Andrew Bloom

VIP

9

[6.3/10] There’s a story worth telling in Killers of the Flower Moon. The tale of an indigenous population being murdered for their oil money, of state and local authorities ignoring blatant murders because it serves their prejudices and interests, and the feds finally stepping in after so much blood has already been shed, is ripe for the cinematic treatment. What such an event in the not-so-distant past says about our society, and the people involved, could make for an incredible film.

This is not that film. It has the wrong protagonist, the wrong pacing, and only intermittently hits the most fascinating and poignant parts of the story.

The film centers on Ernest Burkhart, a suggestible numbskull. Ernest deliberately and unwittingly does the bidding of his uncle, W.K. Hale, a local operator who’s ingratiated himself into the Osage Nation in Oklahoma at the same time he’s conniving ways to knock them off so he and his family can inherit their oil rights. As part of these machinations, Hale nudges Ernest to court and eventually marry Molly Kyle, an Osage woman with full rights and a family full of people who’ve been the target of Hale’s murderous plots.

Burkhart is our entree into this world and the fulcrum at the center of the movie, and the big problem is that he’s not especially deep or interesting. At best, he evokes the same sense of co-star Robert de Niro’s character in The Irishman, a hapless but good-natured goon who finds himself falling into bad company and regretting where his “just do what your told and keep your head down” mentality leads him.

But there’s very little depth to Ernest. He’s a dope at the beginning, and he’s a dope at the end. He seems to harbor genuine love for Mollie and his children with her, but otherwise he’s just a schmuck who seems too stupid and influenced to fully comprehend his choices or their consequences, which makes him pretty tepid and unengaging as a central character. That might be overcome by the acting, but star Leonardo DiCaprio gives the same affected, labored performance you’ve seen him give in a dozen other movies. While not bad, necessarily, it doesn’t have the lived-in character to make you invest in a thin, flat character who takes up too much of the spotlight.

It’s especially frustrating when Lily Gladstone’s Mollie is right there. The tale of a woman who loves her husband, but knows he’s connected to people who only want her family’s money, while trying to convince stodgy government officials to intercede on behalf of a group they either don’t care about or are actively working against, could be incredible. In places, we see glimpses from her perspective, or delve deeper into how the Osage Nation of 1920s Oklahoma reacted to all of this, and it’s the best part of the movie. Filtering it through Ernest’s perspective instead feels like a sad, missed opportunity.

It doesn’t hurt that in a film with multiple Oscar-winning actors, Gladstone gives the best performance in the film. There’s an understated subtlety to Mollie’s responses and reactions that evinces a sense of layers otherwise missing from most of the film’s players. A minor change in her expression, a simple shift in her gaze, can communicate more than the film’s bigger stars can in dramatic monologues. Gladstone steals the show, and the only shame in it is that director/co-writer Martin Scorsese doesn’t lean more into her character as the focus of the piece.

That assumes there is a focus to the piece. While ostensibly adapting the story of the Osage murders, Scorsese and company leave no bit of texture excluded, no cinematic cul de sac unexamined, no narrative rabbit hole unexplored. Some of the inclusions are good! The chance to see glimpses of Osage rituals and traditions amid the broader events is engrossing, and you can understand the filmmakers’ desire to share them with a bigger audience.

But many of them feel like wheel-spinning in a film that barely gets going until it’s two-thirds of the way through. Unlike Scorsese’s best films, this is not a movie with a sense of build or progression. Killers of the Flower Moon establishes early that Ernest, Hale, and Hale’s operatives are steadily taking out those with oil rights, and then it just keeps happening for two hours.

There’s very little difference, very little progression, very little interest as Burkhart acts the fool and Hale and enacts his plan in the same, undifferentiated fashion for the bulk of the movie. There’s no tension or intrigue to it, because there’s little sense of growth or change, let alone mystery, as to what’s happening. The notion of Ernest feeling divided loyalties to the woman he loves and the complicated father figure doing some bad things could be worthwhile! (Hello Departed fans!) The notion of him feeling trapped by the authorities but unsure how to unravel the net with either family could also be an idea worth exploring. (Hello Goodfellas fans!) Sadly, Killers of the Flower Moon never really capitalizes on any of this, instead offering reheated versions of the same thing for much of the movie with little in the way of differentiation or momentum.

To the point, god help the pacing here. Even in the film’s most interesting stretch (which is basically when the feds are working through their investigation and tightening the net), Scorsese and company let scenes drag and drag. You could fairly argue that Scorsese needs to trim the fat at a big picture level, jettisoning scenes and sequences that might be alright on their own but don’t add much to Killer of the Flower Moon’s larger project. But even in important, meaningful, gotta-have-’em scenes, the conversations lurch and lumber on, while the emotion and energy in any given moment drains away. Tighter discipline in the editing bay could have salvaged some of these scenes, but as is, they, and the movie as a whole, feel bloated and ungainly.

This all makes me sound more down on the movie than I really am. Most of the film is solid at worst, with a few keen bright spots. (The clever radio show epilogue is the most inventive and affecting highlight on that front.) At this stage in his career, Scorsese is a master of his craft able to attract some of the best talents in the business. As a result, there’s some memorable, textured performances in even smaller roles, impressive imagery in sequences like the ones where Hale burns up his property for the insurance proceeds, and even a few piercing human moments between Mollie and Ernest as they weather this storm together and then apart.

In that vein, Scorsese also deserves credit for telling the story, with his heart clearly in the right place even if his focus isn’t. Apart from the quality of the art, using your clout and platform to shine a light on an under-recognized injustice that is a metonym for broader problems in the treatment of indigenous communities is commendable. The events depicted here are both galling and horrifying, and the subject matter is worth the time, even if the execution leaves much to be desired.

But you do a disservice to that worthy cause by centering its fictionalization on an uninteresting dolt, and burying it in three-and-a-half hours’ worth of turgid cinematic bloat. Killers of the Flower Moon isn’t outright bad by any stretch. There’s too many talented people across the production for that to happen. But what’s maddening about the film is that amid its missteps and flaws, you can glimpse the outline of a better movie, one which shifts its perspective, kills its darlings, and honors the tragedy, but also the humanity, of the people unjustly cut down, rather than laying its focus on shaming their betrayers.

[8.6/10] A movie to recoil from, and to bask in.

Poor Things is a movie to recoil from because it is a story of abuse. The mere creation of Bella Baxter -- the movie’s wondrous, improbable protagonist -- is an act of abuse. Her erstwhile father, Godwin (cheekily referred to as “God” by his creation) implants the mind of a fetus into the mind of the poor child’s own suicidal mother, in a monstrous act. Even as he cannot help but develop paternal affection for young Bella, he keeps her locked away, attempts to marries her off to his assistant despite her immature mind, and treats as much like an experiment as an offspring.

Bella’s treatment at the hands of her own creator and surrogate father is abhorrent, and not for nothing, he’s probably the person who loves and respects her the most, which really sets the tone for the film.

Because things don’t stop there. A cad named Duncan Wedderburn (played with maximalist lunacy by a scenery-chewing Mark Ruffalo) spirits her away, rapes her, and keeps her like a pet in a jag and jaunt across the continent not unlike that of Humbert Humbert. Her attempts to break free are met with more control, anger, and even violence. Even friends, intent on showing her the world, do so with an intent to break her spirit. The madame at the brothel where she seizes her own “means of production” gives her a lifeline, but exerts her own brand of manipulation and assault.

And the piece de resistance of the film’s unconscionable abusers is Bella’s quasi ex-husband, quasi-father, who takes joy in cruelly, threatens her with firearms, plans to surgically remove her ability to enjoy sex, and accounts for, in his own twisted way, why Bella’s mother would rather leave this cruel world than bring her abuser’s child into it.

It is no coincidence that these controlling trespassers are almost exclusively men. Even the kinder ones, like Godwin’s more availing and understanding assistant, Max McCandles, takes advantage of Bella when she’s in an immature state and unable to consent, desiring the physical and ignoring the mental.

And it’s no coincidence that those who empower Bella, who teach her philosophy and politics and self-possession, are women. From Martha, the aging European cruiser who shows Bella theory; to fellow french prostitute Toinette who helps Bella see the confluence of politics and economics that give her a context and identify the scars that clue her into the past; to even Swiney, the madame who takes her cut but gives Bella perspective, those who lift Bella up share her gender.

In that, Poor Things is a peculiar sibling of fellow 2023 release Barbie, and a raunchier cousin of 2013’s Under the Skin in its equally off-kilter examination of what it is to be a woman, the projections and invasions of their male counterparts, and the abuse that must be endured simply for existing in this state. For all its outsized grandeur, Poor Things is startlingly frank in its depiction of many of these things, and it’s easy to flinch in its barest moments.

It’s also easy to flinch because Poor Things is a thoroughly gross movie. Gross because, being a modern day Frankenstein tale of surgeons and their subjects, it is riddled with scars, blood, and scattered organs. Gross because time and again the viewer must watch a person with the body of an adult but the mind of a child be taken advantage of sexually. Gross because it doesn’t shy away from the awkwardness and multitudinal expressions of sex in a way that is both affirming and repulsive in its peculiar way. This is not a movie for the squeamish, either physically or emotionally.

And yet, despite all of that, there is more than enough to bask in here.For one thing, Poor Things is a beautiful film. The cinematography evolves as Bella does, starting with ornate stage play sets in black and white, blossoming into gorgeous impressionistic settings in technicolor splendor, and eventually reaching a still exaggerated but ultimately more realistic presentation as Bella’s more mature view of the world comes into focus. The way the aesthetic mirrors the main character’s growth and understanding is both visually stunning and a masterful blend of vision and theme.

And the imagery works on its own terms. Director Yorgos Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan craft an iconography that is worth the price of admission on its own. The style of Poor Things blends the larger-than-life expressionism of Fritz Land, with the misfits in a toybox world sensibilities of Tim Burton, with the liminal oddity of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and the twee dioramas populated with broken souls of Wes Anderson. The production design and makeup and costuming, for Bella in particular, invite you into this particular, peculiarly-crafted world with its characters who are no less distinctive in look than in personality. In terms of pure style, pure vibes, pure feel, Poor Things is an experience all its own.

It is also blackly funny. Part of what cuts the grimness of the film’s subject matter is that laughs abound, in the dark absurdity of Bella’s various predicaments, of her matter-of-fact ways over around and through them, and in the almost slapstick-y moments of physical comedy that blend the sublime and the ridiculous. Even in its bleakest stretches, Poor Things carries an arch tone that helps the medicine go down.

It doesn’t hurt that this is one of the most quotable films of the season. In the script penned by Tony McNamara, Bella has a Vonnegut-esque way of identifying the absurdity of human existence by simply stating it plainly. There is a “from the mouths of babes” quality to her comments, driving incisive critique though blithely stating the obvious in a way that upsets polite society. Her matter-of-fact comments are often uproarious, from her agahstness at a new friend’s coital interregnum, to the aforementioned affirmation of a sex worker’s yonic take on Marxism, to Bella’s simple declaration that she need not keep chewing something that revolts her.

But that is the cinch of the film, because as much as Poor Things centers on the abusive and revolting, as much as it offers treats in the form of splendorous images and witty lines, it is ultimately a story of self-actualization. Star Emma Stone sells Bella’s journey from a developmentally challenged child who is misdirected and taken advantage of by all those who wish to extract her gifts for their pleasures, to a questioning young soul finding themselves and discovering their wants, to a worldly and experienced operator who is blunt in her assessments but no less direct or effective at reaching her desires, finally subject and not object.

That is the true focus of the film: what it is to grow-up, what it is to come into your own, what it is to become a person, with all the dangers and messiness and reckonings that entails, but in the right hands and the right company, what joys and solace it may bring as well. (Again, making it a funhouse mirror version of fellow Best Picture nominee Barbie.) Swiney tells Bella that we must experience the good and the bad, to have a full sense of the world, to know, to grow, and become. And in the end, Bella does.

Through all of her adventures, she comes out a battered but fully-formed, self-possessed individual, marked by experiences but also fortified by them. She abandons one abuser in good faith and then rejects and repels him when he blames her for all his self-made problems. She neutralizes her original abuser of sorts and turns him into an erstwhile pet for good measure. She brings her friends close, and finds a partner who is more understanding and forgiving.

Most of all, she breaks the cycle. What makes a man capable of the unfathomable acts Godwin commits sympathetic is that, as he recounts his own childhood of cruel experiments done dispassionately, you see the way he is merely perpetuating his own abuse, albeit with genuine affection breaking through for Bella. When Bella comes into her power, she does not forgive Godwin exactly, but she makes peace with him on his slow road to death. He committed the original sin of violation, lied to her, kept her, but is also the one who recognized her as a being of free will, and perhaps even one who provoked love through his futile attempts at detachment.

Ultimately, she follows in his footsteps, becoming a surgeon herself and stepping into his shoes. She spends much of the film bristling against the shackles of a system, finding the words to question it, and then building her own little oasis apart from it. There is great horror in the core of Poor Things, in its frank depiction of cruelty and craven use of another body and soul. But it is also a story of an ungodly creation who, through experiencing life’s offerings both harsh and wondrous, eventually supplants the man who sewed her together, and becomes her own creator.

[8.9/10] A title like The Holdovers has a double meaning. On a basic level, it’s simply the technical term for the three individuals--a teacher, a student, and a kitchen manager--all spending their holiday break on the grounds of the New England boarding school they call home during the year.

But in a broader sense, it refers to people who have been left behind, who remain in some uncertain limbo not just in where they lay their heads, but in their lives as a whole. The nominal goal at the center of the film is for this trio of disregarded remainders to make it to the New Year without wrecking each other or the school. But its broader aim is to give each of them a direction, a connection, and something that jostles each of them from their different flavors of sad stupor and toward a reinvigorated purpose.

The results are, in turn, uproarious, heartbreaking, and ultimately moving. The Holdovers has its antecedents: from the locked-in mischief and camaraderie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to the young man struggling with trauma a la Catcher in the Rye, to countless broader flicks about grumbly instructors warming up to rambunctious students. But there’s a greater depth, a clearer sense of open-wounded humanity, a distinctiveness in how its main players are formed and bounced off one another, that makes the film feel unlike any other.

It wouldn’t achieve that success without its triumvirate of great character and even greater performance. Paul Hunham could easily have been little more than a walking trope -- a stuffy and curmudgeonly civics teacher who’s hard on his students but betrays a hidden heart of gold. Instead, writer David Hemingson makes him more complex than that. Hunham is grumpy and hidebound before softening to this charge, yes, but he’s also a depressed drunkard, pessimistic about the world’s prospects for the future, with his dreams whittled down by the same forces that grind the other Holdovers, in various ways. Even that could have been a prestige picture cliche, but Paul Giamatti’s performance gives Hunham such spirit, and so many layers behind each grand pronouncement and reluctant, heartfelt compromise. Together, Hemingson and Giamatii make a broad archetype of a character feel achingly human, which is no small achievement.

Likewise, Angus Tully, the bright but trouble-making student unexpectedly left behind by his mother and inclined to rebel against Hunham’s supervision, could also have been a stock cliche. The recalcitrant but troubled youth who fights back against, but ultimately confides in their mandated caretaker is no less traditional a tale. And yet, again, the script doesn’t leave Tully as a one-note stereotype, but instead, gives him a cleverness, a sense of compassion, and a deep well of pain that makes him more than that outline. At the same time, twenty-year-old Dominic Sessa conveys the anger, hurt, and unassuming innocence of Angus to perfection. He cuts the figure of a young Alan Alda with both his snark and his sadness, and delivers a challenging performance for a young actor without stumbling once.

But it’s Da'Vine Joy Randolph--who plays Mary Lamb, the school’s head cook--that steals the show. Unlike Mr. Hunham and Angus, Mary is not the type of character you see much of in either these scholastic coming-of-age stories or prestige pictures. She is a black woman who works among the downstairs set in contrast to the mostly white, upper crust pupils and professors who reside upstairs. She is a woman bathed in grief, having lost both her husband and her son before they turned twenty-five. And most importantly, she is a full-fledged part of the film’s central trifecta, whose needs and concerns get the same attention and focus as her counterparts who are more often spotlighted in these stories.

Her inner life is potent and conspicuous. The things she’s feeling deeply at all times but never saying come through loud and clear amid Randolph’s powerhouse performance. She delivers the film’s signature scene, a furious, crestfallen, devastating lament in a suburban kitchen about the child and partner both gone too soon, with their absences all the more noticeable and piercing in what should be a season of joy. Like all the characters in the film, Mary is more than her trauma, with moments of kindness, levity, and insight just as memorable, but in a movie full of heart-rending monologues and stellar performances, Randolph takes the prize.

Despite the sense of hurt and alienation at the core of the film, The Holdovers is an unexpectedly hilarious movie. Angus’ antics to entertain himself and/or tweak Mr. Hunham have the shaggy whimsy of teenage rebellion. Mr. Hunham dispenses vulgar insults that tickle the funny bone, like “too dumb to pour piss out of a boot” and “penis cancer in hidden form.” The actors provide bouts of great physical comedy, from Angus’ disobedient gym floor flop, to Hunham’s ridiculous football-flubbing flail. And Mary has a dry wit that singes and can get a big laugh with a reaction shot alone. For a movie as unafraid to explore blunted hearts and lingering traumas, it’s full of humor and vigor that makes it come off like a fulsome view of life’s ups and downs, rather than a shameless tear-jerker or sap dispensary.

Nonetheless, there is a thematic undercurrent beneath all that pain and exclusion -- privilege. The recurring motif of The Holdovers is the idea that there are people who manage to wriggle out of the harshest obligations in this world, from schoolwork to plagiarism to war, because of power and position and the dishonesty and dishonor it can cover for. Some people go to Ivy league schools and get safe cushy jobs whether they have the intelligence or character for it, and others die in labor-intensive fields where worker safety is secondary to output quotas. Grades are inflated, service workers are casually demeaned, racism is tolerated, so long as it all comes from a class of people who don’t realize how lucky they have it.

The zenith of this is the Vietnam War, which hangs in the background of this seventies-set film. For all Angus’ legitimate issues, Hunham calms him down when he gets into a snit with a local missing a hand, since the teacher intuits how and why the injury happened. And the grandest injustice in the film is Mary’s son, sent off to fight and die in ‘Nam, when he had the grades, but not the funds, to go to college, denied the student deferment from the draft that would come alongside a university education. This sense of unconscionable disparity between the haves and the have-nots--one group excused from even the most minor of consequences for their actions, and one group forced to suffer the worst of them despite doing everything right--pervades the movie.

But it is also what unites Mary, Angus, and Mr. Hunham. Though thrown together by circumstance, and very different people on the surface, they find solace and understanding in one another, and it’s the most heartening part of the film. That comes through in the elegant cinematography of Eigil Bryld. The visuals of The Holdovers are not flashy, but they are quietly brilliant. Each frame is perfectly composed to convey the character of the grounds, or the ridiculousness of a gag, or the burgeoning intimacy that steadily washes over the main trio.

All three of them are touched by loss and loneliness. Mary still mourns her husband and her son, and is all but spit on by entitled twits who insult her cooking in a job she took to provide for a child who’ll never have the same life or opportunity. Mr. Hunham is, on his account at least, a low-level teacher, scorned by his students and his peers, alone in the wake of a long-since-failed shot at love, isolated and barely able to muster half-a-dream after being kicked out of Harvard for a privileged roommate’s intellectual theft. And Angus is abandoned over the holidays by a mother off to honeymoon with his new stepdad, a reminder of the mentally disturbed father whom he’s forbidden to see, and cursed with a parent in a state of living death -- physically there but mentally gone -- something all the more devastating for a young soul in particular.

So they share drinking problems. They share depression medication. They share flailing grasps for human connection that are reached for then rejected in a state of guilt and self-loathing. And eventually, they share a particular sort of bond that emerges from commiseration and acts of kindness, from recognizing one another’s pain and helping them through it, from seeing how the system works for others and stealing a piece of it for one another.

You can see it in the progression of “what Barton men do.” Angus lies about the cause of his dislocated shoulder to protect Mr. Hunham’s job, a falsehood the teacher accepts with some lecturing about honesty. Only then, Mr. Hunham lies to an old classmate about his career, reasoning that truthful or not, giving his social betters the satisfaction of his comparatively sorry state is not something he owes them.

And in the film’s close, when Angus’ mom and stepdad arrive to excoriate their son and his erstwhile babysitter for daring to let a lonely boy visit his father on Xmas, Mr. Hunham has an out. Angus’ guardians all but invite Mr. Hunham to throw Angus to the wolves, to say that the young man tricked him or “slipped the leash”, which would be half-true. Instead, Mr. Hunham lies in order to take full responsibility; he dissembles to excuse the young man entirely, sacrificing his job and the content-if-stagnant life he’s enjoyed for decades to save Angus’ future.

That is the crux of the film. The key message comes earlier when Hunham reassures Angus that he will not become like his father. Despite his obsession with the classics, he decries the Greek poets’ belief that our path is set and resistance only ensures submission to fate. Your destiny is your own, he implores the young man, and it’s not too late, never too late, to change it.

So Mary will still carry the scars of loved ones taken from her too soon, but she can make space to laugh and reminisce with her sister, and save for her newborn nephew who will carry on the name, and hopefully the spirit of her dearly departed son. So despite the prospect of being kicked out of Barton and forced to attend military school, with the prospect of war and death that comes with it, Angus can remain at Barton and find his way to the sunnier shores all but assured to bright young men in well-regarded centers of learning and the resources to propel them further.

So Mr. Hunham can become the unlikely surrogate father figure Angus is in desperate need of, and change his mind about the prospects of the next generation, at least for one young lad who makes him hopeful, whose success is worth martyring his comfort and security for. And he too can be lodged from his complacency, spurred to go visit the sites of the ancient world he’s studied but never seen, and write that monograph he’s been putting off.

When we’re introduced to the three of them, they are not just hunkering together in those almost unreal, interstitial days that envelop the end of the calendar. They are all in some in-between state, not quite where they started, but not quite able to move forward. When we leave them, Mary if able to make some semblance of peace with her tragedies and rekindle connections to her family; Angus knows someone has faith in him and has the surefootedness and, yes, character, to see his schooling through to the end; and Mr. Hunham, the stymied student-turned-teacher who’s been “held over” longer than anyone, finally finds a reason to break free.

[4.6/10] Wish almost feels like a parody of a Disney movie. It has the vague aura of Shrek’s satirical take on the House of Mouse oeuvre, except somehow played straight. It plays like one of those direct-to-video Disney knockoffs that sneaks just close enough to the line to confuse a well-intentioned gift-giving grandparent while avoiding getting sued. It seems like someone threw every film released by the Walt Disney Animation Studios into an A.I. blender, and this is what it spit out.

What it doesn’t feel like is the worthy capstone to one-hundred years of magic-making from one of Hollywood’s most storied production houses. More so than most Disney flicks, Wish throws in ample tributes to its cinematic brethren to commemorate the occasion. A talking goat dreams of Zootopia. The villain squashes reveries of Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, and Cinderella. The protagonist's friend group is Disney-bounding the cast of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for some reason. All of these shoutouts are pleasing enough, but at best they’re sprinkles thrown on top of a not-very-appetizing cake.

On a more substantive level, Wish follows a durable Disney format. There’s a princess type -- a young girl in a vaguely medieval kingdom with pluck and a dream -- even if she never becomes royalty. There’s a conniving villain who acts to hold her down and occasionally summon some evil magic. And there’s the usual cadre of buddies, cute animal sidekicks, and helpful woodland creatures. If you fell asleep and half-remembered every Disney princess movie you’d ever seen, you might get the basic outline of Wish.

Not for nothing, it’s also a musical, which is a good thing!...in principle. In practice, the songs veer between forgettable and outright bad. The titular tune “The Wish” has a few stirring stanzas, and the “let’s go get ‘em” ensemble number before the climax, “Knowing What I Know Now” has a solid rhythm and some nice interplay. But by and large, the tunes in Wish are well below Disney’s standards. The melodies aren’t catchy; the phrasing is rushed and jumbled, and many lines feature some downright miserable attempts at rhyming. (The allegory/excitatory/morning/story/poorly section is downright painful.) For a studio that's employed Lin Manuel Miranda, too many of the songs in Wish play like cheap imitations of his motor-mouthed lyrical style.

The animation is no better. Again, there’s a few nice pieces here and there. The imagery of Asha and her family rowing to the islet offers a striking starscape. The aforementioned “Knowing What I Know Now” number features a winning shadow puppet motif that stands out. Star, the anthropomorphic wishing star who helps Asha, is downright adorable throughout. And of all things, the villain’s hair is weirdly convincing. But these gems are few and far between.

The animation and overall look of the film seems strangely chintzy, as though this was originally meant for television and got gussied up at the last minute. The character designs are meh at best. Everyone looks like a generic plastic doll. Their faces and expressions don’t seem to match their bodies. And there’s an exaggerated, hyperactiveness to everyone’s movements that leads directly into the uncanny valley. If this is a tribute to a studio whose technological achievements and visual splendor was once its calling card, why does the movie look so blah?

The plotting is no better. At the heart of Wish lies an intriguing premise. A seemingly benevolent sorcerer king who gathers and “protects” the wishes of his populace, while only scarcely and self-servingly deciding to grant a fraction of them, has some thematic punch to it. The fact that the citizens of his supposedly idyllic realm lose their memories of their deepest dream when handing over their wish bubbles to the king, and that he later builds up his power by absorbing them is, true to the quasi-Disney mashup spirit of the piece, some real Kingdom Hearts-style weirdness. But you can at least sense the film trying to make some creditable statement in all of this.

Unfortunately, the story and the character motivations are some combination of jumbled and vague. At base, our hero, Asha, wants to better the lives of her fellow citizens, and the villain, Magnifico, wants to hold onto power. But Asha is as off-the-shell a spunky-but-heartfelt protagonist as they come, and despite a solid performance by Ariana DeBose, there’s nothing much to distinguish her. The reliably game Chris Pine manages to inject some life into Magnifico, and his “Why don’t I get thanked for doing the bare minimum for my people in a self-serving way?” mentality has some juice to it. But there’s just not enough depth to this character, or clarity in how he aims to accomplish anything, to compel you.

The rules for how the wish stuff works seem random. They can float around aimlessly without issue, but extracting them makes you mostly forget. They can be destroyed which gives you a feeling of grief. But it’s okay because some other magic can bring them back! But watch out for dark magic, which you can use to grow more powerful using other people’s wishes as fuel! Don’t worry though, because if you beat the dude infused with dark magic, all the wishes just come back out, good as new.

Look, it’s churlish to complain about the mechanics of a magical ecosystem in an all ages film. But the point is that without some defined boundaries, there’s very little in the way of stakes here. Magic is all well and good, but when it alternatively makes chickens dance and instills in a woman the pain of losing her spouse, without much to distinguish why one happens versus the other, the pixie dust feels like a narrative and comedic cheat code rather than a sturdy element of your story. Even there, the comedy pales in comparison to studio good luck charm Alan Tudyk using his Clayface voice to (I’d bet) improvise funny one-liners to spice up an otherwise dull and tin-eared spate of dialogue.

The sense of cause and effect is also lacking in the plot, but at base, we get a decent enough, “Not even you, evil wish-sucking King, can stop the power of us all wishing together!” And again, you can see what the creative team is going for. Somewhere in the narrative junk pile, the commendable idea of everyone holding onto their wish and working to make it come true, rather than giving it away and waiting on some questionable authority to simply make it happen, comes through. But when the characters used to illustrate that idea, and the story used to explicate it, are as janky and unmemorable as this one, the message loses a most of its oomph.

The vague hint at the end of the film is that Rosas, the utopian island setting for this story, is the source from which all Disney movies come, inspired by the wishes and dreams of a utopian, multicultural population -- right down to the protagonist’s allegorically 100-year-old grandfather coming up with “When You Wish Upon a Star”.

All I can say is that this is somehow the least plausible part of the movie. Not because of the mechanics of the suggestion, which are no worse than other metaphors for the creative process. But because it’s impossible to believe that a century’s worth of wondrous, ground-breaking, heart-rending films emerged from such a pallid, generic, emotionally inert, and all around uninteresting source.

[6/10] You can only do so many of these “various Disney/Star Wars/Animation Domination characters crossover with one another” specials before the novelty wears off, and all you’re left with is your ability to tell jokes, which...

Suffice it to say, it’s nice enough to see the various moms and kids from across Disney’s corporate umbrella to hang out with one another. But the whole bit about them all going to an intergalactic disney Park and marge getting into a fight with stormtroopers is weak as hell.

There’s a few solid gags. I got a dark laugh out of Bambi’s mom freaking out about the car backfiring, and Eeyore’s comment felt in character. Hell, the best visual gags may have been in the credits. But a lot of the jokes here were tepid at best, and the Stewie Griffin stuff was the pits. There were some bits that didn’t quite qualify as jokes, but which were charming enough, like the reimagining of the Walt Disney statue with Kang, or the cantina band playing “Moon River.”

On the whole, I should just write these specials off as what they are -- ads for a streaming service. But you know, the Simpsons have starred in commercials and promotional materials for years, and the vast majority of them are funnier and more entertaining than this, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect at least a little better.

[10/10] This is nothing but sap and fanservice, but damnit, it absolutely worked on me.

I don’t know what to say. I remind myself that Disney is an emotionless corporation whose prime goal is simply to earn money for stockholders. It’s a business, like any other, and shorts like this are basically a giant, heartstring-tugging ad for it.

But I’ve also been indoctrinated by decades of films and television shows and video games and other little pieces of schmaltz just like this one. Whether I want to honor the artists who fueled the studio’s creative output, or look cynically upon the corporate moneymakers who monetized it, these characters mean something to me. I can't help that, or the emotional reaction seeing them all together, honoring the history and the spirit those stories represent provokes from me.

On a nuts and bolts level, the Toy Story-esque premise of the studio’s characters coming to life at night is an appropriately fantastical one. The short derives tons of joy from mixing and mashing-up characters from across the Disney landscape. (Something The House of Mouse, of all things, thrived on.)

I love the little sequence where Moana enlists Merlin to magic some water into the Mad Hatter’s tophat for Flounder, in a seamless melding of different players from different eras. Mirabel’s little cousin guiding the various animals to the photo spot is a nice touch. The gags involving the Zootopia sloth and Baymax getting into the elevator, much to Donald’s trademark chagrin, were delightful on their own terms. The fairies changing the studio storefront from pink to blue rather than Sleeping Beauty’s dress was a treat. And god help me, I love Fix-It Felix repairing Goofy’s camera while Tinkerbelle lifts him up to take the picture.

Again, this is all just pushing nostalgia buttons and deploying cheap fanservice, but if there’s a safe place for it, it’s this kind of celebratory occasion. In that spirit, it’s great to see some of the less-loved or more obscure films be represented as well, from the protagonist of Oliver & Company, to Chicken Little, to even a prominent appearance from Ichabod Crane. This whole short has the spirit of a family reunion, and sometimes that means inviting the rarely-seen cousins too, which is nice for the all-encompassing, celebratory spirit of the piece.

The only real demerits here are the awkward human performances at the beginning, but I assume it’s because the lines are read by animators and not actors, so they get a little slack.

What can I say? Even as someone who has mixed feelings about Walt Disney, it’s hard not to get a little choked up when Mickey doffs his cap to his creator. And even as someone who reminds himself that the big companies that make the art you love are not your friends, it’s hard not to hear generations of Disney characters I grew up with singing “When You Wish Upon a Star” together, culminating with Jiminy Cricket’s original croon, and not get a little misty-eyed.

Disney has a power over us. That is the great and scary thing about the studio having invested a century in generating stories for screens great and small, and marketing their own history and legacy in shorts like these across the globe. I can't pretend any of it’s pure, but I also can't deny the spell all those smiling cartoon faces still cast over me.

[7.4/10] A movie can live on good vibes alone. Don’t think too hard about the mechanics of a planet that can only communicate in song, or the logistics of the digestion habits and transportation of dozens of alien kittens, or the mechanics of the light-based entanglement of The Marvels trio of leads. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. If you can do that, you’re in for a good time.

The best part of 2019’s Captain Marvel was the buddy comedy between Carol Danvers and Nick Fury. Its more ecumenical sequel smartly leans into that, giving audiences the great buddy comedy of Carol and her new chums: surrogate niece, Monica Rambeau and young admirer Kamala Khan. And Fury is back for good measure, not only trading some laugh-worthy lines with the Marvels, but also amusingly bouncing off the rest of the Khan family and his subordinates. This movie thrives on banter and the charm of the proceedings, even if you have to leave sense at the door.

The charm is good, because beyond the science fiction-y, quasi-magical confluence of nonsense going on here, the character arcs are pretty thin here too. Captain Marvel is haunted by the consequence of her destroying the Supreme Intelligence had on the Kree homeworld, consequences that mostly happen off-screen and so have little impact. Monica is salty that Carol never returned despite promising to, and Captain Marvel’s decision not to is tied to that Kree catastrophe through a gossamer thin thread, which Monica forgives for reasons that are no firmer.

And Kamala Khan gets to meet her hero and, but for one minor bump in the road...it pretty much goes great. I don’t know what Ms. Marvel’s arc is supposed to be here. She dreams of being an Avenger and then basically gets to be one, I guess?

Still, I can't complain because Iman Vellani continues to be a revelation in the role, and Ms. Marvel continues to be the best new hero the MCU has introduced since Endgame. Her flummoxed-but-unruffled disposition, starry-eyed desire to do good, and sheer giddiness at getting to team up with her hero continue to win the day. The combination of empathy, enthusiasm, and relatable kid-dealing-with-parents energy the character brings to the table makes her stand out yet again.

The movie’s big silly set pieces are also just charming. The film makes the most of the thinly-sketched conceit that Carol, Monica, and Kamala are “entangled” via their light-based powers, and thus switch places every time they use their powers. The chaotic absurdity when they’re getting a handle on the swaps and squaring off against bad guys everywhere from an alien space station to S.A.B.E.R. headquarters to the Khans’ living room is a treat. The montage where The Marvels learn how to use their powers and have a ball testing them out is endearing for all three of them. And it ties into the movie’s vague theme about the three of them coming together and working best when they’re a part of a team.

Granted, the film’s action varies between inscrutable and bad. The Marvels can get away with a little bit of confounding combat, given the place-swapping conceit of the team’s powers. But even when they’ve mastered it, or are mostly fighting one-on-one, the fisticuffs are chopped all to hell in the editing bay, with indifferent results. In the same vein, the CGI here is a cut below, with unconvincing mid-air green screening and artificial backdrops, a not-ready-for-primetime fully-animated Beast, and full-powered over-glowy versions of Captain Marvel and Monica Rambeau that just look silly.

This level of craft might be forgivable for a mid-range project, but coming from one of the most successful movie studios in the world, they should be able to do better. WIth complaints about crunch and process from effects teams, the shabby results affirm that some rethinking of the whole approach is in order.

But some of that is forgivable with the loony charm of other set pieces in the film. As little sense as it makes, The Marvels’ visit to a planet that communicates entirely in song is terrific. In the humor department, Carol’s tenseness at being the planet’s princess strictly for “political reasons”, Monica being resistant to the whole deal, and Kamala absolutely reveling in it is a complete delight. Likewise, don’t ask why Nick Fury can depend on a bunch of newborn alien cats to keep his S.A.B.E.R. team in their stomachs for a whole spaceship ride, conveniently without gulping down any of the main characters, and just enjoy the goofy imagery of a litter of kittens gobbling up space accountants.

The only weak point that really gets in the way is the villain. Dar-Benn has a decent gripe -- that Captain Marvel, whom she dubs “The Annihilator” disrupted her world. She has an appropriately evil scheme -- stealing climate and resources from other worlds. And Zawe Ashton gives a solid performance. Dar--Benn’s just wildly underdeveloped, feels tossed into the proceedings rather than a vital part of them, and gets dispatched without much real trouble.

It doesn’t help that the nature of The Marvels’ powers is fuzzy as all hell, which isn’t a major problem, except that it’s vital to the plot. Dar-Benn is absorbing Carol’s powers to exert her schemes. But she’s also mixing some power from her big “cosmic rod” which messes things up. But she also has a matching bangle to the one Kamala inherited in the Ms. Marvel show. But it’s no problem, because Carol can just peel those off when she tackles Dar-Benn into a big interdimensional rift. But that's fine, because Monica apparently has the power to absorb the energy from that rift and seal it, even if it sends her to an X-Men universe. And it turns out Dar-Benn’s whole project was unnecessary, since all it took was a pep talk and some technobabble for Captain Marvel to realize she can use her powers to restart the Kree homeworld’s sun anyway. Phew.

It’s all a big nonsense stew. But you know what? In a “phase” that has left many MCU fans disappointed, he Marvels feels like classic Phase One or Phase Two Marvel. Yes, the villain is forgettable and the plot is held together by popsicle sticks and bubble gum, but there’s charm out the wazoo. Kamala, Monica, and Carol have an incredibly fun dynamic together. Nick Fury bouncing off of them and Kamala’s family is a treat and a laugh every time. This is light adventure, heavy on the light, and it’s not afraid of having a good time at the expense of pure soundness of construction throughout the movie.

It’s an approach that's worked well for the MCU for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy rollicking potboilers and clearer character stories as much as anybody. But regardless of whether The Marvels adds up to a greater whole, it is a fun watch on a scene-to-scene basis. In an era where more and more superhero films feel the need to present some vital lore or try to cram complicated character work between the mandatory fireworks shows, there’s something refreshing about a film that puts on a coat of paint for both, but saves most of its fire for simply being entertaining. On charm and fun alone, The Marvels is a good time at the movies.

[7.4/10] Maestro is an upscale version of musical biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody--stately but standard--with a few fascinating artistic flourishes. Most of the time the film’s lookback on the life and times of Leonard Bernstein chugs along exactly as you’d expect. There are stretches of writerly dialogue where the characters philosophize in overly direct ways, actorly monologues that look good on an Oscar reel, and the artist’s trajectory that has become all but standardized in the years since Ray and Walk the Line. But every once in a while, the film does something tremendous, that justifies sitting through the other ninety percent of the time when it merely does what’s expected.

Some of its creative choices are clever, but well-established. The way the movie’s aesthetic mirrors the time depicted in this ongoing period piece is smart, including a transition from black-and-white into color, in line with producer Martin Scorsese’s approach in The Aviator. Likewise, the most striking part of the film’s first act are its dreamlike transitions between scenes, that bend reality but convey the dizzying rush of youthful passion, in a way that's precedented to the point of homage, but still an effective cinematic tool.

But in the film’s first creative climax, it jettisons the off-the-shelf biopic playbook, and indulges in an extended musical sequence that both pays homage to Bernstein’s contributions to On the Town while realizing the tumult of Leonard’s relationship with his soon-to-be wife, Felicia, in flourishing, impressionistic tones. The sense of artistry on display, in not just the song and dance, not just the swirling cinematography, but also in the use of this off-kilter method to convey the fraught dynamic between the movie’s two central figures, makes it an undeniable highpoint.

The other comes in a climactic second act crescendo that sees Bernstein give a spirited, furious conducting performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. Director/co-writer Bradley Cooper stars as Bernstein and, in large part, gives the undeniably well-done but rarely convincing performance of a real life figure that is typical of music biopics. He certainly commits to the part (aided by some rightfully controversial but also genuinely impressive prosthetics and old age makeup). But in line with the film's larger pathology, ninety percent of the time he comes off as doing a ton of capital-A acting, that is recognizable as full of craft and big choices, but rarely seems like he’s truly inhabiting Bernstein and disappearing into the role.

The exception, ironically, is arguably the moment he plays the biggest. Bernstein’s conducting of Mahler is riveting for Cooper’s intensity, for how he, cinematographer Matthew Libatique, and editor Michelle Tesoro stick to long unbroken shots to let the force of Bernstein’s movements wash over the audience without flash or cinematic varnish. One of the trickiest things in music biopics is convincingly portraying the actor as “doing the thing.” Most musicians worthy of story and song possess an incredible talent. That doesn’t always translate when interpreted by another performer. But in Cooper’s rendition of his subject’s Ely Cathedral triumph, you understand the intensity and magnetism of Bernstein as an artist in a way the film strains to tell you rather than show you elsewhere.

The other extraordinary part of Maestro is simply the performance of Carey Mulligan as Felicia. She’s subject to the same paint-by-numbers biopic material Cooper is, but does a considerably better job of elevating what she’s given. The simple changes in her expression as she looks on at her husband’s art and antics are softly masterful. An overwritten monologue about blushing over an erstwhile date only to realize she’s repeating old patterns amid her separation from her husband is made heartbreaking in Mulligan’s rendition of a woman straining to keep herself together through it. And Felicia’s third act’s cancer-ridden deterioration could come across maudlin or cheap from a lesser actor, but in Mulligan’s capable hands, it plays as devastatingly real.

That final degradation of illness becomes the cinch of the film’s interesting themes. Maestro trafficks in a lot of trite questions of “Can an artist have it all? Do they need to engage in questionable or dangerous behavior to fuel their output?”. The film, however, offers a couple of interesting, less traditional answers. The first is that while Bernstein believes the “summer in him” necessary to spur his musical creations comes from his dalliances and spotlight-stealing gregariousness, in the end it’s his connection with Felicia, however staid or fraught, that's as important to his musical fire and fulfillment as the more adventurous part of his life, something put into relief as he begins to lose her.

The way this epiphany mirrors Felicia’s own realization that she can only bear so much of being second in her husband’s life, subordinating herself to his art, looking the other way for his dalliances, while also realizing that she needs him, gives the film some depth in its ideas even as its presentation of them checks all the usual prestige picture boxes with workmanlike efforts.

The second is the idea expressed in Leonard and Felicia’s first meeting -- that the two of them are composites, not just of pieces of their upbringing, but of the seemingly incompatible parts of their lives. In the context of the film, Leonard genuinely loves Felicia and the traditional family they’ve built together, but he’s no less pulled by his attraction to various men in his life, and the bog standard “drugs and debauchery” period all musicians have to go through on the silver screen. The willing to engage in Bernstein’s bisexuality in an unflinching way is to its credit. And the notion that who the Bernsteins are as people -- as artists and spouses and wildchilds and parents -- are inextricable, is a more nuanced take on the “What makes an artist?” question than the movie’s well-crafted but generic presentation of its ideas might suggest.

That's the funny thing about Maestro -- much, arguably most of it, isn’t worth talking about. Almost everything in the film is undeniably well done, but often comes off spiritless, like the latest shiny piece to come off Hollywood's musical biopic assembly line. This sense of Cooper’s work as the kind of film Walk Hard famously pilloried abides in the film’s rush of years for Felicia and Leonard, and there’s even a touch of a Shakespeare in Love here, with unsubtle connections drawn between the events of Bernstein’s life and the compositions he produced, as they’re used to score the film.

But in a few key places, and a few key ways, Maestro makes some daring, even avant garde choices that make it a little more than the standard cinematic portrait of the artist as a young man. In those scant but scintillating moments, there’s a glimpse at the greatest artistry possible even in an overdone form, and of the brilliance and broken pieces of the musician Maestro is so desperate to lionize and humanize.

[8.3/10] Nostalgia is a trap. So is “they don’t make things like they used to.” If you read The Tale of Genji, a novel written a thousand years ago, you’ll find that the characters there lament the decline of the next generation and wax poetic about the good old days. It’s easy to look at the past with a gauzy hue and toward the future with a dark tint.

But by god, it is the rare blockbuster, today or in any age, that comes with as much charm, craft, and above all else character as Raiders of the Lost Ark.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find any tentpole release in the modern day that feels this real. Don’t get me wrong, the film is stylized. Director Stephen Spielberg deploys his typically brilliant shot selection and cinematography. He and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe find unique framings that catch our protagonist’s eye through a latticework or wide shots that carry the excitement of a frantic Indy running away from a horde of angry locals. The production team plays around with light and shadow, especially, using them to heighten a big entrance or color the mood of a given scene. The compositions are elegant, but plainly constructed.

Likewise a few obvious green screen setups amid swirling clouds give the film an appropriately Ten Commandments-esque quality in places. And in the climactic final scene, the animated smoke and spirits that swirl around hero and villain alike come with an ethereal, but obviously unreal vibe that pervades the set piece. No one would mistake this rollicking archeological adventure for a taste of cinema verite.

And yet, the world of the film feels lived-in and populated, with crowds of people in dusty squares and packrat spaces within cozy corners. The movie seems profoundly tactile, with close up shots of Indy’s hands sweeping away sand and feeling for the groove in an ancient map room emblematic of Spielberg and company’s approach. The locations seem authentic and alive, from the intricate ancient temple that spawned a thousand imitators to the windswept desert plains lined with workers. And not for nothing, it is a profoundly sweaty, dirty film; the characters perspire and get wounded and roughed up and messy from beginning to end.

The modern day blockbuster is often pristine, sometimes to the point of being antiseptic. None of that quality is present in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie that is tremendously crafted but nonetheless feels rugged and ragged in all the right ways for the story it’s telling.

That freewheeling quality extends to the characters, Indiana Jones in particular. Spielberg and creative partner George Lucas harness the cheat code that is Harrison Ford’s motley charm. But despite his prodigious skills. Indy comes off nicely imperfect and downright human in places, in a way few action heroes are allowed to be, thanks to Lawrence Kasdan’s script.

Yes, Indy is a sharp-eyed adventurer, plotting his way through booby trap-ridden temples and knocking around bad guys like nobody’s business. He’s sly enough to talk his way out of trouble, or at least delay until the cavalry arrives. He’s smart, even a touch nerdy despite his knockaround bona fides, checking Egyptian symbols against his notes and writing down his discoveries. He’s undeniably manly and slick, in the tradition of Ford’s 1980s archetype roles.

But he also gets tricked and outfoxed at every turn. He sprints frantically from the locals chasing after him and crashes haphazardly into the water. He takes as many blows as he delivers and gets knocked on his ass more than a few times. He falls asleep pre-coitus. He relies on his ex and his best friend to save his behind from some tight spot he’s found himself in on more than one occasion. And in one hilarious moment, he admits that he’s making all of this up as he goes along.

In short, he’s a bundle of talents but also human foibles, to where he’s not as much a role model or idol but some tomb raider with sweaty schmuck energy able to hack it just long enough to win the day. It’s charming, even endearing, in a way a square-jawed, endlessly admirable good guy just isn’t. More than anything, Indy as a protagonist supports that enjoyable rough-and-tumble energy of the film.

It helps that there is remarkably little exposition in Raiders of the Lost Ark. After the opening sequence, we get a few conversations with Indy’s benefactor and some G-Men to set the stage. But from there, we get remarkably little detail on Indy’s history with Marion Ravenwood, his rivalry with René Belloq, or his friendship with Sallah. Spielberg and company just throw the audience into the water, let the conversations and dynamics evolve naturally, and expect us to keep up when the performances and the personalities involved fill in the gaps organically.

It works! There are remarkably few scenes to signpost what happened or what’s happening with Indy and Marion. And yet, from the way they react and respond to one another, from mutual disdain to charming banter to mutual rescues, you buy their playfulness not just as a couple but as partners. For her part, Marion is certainly an object of affection, a point underscored a little too much and too often. But she is also spunky, rambunctious, and full of guts and guile on her own terms. She drinks and fights and stands her ground with the best of them. Ultimately, she is Indy’s equal, not his trophy, and a spirited, memorable performance from Karen Allen boosts every.

The same goes for nearly all of the major roles of the film. Ronald Lacey is downright terrifying as Toht, the malevolent gestapo inspector, torturing and intimidating with a sadistic glee. Sallah is gregarious and warm, helping his pal out of jam after jam and conveying the sense of a longtime brotherly relationship between the two. Paul Freeman’s Belloq is a worthy adversary, regularly getting the best of Indy, managing up with his Nazi benefactors, and coveting Marion in a way that both humanizes him for the attraction and demonizes him for his callous possessiveness.

Those players make a fairly simple “multiple camps look for a macguffin or two” plot come alive. There are double crosses, daring schemes, tricks and ruses that would boost any action-adventure flick. But throughout all of them, these characters spark off one another, they joke with one another, they taunt or tease one another. It makes the quiet moments and the big action set pieces alike no mere exercises in big screen spectacle, but the playground of colorful personalities whose interactions with one another are full of life.

Those action sequences are damn good, though! The opening entrance to the temple and escape from boulders, betrayers, and rival adventurers alike is rightly iconic for how much exquisite detail and excitement Spielberg and company pack in. The search for kidnapped allies through the streets of Cairo, the race to the ark, and the fisticuffs along the way are all aces. And the closing ethereal onslaught, with melting faces and biblical torrents of fire, adds a striking horrorshow element to the theatrics.

Admittedly, In some places, the up-tempo fireworks can go on to the point of exhaustion. The stretch from Indy uncovering the Ark to he and his pals getting it on a boat out of town stacks sequence on top of sequence, with little time to stop and take stock. The action is undeniably well-done, but in the absence of downtime, the attention wanes and the impact diminishes.

Despite that, Spielberg and company aren't afraid to let moments breathe when they need to. In Cairo, Indy and Belloq have an extended verbal tet-a-tet that holds the same creative shot for minute after minute to heighten the atmosphere. The wordless scene where Indy finds the right height for the Staff of Ra and spotlights his destination is a masterclass in letting a steady build lead you to an exciting crescendo. Even the casual playfulness between Marion and Indy on the boat back home feels like the kind of softer, human moment that's missing from too many movies.At its best, the mix between calm and craziness throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark helps the piece land on both fronts.

There’s not much of a point to it all, but it doesn't really matter. There’s an interesting throughline (it would be too much to call it an arc) of Indiana Jones as a skeptic of the supernatural only to find himself faced with the mystical will of god. There’s a recurring theme of Indy tracking down his prize through guile and derring-do only to have some interloper take it away from him in the end, whether it's Belloq or the government’s infamous “top men.” And to the same end, there’s a motif of Indy losing prize after prize in his adventures, only to find something more valuable in rekindling his relationship with Marion. But in truth, this is all set dressing to the scene-by-scene fun and excitement the film has an offer.

There are setups and payoffs, from a disdain for snakes to poisoned dates. There are little fun bits of character in so many flashy set pieces, from Marion guzzling from a stream of whiskey before taking down a brute, to Indy famously just shooting his sword-spinning adversary. And there’s odd but endearing quirks at play throughout, from Nazi-sntiching monkey accomplice who falls victim to his owner’s own evil scheme to a bare knuckle Bavarian brawler felled by a propeller blade. Raiders of the Lost Ark is full of distinctive choices in a way few movies writ large, let alone blockbusters, are.

That said, while the throwback nature of the movie comes with an attention to detail and permission to be sloppy and whimsical that seems to have been drummed out of other pictures, it also comes with some distasteful reflections of the time. Raiders comes with multiple uncomfortable instances of brownface. While Indy’s friendship with Sallah and sympathy for the plight of the laborers helps soften the blow, a lot of the non-white locals across Indy’s travels are treated like disposable mooks at best and embarrassing stereotypes at worst.

Jones’ globe-trotting adventures, true to their influences, come with a certain exoticizing gaze that is rooted in backwards tropes and perspectives. It’s a problem, and it’s something that can't be simply compartmentalized because it pervades the film.

But taking the good with the bad, Raiders of the Lost Ark still feels like a glorious anomaly in any age. The wild-eyed energy, the faltering hero, the memorable personalities, the sparkling-yet-shaggy sequences, and the fantastic texture of the piece all elevate the film into rarified air.

Nostalgia remains a pit no less perilous than the one the villains dump Indy and Marion into. Every age, of fantastical cinema and real life history, comes with its ups and downs. But by god, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

[6.8/10] It can be hard to judge a work for what it is and not what it could be. Raya and the Last Dragon is fine as a film. It delivers a solid, well-structured plot built around a clear theme that can be delivered in an age-appropriate way within a crisp ninety minutes, with plenty of hijinks to keep the little ones entertained. But I also can't help but imagine how much richer and more involving a story it could be if it were told over the course of a multi-season television show.

Admittedly, much of that stems from the sense in which the film feels like a cross between The Last Unicorn and Avatar: The Last Airbender, It has the former’s sense of a fantasy creature experiencing what it’s like to be human, along with an “emerging from the sea” sense of rebirth of the species. And it has the latter’s harmony-to-discord intro, young girl finding a mystical but rambunctious fellow young adult who’s been frozen for ages, and cross-section selection of misfits journeying through the various lands.

As with AtLA that is a big premise! Raya could do so much with it! It could dig deeply into the different cultures and attitudes of chiefdoms within the land of Kumandra. It could develop the allies from these various far flung places that join Raya’s merry band. It could delve further into the history of this place, and how the mythos and the past have impacted the present. It could show more gradual growth and understanding from Raya and her erstwhile rival, Namaari.

Instead, everything in Raya and the Last Dragon is, if you’ll pardon the expression, quick-fire. Rather than committed explorations of the assorted chiefdoms, we get five-to-ten minutes in each locale. Rather than really getting to know the side characters, they get quickly-sketched quirks with the barest hint of pathos, and the writers call it a day. Rather than a full accounting of the intriguing history of this fantasy world, we get an early info dump and a brief flashback or two. None of this is bad, but it’s all glancing, which leaves you wanting more, albeit not in a good way.

Granted, some of that is served by the visuals, which are a mixed bag in odd ways. Part of what makes you wish the audience could spend more time in this world is that the background animators do a tremendous job of designing the five chiefdoms to be distinctive and eye-catching. Each has its own style, and nowhere is the artistry more clear than in the swirling skies above an idyllic plain, or the lamplit bustle of a floating city, or autumnal wisps of a weathered tundra.

Unfortunately, the animation within those cool spaces is a mixed bag. The film can boast a few cool set pieces -- chiefly the long take with the members of Team Siso tossing the chunks of the magic orb to one another. But a lot of the action here is generic in its choreography, choppy in its editing, or muddy in its presentation. Even the big dragon scenes are something of a candy-colored yawn. Even the weakest Disney films can usually boast a heap of stunning animation, and Raya largely tops out at “pretty good.”

The same checkered approach afflicts the film’s character designs. Raya, Namaari, and the rest of the “normal” characters look like off-the-shelf plastic dolls, and many of their expressions seem off. Some of the side characters, Tong especially, get to have a little more character in their mien. And the animal sidekicks, from Tuk Tuk the giant furry rolly-polly, to the adorably simian ongis, even to Noi, the “con baby”, all have more endearing designs and get better and more interesting movements and sequences than the rest of the cast.

Sigh, and then there’s Sisu, the dragon. Despite some neat texturing, she and her cohort basically look like a mix between traditional Chinese dragons and the lineup from My Little Pony. Sisu’s expressions in particular feel overexaggerated in a way that makes her an odd fit for the quasi-realistic look of the film. And the movie wants the characters, and by extension the audience, to treat its dragons with a certain reverence, which is hard when they look more like marketable and toyetic living plushes than an organic part of the world.

Despite all of that, it’s easy to buy into the mythos of Kumandra and the epic quest at the film’s center. While there’s a certain degree of video game plotting at play here -- go fetch the various items; you’ll level up as you do; then fight the big boss -- a tidy structure helps keep the film sound on a scene-to-scene basis. Eventually, you catch on that Raya is progressing from place to place, fending off some challenge, and collecting another misfit at each stop. But it’s a sturdy format for a YA fantasy story, one that creates a sense of build and new adventure just around the corner.

Unfortunately, the characters who populate that adventure are generally just so-so. Raya and Namaari come off fairly flat and unengaging despite having solid character arcs. Sisu gets a few good lines, but Disney’s been, if you’ll pardon the expression, chasing the dragon of energetic celebrity personalities since Robin Williams’ Genie, and this is another case of diminishing returns. Benedict Wong remains a treasure as the film’s brute-with-a-heart-of-gold, and the wordless characters are adorable, but the rest of the movie’s players veer between annoying and forgettable.

Thankfully, even if the personalities involved are hit-or-miss, Raya and the Last Dragon has some strong and timely themes to build around. The idea of multiculturalism, the idea that these different peoples are stronger when banding together than when they’re divided by self-interest, especially when facing a collective threat, is a heartening and appropriate one. And the manifestation of that idea -- through the idea of when and whether to trust those from outside your personal experiences -- provides a handle that kids can understand.

The film does better when it tells rather than shows that fact. Chief Benja’s soup, made with ingredients from across Kumandra, becomes a nice metonym for the benefits of that cultural blending, one the kids replicate later in the picture. Likewise, the mere existence of Team Sisu, with different orphans and loners, united by their losses, is a good illustration of breaking down walls and finding common ground.

Unfortunately, in addition to serving up a bunch of tin-eared one-liners, the dialogue all signposts its themes to a ridiculous degree. This is an all ages film, so some hand-holding is to be expected. But everyone from Raya’s dad, to Sisu, to eventually Raya herself practically announcing the message of the film, replete with a giant glowing ball of trust for anyone who dozed off, means there’s a certain lack of grace in the delivery.

Still, trust is a good axis for the film’s ideas. The interplay between Raya, who’s too reluctant to trust given her mistakes in judgment and what it cost her; Sisu, who sometimes trusts too easily in her newly-human naivete; and Namaari, who wants to trust but has been taught to look out for her own, is the strongest concept in the film. Granted, it does run aground on the same ham-fisted dialogue and overdramatic presentation.

That said, the best choice in the film is to have the confrontation with the Druun -- the neat-looking purple energy balls that turn people to stone -- not be solved through just fighting with more fury or magicking harder, but rather through an act of trust. Raya hearing Sisu and her father, and giving up the piece of the dragon ball that everyone’s been guarding so jealously to the young woman who’s betrayed her twice, is a powerful act in the Disney pantheon. The way her compatriots follow suit, and Namaari thinks about just saving herself, but instead chooses to make her stand and save everyone, gives the movie a moving climax, even if the path to get there is a rocky one.

Maybe that path would be better if it had more time to breathe. There is something marvelous at the core of Raya and the Last Dragon: an inviting world, an epic quest, and some worthwhile ideas to underpin both of them. What’s frustrating about the film is that, by the necessity of a ninety-minute runtime, it seems like we only get a sliver of the potential in all of that. The movie has some essential issues that wouldn't be solved no matter how much real estate it might enjoy. But I can't help feeling like this grand, momentous journey would be so much more engrossing and impactful if it actually had the time and space to be, well, grand and momentous.

[7.6/10] Before I sat down to watch this film, I read a comment about that film that said, “You will never know who to side with.” And as someone who’s read the novel, I was kind of aghast. What could they possibly mean?

Did they think it was tough to choose a side between Angel’s “You’re a different person now and I can't love you” perspective and Tess’ “You should be willing to forgive me my ‘sins’ that are the same as what you yourself did” perspective? Did they find it challenging to know whether to lean toward Alec, the obsessive man who harassed and raped and then kept harassing Tess, as her preferred romantic pairing, or toward Angel, the man who earnestly loved her, and screwed up royally by abandoning her in his rank hypocrisy, but at least saw the error of his ways and sought to make amends?

In both instances, it wasn’t hard to know who to side with. It was, frankly, mildly disturbing to read a comment from someone who sees one or both choices as an even playing field.

And yet, after watching the adaptation, I get it. This is an oddly more “balanced” portrayal of the entanglement between Tess, Angel, and Alec. Tess speaks of herself as more at fault for what happened with Alec. Alec himself is softened, particularly in the latter half of the story. Angel’s change of heart is reduced to lovesickness rather than a fuller shift in his perspective. You still have to excuse some pretty serious crimes, but it’s not unreasonable to walk away from this adaptation feeling at least more ambivalent about these situations than you will once you’re done with the source material.

I have my qualms about that. As with the 2008 adaptation, I have some issues with the notion of softening the presentation of a rapist, even if it’s in the name of offering a more complex villain to fit with modern expectations. But I cannot deny that the adaptation largely works on its own terms, molding the story to fit a different interpretation, but one that, on balance, succeeds in its project, which is more than I can say for its ten-years-later counterpart.

What’s funny about all of this is that, for the first two thirds of the film, the 1998 Tess of the d’Urbervilles is surprisingly faithful to the book. Sure, the instances of overly didactic voiceover narration are cheesy and unnecessary. And sure, there are cuts and elements that are necessarily excised for a feature length runtime. But director Ian Sharp gets the tone and spirit of the story right and hits the key beats with aplomb. Most importantly, the characters feel right, to where even if the production is stately, the interactions between the major players come off as compelling and real.

The peak of this is Justine Waddell’s outstanding performance as Tess. More than anything, her acting is what elevates this film over the 2008 one. The problem with any adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is that it’s a very internal novel, and more often than not, you’re inside Tess’ head. While obviously less explicit, Waddell overcomes that gap by giving an incredible, layered performance that conveys the complexity of what Tess is feeling in any given moment in a way that is just as potent, if not quite as detailed, as Thomas Hardy’s literary descriptions.

You sense her fear and discomfort during Alec’s advances at Trantrage. You understand viscerally the sense in which she’s snapped once Angel returns at Sandbourne. More than anything, you feel the complicated tug of war during her romance with Angel at the dairy farm, where on the one hand she is enervated by the joy of love and the bliss of companionship, and on the other, she is devastated by the realized fear that she’d be rejected if her beau knew her past and the torturous guilt over the sense that she doesn’t deserve such happiness.

Waddell communicates it all, in ways that evoke profound sympathy and at times, are so real that you almost feel uncomfortable watching, like you’re peering in on a private moment of pain that shouldn't be exposed to the world. That's the adaptation’s greatest strength.

But a close runner up is how lovingly and luxuriously it conveys the romance between Angel and Tess at the dairy farm. It is one of those core things in the story. You have to buy that profound central affection between the two of them: to understand Tess’ devastation at losing it, to understand Angel’s callousness to throw it away, and to experience the catharsis when they regain a piece of it at the end of the narrative.

The 1998 version gets that crucial part right. Their steady coming together on the farm, the ways in which they are inexorably drawn together, the way that the mix of hope and anxiety flows between them. You get why they’re attached to one another, which makes so much of the film work on the merits even when there are problems on the margins.

The same goes for Tess’ scenes with Alec in the first half of the film. Here Alec is charming in an oily sort of way, but also plainly predatory. Tess’ discomfort with his “liberties” and advances is plain. You get the clear sense of someone nigh-literally indebted to a male pursuer, whose abuse and assault at his hands feels like the inevitable result of a sense of entitlement, infatuation, and alarmingly escalating behavior.

Those three things -- Alec’s harassment, Angel’s affections, Tess’ sentiments -- are at the heart of the novel. And while not quite perfect, the 1998 Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ rendition of them is not only faithful in the man, but terrific on its own terms.

That is, until Tess’ confession. That marks a strange turning point, where the film not only starts diverging more from the text, but almost seems to get into a sprint to the finish. I don’t know if the production team was running out of money, or reaching the end of the shooting schedule, or just wanted to put their focus elsewhere, but it’s the point where things start to feel rushed and odd.

Angel is still hypocritical in rejecting Tess for not being “pure” when he himself is far from “unblemished” on the same account, but he seems more hurt than cold in his reaction. The film excises his worst excesses (nearly running away with one of Tess’ fellow dairymaids). And the scene even has Tess basically say that she can't deny being somewhat responsible for what happened. I get that there’s some ambiguity in the source material, but it still seems an oddly ecumenical realization of what is, to my mind at least, Angel’s great betrayal.

Likewise, when Angel returns from Brazil, there’s no broader sense of him truly changing or his worldview being shifted through seeing an abject state of humanity that makes his social hang-ups seem miniscule and even ridiculous. He just wanted to be apart from Tess, got that, and then realized he loved her so much that he couldn’t be apart from her any longer. It reduces one of the more interesting elements of the character’s arc to a standard issue “No, I just loved you too much to be away” bit of folderol.

What’s interesting is that the film kind of gives his arc to Alec. The 1998 adaptation softens Alec in the back half of the book. He is still pushy, and even physical with Tess in ways that are disturbing. But unlike the source material, Alec seems to have genuinely changed in the midst of his religious conversion. He seems earnest in his belief that Angel’s never returning and in his desire to spare Tess from the life of hardship she’s enduring in his absence.

There’s never any sense that Tess wants this, and Alec still ignores her wishes in ways that don’t speak well of him. But he seems legitimately aghast and scornful of any man who would abandon Tess, and truly desiring to help her and make amends for his past transgressions. The novel’s Alec was consumed by lust, not love, and at most wanted to possess Tess more than be partnered with her. 1998 movie Alec, by contrast, actually loves Tess, to the extent of “his nature”, something Tess herself even acknowledges in dialogue.

It’s all odd. Tess remains as strong as ever from beginning to end. But Angel is made less complicated and more flat as a love interest post-confession, while Alec is made more sincere in both his affections, actions, and amends toward Tess. You can forgive the enterprising YouTube commenter who struggles to pick between them.

Despite the race to the end, which leaves Angel’s absence feeling brief, Alec’s pressure feeling lesser, and Tess’ strife and joy a bit diminished, nevertheless manages to work, largely on the back of some great performances. Again, whatever problems the text may have, Tess and Angel have chemistry together that makes it easier to buy into their reunion. Alec and Tess’ lethal argument is raw and gallingly real. Tess’ acceptance of her impending demise as a blessing, because it means she’ll never have to endure Angel despising her again, is as heartbreaking here as in the book.

I don’t know what to say. The 1998 film still has its problems. Too much of the dialogue turns the story’s subtext into text, and whatever’s left is ham-handedly explicated by the narrator. The desire to rebalance the story changes its meaning in subtle but substantial ways, not all of which are commendable. The brisk pacing of the film in places loses the sense of the almost epochal passage of time that suffuses the novel.

And yet, this adaptation gets the tone right; it gets the spirit right; it gets the feeling right. You believe these characters. You believe in their abject struggles and in their fleeting triumphs. You buy their relationships with one another, and the way they shift and complicate over the course of the story. Most of all, you buy Tess, the innocent young woman, taken advantage of by a manipulative benefactor, made to suffer untold pains and indignities, given a reprieve of bliss before it’s taken away from her, and unexpectedly finding a measure of joy on the cusp of tragedy.

It’s why I’m apt to forgive this Tess of the d’Urbervilles its excesses and headscratchers. That alone is a superb achievement, one that makes this interpretation worth the price of admission, even if the uninitiated viewer might walk away not knowing who to side with. The answer is, and has always been, Tess.

[8.0/10] So fun story. When I was a kid, my parents forbid me from watching South Park. This was at the peak of the show’s controversial rep, and they’d read the usual horror stories in the local news about how it was poisoning the minds of today’s youth.

But hey, it was cool! It was a cartoon! It starred kids! Everyone was talking about it! There were t-shirts! One of the WWF wrestlers carried around a giant Cartman plush! So I did what any kid would do. I snuck onto the computer when my parents were otherwise occupied and watched clips online.

Which is all to say that it’s funny (and I think, deliberately self-referential) for South Park, of all shows, to do an episode about content built behind the facade that it’s only intended for adults, with the wink-wink/nudge-nudge of the knowledge that kids will consume and absorb it. Part of the gag here is that, even nearly three decades after its debut, the show is showing penises and gore and other raunchy material that would have caused the pearl-clutchers of the 1990s to blow a gasket, with the knowledge that kids will undoubtedly watch it. The irony does not seem to be lost on the show’s creative team.

Only, for once, South Park seems to have some qualms about the idea of adult content reaching and influencing children. And I don’t know what it says about me, the show, or the way time makes fools of us all that I’ve gone from being a kid who watches puerile comedy behind my parents back to sharing those same concerns about what messages and influences are making their way to kids these days.

The “Not Suitable for Children” special is right to point out that the current culture of online influencers mixes hollow affirmations with conspicuous product placement. They’re right to point out that it blends self-esteem, social standing, and consumerism in ways that lead to uncomfortable arms races and badges of self-worth for young people. They’re right to point out that a raft of pornography makes its way to kids, and they’re right to worry about the effect that firehose might have on minors (or miners).

I want to remember what I thought when was going online and watching ribald cartoons: that kids are smarter than adults give them credit for, that not everybody buys into fads and school reputation bullshit, that young people know when they’re being shilled to, that they’re not so naive or susceptible to manipulation, that they’re swimming in hormones and need safe outlets for them, that they can separate fantasy from reality.

I want to credit those opinions, that I imagined still exist in some form of another with today’s young adults, and I remember how infantilizing it felt to have the grown-ups of the world feel the need to protect us from things deemed “too naughty” or “too real.”

But I’m also cognizant that what was a trickle when I was growing up is now a downpour. I’m cognizant of the horrid shit I saw online and the soulless, South Park-admiring edgelords who practically ran corners of the internet at the time. To date myself even further, I’m cognizant of begging my parents to get me JNCO jeans and No Fear t-shirts, because I thought I just had to have them to be cool like everybody else. And I’m cognizant of the effect a lot of that B.S. had on me, some of which it took a long time to shake off.

So I dunno, I’m a cranky old man now. I clutch my own pearls and worry about shitbags like Logan Paul having a tremendous following among kids in the way my parents worried about South Park. I worry about the garbage that's sold to children via the trojan horse of manufactured authenticity and social status. And as hilarious as it is to show old timey pictures of mineworkers flashing their junk, I worry about kids seeing the ocean of smut out there and not just getting the wrong ideas about sex and sexuality, but deciding they want to try this at home.

Sunrise, sunset. The mischievous scamp who snuck online to watch forbidden cartoons grows up to be the hand-wringing chump concerned about the minefield of unsavory influences shotgunned at today’s kids. And the television show that made its bones on knowingly producing crude and bawdy content it knew kids would watch in exchange for ad dollars is now making hilarious but seemingly sincere polemics about the current institutions that are doing the same. It all comes full circle, I suppose.

This is all to say that, unlike the last regrettable special, this one hit home in terms of its perspective, even if I felt the irony, and a little queasiness, at agreeing South Park’s seeming “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” stance.

Even if you feel more like my younger self, this is also just a quality episode on the merits! I kind of love the Clyde story, even apart from the messaging involved. It’s rare that someone on South Park evokes genuine sympathy, but by god, you feel legitimately bad for Clyde when his parents understandably don’t want him drinking junked up sugar water, when his idol is telling him that sugar water is exactly what he needs to truly be himself, and when there’s unfathomable amounts of peer pressure at school to do just that.

South Park walked that territory before in the “Chinpokomon” episode, with a little more irreverent cynicism and a little less incisive sophistication. But the thrust remains the same. You sympathize with Kyle for feeling left out, and you sympathize with Clyde for the same. The moment when the boys expose his rare bottle of Cred as containing nothing but apple juice is quietly heartbreaking for the poor kid, in a way little is.

You feel for his quest to try to get int he good graces of his peers. You feel for the alienated young people in his palace still trying to belong. You feel for the struggles he goes through to get a different rare bottle and the carnage that ensues. You get him wondering if all of this insanity is worth it. And you feel for him, as Wendy did in the social media episode, giving in and participating anyway because he feels like he can't beat the system.

I don’t know. This episode is something of a tragedy in a way that few South Park episodes are. I may be a crusty, heartless old man now, but I remember what it’s like to be a kid like Clyde, and something about it still hits home.

Thankfully, Randy’s story is there to bring the laughs. I may not be as mature as I think, because even though it’s the same joke over and over, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at Randy trying to get to the top of the OnlyFans charts by flaunting his, shall we say, unremarkable equipment. His obsession with climbing the ranks of influencers, his naivete about his own appeal, and the way he doesn’t care about Sharon showing off the goods or sleeping with other men so long as he’s still getting more views and followers than her is all classic Randy manchild shtick. I don’t necessarily need the “beat my wife” double entendre, but I dunno. “Dumb middle aged dad tries to become an online exhibitionist megastar” is a premise just loony enough to tickle my funny bone.

Along the way, there’s a strong vein of satire. The ecosystem of conspicuous consumption at South Park Elementary mixed with the liquid garbage the Logan Pauls of the world are slinging has bite. The sense of false scarcity and exclusivity are topics South Park has hit before (see also: Cartman’s theme park and the mobile game episode), but they still work here.

The open secret that these various avenues reach kids despite nominally being aimed at adults, and that various forces, both benign and malign, are bidding to bake their messages into that content, is as strong a polemic as South Park’s issued in a long time. And as silly as the presentation is, Randy’s realization that kids see mature content and are inspired to try the same trick is, likewise, as direct a warning as the show’s issued in years.

Apart from the themes, and despite my reservations about South Park reverting to “everything’s a secret giant conspiracy” as the end to all its stories, I love the swerve of the ending here. The twist that it is, in fact, Clyde’s stepmom who’s somehow behind this influencing industrial complex, in the hopes of being a “good influence” on her stepson, is both just wholesome enough and just absurd enough to work for me. It too brings things full circle, and is a more satisfying answer to the episode’s big mystery than I might have expected, one much better than a random boogeyman.

What can I say? I don’t think South Park has lost its “cred” just yet, even as it turns the table a bit, and accuses others of corrupting the youth. But there is something kind of cosmic about the onetime source of so much parental concern, one that fiercely defended unfettered free speech, using its platform to ask if we’re okay with the messages now burrowing into the brains of young folks.

It feels weird for me to be on the other side of that fence too. But maybe all this hand-wringing is for nothing. After all, I watched tons of South Park when I was growing up, and I turned out alright, didn’t I? Uh...didn’t I?

[8.2/10] I don’t tend to think of the Exodus story as a tragedy. Sure, when you get to the wandering for forty years in the desert part, a portion of the tale The Prince of Egypt tastefully elides, things get bleak in places. But in large part, the story of slaves breaking free of their captors is one of triumph, of joy, and as the film reminds us, of deliverance.

What makes The Prince of Egypt so stunning is that it turns that story into one of tragedy -- not the liberation at the center of the Passover story, but what it took to gain it. The cost of that freedom, in lives and in families, means that even the beautiful moments of relief and catharsis come tinged with a certain sadness.

In short, it’s a tack that humanizes one of the oldest and most venerable stories ever told. Even if you didn’t read the Haggadah at Seder every year or, perish the thought, watched The Ten Commandments on an annual basis, chances are you knew the basic outline of the Exodus narrative. Most everyone in the western world does, which means it’s hard to have surprise or novelty in the retelling. The marvel of The Prince of Egypt is that it breathes new life into the story, not just with the incredible craft on display, but in the personal and pathos-ridden lens through which it presents a familiar, but ultimately no less moving tale.

Much of that force comes from the fact that the film leans into the brotherly bond between Moses and Ramses. In the confines of the story, they are not mere rivals, but genuine siblings and friends. They truly love one another, relate to one another, delight in their shared history, which makes it that much more melancholy when divine will and a clash of nations tear them apart.

It’s the best thing in the movie, which is saying something. Val Kilmer and Ralph Fiennes have an easy rapport between them that reads authentically as brotherly playfulness, layered with the complexity of different siblings laboring under different expectations. You buy their dynamic as the chosen older brother freighted with royal obligation, and the more mischievous but kind-hearted younger brother who causes trouble but cares deeply about his big bro. That adds a lived-in humanity to the film’s early scenes, and an earned sense of heartbreak when they’re torn asunder in its later ones.

Much of the heartbreak comes from the fact that this is the most sympathetic Ramses has ever been in the Exodus story. (Surpassing even the malevolent but strangely endearing version played by Yul Brynner.) This is a Pharaoh who genuinely loves his brother, who is warring against his own insecurity about being “the weak link in the chain”, who worries he won’t be able to live up to his father’s legacy and that his kingdom will suffer for his weakness, who is punished for his stubbornness but exudes a sense of great pain at the cost of his sins.

In short he’s more than a bitter antagonist; he’s a fellow human being, with his own understandable if flawed motivations, his own sympathetic attachments, and ultimately, his own recognizable pain when he loses everything. In the end, you feel for Ramses, which is an impressive feat for a character who presides over a slave empire and orders the systematic murder of children.

But you also feel for Moses. Much of the film’s narrative centers on the personal journey of Moses as much as it does the broader sweep of the Lord delivering the Hebrew people from bondage. This is, in many ways, a story as much about one man breaking free of his cultural programming and waking up to the moral ills of the system he took part in unreflectively as it is about his cause of freedom. In that, The Prince of Egypt oddly frames Moses as a Buddha-like figure, a spoiled prince who throws off the golden shackles of his old life when he learns a deeper truth, trading it for a simpler one.

The transformation still has power, in any guise. Moses’ reluctant acceptance of God’s command to lead his people out of bondage comes with the poetry and irony of his telling his own sister, “Be careful, slave!” with disdain when she dares to touch a royal prince. As with fellow cinematic champions no less august than Oskar Schindler from Schindler’s List and Sully from Monsters Inc., it is piercing when someone insulated and comfortable nonetheless realizes the cruelties they’re a part of, particularly when those harms are inflicted on innocent children, and devotes everything they have to rectifying it.

That mission is given scope and form by the tremendous craft on display in the film from beginning to end. The Prince of Egypt is an utterly gorgeous movie to look at. Directors Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells, and their team cook up captivating image after captivating image. The movie is awash in light and color, from the dark shadows of the Pharaoh’s throne room to the bright hues of the path to freedom. The way hair and clothing billows in the wind is impressive. And while the character designs are a bit awkward in their angularness, particularly Moses, the players’ fluid expressions and movements more than carry the day.

In line with the film’s Cecile B. DeMille-helmed predecessor, The Prince of Egypt also isn’t afraid to go big when the moment calls for it. There are a raft of impressive effects and sequences here, from the impressionistic nightmare of Moses’ infant rescue told through hieroglyphics, to the towering dividing of the sea in front of a column of fire, to the harrowing set piece where the mist-like angel of death steals the breath away from the first born sons of Egypt. The visual panache matches the scope and scale of the story, conveying through imagery and song what must be felt rather than told in the tale.

That includes the Jews’ harrowing escape from Egypt. It would be easy for a development told and retold and retold through a dozen avenues to lose all impact on the umpteenth rendition. But something about the mass of parents and children, laborers and their animals, old and young, clambering their way across steps and sand and sea to reach their salvation, moves one anew.

Much of that owes to Stephen Schwartz’s lovely compositions and lyricism. The plaintive cries of “deliver us”, the call and response of “all I’ve ever wanted”, the grim tones that pervade bondage and the inspiring notes of liberation, the paeon to belief that seamlessly transitions into a children’s rendition of the (biblically canonical) song “Mi Chamocha”, all lend this story of freedom both an epic reach and an emotional weight that makes the Hebrew slaves’ deliverance as momentous and cathartic for the audience as it is for the characters.

And yet, it comes laced with a certain sadness, a certain sense of regret of all that it took to reach this divine salvation. Much of that centers on Moses himself. It is tough, to say the least, to make the harbinger of plagues into a sympathetic figure in modern cinema. The canny move from Philip LaZebnik is to cast Moses as an endlessly reluctant figure. Here, he does not only lament the burden of leading a people he fears won’t accept him, but he practically begs Ramses to acquiesce so that they can end all of this. He winces and almost weeps for the horrors inflicted on his Egyptian countrymen.

There is a sense of great regret that it’s come to this, that he can't get through to his brother, that this is what it takes to move the hardened heart of a king. And even when it’s time for the slaying of the first born, it only comes in self-defense, a response to Ramses threatening to finish the decimation his father started, a sense of generational inertia leading a dynasty, a people, and a brotherhood to ruin. Nobody wants this, and even in his moment of greatest glory, Moses looks on at the sibling he’s lost with pain and regret.

That is duly tragic. To gain your freedom is glorious. To gain it at the cost of countless hardships and lives that could have been spared but for one man’s obstinance is sorrowful. To lead your people to liberation is righteous. To do so as a bringer of death and pain to those you once looked upon as countrymen is devastating. To grow up with a sibling you love is wonderful. To see that love shattered on the altar of generational toxicity and divine justice is heartbreaking.

The Exodus story remains a rousing and triumphant one. But in hands like these, it is also one rife with pain on both an epochal and personal level. And somehow, that makes a venerated story all the more human, and beautiful.

[8.0/10] Words won’t do for Spirited Away. It is not a film meant for words. It is a film of images, of moments, of experiences. If you’ll pardon the expression, it is one of cinema’s most immersive films. There is a story here. Young Chihiro enters a magical world inhabited by witches, phantoms, and other whimsical creatures. She has some wild adventures and comes back more mature and equipped for her big life transition in the human world. But the story isn’t really the point of this movie.

It is, instead, to be in the spirit world along with her. It’s hard to summon a film with a better sense of place, a more lived-in setting, or a more dizzying yet inviting backdrop for the audience to hang around in for two hours. You can practically taste the sizzling morsels that lure Chihiro’s parents into hanging around a spectral marketplace long enough for disaster to strike or the dishes at the high tea at Zeniba’s cabin. You can practically feel the gunk of a stink demon cling to your skin and the relief of hot herbal water pouring over you as it does the young protagonist. You can practically smell the burning furnace or the steamy baths or the ocean breeze as they all waft through the picture.

In that, Spirited Away is a profoundly tactile, intricate, and above all sensory film. There is so much care imbued into every sight, sound, and frame. In the same way that movies themselves are a magic trick--a series of still images played fast enough that our feeble minds mistake it for motion--Hayao Miyazaki’s signature film works in the same terms. It is the suggestion of so many sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and textures that eventually, they cease to become artifice and start to feel hauntingly, palpably real.

That's my pet theory about why Spirited Away is so memorable and so salient in the minds and memories of its audience. Miyazaki and his team present a world that is undeniably fantastical, replete with ghosts, witchcraft, beaucoup magical transformations, and travel between various mystical realms and settings. His figures are exaggerated and often comic. And yet, all this wild and whimsy comes with a startling sense of realism in how it’s presented to the viewer.

The flow of so much liquid through a magical but workaday bathhouse, the cluttered colorful bric-a-brac that consumes so many corners, the swift flitting movements that young Chihiro makes her way through it all with, give the sense of this enchanted space as something true and genuine. Even in animation, our lizard brains recognize the level of detail, the accuracy realized in caricature, and we intuit this liminal space as some place real in a way few fictional settings can achieve.

Despite my ramblings and grandiosity, I mean it when I saw I don’t have the words to describe it all. The animation and design work here in particular is so virtuoso that it all but defies description. The film’s characters come in different sizes and styles, and somehow all still feel like they belong in the same world. The imagination on display in the designs of bulbous Yubaba, beastly-yet-benign No-Face, and the countless colorful denizens bobbing through the bathhouse is incredible. The animation is extraordinary, with flowing movements, kinetic sequences, and a certain weight and weightlessness that makes every character distinctive. And the backgrounds and “lighting” the film deploys make every random still frame seem like something you could print out and hang on the wall with the level of artistry involved.

The visuals here are sumptuous, even shocking, in a way that puts Spirited Away in the highest of echelons for 2D animation, and maybe even makes it peerless in that department.

Much credit also owes to the sound design and mixing team, who do no less an amazing job at bringing the spirit world to life. When Lin’s boat creaks against the waves, the ship itself seems more real. When the same sort of living soot mites from My Neighbor Totoro audibly skitter and huddle and rumble across the floor, they seem like genuine little creatures. When goop sluices in the halls or a rush of hot water douses its residents, the sounds make you feel like you're there. Spirited Away doesn’t neglect any part of the sensory experience, and beyond the lovely score and endearing touches like No-Face’s exhalations, the everyday sounds of the place are just as vital to the film’s creative success.

I offer all this praise with the admission that, for all its stunning imagery and nigh-unparalleled sense of place, I don’t really care for Spirited Away’s story or its characters.

I suppose that statement assumes there is a story. You can, charitably, say that the film has a plot. Chihiro is stranded in the spirit world. She labors and survives with the help of some generous new friends. She finds talents and courage she didn’t know she had. And in the end, she affirms who she is and emerges back in the human world ready to face its challenges. At a broad enough level, there’s a solid trajectory there.

But things just sort of happen in Spirited Away. It is more episodic, a series of loosely connected vignettes, than it is a propulsive story. Sure, an object Chihiro recovers after assisting a river spirit comes in handy when she needs to save her friend, and the contract she signs with the nasty proprietor of the bath house must be dissolved by the end of the film. For the most part, though, the events of the film seem random, more simply adjacent than feeding into one another. And the major happenings are often baffling, with confounding incidents going entirely unremarked upon, or otherwise being accounted for in awkward, shoe-horned-in exposition that doesn’t make the explanations satisfying.

The peak of that is the reveal that Haku, Chihiro’s standard anime boy crush/dragon, is actually a river spirit who rescued her as a little kid. Aside from a couple blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flashbacks, it comes out of absolute nowhere, and adds nothing to the story beyond a convenient shortcut of a connection between them to justify Haku’s kindness mechanically rather than through his good character. It’s emblematic of the “things just sort of happen; don’t worry about it” spirit of the film.

Charitably, that can work for a whimsical movie like Spirited Away. Chihiro is in a world she doesn’t know or understand. The fact that random occurrences interrupt her peace without warning or logic puts the viewer in her same shoes, left to be confounded by it much as she is. That, combined with certain cultural context I’m likely missing as someone not steeped in Japanese culture, can excuse much of the formlessness and apparent randomness of the film’s storytelling.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t excuse the characters. Chihiro is annoying as all get out with her screeching delivery. Haku is every young girl’s fanfiction crush with the standard issue dreamy face and haircut. Yubaba is every Dickensian master. None of the characters has any real depth. Often, their personalities seem to turn on a dime. They don’t have much beyond the most basic of motivations. And as a result, I don’t really care what happens to most of them. At best, the film can coast a bit on that relatable sense of being young and in a new place, scared but determined, and wanting to go back where you started. It imbues Chihiro’s plight with a depth the character herself can’t otherwise support.

But you know what? It also doesn’t really matter. I’d be lying if I said I was compelled at an emotional level by most of the characters (give or take Kamaji, the boilermaster, who is arbitrarily but touchingly kind to Chihiro). But I still enjoy watching the lot of them, if only for how they move, how they look, how they literally and figuratively bounce off of one another. None of the major players here has depth, but they have personality and character thanks to the exquisite craft on offer in the film, and given the tremendous achievements in that department, it’s more than enough.

In truth, that's what Spirited Away survives and thrives on. It is a movie much more about the vibes than the plot, and much more about what you saw and felt when experiencing it in any given moment than what your rational mind thought about it as a whole. The movie is inextricable from that experience, to visit this place with all its terrors and wonders, to sit on that train and watch the phantoms rise and depart, to stand in Chihiro’s mite-mended shoes and bite into her dumpling and look upon a horizon that is at once welcoming and foreboding.

I can’t pretend I’m able to articulate it. I don’t think that's what Spirited Away is meant for. It is, rather, a feast for the soul, bereft of sense but rich in feeling -- a bit of wizardry that whisks the viewer away with its young protagonist, and returns them both unable to capture the experience in feeble words, but duly awed by the experience.

[8/10] I’ll confess, I had no idea this existed until the Robin Williams lost boy made a cameo in the short film Once Upon a Studio. And I’m glad I found out about it, because as always, WIlliams is a delight.

If anyone was born to be in cartoons, it’s him. It’s such a blast to see a pre-Genie collaboration between Williams and Disney, that takes Williams’ motormouth, free-association style and realizes it in the medium of animation.

I’ll admit, it’s a little odd pairing him with Walter Cronkite or all people, but they make for a surprisingly effective pair. Cronkite is a good straight man, and the combination of Williams’ whimsy and Cronkites steadiness pays dividends. Just seeing them banter in front of gigantic books or seeing Cronkite work as Robin’s wry guide through the tribulations of animation is unexpectedly fun.

This is also a solid introduction to the process of hand-drawn animation. Obviously there’s a lot of intricacies left out, but especially for the purposes this was intended for -- introducing people to these concepts on a studio tour -- this is a perfect little primer.

I enjoyed the Duck Amuck-esque hijinks of animated Robin flitting about the studio, wanting to transform into other personas or bibbing and bobbing with the famous Disney squash and stretch. The work to mix him into live action and play around with backdrops and settings is superb.

And the scene we get with him in Neverland is stellar as well. Corey Burton does a great Hook (as Kingdom Hearts fans know). Williams is outstanding as a fretful and then frenetic foil for the not-so-good captain. And the solution to the problem, of a little pixie dust to spare Lost Boy Robin and make the crocodile a floating problem for Hook, is clever and amusing.

All-in-all, if there’s someone who makes sense within the world of animation, and as a lost boy at that, it’s Robin Williams. I’m sorry I didn’t know about this until now, but it’s a wonderful little tribute to the man and to the medium all at once.

[5.5/10[ Remember when South Park’s social commentary was incisive and biting? Now the show’s reduced to parroting generic boomer criticism and repeating the same tired comments you can see in a million places on the internet. It’s a bitch getting older, let me tell you.

“People don’t know how to do things anymore.” “Trades are now more lucrative than college.” “Disney makes lazy movies.” “Everything is too ‘female, gay, and lame.’” “Multiverse storytelling sucks.”

There are not the comments of an expert, experienced group of cultural commentators. They are the same collection of comments you can find on a million articles, YouTube videos, and other online rabbit holes right about now.

Sure, South Park is slightly more clever about it, and there’s at least some satirization of these views. But I don’t know, for a show making fun of laziness and being out-of-touch from other studios, it’s pretty easy to accuse the show of doing the same thing.

You want to know the funny thing? I actually really got a kick out of Panderverse Cartman here. Maybe it was just Janeshia Adams-Ginyard’s performance, which did a good job of replicating Trey Parker’s rhythms without doing a straight imitation of the character. But I also think to drive the concept home, reverted her to more of Cartman’s classic characterization, which was honestly refreshing! Panderverse Cartman going to incredible lengths and cons and resources, just to play Baldur’s Gate is total golden era Cartman shtick, and is frankly better than some of the stuff we’ve been getting lately.

Otherwise, the big about Randy trying to find a handyman and getting a group whipped up and mad at them, college, and millionaires, was clumsy and not particularly funny. Most of the other multiverse gags and commentary were nothing to write home about either. Cartman’s dream sequences and the visits to other universes got tired fast.

There’s a few bright spots here and there. I appreciate the setup and payoff of Randy’s broken oven that caused all the trouble being the multiversal doorway. The “multiverse” just being him in different clothes was a decent laugh. And the observation that audiences didn’t mind formulaic films until they started getting more diverse is a solid one too.

But man, “both sides”-ing the issue at hand -- declaring that bigoted hate spurs pandering spurs bigoted hate spurs pandering, so both parties are to blame, is such a weak, mealy-mouthed take. Considering it’s how the show ends the special, it’s particular meh.

Overall, this is another instance of South Park having lost more than a step, instead devolving into generic online criticisms and “old man yells at cloud” style gripes, without the deftness of delivery, insight, or humor that used to elevate it. Watchable but not good.