REVIEW: Claydream [2022]

Let’s get rolling. There’s intent in a brief snippet from an archival interview with Travis Knight where he’s asked about getting the animation bug at Laika (of which he’s co-owner with his father Phil Knight while also serving as President and CEO). His answer is, “No. I started at another studio.” It’s not a lie. He began his career at Will Vinton Studios after Phil became a minority shareholder. It’s also not the whole truth considering Laika is Will Vinton Studios, or, at least, what Will Vinton Studios became after…

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REVIEW: Bumblebee [2018]

I can fix you. I get the appeal to capitalize on nostalgia and credit to Hasbro and Paramount for doing exactly that with the original live-action Transformers film. They went for wall-to-wall explosions courtesy of Michael Bay, leaned into the male gaze with an out-of-the-lead’s-league love interest, and brought a sarcastic nerd to life who could probably be argued into filling the role of a proto-Gamer Gate type entitled prick. The goal was to excite twenty-year old men who played with the toys in their youth in the hopes they…

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REVIEW: Kubo and the Two Strings [2016]

“Memories are powerful things” The narrator of Travis Knight‘s Kubo and the Two Strings demands us to look closely and never blink. His story delivers fantastical wonders and poignant metaphors concerning family, love, and traditions to uphold if not an archaic remnant of a lost time meant to be broken. We’re to pay attention because details are intentionally only thinly-veiled, alluding to discoveries Marc Haimes and Chris Butler‘s script shortly reveal. A mirroring of roles proves critical to the tale’s resonance, our own dreams as children coaxing the real world…

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