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Film Review: Bodies Bodies Bodies – 2022

Director(s)Halina Reijn
Principal CastAmandla Stenberg as Sophie
Maria Bakalova as Bee
Myha’la Herrold as Jordan
Chase Sui Wonders as Emma
Rachel Sennott as Alice
Release Date2022
Language(s)English
Running Time 94 minutes
Report Card Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The soundscape is littered with the sounds of birds and bees, animalistic noises and the symbols of sexual euphemism come to life, as the camera focuses on a fitting image of a loving, lustful engagement – a gratuitous make-out session – whose noises enter into the cacophony. The frame’s first focus is the encounter, the experience and not the experiencers – an intentional choice that affirms a “living in the moment.”

Then, the camera pulls back to reveal the subjects of this amorous encounter, Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova), who are caught in the throes of passion, their desire for their respective partner’s body overwhelming any other drive – humans rendered as their basest selves.

From this vantage point, the greenery surrounding the couple in the backdrop shot out-of-focus to render it into a hue of colors, an impressionistic embrace and framing by nature, calls back to the idyllic Eden, this time populated by two Eves.

This paradise continues for a while until Sophie declares her love to Bee, the latter of which smiles back without giving a verbal response.

The enunciation is immediately interrupted by the harsh musical tunings of Slayyyter ‘s “Daddy AF” and we cut to the two characters, previously protected by the lush greens, now encased in a metallic husk, a car, with phones in their hands as opposed to on one another – technological transmutation, a counterpoint to the openings positioning of the human as pure animality freed from anthropocentric constraints.

With the shift to this “hi-tech” humanity, we see new concerns bleed into the environment, replacing the love from before with a sense of worry. Bee looks at her phone with concern, scrolling through it with a sense of dread. Sophie attempts to assuage her, claiming that her friends’ digital personas, profiles Bee is looking over are not as “nihilistic” as portrayed and are indicative of what said friends want others “to think” of them.

Thus, the phone is rendered as a barrier to unfettered love, a portal to false images by which persons can look at others in an artificial, distanced manner.

The camera cuts from the inside of the vehicle to wide shots of the vehicle traversing lush, green mountains before a nice aerial shot reveals a wide-spanning mansion, the location of the get-together that Sophie is taking Bee to, a party with the aforementioned friends that Bee feels the need to research before meeting in an attempt to not make a fool of herself. We’re a far ways from the idyllic Eden where love can find and cultivate itself without regards for the thoughts of outside observers.

The couple gets out and heads to the luxurious abode but Bee hesitates and claims she has to retrieve something from the vehicle. Sophie rushes over, tells her not to dally for too long, and kisses her partner once again. But this attempt to channel the Edenic opening fails. There’s a space here made all the more poignant by the greens around them which are now fully in focus: discreteness generates distance.

Bee goes back to the car and immediately checks her face in the rear-view mirror, touching up her image to ensure that her ensuing meeting with the persons she’s spent time researching will come to joyous fruition. The reflective surface serves as an analog to the phone from earlier, an interface by which the ego can render itself into its most pleasing form.

Satisfied by her appearance, she finally gets out and begins to walk into the abode. The shot frames her in the background with the car’s dashboard and mirror in the foreground. We watch her move towards the house and cut right as she disappears behind the mirror she’s just spent time consulting with: she’s entered the mirror world, the realm of appearances.

Meanwhile, the mansion’s inhabitants peacefully float around in a pool, a man-made approximation of nature, of Eden, that can’t recreate the same idyllic peace but serves as a temporary reprieve, a metaphorical womb of sorts. This moment is interrupted by the presence of Sophie; she appears at the edge of the pool, her image distorted and shifting, and disrupts the reflection of those below. Confrontation looms at the boundary of the water qua mirror, a counterpoint of sorts to Bee’s earlier moment by herself.

The crew comes up and engages with Sophie. Alice (Rachel Sennot) eagerly greets her friend while the rest of the group slowly acclimates to the presence, treating their supposed comrade more like an intrusion, questioning her presence at their get-together. As all the characters pop out, Greg (Lee Pace) pops out of the water and reveals that the paradisal picture was merely a competition ground; the group had been testing the limits of their breathing capacities and he’s won the competition. The game of compare and contrast has already started.

While this group converses, Bee enters the house, a moment which showcases the opulence of the manor in a wonderful tracking shot that starts on the ceiling and goes to Bee’s face as she gazes around entranced. A cut shows her framed by the doors of the house, a new entrant to the world of the bourgeoise who finds herself held in its purview. She enters the backyard pool environment and is initially cast alone, her outsider status re-affirmed.

Sophie quickly runs to her partner’s side, wraps her arms around her, and begins to introduce her to the rest of the crowd, stopping on Greg who is revealed to be Alice’s most recent beau, another new entrant to this social scene – seemingly obvious given his age gap compared to the rest of the group. The framing switches from Bee alone to Bee with Sophie to the couple now cast to one side of the frame against the already established group – two worlds primed to collide.

Greg’s immediate reaction to learning that this is THE Sophie immediately informs us of an undercurrent pervading this social scene, one that has been building since her cohorts first became aware of her appearance. There’s a palpable tension building as we wait to learn what Sophie’s done. Just like Bee, we’re outsiders to this group’s dynamic and must learn how to swim in its ebb and flow.

Quickly, thinly veiled barbs start materializing into larger concerns. The group calls out Sophie for being unresponsive in the group chat. She hasn’t been part of the group’s festivities in some time and her presence is a genuine surprise to everyone else. What exactly does she want?

Then, Alice goes to get champagne to celebrate the festivities. David (Pete Davidson), the party’s host, chastises her for taking his “dad’s shit”, revealing this abode and everything within as part of the generational wealth he’s been born into, but he ultimately doesn’t push the matter when she exclaims the presence of their seemingly unavailable friend warrants a toast. In perfect synergy with his partner, Greg then comes out into the fray with an antique sword and slices the bottle open in a wonderful show, a demonstration which upsets David even more than the retrieval of the bottle. He not only repeats his warning to not touch his father’s property but goes so far as to act and grab the weapon away from the only other male presence – class and gender become inextricably tied as masculinity becomes coded, albeit jokingly, as a threat.

The subtle interactions of the group reveal their individual relationships to one another and to wealth itself which help inform both us and Bee of the underlying dynamics at work, an interplay which has become more complex as an unseen member, Max (Conner O’Malley) is disclosed to be missing due to alluded antagonisms. Additionally, the group realizes that they too are unfamiliar with the new Sophie who surprises everyone with her announcement of sobriety. Suddenly, the reason for the toast itself, a gesture meant to include Sophie within the festivities with aplomb, is undermined and leaves the group searching for something new to celebrate.

In a sick joke, as if we needed any more proof of the group’s opulence, they choose to then dedicate their drinks to the impending hurricane; a devastating event for commoners becomes a time for celebration for those who are capable of sheltering away from such tragedy. But nature cares not for wealth, and the imposing presence of the hurricane makes good on its promise and forces the group to go inside even as David takes the time, with sword in hand, to challenge the natural phenomena before giving up and throwing the sword on the floor thereby confirming that his concerns over its damages at the hands of Greg were based in pride and antagonism: property is only valuable as an extension of one’s image – a succinct take on the purpose of class.

Back in the house, our initial couple attempts to engage in another make-out session, this time framed against the backdrop of the mansion, which is quickly interrupted by the party’s host who takes Sophie aside to learn for the latter’s reason for coming to the event. Class dictates new conventions and the show of nature, initially cast as serene at the film’s start, becomes interrupted and commented on by observers. Privacy no longer exists.

This is confirmed when Bee slowly explores the house, entranced by the images of family and grandeur all around her. She’s clearly alienated by this environment but is unable to even take the entirety of the locale in before Jordan (Myha’la Herrold) intercedes, informs Bee of Sophie’s wealth which is comparatively greater to even David’s, and issues a warning to the newest newcomer: “Just be careful, okay? With Sophie. Just… Be Careful.” As she delivers this cautionary comment, the camera slowly pivots and uses the framing of the wall to divide these two parties into separate partitions – new groupings are being formed.

Suddenly, the mysteries of Sophie are turned against Bee as she’s now thrown into the currents of a group-dynamic which she knows nothing about and is forced to accept that she may not know her partner as well as she previously thought. The previous exchanges amongst the group code this interaction in multiple fashions and transform it into a labyrinth to be navigated with caution.

Is this this an analog to David and Greg’s previous confrontation at the pool, a female antagonism opposed to male, wherein Jordan takes on David’s role, Sophie takes on Greg’s role, and Bee, the seemingly poorest of the bunch, comes to be a stand-in for the “sword”, a symbol of power, in this case companionship, which must be controlled as an extension of one’s image?

Or is this an example of class solidarity, an extension of Jordan’s concern with not dropping the incredibly expensive alcohol, a thought which seemingly crossed none of the other party members’ minds, wherein she is looking out for Bee as someone who is also alienated by the displays of affluence? It would certainly make sense of her earlier, unprompted provocation about the stature of Sophie’s wealth.

We’re left to ponder the intent as Jordan happily hops down the hallway, out of sight, leaving only her eerie words behind.

As the interactions continue to proliferate, the film’s symbol par excellence, the cell-phone, continues to gain functions and becomes cemented as a pivotal tool in each character’s toolbox. It serves as mirror which can allow one to modify their appearance. It can allow for communication with parties not present within the immediate space, allowing for intimate connection. It can combine these functions and be used as a tool for social capital, capturing interactions meant for large-scale consumption vis-à-vis applications like Tik Tok. Director Halina Reijn imbues the object with nuance, an interface wherein all aspects of identity play around in relation to different socialized systems of power, but constantly demonstrates the way this nuance is discarded in favor of projects funded by the ego, affirmations of selfishness at the cost of everything else, a cost which will the film will explore with relish as its run-time continues.

Eventually, the group, including Bee, fall fully under the influence of their drugs and/or drinks of choice and are fully able to interact with one another, the substances operating as catalysts for interaction that previously was too shy to occur organically. It’s a ritual meant to summon the affects of Eden, nature at peace with itself, into a space that’s anything, the abode of capital and egotistical antagonisms that take priority over everything else.

Azelia Bank’s iconic “212” starts to play as the group begins to dance with aplomb while losing themselves in its frenetic energy, but as evidenced by the opening’s musical break, we know this is set to fail. The frenetic hand-held montage can’t sustain the same passion evinced by the opening as the constant-cutting showcases the power of the gaze and its violent powers.

Intimate moments of potential connection are ripped apart as persons are repeatedly transformed into outsiders who project their own fears and concerns onto these new dalliances, transforming would-be encounters into battlegrounds where the excluded participants make themselves known and vie for total control of the situation.

Jordan stares with a fervor as Sophie and Bee dance, her warning looming in the distant background.

Alice immediately pushes Sophie aside when the latter dances with the only other outsider in the group, Greg – a move that immediately stops the establishment of solidarity.

Sophie is prodded by David to look at Bee and Jordan dancing and is clearly perturbed by this interaction. Her reaction marks the beginning of the end and she calls the affairs to a stand-still and proposes that the group play a game, the titular “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”

The game, a take on popular games like “Mafia” or “Werewolf”, designates one player as a killer and tasks the other players with figuring out their identity before the players are fully eliminated. The players must navigate the house in the dark with a light and the next session of the game can only start when someone finds a deceased member and calls out the game’s title: “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” Thus, the implicit arena of the dance-floor becomes explicit within a game that actively forces the players to ascertain one another’s true intentions and come to meaningful conclusions as violence looms around every corner.

However, this variant of the game starts off with a ritualized ceremony, a credo of sorts, that sees each player take a shot and then slap the player next to them. The symbolic violence and rush of the game is not enough for these people and they need to ramp up the stakes even more to feel something in their insulated, privileged lives.

The ritual goes along well until Bee, the female outsider, refuses to hit David as hard as she’s expected to, obviously taking the trappings of the game as a limiting factor to the violence, choosing to play within the realm of symbols instead of letting such desires sublimate into reality. But David takes her refusal as a window to showcase what should actually be done – the host enforcing the laws of the land – and viciously punches Greg, the male outsider, the party who already emasculated David unknowingly outside with the display of the sword, giving the audience a taste of what’s to come.

Alice quickly calms Greg down and the game begins. The lights are turned out and the players are told to hide amongst the house. Of course, Bee armed with her cell-phone, uses it to navigate the environment, an abode which already alienates her with its affluence, and determines her allegiances, choosing to try and form a companionship with Alice, who runs away from her, and avoid Jordan, who narrowly misses Bee as she hides.

Suddenly, the call is made. The group convenes. The lights turn on.

And as expected, the resulting conversation immediately devolves into personal slights, indictments based on knowledge that one would never know outside of the game, so called “meta-gaming” moments that reveal the antagonisms within the group that had been swirling up for so long up to this moment. We see the formation of in-groups and the way they determine outsiders and see the ruptures becoming to form, conflicts which break out into reality when the next round starts and a body is found again, this time genuinely dead and un-moving. Now, the game will truly begin as it becomes realized in the flesh.

As this violent investigation continues, conflicts which we had only seen parts of rear their ugly heads. Alliances are tested and at each critical juncture new information is revealed which makes ascertaining the assassin increasingly difficult. No one can be trusted and the character’s, stuck using their own knowledge of one another, information which has been coded by all parties to fit their own self-interests, find themselves trapped in a nightmarish environment where anything and everything threatens to take them out.

With the lights fully out due to the storm, this variant of the game, one enforced by the rules of nature proper, never has a moment of proper deliberation with every encounter taking place in absolute darkness, the state of ambiguity. The power saps the utility of the phones, turning them into pure symbols meant to light the way – a perfect tying of form to content.

The set-up lets Reijn ratchet up tension, shooting the majority of the rest of the film in a handheld manner that reinforces the horror tropes one would associate with such a milieu and leads into moments of genuine tension.

However, as the storm rages on, the tight, intricate brushstrokes the film paints itself with, namely the minute point and counter-points related to class and gender, wash away under the pressures of the narrative and become far less focused and poignant, drowning under the pressure.

Ideas on class and gender become far more overarching than they need be and the manner by which the film demonstrates the logic of alienation is cast aside.

The script’s wonderful Gen-Z slang, awash in the tropes and stylings of online vernacular, previously used to reinforce the shallow manners by which the characters’ code themselves as perpetual victims and as better than one another, eventually becomes superficial in end of itself, servicing the film with nothing more than punch-lines that elicit laughs but do very little in taking the aforementioned sub textual machinations to the next level, a move that would evaluate this horror-skinned murder mystery into the realm of a full-blooded classic.

While the broad splatters the film ultimately uses to finish populating its canvas tie together the plotlines in a formally competent and satisfying manner, neatly calling back to some of the larger overtures established at the film’s start, the ultimate reveal, the film’s punch-line so to speak, may alienate viewers looking for something grander underneath the veneer of it all. And while that particular message and related revelation may be the film’s biggest point, a perfect encapsulation of sorts of its characters and the manner by which it treats them, it’s a shame that it seemingly becomes the only fully developed statement delivered when so much groundwork had been laid down to present a more multi-faceted thesis.

Using the film’s pressing scenario as a metaphor, there’s a hurricane waiting to be unleashed on the viewer, but the film settles for a torrent of rain instead, foregoing the other elements that would augment such a phenomenon and generate a storm that would truly stand-out.

REPORT CARD

TLDRMuch like the party and game at the heart of it’s story, the film is filled with an abundance of jokes, kinetic scenes, and moments of grandeur that ultimately delivers goods that should satisfy those looking for a fun horror-skinned murder mystery and satire on the parlance of identity politics, but the vacuous nature of this delivery may disappoint those looking for something a bit more profound.
Rating8.8/10
GradeB+

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

Film Review: Shiva Baby – 2020

Director(s)Emma Seligman
Principal CastRachel Sennott as Danielle
Molly Gordon as Maya
Danny Deferrari as Max
Polly Draper as Debbie
Fred Melamed as Joel
Release Date2020
Language(s)English
Running Time 78 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The film opens on a couple, Danielle (Rachel Sennott) and Max (Danny Deferrari), engaged in sexual activities. The duo is framed in the foreground of the frame, blurred out and out of focus. Yet, we can hear Danielle excitedly plays her part and scream “Daddy” before the encounter ceases. Then, she gets up and enters the frame’s foreground where she answers a call from her mother. As she talks to her parental figure, she covers up her lover, the bearer of the parental sexually-charged signifier – a point of contrast neatly communicated via the layers of the frame.

Max gets up to join Danielle as the latter finishes her conversation and tries to pry information out of her regarding her other activities; he’s most keen to figure out if she’s going to see other men. Thus, the relationship between “sugar baby” and “sugar daddy” is revealed – an extension of the parental comparison. She resists giving information as he valorizes himself for supporting young “women entrepreneurs”, revealing that his payments are going towards Danielle’s law degree. He gifts her a bracelet and pauses on giving her compensation till she reminds him; it’s clear he wants her to admit that feelings for him are her primary motivator instead of just the financial ones but he acquiesces as she engages in a passionate kiss with him.

We cut to Danielle walking along a street, now dressed in professional clothing; composer Ariel Marx’s score composed of discordant strings starts to play punctuating the moment. Danielle’s unenergetic face gives way to a false display of jubilation as she greets someone on the road before collapsing back into a more downtrodden expression. She’s clearly playing more than one part.

The camera pivots from her to a car where her father, Joel (Fred Melamed), calls to her. She calls out to “Daddy” before giving him a quick hug and going to the other side to talk to her mother, Debbie (Polly Draper), who immediately begins a painful, yet relatable interrogation of her daughter, calling attention to the bracelet on Danielle’s wrist; Danielle tries to conceal the origin of the bracelet and insists it’s a graduation present from her parents. Thankfully, her parents quickly move on and proceed to run Danielle through the latter’s “soundbites” for the event: she’s finishing finals and has a few job interviews. Yet another performance for Danielle to perform.

During this conversation, Danielle notices another party entering the scene. This young woman, Maya (Molly Gordon), looks quizzically on Danielle. Debbie fills in the blanks for the audience, informing us that Maya and Danielle were formerly dating, when she warns her daughter not to engage in any “funny” business. Finally, the trio is ready to enter the event. Right before getting in, Danielle reveals that said event is a funerary one, a “shiva”, a Jewish mourning ritual, when she asks “who died”. Immediately, the film cuts and shows Danielle expressing sympathies for the departed- a comedic edit by director Emma Seligman that makes explicit the farcical nature of the performances being enacted.

It’s this setting, the house where the “shiva” is taking place, where Danielle finds herself trapped in for the rest of the film’s run-time. Marx’s terrifying string-based score finds itself free reign here, as Danielle finds herself surrounded on all sides by “Other” parties, parents included, who seek to cast judgement and call attention to the multiple roles she finds herself playing.

The stakes of these potential encounters become fully revealed when Danielle notices Max, of all people, talking to her father in a doorway. She looks at him and he looks back at her in shock. Of all the places, the two find themselves face-to-face at a religious function where their illicit relationship can definitely not rear its head. Thus, the stage is fully set as Danielle finds herself in the presence of not only elderly figures who will naturally find some way to probe or disapprove but also finds herself in the presence of her former lover and current sugar-daddy; this is a recipe for disaster and Seligman commits to taking us there.

Despite being set in primarily one location, Seligman refuses to let things remain uncinematic and constantly utilizes close-ups and mediums with faces and bodies crowding the frame from all sides to create a never-ending feeling of discomfort. Given the films interests, the ability for a subject, in this case Danielle, to find themselves among a sea of persons, norms, and expectations, the focus on “Other” persons constantly invading one’s space is genius aesthetic move. This visual cluttering is accentuated by an auditory crowding; like the Safdie’s brothers Uncut Gems, characters constantly talk over one another and their pieces of dialogue are just as intrusive as the character’s bodies themselves. Seligman accentuates this noise with Marx’s non-diegetic score and allows harsh diegetic noises, like the cries of a baby, to blend in, creating an uncomfortable, harsh experience that genuinely generates a foreboding feeling; something feels like it’s on the verge of breaking at every point.

It’s telling that one feels a visceral fear upon seeing an unknown hand reach in from just outside the frame to tap Danielle; every interaction is a potential minefield to be navigated and the supremely crowded audio-visual landscape means that there are infinitely many of such encounters. Key choices made in the mise-en-scene, namely the use of red objects which accentuate the lighting during pivotal encounters, cast said scenes in a hellish ambiance that adds an expressionistic flair to the film and make the fever pitch Danielle’s decisions have led and are leading to explicitly clear. If she can’t find a “point” to ground herself to, she’ll end up swept in the current of the “Other’s” judgement. The film utilizes horror trappings and conventions to demonstrate the terrors that come with trying to find and carve out a space for one’s identity.

Consequently, the identitarian doublings set up at the film’s start – “Daddy” for a lover versus for a parent- only continue to expand as more terms and points of comparison get added with each additional encounter Danielle finds herself privy to. By bouncing between these points and their established counter-points, Seligman is able to emphasize the difficulty in establishing one’s agency regardless of whether or not they follow the proper edicts or go against them.

REPORT CARD

TLDRShiva Baby brilliantly examines the pressures that come with trying to find oneself while juggling personal and social expectations. By utilizing the trappings of a horror film, namely a discordant string-based score, the film is able to transform awkward social encounters into confrontations with “monsters” whose sole purpose seem to be prying and uncovering one’s darkest secrets. The result is a fantastic blend of comedy and gripping tension that keeps you enthralled from start to finish.
Rating9.7/10
GradeA+

Go to Page 2  for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

Film Review: Shrek – 2001

Director(s)Andrew Adamson
Vicky Jenson
Principal CastMike Myers as Shrek
Eddie Murphy as Donkey
Cameron Diaz as Princess Fiona
John Lithgow as Lord Farquaad
Release Date2001
Language(s)English
Running Time 90 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Composers Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell’s ethereal and aptly titled track “Fairytale” plays as the Dreamworks logo begins, encapsulating the film before the narrative proper even starts. A leather-bound book with no discernible title sits in the middle of the frame; the book opens and a voice begins to narrate an archetypal tale of a hero rescuing a princess.

The tale comes to an abrupt close as the narrator incredulously laughs at the story’s insinuation of a true love being able to overcome insurmountable odds, and his green hand subsequently rips the page out to use as a piece of toilet paper; the fairytale becomes the literal butt of the joke.

Accordingly, when the narrator, an ogre named Shrek (Mike Myers), bursts out of his outhouse, the film’s musical stylings switch from Gregson-William and Powell’s “Fairytale” to “All Star” by Smash Mouth. In sharp contrast to the diegetic song-and-dance routine characteristic of the Disney Renaissance films (The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Mulan) preceding Shrek’s release, this non-diegetic infusion of pop serves as the perfect punch-line to Shrek’s earlier subversive gesture and announces the film’s deconstructive tendencies: Songs play in the backdrop but Shrek refuses to give in to their allure and sing along. He’s not your typical protagonist.

The ogre then brushes aside a coat of mud, unearthing the film’s title card, before the film cuts to a montage of Shrek’s everyday activities: he bathes in mud, brushes his teeth with slug slime, and creates warning signs to keep people off of his property. A match cut from his sign reveals that the townspeople, like Shrek, have constructed signs about an ogre, but theirs is a bounty poster which promises a reward for bringing such a creature in. The people begin a trek into the swamp to confront the ogre menace.

The musical montage comes to a close as the townsfolk finally enter the swamp. But Shrek appears behind them and is lit in such a way as to accentuate his monstrous features. He calmly explains the terrors of ogres to the people before engaging in a theatrical display demonstrating the same. The camera hones in on the intensity of his ostentatious roar with three separate shots, each of which cuts closer to his face. The use of heightened lighting, canted angles, and horrific close-ups intentionally evokes the stylings of a monster film in the vein Frankenstein (the set-up also involves a horde with torches surrounding a green monster which adds to the feeling), but we know it’s performative from Shrek’s side as he calmly tells his audience to depart after said presentation, prompting the latter group’s chaotic escape.

A poster flies away from one of them during said departure, and Shrek notices that it’s an ad promising financial compensation for fairytale creatures; it’s not just ogres that the people seem to be after. Another match-cut transports us from the crudely drawn fantasy creature on the poster to the creature proper locked up in a carriage. The vehicle moves off-screen and reveals a deluge of imprisoned fairytale creatures being carted off and sold to a host of soldiers. If the farcical nature of the film wasn’t clear enough, the representation of the fairytale genre via the creatures making up its milieu literally being partitioned, exchanged for scraps of wealth, and shipped away in cells emphatically hammers home the film’s interests.

A woman walks up to the front of the exchange line and tries to trade her talking donkey (Eddie Murphy). The guard asks for a demonstration of the creature’s talents before accepting him, but Donkey, who up to this moment had been desperately conversing with the woman in an attempt to avert said exchange, refuses to modify his performance and compromise his position. But when fairy dust is sprinkled on him inadvertently causing him to fly, he begins to boast of his prodigious abilities as he begins to mount a grand escape. The moment intentionally evokes Dumbo, leading us to believe that Donkey will fly out with the aid of his newfound powers.

Then he falls back to the ground because this is Shrek and magic, like other genre accoutrements, refuses to work as expected. Instead of flying off, Donkey makes a mad dash through a forest and bumps into Shrek. Caught between the soldiers and the ogre, Donkey picks the latter and hides behind him. The armed group approaches Shrek, clearly scared of the green behemoth. The group’s leader reveals that the group is under orders to round up and relocate all fairytale creatures by dictates of a Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow).

We cut to Shrek who asks which army will be in charge of his resettlement at which point we cut back to the leader completely alone and his army long gone. Like the townspeople, the soldiers are too frightened by ogre tales and refuse to deal with the creatures.

But the honest Donkey refuses to buy into the mythos, demonstrating a considerable apathy to Shrek’s horrific performance. He tries to break into a song about friendship, an attempt at introducing the film’s pop stylings in traditional diegetic fashion, but is quickly interrupted by Shrek who refuses to allow a musical moment to happen. In an attempt to terminate any possible relationship between the two, Shrek tries to pull out the same theatrics from his previous acts, glowering down on Donkey from below and growling at him with a monstrous bellow. Yet, Donkey responds with friendship instead of fear and asks for Shrek’s name – a first for the ogre – in an attempt to get to know one another.

However, Donkey’s goodwill only gets him so much: Shrek allows him to stay on the patio for the night but offers no other commodities, going so far as to eat a nice dinner by himself while Donkey sits outside. But Shrek’s peace is quickly interrupted as the fairytale creatures being rounded from earlier begin to spring up from every corner of his house before ousting him out of the abode; the camera pulls up to reveal Shrek surrounded by the entirety of the fairytale crowd imprisoned earlier in the day.

Desperate to disperse the crowd, Shrek learns that their arrival on his property is due to the orders of Farquaad; much to his chagrin, it turns out his swamp has been designated the fairytale dumping ground. Shrek vows to go to Farquaad and evict the crowd from his property. He operates under the assumption that his actions will be decried but the crowd around him, desperate to go back to where they came, cheer for his proclamation and crown him as their champion – a hero fighting for fairytales.

He takes Donkey along as a guide and sets off. Once again, Donkey tries to break into song; the moment is the perfect point where older animated musical fantasies would narrate the journey via song. But he’s stopped by Shrek once more and is only allowed to hum. The ogre might be forced to play hero for the fairytale crowd, but he refuses to go along with the musical script expected.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Farquaad proceeds to an interrogation. His journey to the interrogation room is cross-cut against the room being set up with a glass of milk of all things; intrigue begins to build. We see his feet, his gloves, and his visage framed from angles which emphasize their size and prominence; there’s a weight to his authority and an importance granted to his frame. An over-the-shoulder shots maintains the illusion of this power for a moment, but as Farquaad moves to the center of the frame, his short stature is revealed and his menacing authority is ripped from underneath his feet. When he finally enters the room and the subject of his punishment is revealed to be none other the Gingerbread Man (the milk qua torture begins to makes sense), the upending is complete: Farquaad feels like a huge joke.

The absurd interrogation is quickly brought to a close when Farquaad’s forces bring in a magical mirror similar to the one in Sleeping Beauty. Farquaad, seeking to stroke his ego, asks the mirror to confirm the greatness of his kingdom but is promptly rebuked: Farquaad, without a queen by his side, is no king and must remedy the situation to achieve his goals.

Consequently, the mirror breaks into a date-show presentation of three princess candidates for Farquaad to choose between for marriage: Cinderalla, Snow White, and Fiona (Cameron Diaz). It’s telling that his choice of bride-to-be is Fiona, the only one of the group who has no former Disney connection. After making his choice, “Escape” by Rupert Holmes plays from the mirror as part of its presentation. This diegetic use of music, a direct contrast to the non-diegetic use of “Smash Mouth” earlier during Shrek’s introduction, signifies Farquaad’s desire: the royal ruler wants to be the legendary hero of old, rescuing his princess partner from a seemingly insurmountable situation and buys into general narrative trappings, musical evocations included.

In this manner, the mirror serves as an analog to the book that Shrek was reading at the film’s start; both mediums present aspects of the mythical hero narrative prevent in the genre and have the respective hero characters orient themselves in regards to the same. Shrek decries the validity of the tales while Farquaad seems to enmesh himself within their fabric.

The musical cues represent proximity to the dictates of the genre which explains Shrek’s reluctance and non-diegetic relationship with music and Farquaad’s embrace of a diegetic relationship with it. This is why the latter’s town, Duloc, is crafted to look like a fictional version of DisneyWorld complete with music playing at all times. Shrek and Donkey hear elevator music in the empty townscape and are then greeted by a song-and-dance number by a mechanical information apparatus; despite his reluctance, Shrek is forced to tango with the musical intrusion and what comes with it.

Shrek and Farquaad finally confront one another in a stadium where the latter is hosting trials to select a champion, a hero by proxy capable of engaging in the heroic quest necessary to retrieve Fiona. With an ogre present, Farquaad decides that any one person capable of besting such a monstrosity will be more than capable enough of slaying a dragon, retrieving Fiona, and returning back; he gives the order to attack.

But Shrek absolutely decimates every hero candidate all while “Bad Reputation” plays in the background. At first glance the lyrics suggest that Shrek doesn’t care about improving his social standing or currying anyone’s favor, but his theatrical acquiescence towards the crowd and their demands for performative battle in the vein of wrestling suggests the total opposite: it’s not that he doesn’t care about improving as much as he’s never received an opportunity to change him image.

And it’s this opportunity that Farquaad presents Shrek upon the latter’s absolute victory in battle – a chance to play the part of hero. However, Shrek’s emphatic response to the crowd is short-lived and his disavowal of the archetype’s bells and whistles rushes back in; instead of accepting the quest to embrace the hero lying beneath, Shrek only agrees to Farquaad’s request under the guarantee that his swamp will be returned free of any and all fairytale influence. Thus, the duo sets off on their unheroic, selfishly-motivated hero’s journey.

This disjunction marks the parameters by which the film operates as it swings from lampooning genre conventions to embracing them in a deconstructive fashion. The “traditional” approach popularized by Disney where the protagonist goes overcomes their internal struggles, becomes heroic, and overcome their foes is represented by classical musical choices and the presence of diegetic music numbers, whereas the “non-traditional” approach the film (and Shrek) more explicitly embrace is characterized by the modern song choices and non-diegetic musical montage. Both of these approaches vie for supremacy as the narrative progresses, trading places and functions as Shrek reckons with what his tale truly entails.

The juxtaposition of the film’s more classic sounding score against the pop enthusiasm of its soundtrack exposes Shrek’s disavowal of singing while rendering him a subject of its power. In this sense, just like the social forces within the film which force Shrek to embrace a heroic role, the traditional scoring cues reveal the underlying mood and importance of the moment. In contrast, the needle-drop moments reveal Shrek’s internal machinations, bubbling under the surface, waiting to be unearthed. Diegetic and non-diegetic sound choices represent the shifting tides of this identarian battle as Shrek struggles to reconcile the villainous ogre persona he’s cultivated due to social pressures and the seemingly contradictory heroic persona driving his decisions. By taking advantage of the possibilities generated through strategic interplay of score and soundtrack Shrek is able to achieve a balance between the fantastical and the everyday.

Thus, the sound design ostensibly works to entertain and keep the viewer engaged with its more modern sensibilities all while subtly cueing us in to where Shrek is on the journey to find and embrace the nature of his desires. Like Wes Craven’s Scream, Shrek (to a lesser extent) reveals the underlying logic of its genre, drawing attention to the mechanisms at play, but never undermines them in such a manner to make them ineffective, allowing the film the chance to capitalize on those tropes later on. This combined with both the everyday feel of both the overt soundscape and Shrek’s characterization as vulgar yet endearing gives the fantasy tale a down-to-earth feeling, making it increasingly accessible in spite of its subversive gestures.

Unfortunately, like Scream, Shrek’s success and ingenuity revitalized its genre with lesser emulations (including some sequels) which mimic its appearance but never achieve the same emotional resonance. Films copy the crude humor, expressive animation, genre lampooning, modern songs, and celebrity voice-over acting – all elements of Shrek which are memorable and work – but forgets that these characteristics are utilized in service of the overarching ideas of the film, namely that of expanding the possibilities inherent in fairytales and the narratives the genre can offer up.

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TLDRRevolutionary at the time and hard to beat even now, Shrek‘s deconstruction of the Disney Renaissance era films provides a breath of fresh air for animated fantasy musicals while retaining the magic that genre lovers expect. The pop stylings and crude humor go hand-in-hand with an evocative, ogre-filled hero’s journey.
Rating10/10
GradeA+

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Film Review: Dark Star – 1974

Director(s)John Carpenter
Principal CastBrian Narelle as Doolittle
Dan O’Bannon as Pinback
Cal Kuniholm as Boiler
Dre Pahich as Talby
Joe Saunders as Powell
Release Date1974
Language(s)English
Running Time 83 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

A red screen takes center frame. A message meant for the ship “Dark Star” begins to play. A man (Miles Watkins) from Mission Control informs the ship’s crew that the message they previously sent took near 10 years to get transmitted back to Earth where it was broadcast to rave reviews. He smirks and asks the crew to send increase the pace of the messages sent, a redundant gesture given aforementioned temporal delays.

But to add insult to injury, he proceeds to inform them that their request for mechanical assistance to deal with a radiation leak has been declined due to the same distance issues; sending up tools to their location is financially infeasible. Thus, communication is rendered nothing more than a product, losing its function as connective tool. The crew’s messages are nothing more than nicely packaged goods meant to be consumed as entertainment by the public on prime-time instead of as genuine requests for assistance meant to be acted on. They make profit but are awarded none of its spoils. The communicative farce brings to a close as the man gleefully tells the crew they’ll make do in spite of the difficulties.

Director John Carpenter’s electronic synth score plays, generating a propulsive energy as the ship appears on screen flying towards a planet. We get a view of the crew; one member – Talby (Dre Pahich) stays at the top of the ship while another 3 members – Doolittle (Brian Narelle), Pinback (Dan O’Bannon), Boiler (Cal Kuniholm) – work in a chamber of sorts. The group work in tandem to drop a bomb from their ship.

Pinback (Dan O’Bannon) proceeds to engage in cordial conversation with the bomb to set it up for its upcoming drop and Carpenter employs the traditional shot-reverse-shot between Pinback and the bomb itself, elevating the artificial intelligence qua tool of destruction to a similar agential field as the crew proper. The bomb is released and the crew engages in hyperdrive to get out of the area before the explosion goes off.

Carpenter deftly conveys the effects of such a maneuver in spite of obvious budgetary limitations. The ship quickly “moves” forward into the screen and disappears into a vanishing point created by the movement. A planet emulates the ship’s motion and disappears in a similar fashion. Then, the ship is seen approaching the frame from its front-side, and it comes into the frame before the screen cuts to a view of the stars.

The series of cuts up to now have generated a forward momentum within the frame and the stars begin to blur into streaks of multiple different colors. Another cut reveals the ship flying past a host of streaking colors, demonstrating the intensity of the ship’s speed.

The green lights in the chamber accentuate the intensity of the event before we cut to a screen read-out charting the explosion’s success. The final shot highlights the ship in the foreground and explosion in the background and makes the distance travelled more apparent.

Each part of this sequence is low-tech and has the propensity to feel jarring in its own right, but Carpenter knows exactly how to use them in tandem to present a convincing sequence of the crew successfully accomplishing their mission: they bomb uninhabited areas which may impede future human colonization.

The ship’s computer congratulates the crew on a nice bomb run before they set out to their next mission location. Boiler locates a 95% probability of intelligent life in one sector and asks Pinback if they should head out there; the latter scoffs at the suggestion and reminds the group that when Powell led them to find life during his tenure as ship leader, they only discovered a mindless balloon-like creature that they could do nothing meaningful with; bomb runs have proven to be more productive uses of time. This cynical move to prioritize destruction over preservation extends the farcical nature of the initial transmission sent to the ship: in a world where communication is a compartmentalized product instead of connective force, there’s no reason to prioritize incorporating more voices into one’s discursive sphere.

Thus, the crew continues on their merry way: they ignore all signs of life, plot out the destruction of planets which may impede a future humanity’s evolution, and send communications doomed to receive no meaningful responses back to this same humanity. Carpenter and screen-writer Dan O’Bannon tap into darkly comedic, misanthropic stylings of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in the way they navigate communicative failure and humanity’s drive towards violence but cross it against a futuristic milieu which pays homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, namely in the way it uses artificial intelligence as a way to define and tease out the parameters of humanity and its tendencies.

By using two of Kubrick’s masterpieces as spring-boards for Dark Star, Carpenter and O’Bannon give what started out as a student-film enough momentum to work as a feature-length film[1]IMDb.com. (n.d.). Dark star. IMDb. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069945/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv. The film spends its run-time constantly demonstrating the way communication operates and breaks apart on the ship: the crew-members avoid talking to one another in favor of recording their messages for record-keeping or transmission while the most talkative parties end up being the ship’s main computer and the bombs themselves. By primarily orienting the film around screens and non-human entities, Carpenter is able to create effective set-pieces that expand on the themes without the need for grandiose visuals.

Unfortunately, the gaps made by stretching out the narrative’s running-time are large and frequent enough to seriously dampen the pacing, drawing a negative attention to the film’s sparsity. Communicative efforts between the characters, which already hinge on a dry, wit that may not work for many viewers, often devolve into unclever, insipid moments that feel like run-time extensions, undermining narrative momentum and making the 83-minute film feel like a slog to get through at times.

The intent behind these moments is discernible given the film’s thematic context, but the execution suggests a focus on ensuring the relevant footage exists rather than elevating it with a more intricate build-up. Yet, the thematic intent of the narrative buoys it through its less than memorable moments, culminating in a finale that brings together the film’s best elements in satisfying fashion. Despite being a (very) far cry from his best work, Dark Star serves as a charming calling card for Carpenter’s filmography-to-come, portending the cynical, misanthropic, anti-establishment attitude that will characterize much of it.

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TLDRIn spite of production issues and limitations, John Carpenters debut film, Dark Star, should provide more than enough laughs for viewers in the mood for a wry, cynical science-fiction feature that asks what life should look like in a world where authentic communication seems inaccessible.
Rating7.8/10
GradeB

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Film Review: Mulan – 1998

Director(s)Tony Bancroft
Barry Cook
Principal CastMing-Na Wen as Fa Mulan
Eddie Murphy as Mushu
BD Wong as Captain Shang
Miguel Ferrer as Shan Yu
Release Date1998
Language(s)English
Running Time 87 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

An inked-out backdrop comes onto screen, evoking the distinctive feel of older Chinese drawings. The camera tracks over this backdrop and settles on a view of the Great Wall of China before the ink fades away to the wall proper.

A soldier on guard duty notices an incoming danger right as the Huns, led by Shan Yu, climb the walls and break into the country. The guard lights a large fire on his post and alerts the other guards, ensuring that the the capital knows of and can mount a response against the threat. But Shan Yu relishes the opportunity for battle, going so far as to burn a national flag to signify his challenge to the nation.

As the symbol on the flag burns, the symbol on the Emperor’s door opens; his counsel and him are immediately drafting their strategy. The Emperor decrees that one man must each family must be drafted to ensure the enemy is defeated. One of his generals pushes back and claims that his forces are more than capable of handling the threat but the Emperor refuses to back down, explaining that like a single grain of rice, a single man could tip the scale.

Meanwhile, a young woman, named Mulan gracefully picks up a single grain of rice while taking copious notes on her arm. She’s getting ready for some kind of procedural examination and is rushed for time. In one swift maneuver, she calls for her “brother”, the family’s dog, and ties feed and a treat on him to lead him into feeding her household’s livestock. The maneuver informs us not only of Mulan’s wit but also of her family’s lack of a son.

With her tasks “finished”, Mulan heads out for a meeting with a matchmaker – cue the film’s first musical number, “Honor to Us All”, a song which establishes the cultural idea that women can only bring honor to their families by becoming good wives. Immediately upon coming to the location, Mulan is stripped and washed, losing her unique identity in favor of a culturally approved one. As she’s fitted by her mother and an assistant, it’s clear that these expectations are literally pulling her in opposing directions. Cultural expectations shape familial values which propagate down to the individual which is why Mulan finds herself desperate to fit into the crowd, casting aside her subjectivity in favor or melding with her peers.

For a musical number, the song works as an ironic counterpoint to the narrative proper, establishing the sexist, contradictory roles that women are meant to operate in, while demonstrating the way cultural expectations permeate and shape the lived experiences of persons who don’t fit into presumed archetypes. The number ends with Mulan stumbling into the matchmaker’s abode and failing miserably. She can’t attain honor in this way and is cast aside – a poignant conclusion to a musical number that so strongly stresses that the only role available for women is the one she can’t possible do.

This seeming ineptitude weighs heavily on Mulan and as she gazes on her loving parents, parents who she can’t help but disappoint, she breaks into the film’s second song aptly titled “Reflection”; she walks around her home and looks back at her reflection, first in the water and then in the reflective surfaces of shrines, to find herself but can’t seem to reconcile what she is and what her family and by extension society want her to be. Her make-up is stripped off half her face before being fully removed, demonstrating this gap between the idealized and the real.

Mulan feels utterly alone in her struggle. The pink blossoms in her garden frame her isolation, trapping her in the frame. But her father intervenes and comes into her zone; the duo is framed within the flowers and the emptiness is transformed into a lovely connective moment. He reassures his daughter, pointing out that the late flower blooms most beautiful of all before then placing a flower-decorated clip into her hair to cement the connection; Mulan may not have found her way yet, but when she does, it will be glorious.

But the sound of drums announcing the presence of the Emperor’s men interrupts the moment of serenity; the enclosure generated by the flowers is broken apart by the Emperor’s conscription announcement. Mulan’s father is tasked to serve given his family’s lack of son and suddenly his family has to deal with his impending absence, and due to his fragile body, probable death. Mulan tries to push back, both in public and in private, but is admonished and lectured for her insolence; she should get to know her place in society like everyone else. Yet, the songs have already informed us that such a place does not exist for her.

Unable to come up with any solutions, she sits dejected under the statue of the Great Stone Dragon, her family’s guardian protector, and gazes down on her reflection in a puddle, struggling to figure out what to do. From where she sits, she notices the silhouettes of her parents; her father reaches over to her mother in tender embrace but the latter turns away and walks off leaving the former to blow out the candle and bring the night to a close – the impending war brings a great darkness to the family.

But Mulan refuses to let to let the light die and sets out to take her father’s place, lighting the lamps and offering a prayer for success before trading her flower headpiece for her father’s conscript orders and battle regalia. If no place exists for her, she’ll carve the path for herself . Her resolve is now reflected in her newfound blade which she promptly uses to cut her hair; now she can present as the man the army needs her to be.

Thus, the stage is set for a battle between two subversive forces, each trying to tackle the sociocultural paradigm which they find themselves situated within. Their respective acts of dishonor, Mulan’s military subterfuge and Shan Yu’s invasion, are both attempts at reforming the system. If Shan Yu succeeds in his invasion, he’ll be able to seize the honor for himself; usurping the Emperor means taking control of a major lynchpin behind the cultural forces which delineate what is permissible and what is not. Meanwhile, Mulan hopes to achieve honor by serving as her family’s proxy son, allowing her father to avoid death in battle while helping her homeland against hostile forces.

As both parties pursue their respective goals, the film is able to problematize a system where honor is defined by adherence to a norm over actions proper. Shan Yu’s gambit can only work because by taking over the Empire, he can set the dictates on what constitutes proper behavior: when culture flows downstream, the one who is in charge writes the rules. Mulan’s tactic on the other hand cuts to the heart of honor itself. Her actions in end of themselves feel honorable: the desire to protect one’s family should be commended. Yet, her skirting of prescribed gender roles somehow negates her actions, making them dishonorable; the disjunction between this reality and expectation demonstrates the necessity of an internal value realignment for any change to occur.

The musical numbers define the parameters of this battlefield. The first two songs set the ground-rules: the songs provide points by which to evaluate cultural values while ironically revealing the basis of said values. There are also only four total songs and their removal from the film and then sudden reincorporation helps to highlight the transformation of values mentioned within them. When the music stops, the serious nature of the lightweight lyrics is brought to head and the disjunction in values is made apparent. When the music eventually comes back, the shift in values has alleviates the situation and demonstrates a reconciliation. The fact that the songs are catchy is almost secondary which is testament to their quality; they both satisfy the musical sensibilities one would expect from Disney while organically extending the narrative and its themes.

REPORT CARD

TLDRMulan’s story of a woman turned warrior looking to upend a backwards militant system is as entertaining as it is thematically rich. The use of musical cues to extend thematic and narrative movements not only helps the story moving at a quick pace but also cue the audience in to what truly matters.
Rating10/10
GradeA+

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Film Review: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – 2022

Director(s)Tom Gormican
Principal CastNicolas Cage as Nicolas Cage
Pedro Pascal as Javi
Release Date2022
Language(s)English
Running Time 107 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.

The movie opens with a scene from Simon West’s Con Air, a movie where Nicolas Cage plays the role of Poe, a former sergeant, current prison inmate who longs to see his daughter for the first time. Without even knowing it, we’re caught up at a climactic moment in that story and become invested in Poe’s struggles to get to his daughter. It’s at this point the movie proper starts and the scene from Con Air continues to play, this time as part of the scene as opposed to its entirety; a young woman (Alessandra Mastronardi) and her colleague continue to watch it in complete rapture. Given our proximity to the scene, it’s easy to relate to the characters’ investment in the moment- we, both the audience and the characters, wait with baited breath for the resolution to the moment.

But then the room is raided and the young woman is kidnapped by a group of trained men. This larger kidnapping narrative is the framing mechanism that the movie uses to couch its more intimate character drama, a drama which the film cuts to. Nicolas Cage (Nicolas Cage),a fictionalized caricature of the actor based on pop culture , attempts to land an acting job capable of catapulting him back to the top of stardom. He bemoans his lack of recognition and struggles to find himself.

When he begins to question his path, a fictionalized version of Nicolas Cage, Nicky, based on the manic persona of his younger days (Wild at Heart) comes in to raise the spirits. The younger Cage always pushes against the older Cage, raising the latter up. Stardom is the priority and getting roles capable of achieving relevant stardom is all that matters.

Unfortunately, Cage can’t land the gigs capable of satisfying his inner superego and his obsession consequently begins to affect his family life. His obsessions become projections which he forces on to his daughter, Addy (Lily Sheen); he refuses to allow his family to authentically engage in any interaction and forces his opinion at every juncture. He has to be the star of the show at both the films and at home and with no films capable of satisfying his inner aspirations, he has more than enough time to steal to the spotlight at home.

But eventually his bills come due and Cage is forced to make a pragmatic decision; with no other way to make money due to lack of work, he chooses to accept an invitation to attend a birthday party of a mega-fan of his work, Javi (Pedro Pascal). However, the CIA, suspicious of Javi’s affairs, taps Cage in as agent to extract information from Javi to help in the retrieval of the young girl from the movie’s opening, the daughter of a tough-on-crime politician; the echoes of Con Air can be felt.

Yet, Javi, far from being a criminal element, acts as a foil to Nicky, adulating Nicolas for being a gift to the cinematic craft. As opposed to knocking the actor for any roles, he expresses appreciation for any role, big or small, and attempts to jumpstarts the creative drive hidden within Nicolas, determining that the actor’s creative issues stem from the turmoil of his personal life, an issue exacerbated by Nicky.

This positioning of Nicky as a devil to Javi’s potential angel is where the story shines, allowing Nicolas Cage, as the actor proper, to go through a range of performances that fans of the thespian will wholeheartedly enjoy. Every Cage, from the manic and jittery to the macho and confident and so on is given a moment to shine in the limelight, demonstrating the range of Cage’s oeuvre. With Pascal playing the perfect second fiddle, the intimate character moments are filled with a dynamism that, when allowed to shine, makes the narrative a joyous ride.

However, the CIA framing narrative that this more intimate character drama is couched within absolutely lags the story’s momentum whenever it creeps up. When it becomes the focal point in the third act, the clever character work and meta-commentary on the nature of the movie’s logic and Cage’s persona are brushed aside in favor of something more generally palatable and less interesting. Instead of allowing Cage to lean into his range and engage in a subversion about his image and stylistic tendencies, thereby playing like a Cage-like version of Cinema Paradiso, the story lampshades its inability to be more clever and proceeds to close its “meta” commentaries in the most simplistic fashion, providing enough entertainment for Nicolas Cage fans to justify watching but never reaching the potential that a wholesale exploration of juxtaposing Cage’s popular persona against the actual totality of acting present in his work should be able to.

REPORT CARD

TLDRThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent should serve a more than satisfying time for fans of Nicolas Cage, providing him moments to act against both himself and an equally game Pedro Pascal, but the uneven overarching CIA narrative that encompasses the enjoyable character moments stifles momentum and more clever subversive moves.
Rating7.2/10
GradeC+

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Film Review: Pompo the Cinephile – 2021

Director(s)Takayuki Hirao
Principal CastHiroya Shimizu as Gene
Rinka Ôtani as Natalie
Konomi Kohara as Pompo
Akio Ootsuka as Martin
Release Date2021
Language(s)Japanese
Running Time 90 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.

In Nyallywood (aka Hollywood), the producer who reigns supreme is Pompo, an exuberant young woman with a flair for dramatic entrances and an eye for nabbing the best talent to surround her; her B-movies are a thing of legend and accrue rewards and adulation all around. Her assistant, Gene, in shocking comparison to Pompo, is a tired looking, unenergetic husk whose only saving grace seems to be his intensive love of cinema. Far from just being part of his job, Gene uses cinema as his primary frame for interacting with the world at large around him, spending his free time poring over copious notes he’s taken regarding the production process or watching and absorbing films at breakneck pace.

Consequently, even in his day-to-day outside of the studio, he finds himself framing the world as a director would. While travelling to an routine casting session, he notices a young woman running across the street. As she playfully jumps past a puddle, his pupil transforms into a camera lens, showing us how the seemingly small moment becomes something cinematic; time slows down and his brain starts doing post-production (color grading) to the moment of jubilation, applying colors and filters to the everyday moment thereby rendering it cinematic. A simple jump – a split moment – becomes frozen in time and becomes something greater than it is.

When he finally makes it to the audition area, he runs past the girl once again; this time her face is covered with a miasma of despair – a sharp contrast to before. As the two cross one another’s paths, discordant jump cuts are used to create a stutter effect- time breaks as the two seemingly unrelated persons enter one another’s space. It becomes clear that their paths are meant to cross, even though Pompo informs Gene that the young woman, Natalie, was rejected from the studio’s current film due to an inability to act.

But inability in the moment does not entail incapacity in general, and Pompo decides to spring a surprise on Gene: she offers him the chance to serve as director for her new script, a non-B effort titled Maister. The script – a story of an elderly hardened man learning how to embrace the world via a chance encounter with a young, passionate woman – immediately captivates Gene who finds himself completely enamored with the characters in spite of the generic trappings of the narrative. To his surprise, Pompo reveals that the part of the heroine is to be played by none other than Natalie. Even though the aspiring ingenue’s test performance lacked, a certain aura she possessed captivated Pompo to the point of writing the role in this script explicitly for her; like Gene, Pompo can’t help but take the inspiration from the everyday and transform it into something cinematic.

Thus, Gene is set to direct his first feature film. Suddenly, the never-ending series of notes he’s taken on sets up till now become a template for him to traverse down the path to becoming a full-fledged director. However what opposes him is not a direct antagonist or series of enemies to be defeated but the process of creation itself; getting shots to work in spite of production issues, keeping true to the vision of the script while heeding to cinematic limits, conveying key story beats without relying on excessive exposition, and finding a way to edit down the final product in spite of a wealth of gorgeous footage become the obstacles that Gene and his crew find themselves tackling.

By structuring the film proper around the mechanics of the film-making process, director Takayuki Hirao is able to get the viewer to directly consider each and every choice made. There’s a direct focus on the nature of what makes a good film: decisions related to acting, shot composition (ex: wide shots vs close-ups), and editing are brought up directly by the characters as they discuss how to overcome the various hurdles they encounter. By having the characters walk the audience through the logistics of their decision-making, the film is able to get viewers to subjectively tap into and become involved with the film in a dialogue. Our attention is drawn to the nature of cinematic technique and its intended purpose, so as the film starts to become more “overtly” stylized, it becomes astoundingly clear that even the most seemingly minute decision is being done to engender a certain feeling.

Match cuts (both within Pompo and between Pompo and Maister ), jump cuts, rewinding/fast-forwarding footage within the film proper to explain parallel character decisions, using reflective surfaces in the background to juxtapose characters’ thoughts versus their actions, and moving the camera back from supposed establishing shots to reveal said scenes are nothing more than character perspectives or scenes being projected on the big screen reveal the liminal space between cinema and memory. Not since the works of Satoshi Kon (Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue) has an animated film so effectively tapped into the idea of cinema as a dream-machine; for the characters this dream is both literal – they want to produce and create films for audiences – but is also metaphorical as these same films are expressions of their innermost desires come to life, rendered on a canvas that promises infinite possibilities.

As Gene shoots Meister, he finds that his own life not only serves as a template for how he approaches the content but that the content then, almost as if in response, becomes a guiding force for him to evaluate and progress within his own life; life and art become two mutually reinforcing sides, generating a new creative order. While there are similar works like Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! or Shirobako that also navigate the process of creatives attempting to take their fanaticism to the level of art, what separates and elevates Pompo and its themes is the level of commitment at making the fictional work its about, Maister, as polished and entertaining as the film proper. Even though we’re only privy to brief snippets, the scenes chosen are all pivotal in how they reveal the underpinnings of the story proper while conveying a completely distinct tale that’s enthralling all on it’s own. It’s one thing to cheer on a character as they set out to pursue their dreams, but by making the painful, brutal costs and transcendent rewards of their efforts so transparent, Pompo is able to hammer its points home.

REPORT CARD

TLDRPompo the Cinephile is a love letter to cinema and animation that emphatically demonstrates the ethereal powers of moving images. The film’s unabashed enthusiasm and wit makes it endlessly entertaining and endearing for anyone who’s ever “found” themselves in a work of art.
Rating10/10
GradeA+

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Film Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once – 2022

Director(s)Dan Kwan
Daniel Scheinert
Principal CastMichelle Yeoh as Evelyn
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond
Stephanie Hsu as Joy
James Hong as Gong Gong
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre
Release Date2022
Language(s)English
Mandarin
Cantonese
Running Time 139 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.

The film opens on a mirror reflecting Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), and their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) singing a song in joyous aplomb. However, a jarring match cut reveals an empty reflection in the mirror; the family is no longer singing and the warmth is missing. The camera pushes into the mirror to the Wang family’s present-day day situation.

Evelyn sits stressed at a table sorting through a host of receipts, bills, and other crumpled paraphernalia; the Wang family is being audited and their laundromat is now under the threat of being repossessed. As she deals with the stresses of stabilizing the family’s financial future, Waymond attempts to articulate his own feelings. But he’s constantly interrupted by Evelyn at each juncture. She’s obsessed with ensuring that Chinese New Year celebrations go well this year because her judgmental father Gong Gong (James Hong) is present and she doesn’t have the bandwidth to process any seemingly auxiliary requests coming her way. Unfortunately for her, Waymond’s concerns are more severe than she thinks with his mind headed towards divorce due to the constant neglect.

When Evelyn goes down to deal with problems at the laundromat on top of everything else, Joy comes in and brings up the issue of introducing her girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel), to Gong Gong. But Evelyn refuses to directly answer at first, fritting around the store in a mad dash to finish off all her tasks. Far from the opening’s joyous singing, there’s a cacophony of complaints, expectations, and misgivings at the Wang residence.

But on top of the familial discord, an inexplicable situation arises with Waymond. The camera pushes in on the laundromat’s security-dam dashboard in the background and brings to attention Waymond undergoing a possession-like event. His body jitters and then he does a flip over a table; clearly this is a different person.

Meanwhile, Evelyn finally shoots Joy’s request down and tries to defend her decision by saying that Gong-Gong is from a different time, so such news would be too much for him to handle. Consequently, when the family goes down to the IRS office, their main translator and point-of-contact in their daughter is not there with them; the family’s internal lack of communication bleeds over into their external world, making it harder for them resolve the seemingly much larger problems looming over their lives.

Evelyn, Waymond, and Gong-Gong make their way to the IRS agent responsible for their case, but on their way up on the elevator, Waymond’s body jerks as it did previously and he acts in a completely different manner, going so far as to block the elevator camera with an umbrella. He tells Evelyn that he is another Waymond, that the world is in danger, and gives her instructions to follow at a later time. Initially, she chooses to ignore his instructions but as her tax case agent, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), gets more intense and makes the Wang’s financial situation seem fraught with imminent doom, Evelyn decides that following the instructions might at least provide a reprieve from the situation she finds herself in.

Suddenly, a dolly-zoom like effect is employed where Evelyn finds herself thrust back into a moving frame, creating a kinetic dissonance. Her body snaps back against the wall and the frame fractures like a broken mirror, reflecting multiple Evelyn’s, each with their own perspective, each in their own location; mirrors, which had so far just been part of the set reflecting the Wang family now become enmeshed within the frame proper, tying form to content. One of the Evelyn’s take control of the frame and meets the Waymond from the elevator who reveals that he’s another universe’s Waymond that was temporarily inhabiting (our) Evelyn’s universe’s Waymond, and that he’s been sent to find an Evelyn capable of fighting a threat bent on destroying the multiverse. Thus, a simple trip to settle taxes turns into a Matrix-styled battle for multiversal survival where Evelyn must, in her role as chosen-one, bring balance by taking down a supreme evil set on absolute destruction.

However, directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (the Daniels) use the idea of multiple universes to explore multiple genres, tasking each entanglement with a universe with its own genre settings and trappings. Consequently, as characters traverse their own and current universal perspectives, they’re forced into distinctive genre entanglements, or more accurately genre miscommunications. Early on after initially being given the run-down of the situation, Evelyn finds herself face-to-face with a target she saw in another context as being hostile and acts out like an action hero in self-defense; but the target is far from hostile and is their “normal” self, so the misfire between their drama and Evelyn’s action lends to a genuine comedy of errors.

This is how the film is able to so effortlessly traverse different moods and emotions at the drop of a hat; genre becomes ever-fluid, crystallizing into serious or comedic whenever the narrative calls for it. The most disparate situations flow into one another seamlessly without sacrificing or compromising on narrative momentum . At one point the film becomes an action-comedy Jackie Chan styled and at another adopts the trademarks of one of Wong Kar-wai’s romances with shutter-speed experimentation that isolates the relevant characters and neither moment is out of lockstep within itself or within the larger story at play. Even though each of these tales is done within the confines of its respective genre, going so far as to have the actors modulate their performances, sometimes in minute fashion, to be hyper-authentic to the feeling of the homage(s), their contextual narratives are essentially just recapitulations of the main, overarching narrative about finding meaning in an existence that seems to constantly spit at one’s face.

By couching the Wang family’s respective struggles within distinct genres, the Daniels are able to break down how the problems the family finds themselves are far from disparate and in actuality stem from the same underlying conditions. Even as the film zips from universe to universe with a staggering number of match-cuts, dolly zoom-like disorientation effects, and shifting aspect ratios, the central story never gets lost because the script is careful to keep the emotional underpinnings of what the characters are going through consistent even as the contexts they find themselves inhabiting vary. In this sense, the film warrants a comparison with Terrence Malick’s masterpiece The Tree of Life, in its ability to couch a simple, individual story of a family within a grander universal context such as to suggest transcendental truths while respecting the different ways they may manifest within different, subjective lives.

However, what makes Everything Everywhere All At Once feel unique in spite of its obvious homage and reference and grander aspirations and achievements, is its wholehearted embrace of obscene, vulgar jokes as a way of both retaining the Daniels flair for humor in the vein of their previous film Swiss Army Man but more importantly as a way of hammering home the point. Overcoming the constitutive void of nihilism that permeates existence and butt-plug humor go hand-in-hand in the Daniels’ world of infinite possibilities as they try and demonstrate that the difference between two worlds is nothing more than a question of perspective.

REPORT CARD

TLDREverything Everywhere All At Once is somehow a quaint slice-of-life story of a family coming to terms with their personal and familial struggles and a multi-universal epic about saving the universe from a catastrophic, all-encompassing nihilism that obliterates everything it comes into contact with that feels wholly consistent with itself, being equal parts riotously hilarious, thoughtfully introspective, and emotionally resonant.
Rating10/10
GradeS+

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Film Review: The Hitman’s Bodyguard – 2017

Director(s)Patrick Hughes
Principal CastRyan Reynolds as Michael Bryce
Samuel L. Jackson as Darius Kincaid
Élodie Yung as Amelia Roussel
Gary Oldman as Vladislav Dukhovich
Salma Hayek as Sonia Kincaid
Release Date2017
Language(s)English
Running Time 118 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The film opens with a series of split-screen shots depicting the routine of Michael (Ryan Reynolds), a private bodyguard for the wealthy and powerful. He puts on his watch, picks out a suit from his collection, drinks some coffee, gets his weapons, and kisses his partner, Amelia (Élodie Yung) on the cheek before departing his scenic abode. The split-screen shots demonstrate the rigid order he lives his life by; every moment is part of an elaborately planned sequence.

He picks up his client, Takashi (Tsuwayuki Saotome) and proceeds on pace for a secure delivery. Takashi gets on his plane and Michael waves him off with a smile. But right as the plane is about to depart, Takashi is shot and murdered.

Despite all precautions, Michael finds himself with a client down; he’s in shock. While his men run around him to take hold of the situation, Michael stares dumbfounded, unable to come to terms with his failure. Two years pass and his expression remains the same – the weight of his past remains. He escorts an drug-addled client in dejected fashion; clearly he’s still good at his job, but the loss of a client has certainly hurt his reputation as security detail, so he’s forced to take on much worse clientele.

Michael (Ryan Gosling) agrees to Amelia’s (Élodie Yung) deal to protect Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson).

While Michael tends to his mundane everyday life, his ex-girlfriend and current Interpol agent, Amelia, is tasked with escorting a notorious hitman, Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), to the International Criminal Court to give witness testimony against Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), the dictator of Belarus charged with counts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. But on their way to the court, Amelia’s convoy is attacked; far from being a secret, their movements have been leaked to outside attackers. Amelia and Kincaid momentarily team up to get out of the area, but now they must find a way to get to the court without Interpol’s help. With no else left to turn to, Ameilia phones Michael and asks him to help transport Kincaid.

Michael is initially reluctant to help. On one level, he doesn’t want to deal with Amelia due to their break-up. On another level, due to the nature of his work, he’s found himself on the opposite side of Kincaid many times, often having to keep his clients protected from the hitman. There’s a clear antagonism present in the group. But Amelia promises to help reinstate Michael’s company’s security rating through her government connections if he gets Darius to the court on time to testify. Thus, the reluctant duo between hitman and bodyguard is born.

Unfortunately, the plot that follows goes exactly as one would expect: a love-hate relationship is formed by the duo who ribs and endears themselves to one another over the course of their trip all while they survive increasingly elaborate attacks by Dukovich’s party. Though disappointing, the narrative would be fine if it at least served as a vehicle for stylized action sequences or entertaining character moments, but none of these moments ever bear fruit because the movie would rather tell than show.

The visual creativity from the opening never happens again which is a shame because the primary antagonism between Michael and Kincaid is how they orient themselves towards planning. While Michael is rigid and disciplined, Kincaid is very much the opposite, opting to play situations based on how they proceed in the moment. Consequently, when the character’s find themselves dealing with a threatening situation, they tend to have different reactions; Michael thinks something out and tries to stick by the book while Kincaid goes for the clearest immediate option available. Instead of demonstrating this visually like he does in the opening, perhaps by shooting Michael’s character with split-screen shots to showcase the sequential planning and Kincaid’s character with jump cuts to demonstrate the haphazard movement, director Patrick Hughes opts for standard coverage of the duo as they deal with their problems. We don’t get to see the difference between the characters manifest in poignant fashion and are forced to gleam the essence of their relationship through their conversations.

This proves to be an issue because most of the dialogue is insipid and insists on the basest humor to get a laugh. Ryan Gosling and Samuel L. Jackson may be talented actors, but there’s only so much they can do when most of their conversations end in a punchline about smelling like ass. This type of humor is uninspiring on its own but contributes to a serious tonal whiplash when the story jumps from these jokes to scenes of the primary antagonist planning/committing genocide and genocide-related activities.

All of this culminates in a general feeling of disengagement. There’s nothing to get invested in. The characters are placeholders for the story that give their actors little room to breathe life into the narrative. The jokes are indexed to the lowest common denominator of humor and undercut any sense of tension or gravitas. Even though the action scenes are shot competently and give a clear sense of what’s going on, you don’t care because there’s nothing to cling onto.

REPORT CARD

TLDRThe Hitman’s Bodyguard is a movie that lacks any sense of personality or identity worth investing in. The aggregation of safe buddy-cop story beats provides very little entertainment as even the most minute action is predictable. Even the comedic stylings of the leading duo can’t give the movie a pulse as the script insists on having them repeat the worst punchlines to jokes repeatedly.
RatingD
Grade5.5/10

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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Film Review: Alice in Wonderland – 1951

Director(s)Clyde Geronimi
Wilfred Jackson
Hamilton Luske
Principal CastKathryn Beaumont  as Alice
Sterling Holloway as Cheshire Cat
Ed Wynn as Mad Hatter
Jerry Colonna as March Hare
Richard Haydn as Caterpillar
Verna Felton as Queen of Hearts
Release Date1951
Language(s)English
Running Time 75 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The camera pans through a wonderous environment filled with different types of wildlife; butterflies flutter in the sky while birds swim in the waters. But the camera settles on a young woman who could care less about the beauty of nature and is far more focused on educating her sister, Alice, who sits up above on a tree branch. Alice is fully caught up in her own designs and doesn’t pay attention to her sister’s lecture.

Instead, she makes a crown of flowers for her cat, Dinah, and places it upon Dinah’s head, crowning the pet as royalty of sorts. Dinah shakes the crown off and it lands on Alice’s sister’s head. Alice’s sister looks up and chastises Alice for not paying attention. Alice claims that the lessons are boring and would better suit her temperament if pictures accompanied the words. Her sister responds that there are a host of books without pictures in this world which sets Alice off into another tangent.

If this world contains such boring books, Alice surmises that her world, a world of wonder, would contain no such thing; only pictures would be allowed in books. Her sister calls the idea nonsensical, but far from being deterred by it, Alice seizes on the description and wholeheartedly embraces the moniker: “nonsense”. If the world of sense is so boring, then a world of nonsense has to be better.

Enamored by the idea, Alice starts to describe to Dinah the way such a nonsense world would operate. Things would be what they are not and what they are not they would be. Alice says as much in a matter-of-fact manner, but if Dinah’s reaction is an indication, nothing she says coheres. Regardless, Alice fully commits to her worldview – a shift which is signified by the film’s breaking of the 180-degree rule as her orientation flips from facing left to facing right; she’s “entered” a new world.

This change in environment is reflected as Alice jumps off the tree branch and her sister is now nowhere to be seen. Alice doesn’t notice this disappearance and instead breaks out in song describing all the different ways her wonderland would operate. Eventually the song ends and Dinah and Alice find themselves at the edge of the brook. Alice creates a ripple on the reflection of her and Dinah; the reflected colors of the duo break apart and come back together, this time in the form of a anthropomorphized White Rabbit who’s running along muttering about how he’s “late” to something.

With her curiosity fully piqued, Alice gives chase to the White Rabbit, going so far as to venture down the same rabbit hole she sees him going down. While she crawls into the hole, she mentions to Dinah on how such a decision is unwise and foolish, but she refuses to heed her own advice and proceeds head on. Suddenly, the ground gives beneath her and she falls down into an abyss.

As Alice falls down the seemingly endless pit, she notices a lamp and turns it on. Suddenly, the lights start to strobe from red to blue to purple and so on. She continues to float down and notices an series of oddities including a mirror which reflects her upside-down. She questions whether or not she’s entering a part of the world where people walk upside down before then seeing the White Rabbit running upside down. However, Alice realizes that the Rabbit isn’t upside down; she is. She changes her perspective and continues to give chase to the Rabbit, desperate to figure out what he’s running late to.

Unbeknownst to Alice, the environment she’s running into is none other than a land consonant with her aforementioned nonsensical machinations; she’s heading straight into a world where everything and everyone is “mad” and any attempt at making sense is doomed to fail. Thus begins Alice in Wonderland, the whimsical adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s audacious and nonsensical Alice [1] Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass books. Though the film doesn’t explore its ideas with the same nuances of its source material, the story beats and ideas it does play around with provide a fertile ground for directors Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wilfred Jackson to show their stuff in brilliant, surrealistic fashion.

The narrative is largely incoherent and functions more as journey through set-pieces than anything else. Alice enters a new location, encounters distinctive and personable denizens of Wonderland, engages with said inhabitants in their respective shenanigans, eats some food material which makes her larger or bigger, gets frustrated by said situation, and then leaves the location. Rinse and repeat.

While the overarching relationship between these situations and their respective characters is largely up to the viewer’s interpretation, the story does have a certain logic pervading through it: Alice begins to understand and respect the need for a rational syntax capable of organizing the world – a sense to wade through the nonsense. Her growth gives the narrative a feeling of momentum in spite of its haphazard jumping around allowing the the directors to focus on the random nature of the spectacle. There’s no need to explain why or how situations are happening so we’re allowed to experience the spectacle with a sense of youthful exuberance, becoming children in response to the wonders on display.

Characters transform. Environments open up into new ones. Denizens break into song/snippets, often times making direct references to the source material proper. There’s always something dynamic happening in the frame challenging your assumption on what could happen next.

Add in the iconic voice acting which makes each character leap off the screen and it becomes clear why Alice in Wonderland is so charming. It’s hard not to become mesmerized by the ever-evolving cascade of characters and situations. It may be nonsense, but that doesn’t make it any less moving.

REPORT CARD

TLDRAlice in Wonderland demonstrates the power of animation, presenting surreal sequences that demonstrate the creativity inherent to the medium. The nonsensical story, which moves from set-piece to set-piece, gives the directors’ multiple opportunities to just relish in sheer absurdity. There’s a sense of joy here that’s palpable, calling out to the whimsical child-like sense of wonder inside all of us.
Rating10/10
GradeS

Go to Page 2 for the for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
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