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Director: Dan Scanlon
Release date: February 21, 2020
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Onward’, Pixar’s 22nd feature film, was the first of a series of four originals after a decade of sequels (the 2010s saw seven sequels compared to a mere four originals), making the 2020s a more interesting decade than the 2010s were. Unfortunately, Pixar’s return to original stories didn’t necessarily mean their films got better. ‘Onward’, at least, is not a bad film, but it never becomes great, either. The movie just lingers in mediocrity, relying too heavily on tried formulas and cliches.
‘Onward’ takes place in a fantasy world populated by elves, unicorns, centaurs, fauns, manticores and so on. But like the human-less worlds of ‘Monsters Inc.’, ‘Cars’ or to a lesser extent the later ‘Elemental’ the makers haven’t made any effort to make this world a really original one, turning it into just another lazy version of suburbia America. The whole idea of ‘Onward’ is that it used to be a magical place, until technology took over, making this world as bland and devoid of magic as ours.
In this world we follow teenager elf Ian, who’s designed as your average clumsy insecure teenager, a sort of Linguini from ‘Ratatouille’ (2007), but blue and with pointed ears. Ian also is one of those protagonists that all too often recur in animation films: one that has lost a parent (see also e.g. ‘Kung Fu Panda’ (2008), ‘The Good Dinosaur‘ (2015) and ‘Abominable’ from 2019). On his birthday Ian makes some resolutions to become a better person, but they are all thwarted, until his mother gives him and his quirky elder brother Barley a gift from their deceased father…
What follows is a truly dangerous quest in which the two brothers must team up to restore their father for just one day. This they do accompanied by their dad’s two legs, for that’s all what Ian managed to retrieve from the spirit world in the first place. Barley’s extensive knowledge of magic, which he got from playing a role game “based on reality” is a great help during their quest. Unfortunately for Barley, despite all his knowledge of magic, he hasn’t got the magic skill, but Ian has.
With their quest the two brothers not only restore magic to their world, Ian also comes to realize that his older brother is not only an annoying looney to be ashamed of, but much more to him. And yet, a more interesting and more original yet sadly underdeveloped character than either two brothers, is Ian’s and Barley’s mother, who comes into action and who dares to take risks to save her boys.
The brothers’ magical quest stands in huge contrast with the mundane world they live in, and the studio never really manages to wed these two worlds. In the end, the whole concept of a fantasy world turned mundane remains a forced and unconvincing one, and that one gift from a random father could restore magic to the entire world is anything but believable, even within the fantasy context.
Moreover, as said, the film relies too much on tropes to tell its stories. The magic in ‘Onward’ feels like a direct copy from the Harry Potter’-films with its use of spells. There is the obligate breakup scene, one that is particularly painful, because by that time Ian should have known better. And then there’s a curse, which actually stands in the way of a plot that should concentrate on the relationship between the two brothers, which the film mostly does, but to which, to me at least, the whole magic idea seems superfluous and unnecessary.
Of course, the power of animation is that it can show impossible things like elves and manticores, but for once, I believe that the film would be more courageous if it would tell the story of two real brothers living in American suburbia, bonding together after the death of their father. For this is the essence of the film, meaning that the fantasy part, despite driving the plot, is mostly fluff. Despite the final resurrection of the father being a beautiful moment in the movie, the film just doesn’t manage to pluck one emotional string like ‘Monsters, Inc.’ (2001), ‘Wall-E’ (2008), ‘Up’ (2009) or ‘Coco’ could. Pixar certainly could do better, something they would luckily prove with their next feature, ‘Soul’.
Watch the trailer for ‘Onward’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Onward’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Mike Mitchell
Release date: February 2, 2019
Rating: ★★★
Review:
One of the surprises of 2014 was ‘The Lego Movie’, a surprisingly funny and sophisticated movie, making clever use of the source material, and transcending by far the product placement it actually was. Its huge success spawned the equally great ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ and the much weaker ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie’ (both from 2017), but one had to wait for five years for the true sequel: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.
This second movie immediately starts with a new threat to Bricksburg, the city in which Emmett lives, this time from the planet Duplo. In a toddler’s voice the new arrivals claim: “We are from the Planet Duplo, we are here to destroy you”. After some mayhem we jump to five years later, in which Bricksburg has apparently been destroyed and rebuilt as ‘Apocalypseburg’, a Mad Max-like post-apocalyptic world in which according to his girlfriend Lucy there’s no place anymore for niceness and optimism, although Emmett is still full of these things, despite having nightmares of “Armamageddon” (sic).
To make matters worse, a new, almost indestructible alien arrives with the name of General Mayhem, messenger of the shape-shifting Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi from the “Systar System”. What follows is another adventure full of references to other movies (e.g. The Wizard of Oz), which takes place both in the LEGO world and in live action, and in which Emmett meets a though guy called Rex Dangervest, who teach Emmett to grow up, or does he?
Unfortunately, this movie strives too hard to play a similar trick to the LEGO world as the first film, but it does all too obviously so. For example, we could see the origin of ‘Systar system’ from miles away. A huge talent like Maya Rudolph is wasted on the live action scenes, which remain formulaic and unspontaneous. The film’s message, too, is brought right in your face and lacks all the subtleties of the first film. There are some nice touches (for example, Bruce Willis playing a Lego version of himself, some nice 2D animation and a couple of pleasant songs), but overall the film never transcends mediocrity, despite all the evident effort. Thus one must conclude that after two films most of the inspiration for LEGO movies had died out.
Watch the trailer for ‘The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Directors: Troy Quane & Nick Bruno
Release date: December 4, 2019
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In the opening scenes of ‘Spies in Disguise’ we are introduced to young boy Walter Beckett, the son of a single mom, who’s a police officer. Walter is a ‘weirdo’ to his class mates, but secretly a genius, inventing all kinds of surprisingly peaceful weapons for his mom. Fourteen years later, he has found employment at ‘H.T.U.V.’, a non-existing American spy agency, as one of the inventors cooking up new weaponry for the organization’s spies.
Superstar among these spies is Lance Sterling. Voiced by Will Smith, Sterling is a black version of James Bond: clear-headed, cool and on the cocky side. But things quickly turn against him, when an unknown villain takes his identity, and Sterling becomes hunted by his own agency. To redeem his name, he unwillingly has to team up with Walter and his pacifist weaponry, which includes a very unlikely transformation of the hero…
‘Spies in Disguise’ was adapted from the 2009 animated short ‘Pigeon: Impossible’ and is for the most part standard spy fare, taking place in faraway places like Mexico and Venice. The buddy theme is also tried material, and there are the obligate scenes of almost every American animated feature film of the era, like the obligate breakup scene, and a ‘all hope is lost’ moment. No, the most original aspect of ‘Spies in Disguise’ lies in its strong pacifist theme. As Walter puts it: “when you fight fire with fire, we all get burned”. Even the villain, who certainly meant the worst, is spared in the end.
Artistically the film remains on safe grounds. The human designs are dull and uninspired. For example, Walter is yet another variation on ‘the clumsy young man’ design, akin to Linguini in ‘Ratatouille’ (2007) or Johnny Loughran in ‘Hotel Transylvania’ (2012), while Lance Sterling is too clearly modelled on Smith’s coolest film roles, like that of agent J in ‘Men in Black’ (1997). The rest of the designs are on the angular side, without ever venturing into bold stylization. The color palette is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film.
Unfortunately, Blue Sky wasn’t allowed to show if it could venture into more exciting territories, because ‘Spies in Disguise’ was the last feature film by the ill-fated animation studio. When Disney bought 20th Century Fox in March 2019 it acquired the animation studio with it. Of course, Disney had no use for yet another animation studio, and thus ‘Blue Sky’ was closed in 2021, officially due to the consequences of the covid pandemic…
Watch the first trailer of ‘Spies in Disguise’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Spies in Disguise’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Release date: June 10, 2019
Rating: ★★
Review:
One of the most interesting animation directors to come from Japan is Masaaki Yuasa. He brought us very idiosyncratic movies as ‘Mindgame’ (2004) and ‘Night Is Short, Walk on Girl’ (2017). Both features have striking visuals that make them stand out within the vast anime canon.
‘Ride Your Wave’, Yuasa’s feature film from 2019, is remarkably normal compared to these earlier features. True, the human designs are strangely elongated, there are some distorted shots, and strange perspectives, and the color designs are brighter than usual in anime, but the background art is much more standard anime fare. The story, too, has nothing of the mind-blowing qualities of the earlier features. In fact, ‘Ride Your Wave’ is a disappointingly normal love story with a supernatural element, an almost obligate story ingredient in Japanese feature animation.
‘Ride Your Wave’ tells about a surfing girl who falls in love with a fire fighting boy, but then disaster strikes… Yuasa uses standard montage techniques to tell of the lovers’ bliss, and equally standard flashback techniques and repetitions of what people had said to make his message come across. This makes the film all too explanatory and heavy-handied. In fact, there’s little to enjoy in ‘Ride Your Wave’ besides the designs and some shots, and the film doesn’t rise above the standard fare. From Yuasa we certainly expect better…
Watch the trailer of ‘Ride Your Wave’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Ride Your Wave’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Release date: July 19, 2019
Rating: ★★
Review:
In 2016 Makoto Shinkai rightfully scored a huge hit with his feature film ‘Your Name’. This film’s successor, ‘Weathering with You’ from 2019, unfortunately isn’t half as good.
Like ‘Your Name’ the film is well made, sporting intricate background art, beautiful lighting and fine animation, if not particularly outstanding. But the story, with its high level of spiritualism and its bizarre ending, leaves much to be desired, not in the least because it overstretches its own believability. This already starts with the film’s premise: that Tokyo has been shrouded in rain for months, without any chance of the sun. In this depressing environment there is Hina, a girl who is able to pray for the sun, if only briefly and only locally…
But Hina is not the main protagonist of the film and even remains pretty enigmatic throughout. This is reserved for Hodaka, an sixteen years old boy who has run from home and tries to find his luck in Tokyo, only to discover that this is quite hard without having the legal age to work or a proper identity card. Hodaka is the narrator of the story, and we largely watch the events through his eyes.
Perhaps because the story tells about teenagers the emotions run free in this film, and these are at times quite overblown. One almost rejoices when reality finally checks in with the youngsters’ fantasy life.
Much happens during the course of the film, but little of it makes sense, least of all the aftermath, in which Tokyo is flooded after all. I can’t make head or tail of Shinkai’s tale or his message, and I was for most of the time quite bored. This of course left ample time to admire the background art, but these beautiful sceneries can’t save a film that succumbs under its own pretentions.
Watch the trailer of ‘Weathering with You’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Weathering with You’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Chris Butler
Release date: April 7, 2019
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
Laika’s ‘Missing Link’ is the second of the three animated yeti features of 2018-2019, the other two being Warner Bros.’ ‘Smallfoot’ from 2018 and Dreamworks’ ‘Abominable’ from 2019. ‘Missing Link’ easily is the best of the three. The stop motion animation is much more interesting than the rather generic computer animation of the other two studios, and the story much less predictable.
The originality already starts with the fact that not yetis but a bigfoot, christened ‘Mr. Link’ from Washington state is the central character of the film. We follow him, his ‘discoverer’ Sir Lionel Frost and Frost’s former love interest and widow of a fellow explorer, Adelina Fortnight, on an unusual quest.
The year is 1886 (we know that because we see the Statue of Liberty being under construction), the year before the European powers would divide Africa between them on the Berlin conference , while in North America the once extremely abundant passenger pigeons were being killed in huge numbers to certain extinction.
This age, in which discovery equaled oppression and slaughter, is exemplified by Sir Lionel Frost’s adversary, Lord Piggot-Dunceby, head of a club of explorers Sir Lionel Frost desperately wants to join, despite the fact all members despise him. This club represents the world of white supremacy and male chauvinism, but Sir Lionel Frost shows he’s made from different material, and the whole film sends a message of love and respect for our fellow creatures, being man or animal, man or woman, or whatever.
‘Missing Link’ does not score high on believability. First, we must accept that Sir Lionel Frost is more interested in discovering than in really studying his findings, despite his few tendencies to do so. Second, we must accept that the giant ape-like Mr. Link can wander through the world unnoticed, simply because he has put on some clothes. Third, we must accept the great lengths to which Lord Piggot-Dunceby goes to thwart Sir Lionel Frost’s plans, not only hiring an assassin, but even completely discarding a huge discovery which could have made him famous if he would steal it from Frost. Fourth, there’s an exciting vertigo scene, which unfortunately throws all plausibility out of the window. In this single scene our heroes should have died multiple times. The film makers don’t even show us how our heroes survive their predicament.
But what the film lacks in believability it makes up in characters and story telling. Both Sir Lionel Frost and Mr. Link are interesting characters, with Mr. Link being instantly likeable, while Adelina Fortnight defies the normal love interest cliches, being much more of an independent woman, steering her own course. There isn’t even a breakup scene in sight, that obligatory staple scene of American animation films of the 2010s.
The characters are much helped by great voice acting. Hugh Jackman (Sir Lionel Frost), Zoe Saldana (Adelina Fortnight), Stephen Fry (Lord Piggot-Dunceby), Timothy Olyphant (the assassin Willard Stenk) and Emma Thompson (whose character I won’t reveal here) all do an excellent voice job, but it’s Zach Galifianakis who stands out as Mr. Link, making him both polite, shy, naïve, enthusiastic, gentle, sweet and open at the same time, without forgetting to make him funny, too.
Being a Laika film, the stop-motion animation is, of course, of the highest quality. Especially the character animation should be mentioned as outstanding, but also impressive are the action scenes, highlight being a long chase scene on a rocking boat.
Understandably for a film showing such wide vistas as the Ocean and the forests of Washington State there’s a large dose of computer animation and computer-generated background art involved, which unfortunately make the film’s looks a little more generic than desired. But the film surprises most in its sunny color palette. ‘Missing Link’ is so much more colorful than all former Laika films, perhaps because it has discarded all horror elements, otherwise so omnipresent in their filmography. Thus, the film has very pleasant looks, and is a joy to watch from start to end (yes, even the end titles are lovely). I certainly hope the studio will retain this direction of more colorful tales and sceneries.
Watch the trailer of ‘Missing Link’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Missing Link’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Abe Levitow
Release date: October 24, 1962
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Gay Purr-ee’ was the second of only two feature films made by UPA, the first being ‘1001 Arabian Nights’ from 1959 and starring the studio’s only star, Mr. Magoo. In fact, ‘Gay Purr-ee’ was the artistic swansong of the once famed animation studio. Most daring and influential in the 1950s, by the early 1960s UPA had become only a shadow of its former self, as this feature film painfully demonstrates.
In fact, UPA had already entered a stage of decay when Steve Bosustow, one of the founding members of the studio sold his interests to businessman Henry G. Saperstein. Saperstein had no interest in UPA’s “fine-art crap” (as quoted in Adam Abraham’s excellent book on the studio ‘When Magoo Flew’, p. 212) and was only interested in making the cartoons as cheaply as possible. When Saperstein fired Bosustow in 1961, one can say UPA was in fact braindead. It’s thus the more surprising that the studio did make such a costly product as a feature film anyway.
‘Gay Purr-ee’ was distributed for Warner Bros. and the film breathes that studio as much, if not more than the UPA vibe. There’s of course the bad pun in the title, a Warner Bros. trademark. Then the film stars cats, not humans, breaking with a long UPA tradition, but fitting perfectly in the Warner Bros. practice. Moreover, the story was by Chuck Jones and his wife Dorothy. In fact, Jones was moonlighting when he worked for this feature film, and when Warner Bros. found out, he was duly fired because of breach of contract. Jones clearly was responsible for the designs of the three lead characters, if less so for supporting characters like Robespierre and Mme. Rubens-Chatte. To add to the Warner Bros. vibe, the film was directed by Jones’ former animator and co-worker Abe Levitow, and Warner Bros. voice man Mel Blanc voices several characters.
The UPA influence, in fact, is only visible in the gorgeous background art, supervised by Victor Haboush, who had worked on layout and background art for Disney features ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Lady and the Tramp’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’. The background art of ‘Gay Purr-ee’ is strikingly modern, with bold fauvist color schemes, an unmistakable Van Gogh-influence in the Provencal scenes, and allusions to various other painters in the Parisian ones. In fact, the background art can count as the film’s highlight, for the rest of the movie, unfortunately, is not that good, and the viewer has ample time to marvel at the gorgeous background paintings and pastels.
The film has several problems:
First, the animation doesn’t follow the background layouts. Painted sidewalks are completely ignored, and when Jaune Tom and Robespierre ride the rails, there’s no connection between their walk and the ties they’re supposed to step on.
Second, there’s Dorothy and Chuck Jones’s story: the film takes place in Paris at the end of the 19th century, and tells about a female cat called Mewsette (yes, a pun) who lives in the countryside, but longs to go to Paris. This story is a variation of the age-old trope of a country girl going to the big city only to become ensnared there. Back in 1920 Władysław Starewicz had already made an animation film with this theme called ‘Dans les griffes de l’araignée’ (In the Spider’s Grip). The Joneses add little to this cliché, and the story unfolds in an all too predictable pattern. Moreover, the villain Meowrice’s (yes, another pun) scheme is an all too bizarre one. It would be more logical if he would put poor Mewsette into prostitution, but this was of course off limits in a family film.
Third, there’s the wonky level of anthropomorphism. The cats all walk on fours, and are clearly cats, especially when interacting with men, but at the same time Meowrice is able to write a letter, and there’s a Moulin-rouge-like bar (called Mewlon Rouge, yes, yes) in which cats dance and drink alcohol. The inconsistency is neither explained nor resolved and hampers the overall believability of the film.
Fourth, the characters are not that interesting. Mewsette is more spoiled and naive than sympathetic, Jaune Tom clearly has his heart in the right place, but his only other character trait is that he loves chasing mice. Meowrice is clearly a villain from the very beginning, and his dual character is never played out well. I guess Robespierre was included as comic relief, but he has a particularly weak voice (by Red Buttons) and he is tiresome, not funny. Most interesting and best designed is the opportunistic Mme. Rubens-Chatte, but her role is small and her change of heart all too predictable.
Fifth, Abe Levitow’s all too relaxed direction slows the film down. Excitement or fear are shown, but not felt. Just before the finale there’s a long sequence in which Meowrice describes portraits of Mewsette by several of the leading painters of the era, including Monet, Gauguin and Picasso. This is fun of course, but of no consequence to the narrative, and stalls the story. Then there’s a grand finale on a train, but this, too, is lacking the necessary tension. Never does the viewer fear that things could go wrong.
And finally, sixth, the film contains eight songs by the famed duo of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, who have enriched the world with their songs for ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939), but none of the songs for ‘Gay Purr-ee’ even remotely approach the quality of the ones for the former musical. Even singer Judy Garland, who sings most of the songs, cannot raise these above the level of forgettable. Even worse, the songs contribute to the slowness of the film, as none of them propels the story forward, but only drag the narrative down. For example, when Jaune Tom sings ‘Little Drops of Rain’ in which he expresses his longing for Mewsette, we watch nice semi-abstract images of sea life, but nothing happens, and the story only resumes after the song.
‘Gay Purr-ee’ still is well animated, and one of the last products of the golden age of studio animation, which came to its end somewhere in the 1960s. It’s thus still worth a watch for anyone interested in the era, but barely a rewarding one, and after viewing what lingers is the background art, and the sad notion that a lot of talent was wasted on a feature film that just was not that good. The UPA animation studio, meanwhile, lasted until 1970, but never regained its artistic heights of the 1950s, or even that of ‘Gay Purr-ee’, for that matter.
Watch the trailer for ‘Gay Purr-ee’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Gay Purr-ee’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Piet Kroon
Release date: October 13, 2018
Rating: ★★
Review:
The Dutch animated feature film industry long consisted of one movie only, ‘Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel’ (The Dragon That Wasn’t (Or Was He?)) from 1983. But in recent years several other films saw the light, mostly directed at youngsters: ‘Nijntje de film’ (Miffy the Movie) from 2013 , ‘Pim & Pom: Het Grote Avontuur’ and ‘Trippel Trappel – Dierensinterklaas’, which are both from 2014, and more recently ‘Knor’ (‘Oink’) from 2022 and ‘Vos en haas redden het bos’ from 2024. An oddball within this recent canon is ‘Heinz’ from 2018.
‘Heinz’ was a comic strip by René Windig and Eddie de Jong that run in Dutch newspapers from 1987 to 2000 and again from 2004 to 2006. The comic strip was about a cat, Heinz, who quickly got more anthropomorphized until he became a sort of everyman. The strip knew some continuities but remained first and foremost a gag strip. Nevertheless, the authors dreamt of an animation film at least since the early 2000s.
Although film studio Zig Zag film started working on a film already in 2002, Windig’s and De Jong’s dream never amounted to anything. That is, until the project got new backing and new support from veteran animator Piet Kroon in 2015.
Piet Kroon had ample experience in America, having directed the animation for ‘Osmosis Jones’ (2001) and having worked on stories for a wide variety of animated feature films, e.g. ‘The Iron Giant’ (1999), ‘The Tale of Despereaux’ (2008), ‘Rio’ (2011) and ‘Ferdinand’ (2017). Kroon wrote a completely new story for the film, and with this much of the charm of the original comic strip got lost, and I doubt whether Windig and De Jong are pleased with the end result.
The first aspect of the original comic strip that went out of the window was its family-friendly nature, despite being produced by Burny Bos, who produced some of the best Dutch live action children’s movies. The feature film is clearly directed to adults and has little to offer for younger audiences (in the Netherlands the film is advised for 12 years and older, that says enough). The second major change Kroon made was the setting. The original comic strip takes place in an undefined fantasy Netherlands, but the movie Heinz clearly lives in the center of Amsterdam, which incidentally is also the residence of the comic strip’s two authors.
A more profound and more disturbing change than these two is the change of character of the cat himself. In the comic strip Heinz certainly is cranky, and sometimes insufferable, but in the movie, he is a downright irresponsible drunkard and deadbeat. In fact, in the early scenes the cat is so unsympathetic one wonders why he must watch the cat’s immature antics in the first place. Heinz’s voice by Ruben van der Meer, on the other hand, is well-chosen.
Heinz’s girlfriend Dolly fares little better, as she has changed from a sweet love to a working-class shrew, while Heinz’s friend Frits is nastier and more unsympathetic than his comic book counterpart. Frits also suffers from a bad voice choice (Reinder van der Naalt). In fact, one must look hard for any sympathetic character in the film…
Kroon certainly has tried to put as many characters from the original comic strip as possible into the film, and thus the movie is simply crowded with characters, who mostly make little to no sense to anyone not familiar with the source material. These characters and the rather random inclusion of some gags from the original comic strip make the film too much of an inside joke. On the other hand, the story itself is entertaining enough: it involves time travel, takes Heinz to a remote volcano island and to New York, where he must battle an evil scientist from outer space. But the unsympathetic leads, the plethora of characters, and the random, and often repeated gags make the film a tiresome watch.
The film’s stylistic choices don’t help. The background art is pretty ugly and consists of reworked photo material against which the characters don’t read very well. The ocean is even live action footage. Again, with this method much of the original charm of the comic strip gets lost. The computer animation is a mixed bag. There are a lot of animation cycles, and especially the numerous background characters walk around like automatons with little to no life in them.
No doubt, these technical drawbacks result from an all too tight budget, as it’s a marvel that the film came about in the first place. Most charming are the depictions of Heinz’s fantasies, which consist of traditional animation of René Windig’s idiosyncratic drawings. It’s too bad only these little sequences were made this way.
In all, ‘Heinz’ is a disappointing movie that will attract small audiences, neither satisfying fans of the original comic strip nor anyone else. I cannot find any figures, but I am pretty sure the movie turned out to be a box office flop, and I regret to say unsurprisingly so.
Watch the Dutch trailer for ‘Heinz’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Heinz’ is available on DVD (Dutch only)
Director: Michel Ocelot
Release date: June 11, 2018
Rating: ★★★
Review:
Michel Ocelot belongs to the great author-directors of animated feature films, bringing us such gems as ‘Kirikou et la Sorcière’ (1998), ‘Azur & Asmar’ (2006) and ‘Les Contes de la nuit’ (2011). But somehow, his latest movie, ‘Dilili à Paris’ from 2018 has escaped international attention.
The most obvious reason for this is that ‘Dilili à Paris’ is first and foremost an ode to Paris of 1900-1901*. It’s thus an utterly French film, simply crowded by famous people, many of which actively play a role in the story. I counted 26 painters, actors, dancers, authors, composers, and scientists, not counting a multitude of more in the background. Luckily, this doesn’t mean that film is a nationalistic one, for Ocelot includes a lot of foreigners in his pantheon of greats, e.g. Polish scientist Marie Curie, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, Venezuelan composer Reynaldo Hahn, future British king Edward VII and Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont.
In fact, by centering the film on these great minds in science and art, the film is also an ode to the fantasy and free thought of people. At the same time, the film is a firm statement against narrowmindedness, xenophobia, and oppression. Which brings us to the third theme of the film, which is a strong feminist one. In fact, apart from Dilili’s friend, the Parisian boy Orel, all main players are women, including soprano Emma Calvé (voiced by Natalie Dessay), stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, the aforementioned Marie Curie, and the feminist Louise Michel. Together with these women and many of the other famed people, Dilili and Orel unravel a secret plot in which the mysterious ‘male-masters’ kidnap little girls. Their anti-feminist scheme turns out to be one of nightmarish proportions. It’s clear that to Ocelot one should not underestimate, let alone oppress any human being, whether based on age, sex, color, nationality or whatever. A message that cannot be reinstated enough.
Dilili herself is an original heroine, a tiny Kanak girl from New Caledonia, who speaks French fluently, but who’s only brought to Paris to reenact her lifestyle in the jungle at the Exposition Universelle, a world exhibition that run from April 14 to November 12, 1900. When touring through Paris Dilili is dressed like a prize doll, and she also provides the film running gag, because to every person she meets she repeats the utterly polite sentence of ‘je suis heureuse de vous rencontrer’ (I am delighted to meet you). Of course, she experiences racism during her Parisian journeys, but this is not the film’s main theme.
Paris meanwhile comes to life in the extremely intricate background art, which is clearly based on photo material of contemporary Paris. The computer animation unfortunately is less impressive, and at times downright stiff. Especially Orel is poorly animated. When he makes friends with Dilili his moves and facial expressions are so terribly rigid, it doesn’t transcend puppet theater. The ending, too, leaves much to be desired, as the film’s finale is partly told during the end titles.
In the end the film is a little bit too crowded by famous people and certainly too poorly animated to be a masterpiece, but the mystery plot is a fine one, and the film’s message an important one. Above all ‘Dilili à Paris’ is a fine children’s film that deserves to be seen at least once.
Watch the trailer for ‘Dilili à Paris’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Dilili à Paris’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
* In fact, we can date the time period of the film pretty well, as Pablo Picasso first set foot in Paris in September 1900, and Edward VII became king on January 22, 1901, thus the events must be placed between September 1900 and January 1901.
Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman
Release date: December 14, 2018
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
For American feature animation 2018 was mostly a rather uneventful year. True, the year started off well with the release of ‘Isle of Dogs’, and it was also the year of Nina Paley’s second animation feature, ‘Seder-Masochism’, but for the rest it was a year of uninventive sequels (Pixar’s ‘Incredibles 2’, Disney’s ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet, Sony’s ‘Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation’) and mediocre stand-alones (Warner Bros.’ ‘Smallfoot’ and Illumination’s ‘The Grinch’).
But then, at the closing of the year suddenly a complete game-changer entered the scene: ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’. The film was brought by Sony Animation, the most evasive from all major animation studios, releasing both gruesomely bad movies like ‘The Smurfs’ (2013) and ‘The Emoji Movie’ (2017), as well as more interesting experiments, like ‘Surf’s Up’ (2007). This animated Spider-Man feature certainly falls into the latter category, bringing the animation world a totally new aesthetic.
Like all other films mentioned (sans ‘Seder-Machochism’) ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is a 3D computer-animated film, but unlike all others this feature has a distinct comic book style, complete with clearly visible halftone dots, and even color-shifts that look like misprinting of color layers when the ‘camera’ gets out of focus. The film even adds other stylistic elements from comic books, like page-turning effects, text panels and panel-like split screens to enhance the comic book feel. Even though traditional texturing and rendering is completely in place, never does the art aspire to be realistic, but always to keep the comic book feel intact.
‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ thus is a delight to watch, and a welcome fresh take on traditional 3D computer animation. In fact, the excitement the film stirred in the animation world is comparable to that of ‘The Matrix’ (1999) in the live action film industry. That its stylistic innovation was not an isolated event was proved by subsequent films like ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ (Dreamworks, 2022) and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ (Paramount, 2023). Certainly the latter took heed of the lessons from ‘Spider-Man’.
The story of ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is another reboot of the then 56 years old comic. This time we follow a black teenager from Brooklyn called Miles, who is a son from an over-protective cop, but who leans more towards his less well-behaved uncle Aaron. The most remarkable event in the film is that the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, actually dies, and Miles, who due to unexplained events is bitten by a radio-active spider, too, must take his place.
In fact, the plot is much more complicated, and involves villain Kingpin trying to get his deceased wife and son back from a parallel universe opened by a portal devised by Doctor Olivia “Liv” Octavius, another villain who apparently is the successor to Doc Ock (I’m hardly familiar with the Spider-Man world, so these villains are unknown to me).
The portal also imports five spider-men from alternate universes (and I guess, the Alchemax spider that bit Miles), most importantly a less successful middle-aged Peter Parker and a young Spider-Woman called Gwen, but also a manga girl-spider-man, a black and white film-noir Spider-man and even a looney tune-like spider-man-pig called ‘Spider-Ham’. Part of the fun is the play with these alternate universe characters, some of which are gleefully silly, but I must say the main story is told pretty heavy-handedly.
In fact, the film’s story is hardly as good as the visuals: it’s hard to follow, it’s full of plot-holes, it has some rather forced scenes (most notably the utterly improbable scene in May Parker’s basement, and a believe-in-yourself-like scene in which Miles really becomes a Spider-Man), and a large dose of melodrama that I could hardly stand. Moreover, the finale is taking place in such a messy setting, I had no idea what was going on.
No, did ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ not have the astonishing looks it has, I wouldn’t have been entertained so much, the fun parallel world plot notwithstanding. But as it is, ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is one of the most important animated features from the 2010s, a status corroborated by its equally praised sequel, ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ from 2023.
Watch the trailer for ‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Milorad Krstić
Release date: August 9, 2018
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
One of the more surprising and more original animated feature films from 2018 was this little gem from Hungary. Conceived and directed by Milorad Krstić, a director of Slovenian origin, ‘Ruben Brandt’ shows that one can make an adult animation film without an immature focus on sex and violence (there is violence in this feature film, because ‘Ruben Brandt’ is a crime thriller, but this violence is part of the plot, and not a gratuitous display of gore).
‘Ruben Brandt’ tells about a psychiatrist treating some criminals, who in turn help him overcome his nightmares by collecting artworks from all over the world. This plot is exciting, but on the flimsy side and as nonsensical as a James Bond movie. Moreover, the film fails to solve all the initiated plotlines, and the all too easy ending is a bit of a letdown.
Nevertheless, ‘Ruben Brandt’ remains an entertaining watch from start to finish, not only because of the surreal atmosphere, enhanced by the depiction of several of the art collector’s nightmares, but because of the film’s idiosyncratic looks.
Being a film on art, the film draws a huge inspiration from its subject, and the film breathes art in almost every frame. According to the end titles the film cites more than fifty art works, and part of the fun of watching the movie is to identify a reference in the background. Moreover, the color schemes, the designs and especially the character designs are very bold and unlike anything in any other animation film.
True, the three main characters Ruben Brandt, Kowalski and Mimi look fairly normal, even if their facial designs are already unique, but their co-stars can have two noses, eyes placed above each other, an eye placed inside an ear, three eyes, three breasts, and so forth and so on. There’s even a character with a Janus head, who is only two-dimensional, a characteristic used in the plot. The background characters are often even more bizarre, let alone the birds and fish depicted, and even if the movie were dull (which it certainly isn’t) one can enjoy the surreal imagery.
The film uses both traditional and computer animation and although the computer animation is less satisfying than the traditional animation, the mix is very well done.
In all, ‘Ruben Brandt’ is a highly authentic film that shows surrealism is far from dead, and with his grotesque designs Krstić shows that even 3D computer animation can be exciting and strikingly original.
Watch the trailer for ‘Ruben Brandt, Collector’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Ruben Brandt, Collector’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Shinichiro Ushijima
Release date: July 24, 2018
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘I Want to Eat You Pancreas’ is the first of only two animated feature films by the rather obscure Studio VOLN, which at least I had never heard of before. Studio VOLN isn’t even a big player in the television anime world, with only four series produced thus far. Strangely enough the studio made both its feature films in 2018.
The title of this film, which is a literal translation of the Japanese one, is a contender of the strangest film title of all time award, but what it means is revealed soon enough. The film is based on a novel, and as Japanese animation films often go, there’s nothing that implies the need for animation (except, maybe, for the long spiritual finale).
The film is told by a seventeen year old anonymous schoolboy (his name is only revealed in the very end). He tells about his surprising friendship with a fellow classmate, a girl called Sakura Yamauchi. Sakura is an apt name this character, as Sakura means ‘cherry blossom’, which is a symbol of impermanence in Japan, while the Sakura of the film is already dying from a pancreatic disease at her tender age of seventeen.
Sakura is a bit too much of a pixie girl, and although we also follow her own emotions and anxieties, it’s the story teller’s transformation through her influence that is the film’s focus. At the film’s start the unnamed narrator is a phlegmatic loner, always buried in a book, but indifferent to others and unwilling to commit himself to any relationship. Obviously, the extravert Sakura is going to change all that.
Highlight of this journey is a trip by the two to another town. Part of this trip is told in an original way by still images with dialogue on top, but even better are the scenes in the hotel, which are full of erotic tension. The film’s finale, on the other hand, with its overlong diary sequence is overblown and threatens to harm the complete film. Nevertheless, don’t forget to wait after the end titles!
Throughout, the background art and lighting are both of an extraordinary beauty, making the film a pleasant watch. The character designs, animation and soundtrack on the other hand are very generic and leave much to be desired. In fact, often the animation doesn’t transcend that of the average anime television series. There’s a little computer animation, but this is only used functionally on background art, traffic, fireworks, and such.
Even if the film is not the most interesting one in terms of animation, the film is (for most of the time) well-told, and its emotional tale does move. By all means the film shows that feature animation can be so much more than family entertainment, a message that is still lost on the American studio system.
Watch the trailer for ‘I Want to Eat You Pancreas’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘I Want to Eat You Pancreas’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Kitaro Kosaka
Release date: June 11, 2018
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Okko’s Inn’ is an animated feature film by Madhouse based on a children’s novel series Hiroko Reijō. The film stars a little girl, who’s still at elementary school when she survives a terrible car accident in which her parents die. After this tragic incident she goes to live with her grandmother, who runs a ryokan, a traditional inn in a spa town near Mount Ikoma, East of Osaka, where she meets some ghost children and even a boyish demon.
Okko is supposed to help at the inn, and naturally we watch her grow into her new life and role, helped by the ghost children and little demon, whom we learn more about on the way, while Okko must deal with a girl whose family runs a larger rival inn.
The movie thus taps from familiar tropes in Japanese animation, like a girl losing her parents, and having to work, and the glories of traditional rural Japan as opposed to modern city life. The movie thus at times is reminiscent of such masterworks as ‘Spirited Away’ (2001) or ‘A Letter to Momo’ (2011). In content that is, for stylistically ‘Okko’s Inn’ is very poor. The designs are the most generic possible, with Okko herself being a particularly standard wide-eyed manga girl, and the animation is only fair. Moreover, the film lacks the subtleties of its peers. The film almost mechanically goes through the motions, as if ticking the necessary boxes, and the narrative lacks the surprising twists and turns of aforementioned examples.
It doesn’t help that the film’s message is partly told through guests of the inn, whose role seems almost to help Okko further in life. There’s a father with a son, whom Okko helps through their grief, and there’s an independent woman, a fortune teller, who befriends Okko and helps her getting more self-confident. And then there’s a third family staying, containing the biggest surprise of all.
The biggest flaw, however, is that we don’t see anything of Okko’s grief at all until the very end of the movie. Most of the time we don’t feel her trauma, we don’t feel her fear and we don’t feel any sense of readjustment. We see some of it, but we don’t feel it: in fact, Okko grows surprisingly easily into her new role. Nevertheless, there’s a scene in which Okko meets her anxieties, and this is by far the emotional highlight of the movie. Unfortunately, this powerful scene is followed by a mindless one on shopping.
‘Okko’s Inn’ is not a bad movie, but it’s not a stand-out either, and the film feels as a poor man’s version of ‘Spirited Away’. If anything, the feature shows that also the Japanese animation industry can pour out films that feel like run-of-the-mill products.
Watch the trailer for ‘Okko’s Inn’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Okko’s Inn’ is available on DVD and Blu-Ray
Director: Nina Paley
Release date: June 11, 2018
Rating: ★★★
Review:
Seder-Masochism is the second feature animation film by independent animation artist Nina Paley (born 1968), who created quite a stir with the lovely ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ (2008) in which she blended events in her personal life with the story of the Ramayana, but from a woman’s view.
Apparently, Paley was criticized for using a myth from another culture for her feminist message, with attackers typically focusing on Paley’s supposed lack of understanding of Hindu religion, an irrelevant argument, as the misogyny that Paley attacked is plainly visible in the source text (especially in the last book). Moreover, the Ramayana is hardly unique in its treatment of women as second rate citizens, which can be found in practically all ancient texts.
To underline this message, for her second feature Paley dived into her own heretical religious culture, that of Jewism. The result is a more vicious and more pamphlet-like feature than ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, mostly because the personal note is hardly present, only in an interview of Paley with her father, recorded years prior, about his stance towards Judaism, and that of the Pesach (or Passover) in particular. In these scenes Paley is shown as a sacrificial goat and her father as God himself.
The Pesach, and the story from the book of Exodus behind it, forms the central element of ‘Seder-Masochism’. The ‘Seder’ in the title apparently is a ritual feast at the beginning of the Jewish Pesach celebration, and contains some questionable elements, like rejoicing over the Egyptian victims of the ten plagues and of the closing of the Red Sea.
Surprisingly, Paley juxtaposes the story of Exodus with the idea that initially human culture was matriarchal and devoted to mother goddesses, a theory popular with feminists, but unsupported by archeological evidence. Paley even goes so far as suggesting the golden calf from the Exodus story was a return to such a mother goddess, and thus to times of more equality between and women. Indeed, Paley seems to blame Moses, or monotheism in general for the misogynist patriarchy that dominates most of human culture in its historical existence. This is pure fantasy and can be easily debunked. But of course, ‘Seder-Masochism’ is no documentary, but Paley’s personal take on monotheism and its approach to women.
Yet, Paley’s clear atheist approach to the biblical story is more vicious than anything in ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, which makes the film less approachable and less a classic than Paley’s first movie. Especially when Paley turns to real life footage of religion-inspired violence the film becomes pure agit-prop. Nevertheless, the scene in which Moses returns from Mount Sinai, commanding a stop to the women’s temporal liberation and forcing them back into their niqab-like clothing remains a painful one, and rightfully evokes anger about religious societies who limit the freedom of women.
Even with its strong message, Paley’s way of storytelling remains highly attractive. Paley’s dry sense of humor permeates much of the film, and her visual style is charming throughout, her command of minimal, but effective animation one of the highest degrees. I especially like the poetic intro in which a female goddess flows through space, and sprouts plants, animals, and eventually men on a soundtrack of the most beautiful Bulgarian female chant. Paley’s dance animation of ancient female statues is also a masterstroke, and an attraction in its own right (Paley offers them as singular GIFs).
Moreover, Paley very skillfully mixes the interview excerpts, an enormous variety of existing music and even a 1950s record in which a man tells about the Seder celebration. In contrast with ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, in which only records by 1920s singer Annette Hanshaw were used, ‘Seder-Masochism’ plunders the Western pop music tradition, often to a very striking effect. Notice, for example the single sample of ‘Helter Skelter’ from The Beatles during the sixth plague, and the earlier mentioned scene in which Moses returns uses Led Zeppelin’s ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’ to a painful effect. But the film’s highlight in this respect must be the use of 10cc’s ‘The Things We Do for Love’ which accompanies images of Jews gleefully chopping off foreskins, beheading little goats and killing men and women.
The bitter irony of this sequence is topped by the ‘This Land Is Mine’ sequence, which Paley finished first, and which can be watched as a separate video clip. In this utterly bleak section, we watch several nations fight over the land of Israel, killing one another in greater and greater numbers, with Death itself ultimately being triumphant. With Israel raging the war in Gaza today, with its tens of thousands of innocent Palestine victims, this bleak sequence remains as topical as ever.
The ‘This Land Is Mine’ sequence was also one of the last pieces of animation Paley did in Macromedia Flash, before moving over to Moho. But the most surprising piece of animation in the film is not done on either platform but done with embroidery, in a process Paley calls ‘embroidermation’. This is a lovely piece of stop-motion that Paley rightfully saves for the end, just before the ‘This Land Is Mine’ finale.
In all, ‘Seder-Masochism’ is a beautiful, if rather angry film with a strong feminist message. It cannot stand the comparison with ‘Sita Sings the Blues’, which remains the more balanced work, but as author feature films like this remain utterly rare in the animation field, I strongly recommend watching this feature nonetheless. At least it will make you think about the position of women in society. Paley offers her film for free online, and the movie can be downloaded from her site.
Watch the trailer for ‘Seder-Masochism’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Seder-Masochism’ can be downloaded for free from Nina Paley’s website
Director: Eiichi Yamamoto
Release date: September 15, 1970
Rating: ★★½
Review:
The most important development in animation of the late 1960s and 1970s was the coming of animated feature films aimed at adults, instead of children/families. Heralding the new era was George Dunning’s 1968 film ‘Yellow Submarine’, but the two most important film makers pioneering in this new field were Ralph Bakshi in America (with e.g., ‘Fritz the Cat’ from 1972 and ‘Heavy Traffic’ from 1973) and Osamu Tezuka in Japan.
The three adult oriented anime films Tezuka made at his own Mushi Productions studio are called the Animerama trilogy and consist of ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ (1969), ‘Cleopatra’ (1970) and ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ (1973). The three show that Tezuka, like Bakshi, confuses adult oriented with a rather juvenile focus on sex and violence, making the films adult in content indeed, but otherwise rather immature and even exploitative products.
More than its adult orientation, ‘Cleopatra’ stands out for its highly eclectic style. The film tackles a variety of designs and animation styles, none weirder than the opening sequence, which takes place in the future year of 2001, and which starts live action actors with animated faces, an experiment luckily not repeated, for the results are pretty ridiculous, especially because there’s absolutely no lip synchronization, at all.
The film’s plot revolves around an alien planet called Pasatorine, which has a secret plan to wipe out mankind called ‘Cleopatra’. In order to find out the plans a trio of humans, naturally, goes back into time by “psycho-teleportation”, taking the souls of ancient characters in Cleopatra’s time.
Thus, the three main protagonists change identity: Jirov becomes Ionius, a powerful slave, Maria becomes Libya, an Egyptian city girl, and Hal turns into Lupa, a close companion of Cleopatra, who turns out to be a leopard, much to Hal’s chagrin. His character is the most annoying of the film, for the leopard is sex crazed and tries to get laid all the time, despite its animal features.
After ten minutes we’re in Egypt where Tezaku depicts the Roman conquest of the ancient kingdom in a very silly style, accompanied by some attractive space funk music. When we first see Libya, the adult orientation immediately becomes clear, for she’s bare breasted the whole time. The Egyptian plot is bizarre, too, with an ugly freckled girl changing into the sex goddess of Cleopatra with the sole reason to seduce Caesar and to kill him. Adding to the weirdness is the coloring, for Libya is rendered bright red, while Caesar is depicted as a green man.
Stylistically, the film is all over the place, anyhow, altering tiresome silliness and cheap rotoscoping with quite some beautiful graphic imagery, like the stylized fighting of the Romans and the Egyptian conspirators. The animation, too, is a mixed bag, from non-animation and cheating jump takes from pose to pose, without any animation in between, to far more interesting animation done in watercolors. The animation of the horse ride, and the struggle between Ionius and an Egyptian warrior are actually quite good, and even the first two sex scenes are interesting in their semi-abstract and even poetical stylization, while the third is depicted as a broken-down film. At one point the imagery reminds one of UPA or the Zagreb school, and at another point there’s even a cut-out sequence featuring variations on classic paintings.
What the film completely lacks, is character animation. Emotions are just indicated, not felt, and there’s only broad caricature, not character development. The potentially dramatic story is further hampered by random gags, often strange and out of place. Likewise, the story is sloppy and meandering, with the film makers having difficulty on whom to focus. For great chunks of screen time, the three protagonists from the opening sequence aren’t anywhere to be seen, and after the events in ancient Egypt have ended tragically (in that respect the film does follow Cleopatra’s real life), the film ends abruptly, leaving the viewer wondering why the whole ‘psycho-teleportic’ excursion, and thus most of the movie, was needed in the first place.
It must be said: ‘Cleopatra’ is not a good movie. It is more of an experiment than a success, more of a product of its time than a timeless movie, and rather a curio than an essential watch. It is a product of a more experimental era, but after watching the film, one can hardly wonder why this short age of adult oriented experimentalism stopped.
Watch the trailer for ‘Cleopatra’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Cleopatra’ has been released on Blu-Ray
Director: Denis Do
Release date: June 11, 2018
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Funan’ is a film by Denis Do, a French film maker of Cambodian descent, and the film is partly based on the memories of his own mother.
‘Funan’ means ‘the new people’ in the Khmer language, and this is an apt description of the radical ideology of the Khmer Rouge, an extreme communist movement that took power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, only to plunge the nation in one of the severest mass killings in human history, with the ultimate goal to rise as a ‘new nation’ of autarkic, non-intellectual people.
‘Funan’ thus tells about Cambodia’s darkest years, and does so by following one family from Phnom Penh, which almost immediately falls apart, and which succumbs one by one to various aspects of the terror, be it brutal murder, forced labor, famine or rape. We especially follow a couple, Chou and Khuon, and their son Sovanh, who gets separated from his parents near the start of the film.
Luckily, the film eschews gross images, keeping the watch tolerable, but strangely enough, this also means one feels the hardship and sorrow less than one should. The film’s rather episodic nature certainly doesn’t help, and one has a little trouble relating to these people, perhaps because they aren’t introduced very well (the happy bliss of pre-Khmer rouge existence is shown all too shortly), and because the film is told in a plethora of very short scenes, instead of a few well-chosen longer ones. Especially Sovanh’s story is too fragmentary to follow, and his experiences are only hinted at, although it’s clear that the young boy sees a lot of cruelty and death.
The 2D animation is fair, with the human character designs rooted in the French ligne claire tradition, while the background is painted and lineless. Both coloring and lighting are clearly digitally done, and to be frank, rather uninteresting.
I suspect the film could be more daring and more idiosyncratic in its designs and storytelling, especially when compared to Elsa Duhamel’s similar, but far more interesting short ‘Bach-Hong’, which tells of the coming of the communists to Saigon, Vietnam. Duhamel cleverly sticks to a single story, illustrating the regime’s cruelty by one, ostensibly minor detail in the nation’s history.
Do, on the other hand, seems to want to tell everything, and indeed he succeeds in painting a picture of these black years, but I suspect he had better chosen less scenes, and less characters, for now, unfortunately, the film remains at an emotional distance, and that can hardly be the film maker’s purpose. Yet, I am glad personal films like this are being made, for films like ‘Funan’ save tragedies like that of Cambodia from oblivion, and remind us that peace and safety aren’t guaranteed, at all.
Watch the trailer for ‘Funan’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Funan’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Release date: May 16, 2018
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Mirai’ was the third feature film Mamoru Hosoda made for his own studio, Studio Chizu. Hosoda favors rather episodic films about growing up, and ‘Mirai’ is no exception, although the film takes place in a much smaller time frame than ‘Wolf Children’ or ‘The Boy and the Beast’.
Main protagonist of the film is ca. four-year-old boy Kun, who lives in a design house in Yokohama (the town is depicted regularly during the film in swooping bird-eye’s view shots), but more importantly, who gets a baby sister, the Mirai from the title. Mirai also means future, and in fact, the Japanese title is ‘Mirai no Mirai’, or ‘Mirai from the future’. Indeed, Kun meets an older version of his younger sister from the future, as well as some other characters, while he struggles to adapt to the new situation he finds himself in.
Because with the coming of little Mirai a lot changes for the young boy: his parents have less attention for him, focusing more on the new baby, they’re more often tired and crabby, and they struggle with combining working and caring, now there are two children around. Needless to say, Kun has a hard time getting adjusted, and even gets jealous of his innocent baby sister.
The film focuses on some key scenes, in which Kun experiences a setback, at least in his own mind, and then something magical happens in the little courtyard of his house. First the little boy first meets a humanized form of the family dog, and then his younger sister in older form (there’s more, but I won’t spoil it here).
Unfortunately, Hosoda doesn’t stick to the boy-sister relationship, and at some point, the magic scenes also help Kun overcome his fears. Moreover, a four-year-old is a difficult and questionable protagonist of a film that wants to show the hero’s progress. After all, he is just a little boy. It’s little surprising that Hosoda spends considerable time on Kun’s parents, and their development during this crucial part of their lives. And, indeed, to be frank, Hosoda’s honest depiction of the hardships of young parenthood and of raising one’s own children is much more interesting than Kun’s ‘development’ of character.
Main attraction of the film are the five magical scenes, with the first two showing some broad comedy, as the man-dog and Mirai from the future roam around the house. The third and fourth start to feel obligatory, even though the fourth has a nice nostalgic feel to it. But with the fifth, Hosoda goes completely overboard, and one wonders why these nightmarish scenes, taking the film to a altogether other atmosphere, were even necessary. In fact, this finale, in which Hosoda wants to tell us something about family ties, is too overtly self-explanatory and spoils a film that wasn’t perfect to start with.
In fact, ‘Mirai’ drags a little, being mostly confined to the small space of Kun’s house and with Kun’s development of character as an important, but very weak story device. The film’s episodic nature doesn’t really help, spreading the story thin, a problem that also invades ‘Wolf Children’ and ‘The Boy and the Beast’. I wish Hosoda was able to keep his use of time as tight as his use of space in this movie. ‘Mirai’ is not a failure, the film is too original for that, but it’s arguably Hosoda’s weakest feature film so far, never reaching the emotional heights of either ‘Wolf Children’, ‘The Boy and the Beast’ or even his debut film, ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ from 2006.
Watch the trailer for ‘Mirai’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Mirai’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Mari Okada
Release date: February 24, 2018
Rating: ★★★
Review:
The Japanese animation industry apparently is so rich that new interesting films can pop up seemingly out of nowhere. For example, ‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ (from now on ‘Maquia’) is made by the P.A. Works studio, which since its founding in 2000 focused on television series, and which only made four feature films, the first being based on a video game, the second made for television, the third for training purposes, and the fourth based on a television series.
So, their fifth feature film to be a completely original story, not based on a video game, television series or even a manga, comes as a surprise. It seems that ‘Maquia’ was the pet project by its director Mari Okada, who wrote the story herself. Okada, apparently is somewhat of a modern legend as she has written for over fifty television series since 2001, and is called by Wikipedia “one of the most prolific writers currently working in the anime industry”. She’s one of the brains behind ‘Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day’ (2011), one of only two anime television series I have watched, and it comes to no surprise to me that the ‘Maquia’s’ story style has something in common with that series. Both series and film have a strong focus on human drama, with emotions reigning uncontrolled, and tears flowing frequently. In fact, despite the high fantasy setting, ‘Maquia’ has a strong element of melodrama, and the rather forced emotions, so different from the more restrained style in studio Ghibli, or the films by Yasujirō Ozu for that matter, actually made it harder for me to relate with these people.
‘Maquia’ is a fantasy film, set in a rather Middle Earth-like world, and starts with the depiction of a society of near-immortals called Lorphs, whose surroundings are particularly like the depictions of elven kingdoms in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. These Lorphs write their memories by weaving cloths and live far away from more mortal men. One of these, a young girl called Maquia (from which the English film title takes its name) rather out of nowhere complaints she is so alone. Shortly after this scene of distress the eternal city is attacked by an army of men, and Maquia soon finds herself in the outside world, where she adopts a baby, whose mother is killed.
From then on, the film takes an episodic nature, showing us various stages of the mother-son relationship until the son, whom Maquia calls Ariel, has matured, while his mother, in contrast, has retained the same teen appearance she had in the beginning.
The film apparently tries to say something about how to love is to lose and to let go, how to find beauty in the short lives we have, and how relationships form the most important part of life, but the film’s messages get deluded in a rather complex story, in which we do not only follow Maquia, but also her childhood friend Leilia, who is forced to become a queen by her abductors, the captain who destroyed the Lorph city in the first place and one Lang, a boy/man with whom Maquia spent her first years in the mortal world. The bigger story, and all its subplots are far less interesting than Maquia’s relationship to her adopted son, and both prolong and distract the film unnecessarily.
Apart from being unfocused and very, very emotional, ‘Maquia’ is also hampered by an overblown score by Kenji Kawai, all too forcefully guiding the viewer in which emotion to feel. Even worse, are the rather lazy and utterly generic human designs, which nowhere transcend your average anime television series. The animation, too, is fair, but not outstanding. There’s also a small dose of computer animation that is used sparingly and effectively. No, the film’s highlights are not the story, music, character designs or the animation, but the background art and the lighting, which are both no less than magnificent, and which both give ‘Maquia’ a splendor that make the film a delight to watch, even when the characters and events themselves don’t.
I like ‘Maquia’ being an original story, and its theme of what it means to be (im)mortal is interesting, but the film is too long, too episodic, too meandering and too dramatic to entertain, and I am pretty sure in the end I will not remember either the film’s story or its characters, but the beautiful background art and superb lighting, which the make the film a standout, after all.
Watch the trailer for ‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms’ is avaiable on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Jan Švankmajer
Release date: January 26, 2018
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Insect’ is Jan Švankmajer’s last film. Even though at the time of writing the Czech master of surrealist cinema is still alive, he announced this film as such. It sure was a difficult film to make, as even crowdfunding was needed to finish the movie.
Unfortunately, the film is not a grand finale to Švankmajer’s glorious oeuvre. Sure, the film’s main story is interesting enough and shows all elements of the Czech director’s idiosyncratic style: surrealist events, morbid humor, extreme close-ups, claustrophobic spaces, a preoccupation with food, and even a splash of stop-motion and cut-out animation, rarely seen since the 1980’s.
In this story an amateur company rehearses the 1921 play ‘Pictures from the Insects’ Life’ by the Čapek brothers. Only part of the troupe is present, and the film features only six characters, who are cramped into a dark, poorly lit space, which give the film an eerie feeling the actors are trapped like insects themselves. Four actors are bullied by an overt ambitious director, while the sixth sleeps through most of the rehearsal. While the inapt actors act out a few scenes from the play, strange events start happening, like insects appearing everywhere, and a dummy coming to life, and several of the actors don’t live through the end of the rehearsing.
This story shows a strong unity of time and space, and is told by Švankmajer with gusto, while his actors delight in portraying the clumsy actors, one even worse on the stage than the other. The actor’s antics are often accompanied by the beginning of Bedřich Smetana’s overture to ‘The Bartered Bride’ (1866), the lively sounds of which contrast heavily with the bad acting on the stage. The sound design, too, is excellent, with its well-chosen unpleasant sounds, as of crawling insects.
However, apparently this main story wasn’t enough material to fill a complete feature length film, and thus the action is constantly interrupted by behind-the-scene footage, showing how the film was made, as well as the real actors telling about their dreams. These scenes often reveal the tricks involved in the film making, and thus spoil the fun of the surrealist main story. But more importantly, they greatly disrupt the main narrative, and the viewer is constantly thrown in and out of the story, which makes the film a frustrating watch, indeed. This choice of adding an extra layer to the film actually makes it a weaker product than it could have been, and although it’s nice to watch Jan Švankmajer at work, it makes the film a sad farewell to his illustrious career.
Watch the trailer for ‘Insect’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Insect’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Director: Wes Anderson
Release date: February 15, 2018
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
The 21st century saw a few live action directors and film makers crossing over to animation, often with original films that were welcome deviations from the standard family fare of Pixar, Dreamworks, Sony, Illumination and the like. One of these directors was Wes Anderson, whose live action films already have a very distinct flavor, let alone his animation work.
In 2009 Wes Anderson brought us ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, his own quirky take of the classic children’s book by Roald Dahl, adding some ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’-like flavor to it. It seemed a one off, like all other animation adventures by live action directors, but in 2018 Wes Anderson surprised everyone by making yet another animation movie, this time with a completely original story of his own.
‘Isle of Dogs’ is a sort of fantasy-dystopia film set in Japan. Surprisingly, much of the dialogue is in Japanese, and not always translated, adding to the film’s idiosyncrasy. The film tells about the cat-loving Kobayashi clan who wants to get rid of all the dogs. When a Kobayashi mayor gets into power in the fictive town of Megasaki, he banishes all dogs to a garbage dump island…
The film knows quite a lot human characters, but uses mostly a dog-viewpoint and is even narrated by a dog (voiced by Courtney B. Vance). The film focuses on a stray dog called Chief, whose life changes when a young boy arrives on the island, looking for his own former pet, Spots.
Where all other film makers would make the boy and the dogs be able to talk with each other, Anderson keeps their languages strictly separated, with the dogs not getting a thing the boy says, and vice versa. As the boy speaks Japanese, we, the audience, too, cannot always follow what the boy tries to say – a bold move.
The dog communication is all in English, and Anderson makes use of a lot of familiar names to voice his animated creatures, like Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, just to name a few. Even Yoko Ono has a small role as a scientist of the same name.
Like ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ ‘Isle of Dogs’ is a stop motion film, and a very virtuoso one, too. The animation, directed by Mark Waring, is superb throughout and there are crowd scenes with tens to hundreds of puppets, and both dog and human characters are very intricately designed. Like in Anderson’s first animated film, all animals have a rather scruffy look, giving the film a very individual look. There are some typical quirks in the animation, like dogs sneezing at random moments. I also like Anderson’s use of cartoony fight clouds. As far as I know he’s the first to use those in a stop-motion film.
As with his other films Anderson employs a very typical use of the camera, often showing symmetrical images, and sometimes using close ups in a rather Spaghetti Western-like fashion. There’s also a little 2D animation to depict events on television. The background art, too, is unique. Apart from elaborate sets, the film uses rather flat background art, with a typical cut-out look. The quasi-Japanese score by Alexandre Desplat, an Anderson favorite, adds to the film’s unique atmosphere.
The film’s story says something about populism, and how misleading information can lead to unjust decisions, but the film is too silly to emphasize this point. Likewise, the film’s heart lies with Chief, but much more interesting than his development are the dry dialogues, and the running gag of one dog hearing a rumor the others never heard of. In fact, apart from the film’s looks, the dialogues form the film’s main attraction, as they are often very funny.
Unfortunately, the film’s finale is not the best part, and the defeat of the villains a little too easy, but otherwise ‘Isle of Dogs’ is a real treat, and with its unique style a very welcome diversion from the often run-of-the-mill fare of American studio animation.
Watch the trailer for ‘Isle of Dogs’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Isle of Dogs’ is available on Blu-Ray and DVD
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 