Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts

Saturday, February 22, 2025

MOMBOMB PART 1 (2025) Slamdance 2025


AI animated tale about a little girl telling a horror story to a bunch of fellow girl scouts...but there is a complication

Playing at Slamdance as part of the Episodes section. It's a creepy little tale that ends on a cliffhanger.  I want to see more.

As good as the story is the film suffers with all of the problems that other wholly AI generated films seem to suffer from, namely the look of the characters and objects and  such shift slightly from shot to shot. The also AI gets certain things wrong, not in the typical AI problem of people having extra fingers or limbs but images don't match the narration such as we are told a killer tries to open the passenger side door of a car, while the visuals show us the driver’s side.

While I can not in good faith say that I am 100% against the use of AI in creating films, I do enjoy some of the short You Tube fake trailers, and I understand that certain uses of AI are helpful in making films easier. However at the same time I am wary of the technology. I am wary of how it learns by data scrapping of existing materials, thus essentially stealing borrowing without credit the work of others.

While I am not inferring how AI was used in the creation of the film, I am mentioning it because the press material put that front and center. Because that is the PR selling point, and because the creator is supposed to be an AI expert, I was very aware of the fact while watching it. It was something that made me question if I should even review the film since so many artists are against it and I still haven't fully sorted out where I stand with things. But the film is here and I felt I should at least take a look. 

And having taken a look I do feel obligatigated to say the episode  it’s not bad,its quite good actually, and I enjoyed, but it has typical AI issues. 

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Turning Red (2022)


I finally caught up wit Domee Shi's TURNING RED. The film is a the story of a young woman who has hit puberty and now turns into a gian red panda.

Just like Shi's Oscar winning BAO, TURNING RED is a masterpiece. A beautiful portrait of coming of age that echoes to everyone and not just young women or people of Chinese ancestory.  Watching the film, this older european guy toltally related to what I was seeing on screen.

Make no mistake Domee Shi is one of the best people working in animation today. That she has made to deeply personal, maginicently glorious films at the House of Mouse is stunning. Disney doesn't want films like this. That the film is considered a misfire by the studio is a huge error on their part since they were the ones who botched the release and getting word out.

This is a great film. It's one of the absolute best animated  film to come out of the big American studios in the last 25 years. 

Highly recommended- this is what movies are supposed to do.

Friday, January 24, 2025

Sort of thoughts on Harmony (2024) Animation First 2025


Jesus Perez, who is 33, travels through space in order to bring a greeting from earth. On the planet he encounters strange creatures that were formed because different species can into breed.

I have no idea. This is an alternately amusing and deeply disturbing surrealistic journey to another world where creatures can only say yes and no, and the main character is a rambling Christ clone with a frozen face and weird movements.  

It's both terrible and weirdly compelling. I couldn't look away despite wanting to stop watching. This is a head trip without taking drugs.

I honestly don't know what I think, but I do know that if you love off the beaten path films, this one is a must see.

The write up on the film for Animation first says that director Bertrand Dezoteux created a website: harmonie.center/en. that is a companion piece to this film "The platform engages audiences to delves into Jesus Perez’ larger mission and enterprise, “Harmonie Center.” I am frightened of going there.

Yuku and the Himalayan Flowers (2024) Animation First 2025

 


Yuku is a mouse from a large family. She lives with her family in a big house where there is a cat. She sings songs while playing the ukulele. As her grandmother's health fails she decides to try and find the Himalayan Flowers which always give light.

Oddly paced animated film is one part musical, one part adventure and one part meditation on death. (Grandma need the flowers so that when the mole comes to take her underground she has light and doesn't spend eternity in darkness.) Its a film that is frequently amusing, occasionally dark and completely unexpected.

I'm not sure what I think of this film, but I am amazed that it packs so much into it's mere 65 minutes.  To be honest I wish that the film ran a bit longer so that the film didn't seem rushed. There are a lot of musical numbers and set pieces which sometimes push the plot aside.

Still this film moves, has great characters and some solid songs.

Worth a look, if you can score one of the free tickets at Animation First.

Eden on MASTERS OF TIME which is playing Animation First Sunday

With Les Maîtres du temps playing this years Animation First Festival, here is a look at the film from Eden Miller who reviewed it as part of her look at the cinematic work of Moebius

This is a repost Les Maîtres du temps (also known as Masters of Time) seems like it should be great. It was directed by René Laloux and designed by Moebius. The two of them should have been able to create a visionary masterpiece of animation.

And the truth is, they did, if you adjust your expectations a little.

Although based on the 1958 novel The Orphan of Perdide by Stefan Wul, the plot is secondary to the visuals. It's mostly about a boy named Piel who is stranded on a planet and space pirate Jaffar is sent to go save him.

Or something. As much danger Piel seems to be in, Jaffar and evil exiled prince Matton, his sister Belle, and old friend Silbad spend a lot of time talking and more or less just kind of hanging out. There's little urgency in terms rescuing Piel. And weird stuff that has nothing to do with anything happens -- like a planet where everyone turns into faceless angels and Piel encounters strange creatures on the planet he's on. It goes absolutely nowhere fast, until a resolution comes out of nowhere.

But to want a plot from this movie is maybe asking a bit too much. It is, rightfully so, all about the trippy -- and usually beautiful -- visuals. Much time in spent deliberating over the freaky angel-like creatures and alien landscapes. Two childlike creatures named Yula and Jad have their share of screen time, discussing various philosophical concepts about living. The film's not about the ultimate goal of saving Piel -- it's about everything that leads us to there.

Still, this is the kind of movie you're either going to connect with or you're not. I don't think there's too much middle ground. If the odd and often complexly dazzling look of the movie and its purposeful pacing doesn't appeal to you, Les Maîtres du temps will probably just confuse you at best or bore you at worst.

I know both Moebius and Laloux were disappointed with the final product, but that actually makes me a little sad. The movie is far from perfect, but in many ways, its imperfections is its strength. A more straightforward film would not have been as interesting, even if it would've been more satisfying.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

My Life As A Zucchini (2016) is playing Animation First 2024 this weekend

Short (it runs just over an hour) animated film was the Swiss entry in the Foreign Language Oscar race in201. It was also one of the best reviewed animated films of 2016, and one of those films that is GKids brought to US audiences because its a great film that would confound any other studio and they are the only ones who will have any clue how to market it.

Based on a well loved novel by Gilles Paris, ZUCCHINI, or COURGETTE in the original, is a very bittersweet look at childhood, ts a film that is going to play differently depending upon where you are age wise since the older you are the more you are going to connect with many of the notions because you'll have actually lived though more of what happens. While the film has a certain amount of darkness, the film is ultimately a hopeful look at how one gets a family. I'm told the film is toned down from the source novel which could be rather bleak, just like childhood.

The plot of the film has a boy who is called Zucchini by his mother moving to an orphanage. It seems that Zucchini has accidentally killed his mother and his father is nowhere around. As he adjusts to life and makes friends he ends up smitten with a Camille, a rebellious young woman who is dumped there by her aunt.

Told in a series of expanding vignettes that show the passage of time ZUCCHINI is a magical film that really will remind adults what its like to be a child. Granted we were not all orphans but but we all had to interact with other kids and adults and this film manages to reveal that perfectly. We have been here before or at least been there in some form or another. It is beautifully modulated so that there is laughter with the tears.

Everything about the film is near perfect from the voice cast to the visuals it all comes together to make a film that is going to sing in the hearts of many people who see it. Watching it I couldn't help but think how many people I knew who were going to absolutely fall in love with the film. This is a film that is going to go into that warm place that that many people keep reserved for their most cherished films such as the work of Studio Ghibli, not because it shows us an idealized version of childhood, rather because it shows us childhood as lived that makes it okay to remember it all.

I love the film a great deal.

If I had to be pick on the film for anything it is it's incredibly brief running time. Shorn of it's end credits and it's brief mid credit "actor interview" the film only runs about 61 minutes. The film feels much too short. The film has barely grabbed you by the heart strings when it's ending. Its a rare film that you can argue should be longer.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024) Animation First 2025


In Poland during the Second World War  the wife of a woodcutter  takes in a baby that  was thrown from a train going to the concentration camps. She and her husband struggle to raise the child, while the man who threw the baby struggles to survive the camp.

Michel Hazanavicius shifts gears yet again with an animated film about the miracle of survival and the things we will do for the ones we love. It's an odd move for a man who is best known for his comedies and the results are extremely mixed.

There are some great sequences in this film as well as some head scratching moments. Feeling less like an organic tale and more like a very serious, very important novel, the film never quite comes together because the film never fully connects the two halves. The result is a film that feels a bit like sermon.  

I was intrigued for a while but the film began to lose me as the film started to tell us about the man who threw the baby from the train. It's not that these sequences,  having to do with surviving in the camps, are bad, indeed they include some of the most crushing sequences I've ever seen  about the Holocaust, but rather they never fully mesh with the sequences about the baby and the woodcutters wife. a big part of the problem is the style of the images are too dissimilar.  The woodcutter sequences are more lyric and realistic where the images of the man are closer to some of the surrealist art that sprang up around the war.

While a wasn't connected from start to finish the film still threw up some staggering pieces such as the post war sequence where the man stumbles on the woman and the child selling cheese on the street.  The whole sequence of recognition of finding the now grown child, while also seeing his horrific physical persona is one of the most crushing moments I've ever seen in any film.

Perhaps I would have liked the film more had the ending amounted to something but the film never ties up all the threats ans the 20 year jump ahead didn't amount to much.

Worth a look for those interested in stunning uses of animation or atypical Holocaust stories.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Flow (2024) opens Friday


FLOW is one of the great films of 2024. It’s probably one of the greatest animated films ever made. I suspect in five years it will be hailed as a classic.

A kind of fable, the film is the story of a cat who ends up on a boat with some other animals raveling across the world during a flood.  It’s a tale of life on a grand scale told without dialog.

This is a a grand adventure. Set somewhere else at some other time and place where people are no longer around the film creates a world where anything is possible. Animals that shouldn't be together are. There are references to places here on earth, but nothing concrete. There are some magical creatures, and fantastic turns but it all makes absolute perfect emotional sense. 

I know that everyone is going to have their say about the film. Countless podcasts and You Tube videos explaining a film that doesn’t have to be explained, but simply experienced, will be popping up soon. That we live in a time where everyone has to put out pieces where they explain what the director meant, or more likely saying how their take is the only right one, is a sad one. Everyone should be able to have the film mean what ever they want it to mean. FLOW needs to thrive however it thrives in the hearts of everyone who sees it.

As a work of art, this film is of the highest order. The images and storytelling are near perfect, not always in a brain logic sense but in a dead on heart sort of way. This film moved me viscerally and I wanted to to stop the film several times just because I was so overwhelmed that I wanted to just cry at the beauty of it all. (Several people behind me at the screening were loudly sobbing)

Cinema does not get much better than this.

Similar in some ways to director Gints Zilbalodis’ earlier AWAY because of the mystical journey, this is a vast jump in quality. This is film is a film where the student becomes the master. Everything here is nigh on perfect with the character design and animation being of a quality that few animators ever achieve. All you need to is watch  the eyes of the cat, or any of the characters and you’ll be amazed. Its so good that you’ll wish that the filmmakers could get special Oscars for their work- or compete in the best performance category. I’m serious-the best performances of the year are all computer generated.

In some ways the film nay remind you of some questing computer games. Some games like MYST came to mind (and one person I spoke with after the screening listed others).  And while I can see the influence perhaps in image referencing, I can’t say that the it is more than an influence. I say that because films are not games. We do not have control. The questing structure is as old as humanity. Additionally I have never been as invested and connected to a video game story or characters as I am here. There is a realness here that makes FLOW something greater than it’s influences. 

In a weird way the film also feels like Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld. I can't say why, largely because it's been years since I last read the stories, but there is still something haunting me.

This film is any, and every, superlative you can think of. It is a film at the highest level of cinematic art. It will move you in ways you didn’t think were possible.

Highly recommended.

Look for FLOW to have  a long life.

(And it should be noted that the film does have a post credits sequence. It’s brief but explains what happens to one character)

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024)


Seemingly coming from nowhere and seemingly unexpectedly wonderful THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP is a glorious feature film starring Porky and Daffy, who along with Petunia, end up fighting an alien invasion.

And when I said this is a feature film, I meant it. The film is not a series of black out sketches but a genuine feature film with a beginning middle and ending. There are blackout pieces but the film is entirely focused on a narrative thrust. Honestly the film shouldn't work, you shouldn't have eleven people credited its writing it and still have it work...and it does...pretty much flawlessly.

What makes the film work is that the film gets the characters dead on right and expands them. The film charts Daffy and porky's friendship from when they were kids to now. It lets them grow and be real people and yet the same characters. When the farmer who raised them essentially dies, we are moved. There are other deeply emotional moments, say Porky discovering and being frightened by Petunia, that bring out genuine emotions that you never really felt with any Looney Tunes project previously.  I never teared up with Looney Tunes before.

The best thing I can say is that this is on the level of the best animation being turned out today. It stands shoulder to shoulder with most of the great animated films of the last decade. Watching the film I was struck that the film would make a brilliant co-feature with WALLACE AND GROMIT VENGEANCE MOST FOUL, the film from Aardman and Netflix because it's a film that takes classic characters and breathes new life into them. There are emotions and complexity in both films that raise the stakes.

This film is one of the best film in the Looney Tunes canon and it is a film that probably would have delighted Chuck Jones, Friz Freling, Bob Clampett and the other animators because it shows how the creators of today built on what they did and went in directions they could only have hoped to go.(Warner studio heads would never have gone for a feature, never mind one with this much complexity and emotion.)

This is one one of the great films  and great finds of 2024. I honestly had little hope for this and instead founf myself completely blown away.

Highly recommended.

It's on the festival circuit and it's going to be released early next year- go.

Monday, November 4, 2024

MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (2024)


In the wake of the death of her friend, Grace Pudel relates the story of her life and her obsession with snails.

Another home run from animator Adam Eliot, and another film I never want to see again. A film filled with humor and the darkness of life, what happens to Grace and her brother is largely terrible,  it's a kind of weird parable about finding light and hope where you can. The problem is that so many terrible things happen it becomes overwhelming. I wanted to check out several times during the film and kept wondering if it wouldn't be better to just eat poison.

Don't get me wrong, I love the film, but the bleakness of it all is almost too much to bare.  It's so over powering that I kind of have mixed feelings about the ending, the happily ever after turn feels more like an attempt not to have people killing themselves in the aisles than anything that would follow. 

Honestly my quibbles about the darkness aside it's a great film, and is recommended, just don't see it if you're having a down day.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Flow (2024) Animation is Film 2024


FLOW is one of the great films of 2024. It’s probably one of the greatest animated films ever made. I suspect in five years it will be hailed as a classic.

A kind of fable, the film is the story of a cat who ends up on a boat with some other animals raveling across the world during a flood.  It’s a tale of life on a grand scale told without dialog.

This is a a grand adventure. Set somewhere else at some other time and place where people are no longer around the film creates a world where anything is possible. Animals that should be together are. There are references to places here on earth, but nothing concrete. There are some magical creatures, and fantastic turns but it all makes absolute perfect emotional sense. 

I know that everyone is going to have their say about the film. Countless podcasts and You Tube videos explaining a film that doesn’t have to be explained, but simply experienced, will be popping up soon. That we live in a time where everyone has to put out pieces where they explain what the director, whom they never met, meant, or more likely saying how their take is the only right one, is a sad one. Everyone should be able to have the film mean what ever they want it to mean. FLOW needs to thrive however it thrives in the hearts of everyone who sees it.

As a work of art, this film is of the highest order. The images and storytelling are near perfect, not always in a brain logic sense but in a dead on heart sort of way. This film moved me viscerally and I wanted to to stop the film several times just because I was so overwhelmed that I wanted to just cry at the beauty of it all. (Several people behind me at the screening were loudly sobbing)

Cinema does not get much better than this.

Similar in some ways to director Gints Zilbalodis’ earlier AWAY, which is about a mystical journey, this is a vast jump in quality. This is film is a film where the student becomes the master. Everything here is nigh on perfect with the character design and animation being of a quality that few animators ever achieve. All you need to is watch  the eyes of the cat, or any of the characters and you’ll be amazed. Its so good that you’ll wish that the filmmakers could get special Oscars for their work- or compete in the best performance category. I’m serious-the best performances of the year are all computer generated.

In some ways the film may remind you of some questing computer games. Some games like MYST came to mind (and one person I spoke with after the screening listed others).  And while I can see the influence perhaps in image referencing, I can’t say that the it is more than an influence. I say that because films are not games. We do not have control. The questing structure is as old as humanity. Additionally I have never been as invested and connected to a video game story or game characters as I am here. There is a realness here that makes FLOW something greater than it’s influences. 

In a weird way the film also feels like Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld. I can't say why, largely because it's been years since I last read the stories, but there is still something haunting me.

This film is any, and every, superlative you can think of. It is a film at the highest level of cinematic art. It will move you in ways you didn’t think were possible.

Highly recommended.

Look for FLOW to have  a long life.

(And it should be noted that the film does have a post credits sequence. It’s brief but explains what happens to one character)

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Sultana's Dream (2023) Animation is Film


Isabel Herguera’s feature debut was inspired by the 1905 fable by Rokeya Hossain, which imagines the utopian country called Ladyland, where women hold sway and men stay at home. Here we follow a young woman as she deals with her place in the world, discovers the original book and goes on a quest to find a real world Ladyland.

This is a cinematic work of art of the highest order. The differing look of the film will remind you of the work of some the world's greatest artists as well as the work of animators such as Lotte Reininger, Cartoon Saloon, Marjane Satrapi, Richard Williams and others, while at the same time giving all the borrows it's own slant that makes it something truly unique. Frankly the images and the story telling here are so unique that the referencing of other artists is merely an attempt at trying to explain the visual wonders contained inside.

What this film does visually will make you sit wide eyed and slack jawed at the beauty of it all.

AT the same time this is a film that I never fully emotionally connected to. Very much a film with a great deal on its mind, it often puts it's ideas ahead of it's feelings. This is a film that wants to win us with ideas more than it does emotion. I can't blame director Herguera she has a lot she wants to say, rightly so, but at the same time some of the emotion is lost. It's not fatal, but so much here is so good I wanted to love it not just like it.

My reservation aside, this is still a film you will want to see, especially on a big screen. 

Recommended.

Ghost Cat Anzu (2024) Animation is Film 2024


Karin is dumped at the home of her grandfather, who is a monk at a Buddhist shrine, by her father who is being hunted by loan sharks who already broke his arm. She is intrigued by the Anzu, the giant talking cat. As she settle in to her new home he meets the boy in the neighborhood, some spirits and some other supernatural beings.

This is a film that could never be made in the US. Life isn't neat and perfect, bad things happen and things don't go as expected. The result of the messiness of life creeping in is a film that ends up delighting the audience.

While the film is going to seem gruff and perhaps a bit low brow early on, Anzu loves to fart, the film quickly makes up for it with a cast of characters and situations that worm their way into your heart. You like everyone on screen and they become friends quickly because for the most part no one in this film is like any other character in any animated film. I couldn't help but smile and lean in because these were not people I knew or second guess.

Wonderfully its own thing, sometimes to the detriment of the pacing, GHOST CAT ANZU is film that stands out and warms the heart with real people and real emotion. Yes, some of the character design may remind you of other films, but the truth is the story and the way it unfolds is not like anything else you've really seen in Japanese and especially American animation. The plotting is not really conventional inspite of it being weirdly perfect.

Truthfully this is a film I wish had a real shot at getting at least an Oscar nomination. While I would be hard pressed to call the film the best animated film of the year (the pacing is random and there are some odd tonal shifts), it is special enough and different enough that it should take one of the Oscar slots, especially since the rest of the slots are going to be filled with Hollywood retreads of piss poor cookie cutter formulas.

You need to see this film because it will open your eyes to what can be done with the animated medium.

Highly recommended.



Saturday, October 19, 2024

The Colors Within (2024) Animation is Film 2024


Coming of age film about a young girl who can see the "colors" of people who is staying in a Catholic school. She hooks up with two other people and together they form a band.

This is a film that is going to surprise a great many people. Outside of the colors, this is not a mystical anime tale, nor is it a film with contrived narrative peaks and valleys. This is a film about growing up, trying to find friends and deciding what you want to do in life.  Things happen as they normally do. There is no grand tragedies afoot or aliens or bizarre turn. There is simply life.

In a weird way that's a novel concept....

...on the other hand it makes for a uniquely compelling movie. Yes the use of animation allows for the enhancement of mood and feeling, but the fact that we are just seeing life animated is something special. Naoko Yamada has fashioned a film that sneaks up and works you over because the medium of animation draws us in.  We go in expecting something special and we come out feeling that is exactly the case. We see life as lived, which is something we not only almost never see in animation, at least that which gets a wide release, but also it is not something we see in most live action films since most filmmakers feel the need to spruce things up with an unnatural turn.

Never mind the animation, which is wonderful, I love this film simply as a film. This film stand up well with many of the live action dramas I've seen this year.

This is absolute proof that animation is not a genre but a medium for telling a story.

Highly recommended

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Maybe Elephants (2024) Newport Beach Film Festival, , Animation Is Film and AFI FEST


MAYBE ELEPHANT has animator Torill Kove continuing the story of her family. This time it’s the story of how her parents eventually essentially abandoning her and her sisters.

This is another winner from Kove. As always she uses animation not for cute and cuddly characters but because the medium allows her to do things that would never work in a live action film (one of the final images has Kove and her sister wandering across maps of their own making.) It’s a stunning film that doesn’t conform to the way we think life should go, but more toward the weird turns that life actually takes.

I really liked this film a great deal.

If you are on the West Coast of America you have three opportunities to see it at Newport Beach Film Festival, , Animation Is Film  and AFI FEST 

Monday, October 14, 2024

KENSUKE'S KINGDOM opens October 18


Young Michael and his dog end up falling overboard during a storm while they were sailing around the world.  He washes up on a lost island. He is taken in by the reclusive Kensuke who has been there for years living with and taking care of the animals on the island.

I was not a fan of the early part of this film which was the set up. We’d been there before and Michael was in sufferable. I wanted to drown the kid. However once Michael is stranded the film begins to pick up and by the time the orangutans show  up I was fully invested. Then by the time end came I was an emotional mess.

I absolutely loved this film a great deal. The emotional arc was masterful and the fact the film doesn’t shy away from sadness (the ending is heart breaking) or disturbing (you though the death of Bambi’s mother was bad, you ain’t seen nothing) gives the film an emotional weight that is rare in any film, never mind animated. I think Joe Bendel was correct in comparing the film to the film THE RED TURTLE from a few years back since it was the last time I remember an animated film had this much weight.

Part of the reason the film works is the animation and the vocal performances. Rarely has character animation been this good in any films. The characters seem alive, both human and animal with each one given small nuances that make them more life like then even your typical Studio Ghibli release. Add to it a vocal performance as good as the one Ken Wantanabe gives and you instantly have something that should be in the running for a Best Actor Oscar. I’m serious about that.

This is something you need to see, and bring tissues because you will get misty.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Wild Robot (2024)

 


A crated robot helper is washed ashore on an uninhabited island after a storm. Accidentally turned on by an animal it runs amok on the island scaring the animal as it tries to find someone to help. After learning to speak the animals language it tries to help again. After killing a family of geese, Roz ends up raising the only surviving goose with the help of a fox.

WILD ROBOT is a gorgeous film that is going to win the hearts of many. It's a good film with a great voice cast (none of which are over used) and some truly glorious sequences that are among the best ever put on film. At the same time the tone is all over place (it flops from Looney Tunes to very serious at random) and the film emotionally ends 2/3 of the way in but it still keeps going. 

I want to say again I really like the film but all this talk coming out of the Toronto Film Festival of an instant classic and destined to get a Best Picture nomination is a bit much. Give me five years on the classic bit, and as for the Best Picture nomination in addition to best Animated Film, uh, no.

While I like that the film deals with darkness- characters DIE- the film, especially in the early part of the film doesn't know if it's going to be a jokey film or something more serious with death and destruction mixing with humor. I mean characters eat each other and jokes are made. 

As for the plotting, the film builds to a crescendo and then keeps going. We get an odd winter sequence followed by an action sequence full of robots with ray guns and a finale that had me orchestrating it in my seat "now this happens" followed by what the lines of dialog that were word for word what was said on screen. 

But the voice cast makes it work. Lupita Nyong'o is note perfect and breaks your heart as Roz. It's a glorious piece of work. Additionally some of the big names, say Ving Rhames and Bill Nighy come in and grab you with their first line. Rhames doesn't come in until the glorious beyond words flying sequence but he instantly sells it.

The animation is glorious, and some of the best I've ever seen. The animators must have been left to do what they wanted and it shows in character motion and sequences that are unlike anything you've seen before. 

The good over whelms the bad and as such  WILD ROBOT is recommended.

(By way of an aside, and because I don't know where to put this and feel I have to say it, there is an animated film version of the novel KENSUKE'S KINGDOM which recently opened in the UK and will open in the US in October which tells a thematically similar story, that is emotionally satisfying, and ends at the similar moment where WILD ROBOT should have. Be warned there are no robots, however there are cute animals and some bad men which result in moments that mirror the death of Bambi's mother)

Sunday, September 22, 2024

DESPICABLE ME 4 (2024)

 


I had no intention of paying to see Despicable Me 4 in the theaters but an NYC heatwave and my being outside nearing heat exhaustion required I get into the AC ASAP  so I ducked into a theater to see the next movie was regardless of what it was. It was an amusing romp and time well spent beyond the cooling off.

The plot has Gru and his Anti-Villain League arresting his arch nemesis ----- at the class reunion. --- vows revenge from prison. Since he has morphed into a cockroach man the cockroaches break him out. Gru and family are put into witness protection and most of the minions go to work for the AVL. Complicating matters is the teen girl who lives next door to Gru, she knows Gru’s true identity and she wants Gru to help her pull a caper.

This isn’t high art but it is entertaining. The minion stuff is hit or miss with the superhero riff probably being best- especially at the end. The Gru and family stuff is dead on wonderful, with the film going into the stratosphere when the blackmail starts. That should have been more of the film, but that’s quibble.

While the film feels like two shorts welded together, the film still shines. I laughed out loud a bunch of times and the retired superhero minions getting called back into action had me acting like a giddy three year old as it reminded me of Ralph Bakshi’s THE MIGHTY HEROES going into battle during the open credits of that series.

The film is ultimately pure joy, with only the minion nonsense during the end credits being a real disappointment.

Recommended for fans.

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

QUOTA (2024) Toronto 2024


Wicked short film about everyone being told that they now must watch their carbon output which will be monitored by a phone app- and what happens when it runs out.

This is a very clever little film with a nasty sting in its tale. Running a breezy three minutes it’s kind of hard to write on since there isn’t much I can say without spoiling it.

That said, this is destined to be kicking around the festival circuit so definitely make an effort to see it.

Saturday, August 3, 2024

Sunburnt Unicorn (2024) Fantasia 2024

 


While traveling across the desert a father is arguing with his son, Frankie. As a result they end up in a bad car crash When Frankie wakes up, having been thrown from the car he has a large piece of glass in his head making him look like a unicorn. Frankie’s father is gone, he wandered off to get help according to a turtle that was cut in half by the crash.  Deciding to help his dad Frankie heads off to find him.

Strange animated film could only work as an animated film. There is no way anyone would believe the odd turns and semi-dead characters as a live action film. At the same time this mix of survival and philosophy is so unique that I’m not sure who this film is really for, I mean the philosophical musings are going to blow over the head of the preteen set (not to mention parents being wary about a turtle character dragging itself along slowly dying with its intestines hanging out). and the  older kids are not going to go for the measured pace. Who is this film for? I don’t know.

It's not a bad film. I like it. At the same time I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make of it because it just is doing its own thing. Its so its own thing I don’t know how to explain it, I mean it’s like a normal movie, but it isn’t.

Basically it has me tongue tied as I search for words to adequately explain it.

As a one of a kind cinematic experience I love that the film exists, as will anyone who is a long time reader of Unseen Films, but I’m going to be hard pressed to see this playing any where other than festivals like Fantasia.

Highly recommended for those who want to go off the well worn cinematic paths.