Tag: animation

  • Retro Streaming Movie Adventures: Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

    Seita and Setsuko looking worried with fire behind them in Grave of the Fireflies.
    Seita and Setsuko facing each other and looking at something between them below the bottom of the image in Grave of the Fireflies.

    Boy, Studio Ghibli sure is good at crushing hearts.

    I spent way to long faking the logo for this fake poster, and it’s still not quite right.

    A poster for Grave of the Fireflies mimicking the poster for Ghost World.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Movie Pass Adventures Double Feature: Heretic & Memoir of a Snail

    Today was a “two movies at two theaters” day: Heretic at the Universal Citywalk AMC, and Memoir of a Snail at Alamo Drafthouse. Gotta keep those movie passes working!

    Heretic

    Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East in Heretic.

    Once I assumed that these were two Mormon missionaries who had so little sense of danger that they’d walk wide-eyed into a unsafe situation, this movie was a lot of fun. Nonsense, but fun. Also: Hugh Grant is a natural at playing a creep. What a surprise.

    Memoir of a Snail

    Grace & Pinkie from Memoir of a Snail.

    If you saw clips from this and thought “Oh, a stop-motion animation movie- I shall bring my children,” maybe give it another look before you load the kids into the SUV and head down to the multiplex. It’s a great movie, but it’s clear from the very first scene where someone dies- not in a Disney “maybe they’re just sleeping” way, but in a “gasping for their final breaths in their deathbed” way- that this is made for adults. Also, it’s Australian; are kids allowed to watch Australians (even in cartoon form)?

    Bonus image!

    I can only use one image for the featured image. Normally when I see two movies in a day I mash the images together in some way, but I didn’t care for the one I made for Heretic so I’m hiding it here. I bet you will love it so much that you will write an epic poem about it.

    (Poorly) Stylized image of Sophie Thatcher, Hugh Grant, and Chloe East in Heretic.
    Or maybe you won’t.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: The Wild Robot

    The eyes of The Wild Robot

    It turns out stories can be powerful when told well, even if you already know them. Anyone who saw the trailer for The Wild Robot – hell, anyone who has watched a few “uplifting and emotional” movies – could guess the broad strokes of the story, but that doesn’t matter here because it tells its tale so well.

    And it’s not without surprises. There are some graphic deaths early in the film, and they’re not off-screen or silhouettes. They’re small, and not the more anthropomorphized creatures, but they still surprised me.