Migration (2023) - Movie Review

While Illumination managed to pull themselves out of their recent funk with the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, I was still a bit sceptical about whether that would be a fluke or not. It’s highly unlikely that the studio would be able to keep bringing back the geniuses behind Teen Titans Go! To The Movies for every release going forward, and given their previous track record of trying to relive past glories, there’s just something about how generic this film comes across on first glance that had me worried. Well, that and being written by Mike White, whose last animated venture was with the generation-defining disaster of The Emoji Movie. However, not only does this manage to keep up with that Mario-mentum (oh shush, I liked that one), but it taps back into what I originally started liking about Illumination Studios specifically.

Ghosted (2023) - Movie Review

Films like this feel like practical jokes. Like, hey, there’s people out there who pay real close attention to the names attached to movies, so let’s bring a bunch of them together. We’ll get the guy who directed Rocketman, the writers of the Deadpool and MCU Spider-Man movies, and we’ll get Mindy Marin to work her usual magic and cast all kinds of hot acting talent for it, led by Chris Evans and Ana De Armas. Apparently, the strategy worked, as this set a new record for debut audience numbers on Apple TV+. Of course, first appearances aren’t everything, and it takes little more than a light breeze to scratch the paint off of this bafflingly awful product.

Scarygirl (2023) - Movie Review

Coming off of the decent if inconsistent Tales From Sanctuary City trilogy, director Ricard Cussó’s latest is a major switch-up, both textually and visually. Textually, it’s adapted from an IP that has been doing the rounds semi-regularly for the past two decades, becoming toys, a comic book, a Flash game and even an Xbox Live Arcade download before making it to the big screen.

Visually, however, is where things get really interesting. While Australia has been experiencing something of a boom within the animation industry over the last several years, thanks in no small part to studios like Animal Logic and Flying Bark, this still manages to look like nothing else I’ve seen this country produce thus far. Not even the Sanctuary City movies come anywhere close to this.

Suzume (2023) - Movie Review

From the director of Your Name, the only body-swap romance film I can think of that’s actually worth watching, the latest from animator Makoto Shinkai makes that film’s high concept look downright pedestrian. I mean, most films look normal compared to the story of a Japanese schoolgirl who falls in love with a chair cursed by a cat-god, but my point still stands.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) - Movie Review

After their last film in Game Night, with its story all about role-playing games and how revealing they can be for the personalities of those playing them, writer/directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are now going after the biggest name when it comes to RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons. The extent to which these guys have advanced since the days of Horrible Bosses and Vacation only grows more staggering with each passing release (even if our last check-in with the duo, Vacation Friends, was not that great), and since I’ve actually gotten into a bit of dice-rolling recently, I was doubly excited to see what they had cooked up (all while trying not to let D&D owner Wizards Of The Coast themselves become cooked over the Open Game License fiasco that would’ve caused trouble for a lot of content creators and fans alike).

Now, my own experience with D&D is rather limited; I only have a handful of actual game sessions to my name, and quite a few character sheets and backstories that likely won’t get used, but never say never (the story must be told of Hughal Dughal, the Dwarven pro-wrestler monk). But between those sessions, the nights spent brainstorming backstories, my general interest in video game RPGs like the Elder Scrolls series, and from watching liveplays of groups like Critical Role, I’d like to think I have a good enough idea of what makes this specific IP, and indeed tabletop RPGs in general, appealing. And it looks like Goldstein and Daley have nailed it.

Lightyear (2022) - Movie Review

On the surface, the idea behind this particular Pixar film makes a lot of sense. It’s an origin story for Buzz Lightyear, not the toy, but the film and TV character that the toy was based on in-universe. Toy Story 2 did the same thing with Woody and the Woody’s Roundup show, and Disney at large has been doing a lot of postmodern media exercises over the last several years; if nothing else, this should be more interesting than just the standard live-action remake. And yeah, it is interesting… but not in the way they intended.

Slumberland (2022) - Movie Review

I’ve really come to appreciate the films of director Francis Lawrence. Sure, his work on the Hunger Games sequels represents the best of the 3^rd wave of YA adaptations (not to mention what might be my favourite scene in any movie with the Hanging Tree sequence in Mockingjay Part 1), but there’s also I Am Legend and Constantine as well. Legend has an understanding of the effect of social isolation that has properly stuck with me since watching it, and while Constantine is one of the best examples of the Vertigo comics aesthetic on film, even if it’s not necessarily the best example of Hellblazer specifically. And now, he appears to be aiming for something more family-friendly than he’s used to, with a reimagining of Little Nemo In Slumberland. And I gotta say, it’s pretty good.

New Gods: Yang Jian (2022) - Movie Review

Time to take a trip back into Light Chaser Animation’s universe of steampunk mysticism with a new New Gods feature. And this one actually made it into cinemas over here, instead of going straight to Netflix, and with the kind of visual aesthetics Light Chaser are chasing after here, that is one hell of a good move on their part.

Strange World (2022) - Movie Review

 

It’s getting to the point where Disney’s animated films seem almost perfunctory compared to their titanic dominance over the film market in just about every other area, from their ownership of 20^th Century Fox, to Marvel movies swallowing entire release schedules whole every time they come out. This film is projected to cost Disney somewhere around $147 million, although with the impending release of Avatar: The Way Of Water, I’m sure the profit there will balance things out again. Ain’t it nice to be a corporate monolith?

Yeah, I’m being snarky here, because I wasn’t really expecting much from this. The last couple Disney Animated films were decent, but nothing all that special compared to the studio’s pedigree, and I’ve come to associate director Don Hall with mid-tier Disney, between Raya And The Last Dragon and Big Hero 6. And on top of that, as much as I kinda like the antagonist-less approach Disney has been taking with their stories for the last few years, the reliance on generational trauma to fill in the gaps is starting to wear thin (they hit their peak with that in Frozen 2, for the record). But, thankfully, I can safely say that this film turned out pretty well, in spite of its obstacles. Although it should be said that ‘safely’ is the operative word here.

The Green Knight (2021) - Movie Review

I’m a bit apprehensive about looking at this one. Partly because the last time I reviewed a David Lowery film on here, things didn’t exactly go to plan, but also because, since I still have The Last Duel firmly implanted in my head, I get the feeling I won’t be as open to the more romanticised version of the knights of legend as I might’ve been otherwise. At least, that was my thought process going into this. Having now seen it, it actually fits in surprisingly well alongside that kind of grand deconstruction of the trope, only with a slightly different bent to it. Where The Last Duel was about the grim reality behind those who so readily claimed to live under those ideals, The Green Knight contrasts that reality with the prospect of becoming a legend that embodies those ideals.

Love And Monsters (2021) - Movie Review

After absolutely crushing it last year with Spontaneous, a film I truly hope will go down as one of the most poignant statements on the Millennial generation (my generation), writer Brian Duffield seems to have found his calling in creating coming-of-age stories in truly bizarre situations. With Love And Monsters, that takes the form of Joel, a young-adult survivor of the apocalypse (basically, in stopping a meteor, we wound up mutating all of our animal life into the things that killed off most of the human population) who sets out across the wilderness to reunite with his love Aimee. It is every bit as effective as Spontaneous, and might even go a few steps further.

Bigfoot Family (2021) - Movie Review

Oh goodie, another movie from nWave Studios, the people who thought implied dog rape in a kids film was a good idea. Yeah, I was not looking forward to this one, and if it weren’t for the fact that this made it to Netflix rather than cinemas this time around, I’d be looking forward to it a whole lot less. But thankfully, this isn’t anywhere near as heinous as The Queen’s Corgi. Admittedly, that means it’s closer to the studio’s average of bland, inoffensive bargain-bin material, but I’ll take that any day over whatever fresh hell they tried to pull last time.

Boonie Bears: The Wild Life (2021) - Movie Review

The Boonie Bears franchise has been going strong since 2012, with ten separate TV series totalling up to 676 episodes, and eight films with The Wild Life serving as the ninth. And up until I saw this film listed at my local cinema, I had no idea this even existed. I went into this about as blind as any other talking animal movie I’ve reviewed on here, and considering that sub-genre has basically become my nemesis over this blog’s lifespan, I can’t say I was expecting much. I don’t know if this has more to do with lowered expectations, lack of other options with the constant schedule shuffling, or if this film is genuinely good but… yeah, I had way more fun with this than I ever could have anticipated.

Monster Hunter (2021) - Movie Review

Oh goodie, Paul W. S. Anderson has found another video game franchise he can milk dry. Yeah, suffice it to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to this one largely because of his attachment to it (although, as I’ll get into, his isn’t the only name that spells trouble for this whole thing). Having sat through his last film with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, easily one of the messiest and incoherent action films of the 2010s, if not ever, I went into this expecting the same level of aggrandising clutter. And yet, while that is certainly what I got out of this, this is the first film I’ve seen from Anderson in a long time where I find myself debating if this film is still entertaining in spite of his… eccentricities, let’s say.

Maya The Bee: The Golden Orb (2021) - Movie Review

For a franchise that has been kicking around for over a century, the only truly remarkable thing about Maya The Bee is… well, just how safe the creatives backing it get with these cinematic iterations. This is the third time I’ve found myself reviewing one of these things, and I find myself struggling to really say much of anything that I haven’t already gotten into in the past. Other than this being slightly better than what I’m used to seeing from this series.

The Wishmas Tree (2020) - Movie Review

Time to make up for the relative lack of anthro representation of late by looking at this Aussie effort that already seems to be spawning a franchise around it. And the franchise idea itself isn’t half-bad, framed around the locale of Sanctuary City, a place where all manner of animals live in harmony and that allows for a certain flexibility in the possible stories to tell. To start things off, we have a kid-friendly adventure flick about the precocious Kerry the Ring-Tailed Possum (Miranda Tapsell), who sets out beyond the boundaries of Sanctuary City to stop a potential ecological disaster… that she herself inadvertently set in motion.

Da 5 Bloods (2020) - Movie Review

Whenever filmmakers, particularly Americans, depict the Vietnam War, it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either it’s to emphasise the trauma of the soldiers who fought it, or to offer an alternate history power fantasy, a chance to reclaim some semblance of victory through the veneer of fiction. Spike Lee’s latest joint, however, offers something different. A predominantly black version of a recurrently whitewashed chapter of American history. A figurative and literal unearthing of the past not to rewrite it, but to expose those that have already done so.

Enola Holmes (2020) - Movie Review

Time to close out our look at Jack Thorne’s screenwriting work for 2020, and quite frankly, this really could go either way. It could be another serving of bland nothing that feels like a shadow of a much better story, or it could be a solid, if uneven, breath of fresh air within its own genre. At either rate, I’m fully expecting every other aspect of production to be overclocked to make up for the weakness within the script. Well, nothing of the sort shows up here. It seems I have left the best for last by sheer happenstance, as this is easily Thorne’s most fully-formed script of the year.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run (2020) - Movie Review

I’m in the mood for something fun today. And we’re already off to a good start since, with all the release schedule shuffling, I’m surprised this even made it over here this year. But man, am I glad it did because this is Spongebob doing what Spongebob does best.

The Iron Mask (2020) - Movie Review

I feel like I need to put a massive ‘citation needed’ graphic on that poster because it is all kinds of misleading. They stunt-casted this movie twice over, as while Arnie and Jackie Chan are indeed in this, they are absent from roughly 85% of this two-hour feature (And on a minor note, Charles Dance is in even less of the film than them). Not that it stops just there, though; even the title isn’t accurate. Aside from being labelled in other markets as Journey To China, and the subtitle 'Mystery Of The Dragon Seal' shows up sporadically on different posters as well, it is also a sequel to the 2014 Russian film Viy, with its main character (played by English actor Jason Flemyng) returning here as the lead… kind of. If you thought all of this was confusing enough, you ain’t seen nothing yet.