REVIEW: Pete’s Dragon [1977]

“I didn’t think I’d ever be happy til I met you” If memory serves, I loved Pete’s Dragon. It was on the same VHS tape as Sword In the Stone in my family, two Disney films I don’t think anyone else enjoyed. As such I watched Robin Hood a lot to keep the peace—a superior work to both anyway. So now that I’m probably about twenty-five years past my last viewing, it appears little was retained. While I vaguely recall Elliott the dragon’s look, the reality of its two-plus hour…

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REVIEW: The Secret Life of Pets [2016]

“Liberated forever, domesticated never” Illumination Entertainment’s latest film The Secret Life of Pets has an amazing hook: what do our pets do while we’re gone? We could obviously pay Comcast Xfinity to supply cameras and discover the answer to that question—why use product placement when you can show a commercial before the film that uses its characters as shills—but it’s more fun to imagine the possibilities ourselves. If you’ve seen any of the trailers you’ll know this is precisely what Ken Daurio, Brian Lynch, and Cinco Paul have decided. Their…

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REVIEW: Mower Minions [2016]

“Chop-ah chop-ah” The Minions used to be adorable little sidekicks—hilarious creatures ripe for slapstick in a secondary role to the film they were in (Despicable Me). And then they became bigger than the franchise that spawned them. Toys were made, companies recruited them to sell products, and their own feature length film was inevitably released in theaters. That’s all well and good because I am the first to say I enjoy those goobers as much as the next person. But why is Illumination transforming them into dead horses? Are they…

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REVIEW: Finding Nemo [2003]

“You mean the swirling vortex of terror?” There’s a lot happening in Finding Nemo, a fact that hindered my appreciation for it back in 2003. At its core is a story about an over-protective clownfish father and his adventurous boy yearning to break free of the constant fear that’s ruled their lives for too long. But this logline barely scratches the surface after introducing a blue tang in the Pacific without a short-term memory and an angelfish in captivity searching for freedom. When the boy (Alexander Gould‘s Nemo) is taken…

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REVIEW: The Jungle Book [1967]

“No one explains anything to Shere Khan” It’s without a shred of nostalgia that I declare Disney’s animated The Jungle Book an entertaining romp. Having never seen it due to its absence from my stable of “classics” growing up, my affinity to the characters hailed from “TaleSpin” instead. So it was fun meeting them in their original form—bumbling, kindly creatures looking out for the young man-cub they raised to have empathy for their myriad species while man itself sought to kill similar to villainous tiger Shere Khan (George Sanders). I…

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REVIEW: The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga [2014]

“It was always the middle of the night when They came” Writer/director Jessica Oreck admitting how the best part of the filmmaking process on her document of memory and fable The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga was when audiences in the countries she filmed told her they assumed she’d be an old Eastern European man because she captured their “soul” says everything. There doesn’t need to be a linear narrative driving the images on screen or a definitive purpose that’s decipherable by one and all as her absolute intention.…

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REVIEW: Avril et le monde truqué [April and the Extraordinary World] [2015]

“All scientists must serve the empire!” Most writing on Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci‘s Avril et le monde truquĂ© [April and the Extraordinary World] speaks as though they’ve adapted one of revered Frenchman Jacques Tardi‘s graphic novels. This isn’t quite the case. What they’ve actually done is bring his unique “universe” to life with help from previous collaborator Benjamin Legrand (writer of Tardi’s Tueur de cafards) instead. Legrand and Ekinci crafted this alternate steampunk version of Paris as something inspired by the artist’s work rather than born from it. Tardi…

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REVIEW: Zootopia [2016]

“Where anyone can be anything” In the tradition of Happy Feet (climate change) and Monsters University (fraternity life), Disney’s Zootopia has transposed adult themes onto PG-rated family fare again. Whereas those previous two were misguided—the former shoving a political agenda down kids’ throats without warning and the latter proving a weird stamp of approval on questionable activities we hope our children will show moderation towards—this one’s worthy cause of harmony and inclusivity is age-appropriate and universal. It takes a hard left into #BlackLivesMatter jurisdiction with blatantly satirical comments confusing youngsters…

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REVIEW: ăƒă‚±ăƒąăƒŽăźć­ [Bakemono no ko] [The Boy and the Beast] [2015]

“Find the meaning on your own” Two worlds collide once young Kyuta (ShĂŽta Sometani) and warrior Kumatetsu (KĂŽji Yakusho) meet in Mamoru Hosoda‘s ăƒă‚±ăƒąăƒŽăźć­ [Bakemono no ko] [The Boy and the Beast]. The former was recently orphaned after his mother’s death (she had divorced his father years ago and her family refuses to get in touch with him), currently working his way towards becoming a solitary street urchin full of dark rage aimed at the human race for causing him such pain. The latter is a candidate to replace the…

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REVIEW: O Menino e o Mundo [Boy & the World] [2014]

Writer/director AlĂȘ Abreu‘s O Menino e o Mundo [Boy & the World] is nothing if not a breath of fresh air against the animation medium’s otherwise stagnant aesthetic of glossy computerized fare. Not only does he dive back into a traditional hand-drawn style, he does so with an un-polished rough-edged crayon texture to make it appear as if a drawing on a piece of paper has come to life. The way he makes environments disappear so his titular boy Cuca is left with nothing but a white void and the…

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REVIEW: Last Day of Freedom [2015]

“And then one day it came knocking on my door” Directors Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman have quite the story on their hands thanks to the bravery of Bill Babbitt to allow his catharsis to be captured in a public forum such as film. A religious and loving man who watched his younger brother Manny leave for Vietnam after a troubled adolescence, Bill always saw hope. With two tours, myriad injuries, and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia later, however, Manny’s trouble had just begun. He was coping with this new…

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