Tag: disney

Cinema Dispatch: Finding Dory

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Finding Dory and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Andrew Stanton

Well… I guess we’re back again.  Pixar has gotten pretty passé for me recently and making a sequel to my least favorite of their movies that ISN’T a rip off of Maximum Overdrive is probably not gonna be what ends up turning them around for me.  Still, the studio never makes a lazy movie (except for those G rated Christine films) so we can at least expect a certain level of quality from them, and maybe I’ll be a bit more receptive to their fish story this time around.  Does it manage to bring back that Pixar magic that has gotten kinda dull and played out recently?  Let’s find out!!

The movie takes place a year after the events of the first one (which I guess means this takes place in in the heydays of George W Bush and Nickelback) and since then Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) has been living with Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence).  One day during their day to day life of… swimming I guess, Dory sees something that triggers a memory that had long been forgotten which is that she has parents and lost them many years ago; probably due to her short term memory condition.  Now that she’s aware that her parents are out there somewhere, she manages to rope Marlin and Nemo into going with her to the last place she remembers being at before losing them forever which was somewhere in California.  That somewhere just happens to be the Marine Life Institute which is a rescue center to provide care to, rehabilitate, and eventually release the sea creatures that they either catch or are sent to them for treatment.  As you’d expect, Dory manages to separate herself from Marlin and Nemo who have to then FIND her, and while they’re doing that Dory meets up with an octopus named Hank (Ed O’Neill) who is willing to help her find whatever exhibit her parents are in if she’ll do something for him.  See, Dory was sent to the medical wing and immediately got a tag put on her to send her to the Cleveland Aquarium because… I actually don’t know why come to think of it.  The tags are only placed on fish that are too sick to survive in the open ocean, so… is there gonna be a really sad third movie coming out in ten years?  Anyway, Hank wants to go to the Cleveland Aquarium but isn’t sick enough for them to send him off, so he’ll take her tag in exchange for carrying her around until they find her parents.  Oh, and they’re on a timer because the truck to Cleveland leaves in the morning so Hank is not in the mood to mosey about take their sweet time.  Will Dory manage to find her parents in this place?  What about Marlin and Nemo?  Are they gonna find her before… I guess something bad happens?  Will Pixar ever get to The Incredibles 2!?

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“That’s where my parents are…”     “Congratulations kid.  You found them.”     “Found what now?”     “Ugh…”

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Cinema Dispatch: Alice Through the Looking Glass

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Alice Through the Looking Glass and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by James Bobin

A sequel to a movie six years after everyone stopped caring about it!  THAT’S never gone wrong, am I right?  To be fair to Disney, the original film did make an astonishing amount of money (one BILLION worldwide) but this feels way too late to capitalize on whatever moment that first movie had.  Not only that, but it was also one of the early 3D films which I’m sure boosted the ticket sales, yet now we’re at a point where people are just sick of the gimmick, so it doesn’t even have THAT going for it.  Still, the first movie did manage to be pretty decent and the trailers for this looked very creative to say the least.  Can this manage to be a damn fine sequel that just needed a little extra time to fully come together, or is this a naked cash grab for everyone involved?  Let’s find out!!

The movie picks up three years after the first movie where Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has spent the intervening time traveling the world as a sea captain for Ascot family’s trading company (I think).  She returns to England at the start of the movie to see her mother (Lindsay Duncan) and plan the next trip with the company.  Unfortunately, the Ascot patriarch has died since she last returned and the one in charge of the company is his son Hamish (Leo Bill) who you may recall was set to be Alice’s husband in the first movie which didn’t end up panning out.  Now that this new guy is in charge (and he has a wounded ego) Alice is not only no longer employed as a sea captain, but for some reason is given an ultimatum to either sell her father’s boat or risk losing her mother’s house.  It gets worse when you find out that the mother has been working behind her back to make sure she gets fired so that she would have no choice but to “settle down” as all proper ladies do.  Well I’d say THAT’S enough stuff to stress over to make a trip to Wonderland seem like a wondrous vacation, right?  She gets led to the titular looking glass by the butterfly Absolem (Alan Rickman) and eventually finds the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) on the other side who is slowly dying and not quite so delightfully mad.  Apparently he found a modicum of proof that his family is still alive but no one else believes him so he’s going to slowly die of depression… I guess.  Alice has no choice but to go back in time to save the Hatter’s family from the Jaberwacki and has to face off against Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) to get that ability.  Will she be able to save the Hatter from his battle with depression?  What will she learn as she travels back to the glory days of Wonderland, and what must she risk in order to get the opportunity to do so?  Does anyone else notice that its’ a lot brighter this time around?

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“Did you bring the sunscreen?”     “The hell do you need sunscreen for?  YOU HAVE A HAT!!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Captain America: Civil War

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 7 Comments

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Captain America: Civil War and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo

The Marvel money machine has deigned to appease the masses with the next chapter in their long running story about people in tights (or robo-tights) that STILL manages to be more character driven and exquisitely crafted than any number of big blockbusters that have tried to challenge Marvel to their title as king of the cinematic landscape (*cough* Batman v Superman *cough*).  Now we have another entry in the Captain America series which actually looks like an Avengers movie more than anything else.  Does Marvel once again show us what makes the Captain America movies so unique within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or has the whole enterprise gotten too massive to tell a simple story about one man throwing his mighty shield?  Let’s find out!!

The main thrust of the narrative in this movie is the Avengers having the whole “collateral damage” thing come back to bite them in the ass.  It’s been building up for a while, but when an operation in Nigeria goes south after the bad guy blows himself up and the blast is redirected by Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) into a nearby building and killing eleven people in the process, it seems that the world powers have no choice but to step in.  Of course, the guy had stolen a biological weapon that could have killed THOUSANDS but no one wants to bring that up apparently.  Anyway, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) seems to be in a bad place right now and the guilt over his actions in the last ten or so movies are starting to eat away at him, so when the US government and the UN come to the Avengers with some international regulations, he jumps at the opportunity to get them all on board.  The biggest opponent to this new form of oversight though is Captain America (Chris Evans) who sees the writing on the wall and the possibility of those checking their power using that for nefarious ends.  Things only get worse when a UN meeting in Vienna about the new Avenger regulations (known as the Sokovia Accords) gets bombed as part of a terrorist attack and the only suspect is Bucky Barnes The Winter Solider (Sebastian Stan) who if you recall from the second Captain America movie escaped his captors and has been laying low ever since.  Not only is everyone and their grandma after this guy, but Captain America is the only one convinced that he could not have done it which makes it that much harder to keep the government, the other Avengers, and a new super hero Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) off of his back.  Can he clear Bucky’s name before the world leaders put a bullet in both their heads?  Who really DID bomb the UN meeting?  Will he be able to convince his fellow Avengers as well as Tony that the Sokovia Accords will lead to more harm than good?  Most importantly, how many cameos are they gonna squeeze into this!?

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“Did you guys kidnap me?”     “Yup.”     “That’s AWESOME!”

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Cinema Dispatch: The Jungle Book

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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The Jungle Book and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios

Directed by Jon Favreau

In the early and mid-2000s, we got a deluge of straight to video sequels to classic animated features in the Disney catalog.  Almost NONE of them were any good, and they thankfully died off by 2007.  Now we’re in a new age of cannibalizing those cartoons by making them into live action, albeit with better results.  These include Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent, Cinderella, and now this with PLENTY more on the horizon.  Can Disney continue to successfully rehash their older properties, or are we getting to the point of diminishing returns?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the adventures of Mowgli (Neel Sethi); a young child who was abandoned in the jungle and raised by wolves.  Most of the animals don’t have any real beef with him, so they coexist without much strife to speak of until the fierce (and apparently ONLY) tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) shows up and declares that the boy must be turned over to him for death, else he will wage war on the other animals; particularly the wolf pack Mowgli’s a part of that also seems to be the highest ranking species here… or something.  Rather than have his pack go to war over him, he leaves them behind and goes with his panther friend Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) who’s gonna lead him back to the human village which is the one place he’ll be safe from Shere Khan’s anti-human wrath.  Unfortunately, the two get separated along the way and Mowgli instead finds himself moving in with a bear named Baloo (Bill Murray) who will teach him about chillaxing and eating honey.  Will Mowgli truly be safe in his new home?  What will Shere Khan do once he learns that Mowgli is not dead?  Does this have at least the Bare Necessities to make it a good film!?

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“What have I told you TIME and TIME again?”     “Don’t forget to take that left turn at Albuquerque?”     “And did you?”     “No.  I’ll do better next time.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Zootopia

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 7 Comments

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Zootopia and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore

With Pixar not really living up to its namesake in the last couple of years (not the biggest fan of Inside Out), it’s interesting to see their decline coincide with Disney Animation Studio’s recent output steadily increase in quality.  I didn’t see Big Hero Six, but Tangled, Frozen, and Wreck-It Ralph are all very strong features from a studio that had been relying on Pixar for some time to keep Disney’s theatrical output relevant and groundbreaking.  Not only that, but they’ve done a good job of keeping their ideas interesting and relevant, from Frozen’s LGBT undertones, to Wreck-It Ralph’s use of new(ish) media to tell a classic Disney fable about a lost princess.  Now they’re giving something that ALL internet users are at least passingly familiar with; FURRIES!  Does this anthropomorphic animal tale manage to continue Disney Animation Studio’s valiant escape from the shadow of Pixar, or are we in for another bland kid’s movie that’ll only succeed due to the brand name recognition?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the trials and tribulations of one Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin); the first rabbit police in… the country?  I don’t know the exact geography here, but her becoming a police officer (valedictorian at the academy) is such a big deal that she gets assigned to Zootopia; the most vibrant, diverse, and technologically advanced cities on Earth… or Animal Planet.  Whatever.  Unfortunately for our friend here, she’s relegated to menial tasks as the chief of police Bongo (Idris Elba) has no confidence in her abilities to perform in a job that is typically handled by much larger animals.  When a case involving a series of missing animals (predators specifically) gets out of hand though, she has an opportunity to prove herself by tracking down an otter who was among those missing.  However, because of the necessities of screenwriting conventions, Bongo somehow manages to turn this into an ego contest and has officer Hopps agree to quit the force if she doesn’t solve this case in forty-eight hours (I sense a reference there!) which you would think wouldn’t be something he can force her to do, but I guess she’s got something to prove and agrees to the wager.  The only lead she has is a local fox who’s already been giving her grief named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) who may have seen the otter and knows where he might have gone.  After some underhanded tricks of her own (hey, the fox started it!) she finally convinces him to assist her in finding this otter and find out what it is that has caused these animals to go missing.  Will they be able to solve the case within the arbitrary time limit?  What secrets are there to uncover in the dark underbelly of this supposed utopian city?  Wait, is this gonna be the most socially conscious movie about race relations this year!?

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“They keep me on board so the administration doesn’t look anti-prey, yet I’m stuck in a boiler room.  Progress, am I right?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Inside Out

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

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Inside Out and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios
Motion Pictures

Directed by Pete Docter

Is it too late for the Herman’s Head jokes?  It is?  Okay then.  Anyway, we once again find ourselves with another film from the world’s most harshly criticized 9.5 out of 10 studio.  It’s hard to deny that the Pixar brand has become somewhat tarnished in recent years what with Cars 2 being a critical bomb and Brave not living up to expectations for many.  That and the fact that they’re gonna start cranking out sequels left and right for the next decade.  Still, you can’t deny that Pixar on a bad day is still gonna be better than a lot of other studios on a good day.  So where does Inside Out fall on the Pixar scale?  Eh… we’ll get to that in a minute.  First, what is this movie about?

Our heroes ladies and gentlemen.  And they control EVERYTHING we do.
Our heroes ladies and gentlemen.  And they control EVERYTHING we do.

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Living on Netflix: Escape from Tomorrow

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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One of the biggest oddities of 2013 is this independent film that was shot inside Disney World (and Disney Land) without anyone from Disney knowing about it.  What was made from that footage is supposed to be one of the most bizarre and inflammatory films to ever try and get one over on the Mouse House.  I’ve been waiting to see this movie for a long time, and I’m SO glad that Netflix picked it up.  Is it any good?  Read on to find out!

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