Wind is even better than Smash and Grab, and that’s saying a lot. SparkShorts, it turns out, are some of the best short films I’ve ever seen. And they’re quite different from each other, with unique settings, characters, and stories.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is inescapably a nostalgia grab of a movie, relying on people like me and our fond memories of the original film. If it weren’t for that history, I’m not sure it would’ve been that big of a deal for there to be a new kid’s movie about chickens attempting to escape being eaten.
Klaus is a heartwarming, magical, wonderful film that does what the best Disney and Pixar movies manage and is instantly a classic.
Almost all “speculative” fiction is fantasy fiction. Horror is fantasy. Most science fiction is science fantasy or just fantasy with some aesthetic changes. Superhero fiction is fantasy fiction. Time travel stories are fantasy.
Elemental marks Pixar’s first romance-focused story since Wall-E, and as a fan of romance stories—yes, most people also find that surprising when they find out—I have to give it a glowing endorsement right off the bat.
Before listening to The Storage Papers, I never thought a podcast could scare me as much as The Magnus Archives. That the mind-melting, the dark-is-dangerous thrill it gave me was the peak of horror storytelling.
The Legacy Saga taught me an interesting lesson about tropes, genre conventions, and storytelling methods that I simply cannot enjoy. In the grand scheme, there’s nothing terribly wrong with The Legacy Saga, no glaring sin, but it was a slog to listen to for any amount of time. The minor issues stack up quickly, and what could’ve been a fun experience turned into a malaise.
The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Morality is, for one thing, the piece of media with the longest title I’ve possibly ever reviewed. It’s also a podcast series with a premise I love. Though I have no idea how well Warehouse 13 holds up in quality or how well it has aged with its content since 2009, I used to be a massive fan of that series, and The Mistholme Museum feels like its cousin.
The Domestic Life of Anthony Todd puts me in an interesting conundrum. The early episodes have a negative quality that, as the story continues, turns out to be intentional and basically a plot point. But that didn’t make the first few episodes not annoying for its inclusion. Mulling it over almost becomes a question of artistic intent over general podcasting practices. Is it a good inclusion if it serves the story but risks the impatient listener simply bouncing off?
Time for the second, much more powerful of the Historic Brawl decks I promised: Elf Ball. A deck that seeks to overrun the opponent with lots of creatures pumped to absurd power by Craterhoof Behemoth.
Luca serves as another reminder of why Pixar has the reputation it does. Yes, stuff like The Good Dinosaur and the Cars franchise unsettled that a little, making it guesswork if the newest Pixar movie will be worth the time, but Luca is worth the time.
Nimona hit the media landscape with such explosive power that avoiding spoilers was difficult. A stylized, bombastic, irreverent sci-fi fantasy mashup with an animation style reminiscent of Spider-Verse and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has become a winning combination, practically guaranteed to get the attention of the critic community, and I’m no different. The question of Nimona was when I would review it, not if I would.
