Kogonada‘s sophomore feature, After Yang is a low-key, heartfelt, and endearing examination of what it means to be not only human, but to be alive.
While Yang plays fast and loose with its story in the third act and starts to come apart, the first two-thirds of After Yang are as engaging and beautiful of a film as one could desire. As After Yang alternates between three aspect ratios, certain scenes of memories are these brief but beautiful full-frame shots that…
Tangled is a modern classic, Disney Animated Studios’ return to form, grossly underrated, and a top-10 American animated film of all time.
From the performances, to the music and songs, to some breathtaking visuals, Disney’s 50th animated film delivers over and over again, and is everything about classic Disney that made them an industry titan, with—and no disrespect to the fantastic Princess and the Frog—enough modernity to kickstart the studios’ much needed renaissance after years of struggling to find its footing…
I’m more than happy to call Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers a modern Who Framed Roger Rabbit. While it doesn’t quite compare in totality, Rescue Rangers is far and away superior to the recent live-action-animated hybrid films like Space Jam: A New Legacy and Tom and Jerry.
Rescue Rangers is not only a surprisingly fantastic revival of the property, but a meta-commentary on reboots, and a love letter to animated movies as a whole. With all of the various properties…
X2 is, historically speaking, one of the most significant superhero films ever made and should be required viewing for anyone in the future wanting to study the history of the genre because this is one its earliest peaks in the modern era.
A loose adaptation of the X-Men comic arc, “God Loves, Man Kills,” X2 builds off the flaws of first film, but shows a fair amount of restraint in going too big for a sequel. Prior to Days of…
Eternals is stricken with blandness compared to its fellow MCU entries, but I don’t know how one could look at this film, its cosmic scope, and history-of-everything background and still expect the same bombastic energy that the Marvel films before it had.
I love the authenticity of Eternals. It’s a much more mature film compared to any of the MCU pantheon in that it actually lets the emotional beats breathe; not every decision or thought had to be explained in…
I’m gonna drop the more formal prose with this review and tell you straight up than I am a sucker for this kinda shit. This sort of cookie cutter and by the numbers—but still okay/good—animated superhero movie is absolutely the kind of thing I ate up as a kid! Even when I first saw Ultimate Avengers in 2006 at the age of 18, it still found a place in my heart while I imagined how great and entirely impossible a live-action…
I love a good heist movie, and frankly I don’t think there are enough children’s heist movies—let alone good ones. Universal/Dreamworks’ The Bad Guys may be pretty paint-by-numbers with an incredibly telegraphed and predictable story, but don’t let that undermine the rest of Baby’s First Ocean’s 11.
The animation in The Bad Guys is clearly influenced by Sony’s Spider-Verse but in the best ways. There are also some obvious anime influences and some light Who Framed Roger Rabbit stylings, but everything comes…
The MCU through all its strengths and faults has always been at its best when there’s an intersection of a good story and the selected director’s applied style and flair. Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, and to a slightly lesser extent Black Panther are all shining examples of how Marvel’s distillation of the blockbuster can rise above being just another ship in a sea of similars.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is nothing if not a fantastic Sam Raimi…
Cold Mountain was one of my favorite movies of 2003 and I distinctly remember being an absolutely incensed 15-year-old when this wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. Now, at the age of 34, and Mountain itself being older than I was the first time I saw it, it was due to be revisited.
Cold Mountain is a Civil War epic romance set in the south, adapted from the 1997 novel of the same name, but at its core, Cold Mountain is merely an adaptation of Homer’s…
Mockumentaries are one of my favorite genres because they are conceptually easy, require only a small crew and little to no budget, but hard to do well because you have to create compelling and engaging—but still fictional— people and events. Then the humor still has to be there, too. All that said, I’m always nervous heading into one because I love them so much and am inherently picky.
What We Do in the Shadows fortunately is fantastic. It delivers on…
I’m genuinely shocked by how much I enjoyed Moonstruck! I’m not saying I went in looking to hate it, but it’s an understatement to say it took me by surprise. While it ended too neat and clean and easy for my tastes given the amount of wrongdoings going on, Moonstruck is an incredibly endearing romantic comedy that charmed me.