Pokemon the First Movie (1999)

Happy Labor Day!  Here's a movie about gladiatorial combat with cute, fuzzy creatures!  I am not the target audience for this movie.  I was too old when Pokemon came out.  But my partner is a huge fan.  He collects the cards, has all the games, goes to conventions, all the things.  Everything I know about Pokemon, I have learned through osmosis.  It's a surprising amount, though, because I was well-prepared to watch this movie.

Junior Pokemon trainer Ash Ketchum (Veronica Taylor) is having a picnic with friends when a mysterious invitation is delivered.  Someone calling themselves The Master is holding a grand tournament on a private island to see who can Be the Very Best, Like No One Ever Was.  Ash is very excited and heads out right away, only to be told that a massive storm has disrupted the ferry to the island and no one can cross.  Several other trainers see it as no obstacle, using their Pokemon to brave the hurricane.  Ash, Misty (Rachael Lillis), and Brock (Eric Stuart) do the same.  When they arrive at Kindergartner Kumite, they learn their host is actually a genetically engineered Pokemon named Mewtwo (Philip Bartlett) who has become obsessed with world domination.  He has staged this tournament in order to isolate the best Pokemon genetic sequences that he plans to clone and turn into his own private army.  The children are very upset by this because apparently forcing Pokemon to fight their clones is bad, despite it being the basis of their entire society.  Unsporting because it's an existential crisis, maybe?  Anyway, a literal actual demigod named Mew shows up, and everyone learns about the power of friendship.

This movie has a 17% on RottenTomatoes, which isn't really fair.  I don't know shit about Pokemon and I thought it was okay.  Actual fans probably really enjoy it.  I know my partner remembers seeing it in theaters at 10-years-old.  You can't tell him this isn't a cinematic masterpiece.  Anyway, Pokemon is a cultural juggernaut and you probably know at least one child who is super into it.  This is for them.  It's not currently streaming anywhere but the Blu-ray triple-feature with all the movies is like $10 on Amazon.

Blind Vaysha (2016)/4.1 Miles (2016)

  Here's a couple more shorts.  

First up is Blind Vaysha, an eight and a half minute long animated film based on a short story of a girl whose left eye can only see the past and whose right eye can only see the future.  She can never experience happiness because she has no present.  

I found it overly moralizing and not nearly as clever or provocative as it thought it was being.  Would rather read the folklore, honestly.

  4.1 Miles is a documentary short produced by The New York Times.  It follows a Greek Coast Guard captain who rescues Afghani refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded crafts not designed for the journey.  

I want you to open another tab on your browser and pull up a map.  Find Afghanistan.  Now find Greece.  Consider the level of desperation you have to have to consider crossing that amount of distance with absolutely nothing but a backpack.    

There was a different doc short called Lifeboat from 2018 that covered the exact same thing, except they were a German non-profit.  It was a whole-ass humanitarian crisis and I have no idea if it is still happening because there have been like 20 other whole-ass humanitarian crises since then.  I'm so tired, y'all.

Both films are available on YouTube.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (2017)

  Finally getting around to some of the Oscar nominated shorts from 2017.  Still working through my burnout.  

A narrator (Robert Valley) recounts the story of traveling from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to China in order to get his childhood friend to stop drinking long enough to have a black-market liver from a death-row prisoner transplanted.  

This is not a fun or happy story.  The animation is slick, anime-inspired, and completed entirely in Adobe Photoshop.  It is an adult animation, so there's some nudity but nothing super egregious.  It's about half an hour long and available on YouTube or Vimeo.  I'd never watch it again but it was very pretty to look at.

Kpop Demon Hunters (2025)

  This movie is so fun.  Even if you're not into K-Pop.  

Huntr/x are pop stars by day and demon slayers by night, the latest in a long line of singers that maintain a magical web keeping the Demon King, Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun), from stealing the souls of mortals.  But Gwi-Ma has a plan to destroy the girls before the web becomes permanent.  He sends Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), a human turned demon, to form a rival boy-band to steal all of Huntr\x's fans.  Lead singer Rumi (Arden Cho) is pissed but believes there's still some good in Jinu, especially after he refrains from revealing her own terrible secret.  

I found the animation a little off-putting.  There's just something about it that doesn't gel for me.  But the whole movie is so freakin' cute, I stopped caring about a third of the way in.  It is fizzy bubblegum for your brain.  Utterly charming.  And the soundtrack is phenomenal.  I'm not a big K-Pop person (I like BLACKPINK and that's about it) but I immediately bought this one.  So good.  It is streaming on Netflix.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    No content warnings needed for this one!

Faithful companion Gromit feels the sting of rejection when Wallace (Ben Whitehead) invents a "helpful" robot gardener called Norbot (Reece Shearsmith) and seems to prefer its company.  But the pair's old nemesis, Feathers McGraw, is plotting revenge from his prison cell/enclosure and hacking Norbot is the first step.  Gromit must stop the rogue AI garden gnomes from destroying Wallace's good name and reputation and framing him for theft before Wallace is locked away.

At this point, the "turn evil" button/setting on robots is old hat but still funny.  I would have liked more focus on Feathers McGraw and less on the cops but I understand you need some characters to talk in your movie.  

If you are already a W&G fan, congrats on another successful entry.  If you're not, this won't make you one.  Head on back to Memoir of a Snail, fellow degenerate.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Memoir of a Snail (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature   Content warning:  animated nudity, child abuse, bullying, conversion therapy, homophobic hate crime, child death

Orphaned and separated across the continent, Australian twins Grace (Sarah Snook) and Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) dream of one day being reunited.  Grace retreats further into herself, becoming a hoarder and snail collector, while Gilbert rails against his cult-like foster family.

This is not a movie for children unless you feel like explaining a bunch of stuff.  This is in the vein of Mary & Max, also written and directed by Adam Elliot, and should not be confused with family friendly movies by LAIKA.  It ends up heartwarming but it takes its time getting to that point.  Still, we love stop-motion and it's always nice to see it represented.  

It's currently only available to rent or buy and if you like quirky, off-kilter characters, it's worth tossing some cash at for a one-time watch.

Inside Out 2 (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    I was prepared to write this off as the obligatory Pixar inclusion but I actually really loved it.  

Riley (Kinsington Tallman) is a teenager now and her emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) have been working overtime to keep up.  But with new stressors --hockey camp, meeting her high school idol, finding out this is her last year with her best friends-- comes new puberty-enhanced emotions like Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Envy (Ayo Edibiri), and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos).  Joy has been carefully tending Riley's Sense of Self only to have Anxiety begin to threaten her artfully chosen memories.

Once again, the Inside Out characters delve into thorny psychological concepts with wit and humor overlaying true understanding.  I love that the Core Memories from the first have become a garden of Beliefs that form Riley's sense of Self and how delicate they can be, but also how mutable.  The Self isn't static; it's constantly responding to new stimuli and changing into new shapes.  And that Joy's blithe insistence on only holding on to positive beliefs actually weakens Riley so that the first negative thing that happens causes her to spiral into anxiety.  

I don't want to go too deeply into the ending but I found it to have really powerful imagery that's mostly unspoken.  **SPOILERS FOLLOW**  She floods Riley's memory pond with conflicting --even negative-- emotions, forcing her confront her actions and sparking introspection, a more nuanced sense of Self, and enhanced maturity.  **END SPOILERS**  It's given the context of "feeling your feelings" but it was more than just that for me.  How we feel influences how we see ourselves and toxic positivity is just as damaging as its opposite.

Inside Out 2 is currently streaming on Disney+.

Flow (2024)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature  This movie stressed me out.  

A cat must navigate a world threatened by rising water, finding relative safety on a boat with a crew of other random animals as they search for high ground.

This was the Oscar submission from Latvia and it's one of the strongest animated showings I've seen in years.  I felt genuine distress every time that cat was in danger.  I was a little distracted at first because the collection of animals is weird: a capybara, a secretary bird, a ring-tailed lemur, and a golden retriever, all of which are from different continents, but the architecture of the human (?) built structures is also weird so then I didn't care as much.  It's obviously some sort of fantasy setting.  (Tyler suggested it takes place in Hyrule.)  

There's no attempt made to anthropomorphize the animals so it's completely wordless, which means you have to pay attention to every frame.  This is not the movie to have on while you play on your phone.  

The animation is very soft and almost dream-like.  I generally don't pay attention to the score but it is also very soothing.  It reminds me of music you'd hear in a video game, present but not calling attention to itself.  In fact, I would not be surprised to find that this started out as a cut-scene or demo of a planned video game like Stray.  Too lazy to look it up though.

It's currently only in theaters (if you're lucky) or available through your handy-dandy VPN.

The Wild Robot (2024)

Nominated for Best Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Animated Feature     Dreamworks with a very strong showing this year.  Content warning:  animal death (animated, mostly off-screen)

A helper robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) crashes onto an island with wildlife as the only inhabitants.  Her attempts to "help" the natives are met with fear, distrust, and in some cases, violence until she accidentally hatches a goose egg and the gosling imprints on her.  Raising an infant of a non-programmed species is hard, so she enlists the help of Fink (Pedro Pascal), a fox, to fill in the gaps of her knowledge.

The moral of this story is Kindness is a Survival Skill, which is frankly a bold choice in this, the worst timeline.  It's a little simplistic when you really scrutinize it (wtf is the lynx supposed to do in this socialist utopia?  It can't just eat acorns) but for a kid's movie, it's a good baseline.

It does kind of feel like two movies smashed together.  There's the expected "robot learns to feel" storyline which takes up the first half, and then it just...keeps going.  This isn't necessarily a complaint.  We've seen dozens of the "robot learns to feel" stories, but because the beats are so familiar going beyond them can almost feel like fatigue.  Like when you watched the first half hour of Up and then you're like, Jesus, there's a whole-ass movie after this??  But life doesn't just stop once your kids leave the nest (ha ha, get it?) and it's nice that the movie acknowledges that.

It's streaming on Peacock.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

  If you grew up watching this on TV in the 90s, like I did, I urge you to find an unedited version.  The full movie is almost two and a half hours and TV cut so much for time and content.  

Homeless orphans Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan), Paul (Roy Snart), and Charlie (Ian Weighill) are sent to the  English countryside during WWII.  They end up in the reluctant care of Miss Price (Angela Lansbury), a spinster heiress pursuing witchcraft as a solution to the Nazis.  But the war has necessitated the closure of her correspondence course, so she takes the three children to London via a magical bed (which sounds like the worst euphemism but it's not) to find her professor, Mr. Emelius Brown (David Tomlinson), and get the final spell she needs.

I cannot overemphasize how much of a disservice the TV edit is to the original.  It removes so much context, character building, and at least one entire musical number while cutting others down sharply.  If you watched this as a kid and thought it was mid- to lower-tier Disney, please give it another try.  If you still don't like it, that's fine.  

Hopefully, the full version is on Disney+.  I have no idea.  I bought this on DVD ages ago.

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

  Merry Solstice, everyone!  Thus begins our round of Christmas movie offerings, courtesy of Movie Club, and it is getting Festive AF in here.  Content warning:  homophobic slurs, violence, attempted suicide, child endangerment

An unlikely trio of homeless people: Gin (Tôru Emori), an alcoholic, Hana (Yoshiaki Umegaki), a transwoman, and Miyuki (Aya Okamoto), a teenage runaway, find a baby abandoned in the trash on Christmas Eve and begin a journey to find the parents.  Along the way, truths are revealed, burdens are shared, and people learn what true family means.

This is considered a modern classic especially for Christmas but it was just okay for me.  I liked the characters and I thought the animation was really well done but the longer it went on, the less interest I had.  There were so many coincidences and random events that turned out to be really significant to the characters' pasts and it got really old for me.  But as always, your mileage may vary.  It's for damn sure better than Triplets of Belleville.  

Would I watch it again?  No.  Would I recommend it to people?  Yes. It's streaming for free on Tubi, the Roku Channel, and Amazon's ad-supported tier FreeVee.  Tubi is better about not making jarring cuts to commercial.

The War of the Rohirrim (2024)

  Wish I could say this was good.  Content warning:  dead animals, some blood, war violence

Héra (Gaia Wise) is the only daughter of Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), King of Rohan, and has grown up fighting and riding alongside her two brothers.  Helm wants to marry her to a prince of Gondor, to solidify alliance with that kingdom, but one of his nobles, Freca (Shaun Dooley), wants Héra to marry his son, Wulf (Luca Pasqualino), and challenges Helm in front of the entire court.  Helm kills Freca and banishes Wulf, who swears to tear Rohan apart until he gets Héra.

This was a lot of bloodshed over a dude not being able to hear the word No from a woman.  Also, a lot of patriarchal bullshit about how her only role is to bear heirs.  Very lame.

The character animation is beautiful.  The background animation is beautiful.  I just wish there had been any effort made to bring the two together.  There were scenes where characters didn't touch the ground while riding or moving and it was very jarring to the eyes.  And this movie cost a gazillion dollars!  It should not look like a shoestring budget, broke-as-shit Miyazaki knock-off.  

It goes on way too long, tries too hard to hammer in its Lord of the Rings setting, and tries to overcomplicate an extremely simple plot.  I love that someone tried to make an original story using the established universe.  I hate that it was this Gucci-with-a-Y ass movie.

The Boy and the Heron (2023)

  Well, this movie was kind of bonkers.  Content warning:  dead parent, mild horror

After losing his mother in an accidental fire, Mahito (Soma Santoki) moves with his father (Takuya Kimora) to the countryside to start over with his new step-mother/aunt (Yoshino Kimura) at her family home.  He is immediately menaced by a gray heron (Masaki Suda) who tells him that his mother is not dead, merely lost inside a tower on the property.  Mahito believes this to be a trap of some kind and resists until his step-mother goes missing.  For her sake, he must brave a strange world between the living and the dead.

This feels so much more cynical and angry than Miyazaki's other works.  I don't know if that's because it's a male protagonist versus female or if the man himself is just done with subtlety.  He has retired like three times now.  

The animation is, of course, gorgeous with all of the hallmarks of Studio Ghibli.  You've got adorable amorphous blobs, child endangerment, wrinkled old giant-headed ladies, confusing quests, and perfect platonic companionship.

I have to say, though, the dad character gave me the ick.  His wife hadn't been dead a year and he already married and knocked up her sister.  Yikes.  Granted, it looked like that broad was crazy-rich but still.  Have a little decorum, man.

This was a huge pain in the ass to try and find during Oscar season and it's no less of one now.  It's available for rent but if you're a Ghibli completist, you should just go ahead and pick up a copy.  I'm not sure if I'll revisit it.

Bambi (1942)

It's taken me damn near exactly 11 years to come around back to Bambi in my alphabetical watch.  And I still need to re-read the book.  This time I couldn't remember what the name of the other stag who challenges Bambi for Faline was.  Probably not the worst crime in the history of reading but it bugs me. 

Having just watched Lightyear, going back to hand-drawn cel animation was kind of a shock but no less of a technological marvel.  The depth of field demonstrated in this film was revolutionary for its time.  You can look up videos about how the animators accomplished it and be in awe.  Anyway, it's a good movie and a better book.  You can find it on Disney+ but this is probably one you should own.

Originally published 6/15/13.    I thought it was time to bring some wholesomeness to this blog.

Just kidding, I'm up to B in my collection.

Bambi is a fawn born in the forest.  He frolics with his mother on the meadow and plays with his friends Thumper, a rabbit, and Flower, a skunk.  Just past his first winter, he learns what tragedy is when his mother is killed by hunters.  Afterwards, he is raised by the Great Prince, a wise but aloof stag, until his antlers come in and he goes forth to seek a mate.  It's not all dancing on puffy clouds, though, as hunting season comes around again.

Watching this makes me want to go back and re-read the book.  I don't think I have ever noticed that Bambi makes a miraculous recovery after being shot and forced to run from the fire.  In the book it's not as abrupt.

Lightyear (2022)

Here's a movie banned in China for one (1) same-sex kiss between two consenting married adults.  Who are animated.  Another one for the Lucy-is-Too-Late files!  We have got to stop using the box office as a metric for success because on paper, this under-performed, which means we're probably not getting a sequel.  It doesn't necessarily need a sequel but it would be a shame if the concept was trashed because people aren't going to theaters.

Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) takes being a Space Ranger very seriously.  So seriously that he refuses to ask for help, inadvertently stranding his entire research vessel on a hostile planet.  Desperate to make up for his mistake, Buzz volunteers to test a new fuel, attempting to reach hyperspace.  But due to time dilation he loses four years on the planet every time he goes up, even though it only feels like four minutes to him.  He is a man outside of time, watching as the people he knew as peers grow old, marry, have children, and generally live life.  When the new commander (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) cancels the program for lack of interest, Buzz snaps, steals a ship, and with the help of his robotic cat, Sox (Peter Sohn), makes one last attempt to crack the fuel formula.  It works, but now there's a new problem.  Buzz is far enough into the future that evil robots are attacking the planet and the only people available are the Colonial Defense Forces:  a weekend warrior named Mo (Taika Watiti), a parolee (Dale Soules), and the granddaughter of Buzz's best friend, Izzy (Keke Palmer), who is afraid of space.  They have no training and no concept of teamwork, but they've got heart.

The movie opens by saying that it is the film Andy from Toy Story watched that inspired him to want a toy based on the main character.  I am not an expert in Toy Story lore and my eyes glazed over trying to read about it on Wikipedia so I'm just going to take it at face value.  Lightyear is a "real" movie that a "real" child saw and liked enough to want a "toy" that had it's own real four-movie saga, and at least 2(?) spin-off TV shows.

The animation is completely stunning.  And best of all, it looks like animation, not creepy photo-realistic uncanny valley human mimicry.  Buzz Lightyear the "human actor" looks like Buzz Lightyear the toy and not like Chris Evans.  I feel like a snake eating my own tail typing all this out.

Anyway, the point of the story is that sometimes you need help and also you can't just sit on the sidelines of life.  It's super cute and there's a cat.  10/10.  Go watch it on Disney+.

The Land Before Time (1988)

  Did you know this movie has 14 sequels?  And it is only an hour and 8 minutes long?  That technically makes it a short, not a feature film.  

An orphaned brontosaurus named Littlefoot (Gabriel Damon) travels with four other baby dinosaurs to reach the Great Valley, a rumored land filled with food where their families are waiting for them.  

I must have watched this movie 100 times as a kid.  Happily, it still holds up really well, maybe because it's only 68 minutes.  There's no faffing about.  The animation isn't as crisp as modern works but it still has that Don Bluth magic to it.  I cannot speak to the rest of the sequels for quality, as I am frankly baffled by their existence, but Land Before Time remains a stone-cold classic.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

The Garden of Words (2014)

  This was so beautifully animated but the story was so gross it completely took me out of the experience.  

An emotionally vulnerable teenaged boy (Miyu Irino) skips class when it rains to sketch in a gazebo in the botanical garden.  An emotionally fragile woman (Kana Hanazawa) shares the gazebo while she works through a major depressive episode.  The boy develops a crush.  The woman encourages it.  

I've never been to Japan and I don't know how their culture works with regard to age gaps in relationships but a 15-year-old is a fucking child and no 29-year-old should be interested in pursuing them.  And before anyone jumps in with "oh, but they're just friends and kindred souls and she didn't do anything," please note that she fucking lies to her boss and says she's been meeting with an old lady.  If she didn't think there was something wrong with the relationship, she wouldn't have lied about it.

That being said, holy Cheezit Christ is there a bullying problem in Japanese schools.  There are waaaaay too many movies and shows about kids being bullied to suicide in East Asian countries.  (In America, you just get shot so it's not like we have room to throw shade.)   

This is the kind of shit that makes me grateful to just have cats.  I mean, they're still bullies but they weigh 8 lbs and don't have opposable thumbs, so they're manageable.  

This is on Criterion Channel but I say skip it and watch something else.

Elemental (2023)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    Here's the nominee from Pixar, which is basically a shoe-in.  I personally liked Nimona more but Elemental is a perfectly good movie.

Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) is a first-generation resident of Element City.  Her parents moved from their native Fire country and opened a small shop just before she was born, eventually becoming the heart of the diaspora.  Ember has always known that her duty is to take over for her dad (Ronnie Del Carmen) when he retires, but finds her temper prevents her from connecting with customers.  One of her meltdowns causes a pipe in the basement to burst, accidentally freeing a city inspector, Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie), who files 30 citations before Ember can stop him.  Terrified that she will be the cause of her dad losing his life's work, Ember and Wade, who is burdened with an overabundance of empathy, try to find the source of the errant water before Wade's boss, Gale (Wendi McLendon-Covey), shuts the shop down for good.

This is primarily a story about the generational guilt that comes from being a child of immigrants and the pressure to conform to their expectations as much as it is about interracial dating.  It's beautifully animated (duh, Pixar) and everything about it is great.  The world feels fully realized, it's creative, the story is universal and yet highly specific, and the characters are engaging and cute.  There's nothing wrong with it.  So why did Disney drop it unceremoniously onto their streamer instead of opting for a theatrical release, undercutting consumer confidence in it before it even had a chance?  Smacks of corporate fuckery, no?  They doubled back, pushing for a theatrical run after the Oscar nomination but I think a lot of people dismissed it out of hand and they shouldn't.  So this is your strong recommendation to watch Elemental.  It's available on Disney+ and in select theaters.

Nimona (2023)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    I would love for this to win.  I don't think it will, but I would still love it.

Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is the first commoner to make it into the prestigious Knight Institute but is framed for regicide before he can receive his official knighthood.  Now a fugitive, Ballister wants nothing more than to clear his name until a shapeshifter named Nimona (Chloe Grace Moretz) shows up at his lair demanding to be his new sidekick.  

The animation is fine.  It's very stylized, the world is a neat mix of traditional sword-and-sorcery and hyper-futurism, and everything is cleanly done.  The story is fun and heartwarming and sad in equal measures.  It's not a new message but it's delivered very well.  The real highlight here is the voice acting.  That is what elevates this whole movie from just a Netflix acquisition to a modern classic.  Moretz and Ahmed breathe real life into their characters and it is absolutely joyful to watch them do it.  I would put this up there with Wolfwalkers.

It's currently streaming on Netflix and I highly encourage you to watch it.  Tell them with your views that original animation is the way to go.

Akira (1988)

  This is one of the Big Ones when it comes to anime.  Content warning:  extreme violence, animal death, gore, body horror, sexual assault

In a dystopian future, Neo-Tokyo has risen from the ashes of World War III.  Aggressive motorcycle gangs of disenfranchised youth roam the streets.  Tetsuo (Nozomu Sasaki) is injured in a collision with a strange child (Tatsuhiko Nakamura) and basically kidnapped by a shadowy government agency.  During their experimentation, Tetsuo is discovered to be compatible match for their greatest failure:  Akira.  Driven mad by the sudden influx of psychic ability, Tetsuo goes on a rampage to find Akira and be revenged.  The only people who can stop him are his best friend, Kaneda (Mitsuo Iwata), a revolutionary named Kei (Mami Koyama), and a trio of psychic children, previous experiments like Akira.

This got so popular it became a red flag, like a poster of Fight Club or American Psycho in a dorm room.  And that's a shame because it really is a cool movie; it just got championed by the absolute worst people you've ever met.  

If you're used to modern anime, the art style might come off as clunky and harsh.  There's not a lot of detail in the faces, it's very hard-lined, garish in its colors, but if you give it a chance, I promise you will not care about that by the end.  There are still some really cool aspects to this film and its message of repeating failures and who gets punished for that is still relevant and timely.  

It's currently streaming on Hulu.