat: my number 2 goes to immersive, beautiful, terrifying white-knuckle movies. Both of them.

They're very different films, of course. One is a true story that spans years, with a bunch of characters and a lot of talking; the other is a very fictional day-long story, with barely four characters and minimal dialogue. Also one of them happens in space.
But, as I'm lumping them together, they're actually more similar than they might appear. Both films are about their characters' single-minded determination to reach a goal - being World Champion and not dying respectively - and the horrific events that get in their way. By dragging us intimately through their stories, and by getting incredible work from the actors, they both make us care and feel for characters we normally wouldn't, either because we know nothing about them or because they're kind of awful.
The biggest similarity, though, is that they're both just flawlessly executed. Even though Howard uses a thousand shots where Cuarón might use three, every single one of those shots is necessary, meaningful and stunning to look at; and every one propels the film at a breakneck pace. Neither director wastes even a moment.

Despite their huge differences in story and style, these two share a spot because they're both transportive, breathless, powerful movies. And they both scared the shit out of me.

Read the full Gravity review here!
Read the full Rush review here!


1: Wreck-It Ralph - Rich Moore

All my favourite animated films seem to centre on unlikely friendships. Sully and Boo, Lilo and Stitch, Wall-E and Eve, Hogarth and the Giant, Hiccup and Toothless, even Wallace and Gromit. It was probably inevitable that Ralph and Vanellope would jump straight onto that list, too.
What wasn't inevitable is that they would do it with such style.

I don't just mean that it looks gorgeous - though it certainly does, with brilliant design work and ingenious game-like animation - but also the flair with which it pulls off its story. We're rapidly plunged into not one, but a whole handful of worlds, each with their own rules and textures. Characters feel fully-rounded from the first moment they appear. The main villain is somehow set up without us even knowing that there's meant to be one.
It's all just so clever and assured!

Cleverest and most assured of all, though, is how emotional things get. It's very funny the entire time - the whole cast is made up of comedians - and yet it choked me up again and again. That central pairing, for whatever reason, grabbed my heart as only animated odd-couples seem to do.
Often that emotion would come at the expense of scale but here, even at its most quiet and private, this film is never afraid to go big. When it all reaches its tremendous, apocalyptic climax everything, from those intimate emotions to the wonderful designs to tiny ideas we didn't know were important, collide to create an ending both huge and wonderfully personal.
The defining moment of the cinematic year, for me, was when a big dumb guy holding a cookie chanted a totally meaningless mantra, and somehow made it mean so much.

Wreck-It Ralph was the first new film I saw in 2013 - and nothing topped it. Honestly, nothing even came close.

Read the full review here!

Frozen Review

Walt Disney Animation Studios, reborn from the ashes of the early two-thousands, still haven't figured out how to make the songs work. Tangled came the closest, but neither The Princess and the Frog or now Frozen quite capture the magic of the old classics.
I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but the songs don't gel with the rest of the action the way they did in, say, Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast. It might be as simple as the type of music; where Tangled has a fairly traditional feel, Princess had its jazz thing and Frozen is more of a modern pop musical - it's no coincidence that one of the leads is Idina Menzel from Wicked. It might also be a pacing issue; Frozen crams all its songs into the first half, leaving the second half feeling kind of empty, and the last song we hear is a jokey comedy number which just doesn't seem right somehow.

It's clear, though, that Disney is truly passionate about keeping the animated musical alive, long after it was declared dead, and that is a wonderful thing. Maybe they haven't nailed it yet - there's bound to be a few hiccups in this early stage - but they've come damn close, and the fact they're trying at all is a triumph in itself.
Besides, while the songs may not blend seamlessly with the rest of the film, they're still great songs. There's a couple I'll be humming well into next year.

Their real strength, though, is how earnest and heartfelt they are. Every number, bar the aforementioned comedy one, crackles with emotion and really lets us into the hearts of the characters. What we find there isn't always obvious, either. A cute song about building snowmen suddenly becomes incredibly poignant, an even cuter song about snowmen is surprisingly bittersweet, and a duet combines the excitement of one character with the dread of another. The single best sequence in the entire film is when we're expecting one kind of song but get the complete opposite - it's just so unexpected and powerful!

That's sort of Frozen's entire philosophy; to be moving in unexpected ways. We have the traditional Disney setup of a princess with no parents, a handsome prince, a magical curse. But the unexpected part is that there's two princesses, sisters Elsa and Anna, and every part of the story - both the warmth and the conflict - comes from their relationship. Except for one snivelling ambassador, there's not even a villain, and it's amazing how well that works.

When they were younger the sisters were extremely close, as you'd expect, but one day Elsa, the oldest and heir to the throne, suddenly shut herself away and they've barely spoken since. The reason, unbeknownst to Anna, is that her sister can magically manipulate ice and snow. When, as children, those powers almost got Anna killed, Elsa became a recluse to keep her sister safe and try to repress the magic. All Anna knows is that her best friend suddenly shut her out and she misses her deeply.
When Elsa's secret is eventually revealed, in the most explosive and public way possible, she flees to the top of a mountain, accidentally trapping the country in an unending winter. This leaves Anna as the only one who can follow her up there and make things right - and that double meaning of "make things right" is basically the whole point. It's a quest to save the country, sure, but it's equally about saving their broken relationship.

While this sounds pretty heavy - and it is, particularly for Elsa - the film stays light and fun, with Anna almost hyperactive from being cooped up in a castle her whole life with no-one to talk to or play with. The side-characters help with this too, as Anna collects a small posse on her way up the mountain - Kristoff the hunky ice-farmer, Sven the reindeer, and Olaf the comedy snowman (he likes warm hugs) are all very funny and bounce off each other nicely.
While every character is important and has something to do within the story, including a handful of townspeople and the dashing Prince Hans, all of it's ultimately incidental to the central tale of two sisters. We never lose sight of the film's heart.

As a result it's a very touching film but, like Brave last year, the intimate focus leaves everything feeling quite small. There's only a few locations, and travelling between them seems to take very little time (Elsa's mountain must be quite a short one). But, like Brave again, the lack of scale allows for a very fine level of polish, and the emotions are anything but small. Though the finale in particular is technically tiny, it feels big - it's such an emotional moment for the sisters, and it staunchly refuses to take the obvious or traditional way out. It works brilliantly.

In the end, Frozen fully embraces everything that makes Disney musicals great, centring itself around a heartwarming family story, and balancing fun with genuine feeling. But, importantly, it always finds ways to mix those things up - from the number of princesses to the direction of the songs - becoming something unusual and special. This slightly subversive streak runs through everything, right down to the message of the film, which basically boils down to "most Disney movies have a stupid message." Add to that the only Disney song that will ever contain the word "fractal" and it's worth the ticket price already.