Puss in Boots carries some of the humor of the Shrek films, for which it's a pseudo-prequel, but it has a bit more gravitas perhaps than... well the memory of those films if not the actual films--when I think about the first Shrek, there were a few sequences that tried to turn the drama up, put some real emotion into it, but it seems like the series depended more on amusing sight-gags and jokes more than, say, character growth. Puss in Boots is no less plot-driven, but the character of Humpty Dumpty, for example, has more depth than one might expect from these films. Still, he's available for simple jokes--his Golden Egg costume, for one obvious one (that probably should have been in the trailers... was Humpty Dumpty even in the trailers?)--as are Puss and Kitty Softpaws. There are some nice visuals here that would probably look good in 3D (though I didn't see it in 3D). The plot, while straightforward, isn't simplistic. All in all, a good family film, with a few good jokes for the adults.
In Time is a fairly straightforward critique of capitalism--one character even refers to the use of time as money as "Darwinian capitalism." The film has something serious to say, or a few somethings actually, but it's prettied up with a nice sci-fi veneer and the plot-necessary 25-years old cast. Still, I wonder if there isn't a big part of the potential audience that a) won't get it, or b) won't agree with it, so much so that the audience that might do both is limited... and, being science fiction, the film's audience is already limited. Many who saw The Truman Show might not have noticed commentary on our obsession with television, and many who see this won't get the capitalism thing... or will get hit over the head by it without quite recognizing it for what it is.
There are some good performances here, though some interactions between Timberlake and Seyfried draw attention to the triteness of some of the dialogue. There is some fault in the writing in taking a rather obvious metaphor and trying to work around it without outright commenting on it too often... that isn't to say they don't comment on it, but it's not like there are long monologues about the evils of capitalism... more like an assumption that capitalist greed=bad, rebellion against the system=good. I'm simplifying more than the film necessarily does, but the film also simplifies more than it necessarily has to. Still, this isn't a shallow action film but rather a thinkpiece pretending to be one.
Melancholia, on the other hand, does not pretend for even a moment that it's a shallow, audience-friendly film. It's first half, focused on Kirsten Dunst's Justine, is an extensive exploration of depression and the effect it can have on those around you, and it's about as bleak as one can get from a feature film. It is worth mentioning that this is not an American film, of course. Though filmed in English, this is a Lars Von trier film, a European film (for all that label usually means). The film takes its time (and, most people in the audience will think it's taking theirs as well) and at the point the subject turns to metaphor--a planet hurtling toward Earth effecting Justine and her sister, Charlotte Gainsbourg's Claire (the focus of the second half of the film)...
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