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Category Archives: Animated Films
The Two Halves of Inside Out, and Ourselves, that Make a Greater Whole
The best compliment I can give Inside Out is that it would still be a great movie if you lopped half of it off. There’s a worthwhile story to be told about an eleven-year-old girl moving halfway across the country and struggling to adjust to her new environment. The emotional beats of Riley’s story — feeling the need to put on a happy face for the good of her parents, buckling under the pressure, and deciding to run away — are compelling and poignant all on their own.
Likewise, if Inside Out were just a wild romp through the mind of a child, it would still be uproarious and inventive from beginning to end. The movie works just as well as a buddy comedy, with Joy and Sadness traipsing through a colorful labyrinth, leaping over hurdles both literal and metaphorical, and eventually finding common ground. As I discussed on the We Love to Watch Podcast, you could take either of these tales, make it the whole movie, and still create something wonderful and stirring.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies
Tagged Amy Poehler, Film Reviews, Inside Out, Pete Docter, Pixar
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South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut Continues to Give and Point the Finger
Blame TV. Blame your parents. Blame movies. Blame society. Hell, blame Canada. But whatever you do, blame something, and quickly, before someone thinks of blaming you.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut turns 20 this weekend, and for as much as the movie’s Saddam Hussein-heavy, Celine Dion-referencing take on the world is very much of its time, the film nevertheless captures the ways in which American culture would continue to take deeply entrenched, complex cultural problems, and hunt for convenient scapegoats and easy answers in the years to come. There is no issue too inflammatory, no societal malady too multifaceted, that it cannot be oversimplified and laid at the feet of a readily-available boogeyman.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies, Other Animated Shows
Tagged Film Reviews, Matt Stone, South Park, Trey Parker
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Defines Miles Morales at the Same Time It Defines Spider-Man
I’ve seen a lot of Spider-Man. From the three versions of the character who’ve graced the silver screen in recent years, to scores of different animated series, to an endless font of video games and shorts and other material, Marvel and its licensees have given us countless versions of The Webhead. Some kept Spidey in New York, while others sent him off into space. Some framed him as an untested kid in high school, while others made him an accomplished young adult. Some narrowed his world to a localized ecosystem of characters and conflicts, and others expanded to encompass the whole of the Marvel Universe.
But all of them starred Peter Parker as Spider-Man. And as I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, that process of repeat adaptation can’t help but raise the question — what makes each of these characters Spider-Man as we know him? What is the connective tissue that lets each of these adaptations feel of a piece with one another and recognizable as stories about the same character? Is it just the suit, or the web-slinging, or the quips, or is there something more there?
Posted in Animated Films, Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Film Reviews, Marvel, Miles Morales, Peter Parker, Spider-Man
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Moana Is a Cheery Throwback to the Heights of the Disney Renaissance
There is a little bit of magic in Disney films of a certain stripe, when the music swells and the counterpoint kicks in and the protagonist hears the call to adventure and your cold, icy heart can’t help but melt just a little as you feel the hero’s same pull toward the horizon and mix of excitement and trepidation over the sheer possibilities. Moana is filled to the brim with these moments, the kind that make the most of the hero’s journey the films sets its eponymous protagonist on. And it capitalizes on Moana’s unique combination of self-confidence, internal conflict, and gnawing uncertainty, that give her layers and make her a compelling figure.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies
Tagged Animation, Computer Animation, Disney, Duane Johnson, Movie Reviews, Musicals, Walt Disney Animation Studios
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In Batman: The Killing Joke, the Abyss Gazes Back
CAUTION: This review contains major spoilers for Batman: The Killing Joke
The traditional superhero story is a simple one. The bad guy threatens to do some bit of evil; the good guy comes in to stop it, and the day is saved. Lather, rinse, repeat. The costumes change, and so do the capers, but for a while, that was the dependable, well-worn blueprint for the battles between capes and criminals.
And then, somewhere along the line, that started to change. Writers like Alan Moore began to deconstruct those old stories. They started to look at the ways that these battles might not be so weightless, how those heroes and villains might still leave their marks on one another. These artists examined how the good guys could not fight evil day after day, week after week, year after year, and yet come out of those battles unsullied, unblemished, and unscathed.
Batman, after all, fights monsters. How long can you run headlong into battle with monsters before you start to become more monstrous yourself? It’s not every comic book adaptation that drops references to Nietzsche, even when it’s one of his most famous quotes, but it’s appropriate for Batman: The Killing Joke, an animated film adaptation of the Alan Moore classic. Because more than The Joker, more than Batman, more than Jim or Barbara Gordon, it’s a story about what happens to those who fight monsters. It’s a story about the abyss.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Alan Moore, Barbara Gordon, Batgirl, Batman, Commissioner Gordon, DCAU, Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joker
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Ranking: Every Pixar Movie From Worst to Best
With the release of Finding Dory, Andrew Bloom joins Dominick Suzanne-Mayer, Allison Shoemaker, and Derrick Rossignol to rank all of Pixar’s feature films.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies
Tagged Cars, Cars 2, Inside Out, Pixar, Ratatouille, Toy Story, Toy Story 3
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A Christmas Carol (2009): Jim Carrey, Robert Zemeckis, and a Mishmash of Tones
Every modern adaptation of A Christmas Carol starts out at a disadvantage. No matter the strengths of its take on the material, no matter what unique flourishes or embellishments it adds, no matter how novel its interpretation, the new version will inevitably be compared to its hallowed predecessor, so ingrained in the public consciousness that it has become a part of the cherished lore of the holiday season.
I am speaking, of course, of the classic 1992 film, The Muppet Christmas Carol, starring Michael Caine and Kermit the Frog, in the production that forever proved that Dickens’s work is best realized in shades of well-trained British grump and felt.
Despite working in the shadow of that seminal work, writer and director Robert Zemeckis, of Back to the Future fame, brought Dickens’s story to life anew in his motion-captured retelling of the classic tale. The film stars Jim Carrey as the curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge, Gary Oldman as his put-upon employee Bob Cratchit, and Colin Firth, Robin Wright, Bob Hoskins, and Cary Elwes who, alongside Carrey and Oldman, play multiple roles in filling out the film’s cast. While Zemeckis assuredly puts his own stamp on the source material, in the end, his interpretation is a muddled one.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies
Tagged A Christmas Carol, Animation, CGI, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Disney, Gary Oldman, Holiday Season, Jim Carrey, Performane Capture, Robert Zemeckis
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Who Will Speak For The Lorax?
A long time ago, in a sweet serene dale,
Dr. Seuss wrote “The Lorax,” a wonderful tale,
About truffulas, Oncelers, a thneed and a plan,
And of course of a small, squat, mustachioed man.
Then some big-shots in Hollywood liked what they’d seen,
And decided The Lorax should be on the screen!
They would spare no expense, they’d promote cross the land,
So that furry and orange could be their new brand!
They put ads up on billboards that list all their stars,
Hawking toys, meals, and t-shirts, and gas-guzzling cars,
And the latter is what has folks all up in arms,
The hypocrisy rankling, And raising alarms,
While the irony of it’s not lost on yours truly,
There’s something else that I find much more unruly.
The ad’s contradiction is worth some distress,
But “The Lorax” is part of a much bigger mess.
(more…)
Posted in Animated Films, Movies
Tagged Betty White, Children's Books, Dr. Seuss, Ed Helms, The Lorax
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Why “How Were They Built?” Is the Dumbest Criticism of Pixar’s Cars
Cars is Pixar's seventh feature film and was released in 2006.
Cars is easily Pixar’s most poorly-received film. The movie, featuring a world of anthropomorphic automobiles, completely rankled fans of the studio. These detractors view Cars as a rare misstep amidst Pixar’s otherwise unblemished offerings. While movies like A Bug’s Life may have underwhelmed, and those like Ratatouille flown under the radar, no Pixar film has engendered as strong a negative response from the faithful as Cars. With a sequel coming out soon, these doubters have renewed and redoubled their critiques.
Personally, I generally enjoyed the film as a bit of harmless popcorn entertainment, and I believe that Pixar is, in many ways, a victim of its own success. The studio has a remarkable track record of releasing uniformly outstanding feature films, from its initial offering of Toy Story to classics like Finding Nemo to recent triumphs like Up. When held up against these lofty brethren, Cars status as merely “pretty good,” makes it seem overly lacking by comparison. It’s a solid, but unspectacular film, doomed by the company it keeps.
Posted in Animated Films, Movies
Tagged Cars, Disney, Kids Movies, Larry the Cable Guy, Pixar, Toy Story, Up, Willing Suspension of Disbelief
13 Comments
