Search found 1 match: Gore Verbinski

rango mirrors its chameleon protagonist in moulding a thousand different cinematic influences (leone, jodorowsky and chinatown foremost amongst them) into a pseudo-psychedelic, existential animated western, which matches the idea of making art out of one's own life against the revisionist western's anxiety in the shadow of a mythology and heroism that can never be emulated, because they never existed.

its ecosystem is intricate and evocative, from sparse widescreen compositions of sun-parched landscapes to the crisply-textured minutae of its dried up rickety western town and its amusingly anthropomorphised inhabitants - it's all admirably strange for what's ostensibly a kid's movie, frequently showing moody restraint when given opportunities to pander to the kids with slapstick and cuteness.

but pirates director gore verbinski predictably indulges in visual creativity and action spectacle at the expense of narrative depth/coherence, with a simplistic redemptive arc, conventional romance and feel-good ending doing no justice to the barren setting and heavy themes it allegorises, leaving a film that unlike its protagonist never stops falling short of the stories it measures itself against.