Pixar

Inside Out 2

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Inside Out 2
  • IMDb: link

Inside Out 2

The sequel to 2015’s Inside Out is exactly what you would expect. Catching up with Riley (Kensington Tallman) as she enters her teenage years, the film features several new complicated emotions that get into competition with Joy (Amy Poehler) and the other characters from the first film as Riley gets ready to deal with high school, the potential loss of friends who (while the three are headed to a summer hockey camp) drop the bombshell that they will both be attending a different high school, and (thanks to the help of the new emotions which she can’t always control) juggling fitting in with redefining her sense of self.

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Elemental

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Elemental
  • IMDb: link

Presented with less fanfare than any Pixar movie I can remember, Elemental answers the question of what a Disney version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner would look like. Similar in many ways to Zootopia, Elemental offers an unusual city of characters, this time elemental beings of fire, water, cloud (air), and tree (earth), attempting to live together in peace with an undercurrent of racism and bigotry bubbling just below the surface.

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Lightyear

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Lightyear
  • IMDb: link

Disney and Pixar find a way to return to the Toy Story franchise without returning to the Toy Story franchise with Lightyear which is meant to represent the movie young Andy saw in 1992 which would inspire the Buzz Lightyear toy line. While it might not look or sound like a 90s film, a minor quibble, Lightyear does entertain by offering us the misadventures of the Space Ranger who struggles to get home after getting stranded on a hostile planet light-years from Earth. Although Buzz isn’t a toy, Lightyear demands a toy be made for the adorable robotic cat Sox (Peter Sohn) who is just about the best thing ever.

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Turning Red

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  • Title: Turning Red
  • IMDb: link

Disney’s Turning Red is basically an animated remake of 1985’s Teen Wolf recasting the main character as a 13 year-old girl who begins turning into a giant Red Panda whenever she gets too excited. Like Michael J. Fox‘s Scott Howard, the cause for the transformation is a mix of puberty and a family curse which Mei (Rosalie Chiang) only learns about after being freaked out by the horror of the unexplained change. And, as in Teen Wolf, Mei is told by her family to control and hide the Panda within but instead uses it to increase her popularity at school.

Turning Red is slow to get started, relying on cookie-cutter Asian stereotypes of the dutiful daughter breaking out of the mold. Thankfully, once the Red Panda shows up, things get a bit more interesting. However, if we are going to ding movies aimed at kids for dick and fart jokes, it’s hard not to do the same here for the numerous cheap jokes the film gets away with around mensuration. 

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Luca, the Little Merboy

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Luca
  • IMDb: link

Luca movie reviewSet on the Italian Rivera, in an era before cellphones and the Internet, Luca is a fish out of water story. Literally. Living his life under the sea, the curious Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is drawn to the world on the surface despite his parents’ (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan) warnings about the monsters lurking above. With the ability to assume human form when stepping onto land, Luca can’t help be curious about the humans whose bizarre garbage makes it way to the bottom of the sea. Meeting another teen sea monster who has been passing for human pushes Luca to exploring the surface further and leaving his life under the sea behind him for the seaside community of Portorosso.

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