Film Review: Moana (2016)

Halfway through Moana, the demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) derisively calls the eponymous character (voiced by Auli'i Cravalho) "princess". She says that she isn't a princess, she's the daughter of a chief, and while Maui isn't swayed by the distinction, it's an important one to Moana - it's the latest example of man trying to define who she is, and in doing so underestimating her - but also for the film around her. "Princess" comes laden with certain expectations about responsibilities, behaviours, and decorum, just as the notion of a "Disney Princess" is associated with a certain kind of storytelling.

Film Review: The Good Dinosaur (2015)

The best Pixar films take a fairly simple idea, then build emotional complexity onto their basic premise. To use the most famous example, Toy Story asks "What if toys came to life when no one was around?" and turns it into a funny and sad musing on aging. The worst Pixar films get lost in the details of their premise, with the most obvious examples being the two Cars movies, both of which suffocate straightforward stories in worlds that take a lot of time and energy to explain, yet still come off as off-putting and weird.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 120 - Pixar

To coincide with the release of The Good Dinosaur, as well as the twentieth anniversary of the release of Toy Story, Matt and I decided to sit down and chat about Pixar. In addition to airing our thoughts on the studio's latest offering, we take a look at the impact they have had on American animation, their fractious relationship with Disney, and ponder what the future holds for one of the most creatively and commercially successful companies in Hollywood history.

Sitcoms and Sadness: A Conversation About BoJack Horseman

In anticipation of the second season of Netflix's BoJack Horseman, a previously unheralded animated series about a washed up sitcom actor who also happens to be a horse (Will Arnett) that became something of a word-of-mouth hit during its first season, I sat down with my friend and fellow pop culture addict Lewis Davies (@LewisKernow) to discuss the show and why it struck a chord with audiences. 

Film Review: Inside Out (2015)

Joy (Amy Poehler) is the dominant emotion in the mind of Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), an eleven year old girl who loves hockey, being a goofball, and her family. Alongside Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Bill Hader), Joy is responsible for guiding Riley through her life in Minnesota. When Riley and her family up sticks and move to San Francisco, Joy finds herself unable to control the wave of negativity stemming from Riley's sense of dislocation and loneliness. When Joy's attempts to control the situation result in her and Sadness being inadvertently locked out of the mind's command centre with no easy way back, Riley's emotional well-being starts to become dangerously fraught, and Joy and Sadness need to figure out a way back before any permanent damage is done.

Film Review: Big Hero 6 (2014)

Seven years and nearly a dozen movies into what sages will one day call The Age of Marvel, it's pretty easy to spot the tropes that crop up in films produced by Marvel Studios. Chances are that a Marvel film, particularly one launching a new character or set of characters, will revolve around geniuses who have suffered or will suffer some tragic loss, will feature a villain with little of their own personality (unless they're Loki, in which case they'll almost have too much personality), and will probably end with a battle in the sky above a major city. Each film finds ways to differentiate itself from its predecessors, but they tend to follow a fairly well-worn (and immensely lucrative) framework.

Film Review: Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? (2013)

There are a number of interesting questions and thought experiments posed throughout Michel Gondry's Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? in which the aggressively whimsical filmmaker recounts several conversations he had with the influential philosopher, linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. They touch upon several interesting ideas, such as the importance of language in shaping perception and how humans understand language from an early age. They also talk at length about Chomsky's childhood during the Great Depression, and how attending a "Deweyite" progressive school shaped his intellectual development. It's a film with plenty to say, or at least it is about a man who still has plenty to say.

Pixar Giveth, and Pixar Taketh Away: Get Ready for The Incredibles 2 and Cars 3

Pictured: Pixar, resigned to making more sequels

News broke today that Pixar, in addition to working on the previously announced Finding Nemo sequel Finding Dory and the original features Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur, have begun work on a sequel to Brad Bird's The Incredibles, which was released way back in the less superhero-clogged days of 2004, and a third film in the Cars series. The latter announcement wasn't that surprising since, even though neither of the previous Cars films were as warmly received as the films that preceded or followed them in the Pixar chronology - I myself likened Cars 2 to demented fanfiction, and said that giving Pixar a pass for how terrible it was would be akin to covering up for a loved one after they killed someone in a drunk driving accident - they were sizable hits, and between them grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide. (Not to mention that the franchise has been a huge cash cow for Disney/Pixar in terms of merchandising.)

Film Review: The Wind Rises (2013)

Flight has been a key factor in both the life and work of Hayao Miyazaki. In his films, flying represents freedom, hope, magic, and the sheer wonder of nature, but Miyazaki's family benefited financially from selling plane parts during World War Two, living in relative comfort as a direct result of the Japanese war effort. This experience seems to have given Miyazaki a very dim view of war, as seen in films like Nausicaa Valley of the Wind and Howl's Moving Castle, but it's especially germane to The Wind Rises: In telling a highly fictionalised account of the life of aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the English-language dub) it directly addresses the life of someone who achieved success and renown for designing weapons of war, as well as the tension that exists between conscience and the desire to create something beautiful. Despite its basis in real history, The Wind Rises feels like Miyazaki's version of The Tempest; a fantastical, oblique yet deeply personal work about the craft of its creator.

Film Review: The Lego Movie (2014)

Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt) is a thoroughly average construction worker. Actually, average doesn't go far enough: Emmitt is consistently and thoroughly generic. He looks like everyone else in the city of Brickburg; he watches the same TV program that they do (a sitcom whose title and sole line of dialogue is "Where Are My Pants?"); he loves the one song that they play on the radio, a relentless perky electro-pop hit called "Everything is Awesome." Despite his adherence to following the instructions for living laid out by President Business (Will Ferrell), Emmet suspects that everything isn't awesome, and that maybe there's more to life than going to and from work. When he stumbles across a beautiful Master Builder named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and a mystery block called The Piece of Resistance, Emmet is thrust into the middle of a desperate struggle to defeat President Business' plan to use a super weapon called the Kragle to destroy the world. The rebels become convinced that Emmet is the legendary Special destined to save the world. The only problem is that there is nothing remarkable about him. Like, at all.

Film Review: Frozen (2013)

Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) are a pair of princesses who have spent most of their lives living within the walls of their castle in the kingdom of Arendelle. Unlike most cases of princesses being kept hidden, they've been kept there for a very good reason; Elsa has the power to control and manipulate ice, and when they were children, Elsa nearly killed her younger sister while the two were playing. Afraid that she might  hurt her again, Elsa retreated into the castle to protect herself and Anna while the people of Arendelle went about their lives. As Elsa comes of age, the gates of the castle are thrown open for her coronation, to her dread and Anna's palpable delight. Things quickly go awry, and Elsa flees the kingdom, accidentally leaving it frozen in her wake. It falls to Anna, along with the ice trader Kristoff (Johnathan Groff) and his adorable reindeer Sven, to coax Elsa back to civilization before Arandelle is destroyed by the winter, or before the Duke of Weselton's (Alan Tydyk) men find her and seek to end the cold by ending her life.

Film Review: Monsters University (2013)

The biggest obstacle facing any prequel is that of keeping an audience engaged even when they know the broad strokes of how the story will finish. It's not a problem unique to prequels - most people were probably aware that Lincoln wasn't going to end with an Animal House-style freeze frame explaining how awesome Abe's second term and subsequent retirement were - but it's still hard to make what is essentially back story compelling when the blueprint has already been laid out so thoroughly before. At their worst, this can result in films that consist of little more than colouring in parts of a picture which is already pretty complete, and in the process runs the risk of marring it with talk of midichlorians or amnesia bullets.

Film Review: Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970)

A few days ago, Nathanael Smith, freelance writer and editor of the great animation blog Animation Confabulation, asked for contributions to his site in the form of articles about favourite animated films. I jumped at the opportunity, and used it to wax lyrical about the strange pleasures of Dougal and the Blue Cat, the phenomenally funny and trippy feature film adaptation of The Magic Roundabout. It was a firm childhood favourite and remains a joy to watch even now. (It's all up on YouTube if you fancy seeing it for yourself.)

Film Review: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Videogames are built upon repetition. Collect the rings, drop the blocks, perform a Fatality, these are the foundation upon which an entire medium and accompanying culture have grown. Each time through, the players might get a little bit better, they might keep failing at the same point, but the mechanics of the game remain essentially the same. But what if the characters carrying out that repetition had lives of their own? What must it be like to have to go through the same limited selection of motions and actions every day? And what of the bad guys, the ones who throw the punches and the barrels, who spend their days being the focal point of constant anger and frustration? To paraphrase Camus, should we imagine Donkey Kong happy?

Film Review: Frankenweenie (2012)

Tim Burton's latest film, Frankenweenie, has its roots in the earliest days of the director's career. Burton directed the original live action short of Frankenweenie in 1984 whilst working as an animator for Disney, and it was intended to accompany screenings of Pinocchio when it was re-released that year. The short was ultimately deemed too dark and Burton was fired from Disney for using company money to make films that they did not consider to be suitable. There's a certain delightful symmetry in Burton making a feature-length version for Disney nearly three decades later, especially since the new version seems to find him regaining some of the spark that has eluded him in recent years.

Film Review: Brave (2012)

Set in a romanticised Scotland at an undetermined point in the past, Brave represents a number of firsts for Pixar, the creative powerhouse behind such wonderful films as WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3. It's their first period piece, their first fairytale, their first film to revolve around a female protagonist, and, as a result, the first of their films that fits into the tradition of the Disney princess. It's also their first film after the somewhat regrettable Cars 2, which represented the first commercial and critical disappointment for the studio since it started making features in 1995. Brave, then, not only has to break new ground for Pixar, but also prove that Cars 2 was a mere misstep, rather than the sign of a greater creative decline for one of the most consistent companies in the industry.

Film Review: The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists! (2012)

By this point, Aardman Animations have become such a cultural force in Britain that they have transcended being merely an animation company to being a national institution. Their wonderful and charming Wallace and Gromit shorts and their handful of features have made for some of the most beautifully crafted animated films ever made, thanks to the lovingly homemade quality that stop-motion animation affords to them. More importantly, each of their films has been imbued with a gentle sense of humour that is utterly charming, and has created an appeal that is universal. Their films can work for children, the elderly and everyone inbetween without condescending to or boring any one group.

The Lion King 3D as an example of the failings of 3D

Last Saturday, on the penultimate day of a two-week visit to my parents' house in Florida, my sister and I jumped into her car, drove to the local cinema, and paid to see The Lion King in 3D. It was a pretty special moment for the two of us, since it was the first time that either of us had seen the film on the big screen since 1994 (though it was by no means the first time that we had seen it since then, since we watched it quite literally hundreds of times on VHS in the '90s) and there's always something indefinably beautiful about seeing a film you love on the big screen, especially when it's a version that people who love the film as much as you have clearly spent a great deal of time remastering it.

Film Review: Cars 2 (2011)

To say that I am a fan of the films of Pixar would be to underestimate the power and meaning of the word "fan", bearing in mind that the word is short for "fanatic", and a certain degree of terrifying obsession is implicit to its usage. I love Pixar. I have done ever since I saw the original Toy Story at the age of nine, and have waited with bated breath for each subsequent release from the studio. Rarely a year goes by that one of their films does not make my Top Ten, and Toy Story 3 is probably my favourite film of this still young decade. I like them a lot, is what I'm saying.

Film Review: Arrietty (2010)

Note: This review is based on a screening of the English dub of Arrietty, hence the use of the English voice actors. Who are all excellent, incidentally.

Arrietty (Saoirse Ronan) is a member of a race of thumb-sized people called Borrowers, so named because they sneak out of the nooks and crannies of human houses in order to 'borrow' whatever they need to survive. It's a perilous existence, since the smallest, most benign object to humans can be a life-threatening hazard to a Borrower, but it's also one filled with a sense of wonder and adventure, one which Arrietty is eager to join once she comes of age. On her first 'Borrow' with her father (Mark Strong), Arrietty is inadvertently spotted by Sho (Tom Holland), a sickly young boy who is staying in the house, which is owned by his aunt and secretly the home of Arrietty and her family. Initially ashamed and afraid, since being seen by humans is considered the greatest threat to the Borrowers, a tentative friendship develops between Arrietty and Sho, one that could save her family from the nefarious attentions of the housekeeper (Geraldine McEwan) who has become obsessed with finding them.