Nimona (2023) - Movie Review

Blue Sky Studios deserved better. I had given them a lot of flak for stuff like the Ice Age series and the Rio series, but their last two features not only showed drastic improvement from that standard, but showed that they had carved out their own niche in the modern animation market. Ferdinand had its growing pains, but still had some solid messaging, and Spies In Disguise only built on them further to make something even better. At long last, they found their (in my opinion) much-needed lane for today's family films with some strong pacifist messaging.

Then Disney bought out Blue Sky’s parent company 21^st Century Fox, repeatedly delayed their next feature, and then outright cancelled it along with Blue Sky Studios as a whole. The company that thinks digging up the graves of their previous successes, and that a new coat of CGI paint will cover the smell of stale corpse that is being paraded in front of audiences for profit, is a sound business strategy, but allowing a studio to continue operation and produce media that, just maybe, people might actually want to watch isn’t.

But out of the ashes of Blue Sky, this film still managed to take flight. Picked up by Annapurna Pictures, with animation by DNEG (who proved their salt as a dedicated animation studio with Ron’s Gone Wrong and Entergalactic), and Spies In Disguise directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (who were originally slated for the helm before Blue Sky got shuttered) brought back in. That this whole production exists as a manifestation of hubris and spite against the conglomerate that tried to stop it from being made, quite frankly, has already earned my respect. But hoo boy, did it not stop earning it from there.

Shadow In The Cloud (2021) - Movie Review

Much like with Ava late last year, I was initially debating whether I’d even deign to watch this movie at all, let alone review it, and for largely the same reason: The abusive history of the guy who wrote it. Only this isn’t a niche example like Matthew Newton, as Max Landis has had people distancing themselves from him as early as 2012’s Chronicle, his first feature-length script.

Considering it and American Ultra are the only good movies with his name attached to them (and even then, it’s the presentation that makes those two memorable, not necessarily the writing), there’s other reasons to be sceptical about this one… but again, like with Ava, I don’t see disregarding the work of women in the industry off the back of one toxic guy to be all that helpful a move, although to her credit, director and co-writer (we’ll get to that) Roseanne Liang gets why audiences might distance themselves from this film based on his involvement. I, however, am not going to advocate for that. Instead, I’m going to declare proudly that this is a fantastic film that is more than worth checking out.