Dreambuilders (2021) - Movie Review

Well, this was unexpected. A Danish animated family film that takes all manner of cues from Pixar (although, let’s be fair, just about every animated movie borrows somewhat from that studio, especially these days), and yet it being as derivative as it is is barely even an issue. Partly because the scavenged material at least makes sense as to why someone else would want to use it (unlike, say, the number of films I’ve covered of late who basically took the finale of Toy Story 3 wholesale), but partly because in the process of taking those ideas… this film manages to go even darker with them.

The Guilty (2019) - Movie Review

This is one of those ideas that, on paper, feels like the worst possible fit for a visual medium. It’s the story of a Copenhagen policeman who is on desk duty and manning the phone line. For the entirety of the film’s run time, we never leave his side; the majority of the other characters and pretty much all of the narrative is given to us through dialogue, with only background noises during the phone calls giving us a ‘picture’ of what’s going on. This isn’t the first time this has been attempted, but when your contemporaries include The Call with Halle Berry, the capacity for mediocrity is quite high. And yet, even with the lack of visual detail, this works really damn well. Namely, because it highlights what else goes into the cinematic process besides the visuals.