"Chicken for Linda!" and "Louise by the Shore"

France has a long and storied history of producing interesting animated films.  I want to discuss two that I've only just gotten a chance to see - Chiara Malta and Sebastien Laudenbach's "Chicken for Linda!" and Jean-Francois Laguionie's "Louise by the Shore." 

First, we have "Chicken for Linda!" a rowdy, colorful, traditionally animated feature about a woman named Paulette (Clotilde Hesme) and her eight year-old daughter Linda (Melinée Leclerc).  Due to a family tragedy, there's been some difficulty in their relationship.  One day a misunderstanding causes Paulette to punish Linda for something she didn't do. To make it up to her, she promises to make Linda a beloved dish of chicken with peppers - but with a general strike going on it seems like it's impossible to buy any chicken.  Paulette is desperate, roping her sister Astrid (Laetitia Dosch) into the quest.  And a rookie police officer (Estéban).  And a truck driver (Patrick Pineau).  And a gaggle of Linda's friends and other neighborhood kids.  

I love the animation in "Chicken for Linda!"  The characters are drawn with black outlines and colored in with exactly one hue for each character.  Linda is yellow, Paulette is orange, their cat is bright purple, and a certain troublesome chicken is beet-red. Linda's friends come in sage green and chartreuse and violet.  This means you can easily track everyone on screen, no matter how crazy the action gets or how crowded the frame becomes.  And there is quite a crowd.  I was delighted to discover that "Chicken for Linda!" is an old fashioned slapstick comedy, full of chases and pratfalls and silliness.  The story has many unexpected twists and turns, and the cast keeps getting bigger and bigger as more people are drawn into the adventure.  And somehow there's room for everyone, even stressed out Astrid getting a song number about devouring sweets.  Even better, this is a comedy with heart, where the characters are messy and make lots of mistakes, but love and good food win the day.   

It's been a while since I've seen a proper film about community building - the kind that Preston Sturges or the Ealing Studios used to make.  Strangers meet in odd circumstances.  People from different walks of life connect and work toward a common goal.  Broken and damaged relationships get mended and renewed.  And of course the kids refuse to be left on the sidelines and try to fix the problem themselves.  "Chicken for Linda!" reminds me of how much I like these kinds of films, and is exactly the cinematic experience that I didn't know I needed this season.  It's a small and unassuming piece of animation full of exasperated women, befuddled men, riotous children, and poultry on the run.  And it's my favorite animated film I've seen in a long while.

Onwards.  You might know Jean-Francois Laguionie from  "The Painting," a lovely 2D/3D hybrid feature that was released in 2011.  His follow-up, "Louise by the Shore," is a much more slow-paced, modest effort rendered in simple traditional animation.  I found it very affecting.  We follow an elderly woman on holiday named Louise (Diane Dassigny), who misses her train and finds herself alone in a deserted seaside town during the off-season.  Resourceful and capable, Louise is soon building herself a new place of residence and exploring the shoreline, not ready to go home.  However, winter is coming and the weather is quickly turning bad.

The French title of the film is "Louise en Hiver," which translates as "Louise in Winter."  Here winter not only refers to the season but the stage of Louise's life that she is struggling to cope with.  The story is a metaphor for dealing with old age and everything that comes with it - loneliness, regret, and sometimes quickly changing circumstances.  As Louise explores her shoreline, she also takes trips into her memories of her girlhood and loved ones.  Hers is very nearly the only voice we hear in the film, usually through a grumpy, but tender inner monologue.  

Reality is a very fluid thing in "Louise by the Shore," with its dreamlike setting and unlikely premise.  Surely an entire town wouldn't be totally abandoned during the winter months, would it?  The painterly visuals and relatively lack of incident gives the film an existential air, but the atmosphere is light and the company is pleasant.  I don't know if I'm supposed to recognize Louise, but she's certainly a memorable personality, and I'm very glad that I got to spend seventy-odd minutes with her and her movie.       

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My Top Ten Episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks"

I decided not to write a season review for the final season of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," because despite a good amount of serialization, the show has always worked best as an episodic series for me.  Also, I lost track of the seasons at some point and binged the whole ending in one go.   So I'm just going to skip ahead to the Top Ten episode list, where I'll be discussing my favorites episode by episode, and the last season will definitely get some representation.

Episodes are unranked and listed by airdate.  Despite the overrepresentation of the first season, I really enjoyed the show consistently the whole way through.  Lots of "Trek" references ahead, and it gets pretty nerdy.  

"Moist Vessel" - You can see the influence of "Rick and Morty" the most clearly in the first season.  Mike McMahon is an alumnus, and definitely brought some of the sensibilities of that show with him to "Lower Decks."  Here, we get concepts that you could never do in a live action "Star Trek" show, like the terraforming agent wreaking havoc on the Cerritos and the ascension ("Space koala!").  And yet, the best gags are character based, with Mariner's priceless reactions to being promoted. 

"Terminal Provocations" - This is the first Badgey episode, and the one where he works the best.  Honestly, the joke wore pretty thin after they brought them back a few times, but Badgey's introduction is absolutely priceless.  Having a holographic assistant character based on Microsoft Office's Clippy is funny enough, but then they're also a talking Starfleet icon badge?  And they're evil?  And Rutherford has to resort to some pretty extreme violence to put him down?  It's perfect.  

"Crisis Point" - The entire episode is a spoof on the "Star Trek" movie franchise, complete with modified credits sequences, ridiculously drawn out beauty shots of the Cerritos, J.J. Abrams lens flares all over the bridge, and Mariner playing a campy Khan figure named Vindicta.  Of course, the meat of the story is Mariner confronting some of her own issues through the holodeck therapy, and Boimler finally learning the truth about Mariner being the Captain's kid - which predictably freaks him out.  

"No Small Parts" - The first season had some significant competition, but the appearance of a special guest star convinced me it had to be on this list.  I think the big sacrifice play would have had a lot more impact if it stuck, but this was still a chance to see the Cerritos handling a major crisis with some real stakes.  Bonus points for the introduction of exocomp Peanut Hamper and turning the dopey Pakleds from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" into some pretty formidable villains.  

"I, Excretus" - This is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series because Boimler demonstrates his ability to be a total badass for the first time.  He spends most of the episode grinding a holodeck training simulation of a Borg mission until he's turned himself into the coolest action hero ever.  Meanwhile, it's nice to see Freeman and Mariner getting along, and other familiar "Trek" plots and scenarios getting goosed in the other simulations - including a wild new take on "The Naked Time."

"Grounded" - I picked the premiere of season three instead of the finale of season two because I love the way that it shows how much Mariner has progressed as a character over the last two seasons.  The big cliffhanger isn't resolved because of her efforts, but boy does she put in the effort.  This involves hijacking a theme park ride, complete with a hologram of Zephram Cochrane, then hijacking the Cerritos, and finally being brought down a peg when she learns Starfleet did the right thing anyway.  

"Reflections" - This is easily the best Rutherford episode, where we finally learn what's going on with his sinister implant and discover what a different person he was in his past.  I haven't written enough about Tendi, but this is such a good Tendi episode too - giving her relationship with Rutherford some emphasis.  This is also the episode where Mariner and Boimler are essentially stuck manning a recruitment booth at a job fair the whole time, and Mariner gets the opportunity to process her life choices. 

"The Inner Fight" - Nerd that I am, I absolutely loved that the last two episodes of season four paid so much tribute to the original "Lower Decks" episode of "The Next Generation" that was a big inspiration for this show.  They brought Robert Duncan McNeill back again, this time to reprise his one-episode role as the bad influence Nick Locarno!  I also found it very sweet that Mariner had a significant connection to the departed Ensign Sito in her younger days - I always loved that character.

"Starbase 80?!" - At last, the crew of the Cerritos visits the notorious backwater Starbase 80, which offers some interesting surprises.   Most of the episode functions as a horror thriller, with a giant bat and something that's turning people into zombies.  However, the "don't judge a book by its cover" message is delivered just right, and the new characters are all delightful.  I was so glad that the "Lower Decks" series finale provided an extra coda to this episode that ties up a lot of loose ends.  

"Fissure Quest" - I suppose that it was inevitable that "Star Trek" would end up exploring the multiverse, and this is the best possible result.  The episode is spent with the crew of an entirely new ship, populated by alternate versions of familiar characters - Boimler's clone, a Garak and Bashir who got married, a T'Pol, a Curzon Dax, and many, many Harry Kims.  It's pure fanservice, and yet it works so well because nobody's playing the material for laughs.  I hope to see this group of characters again one day.

Honorable Mentions:  "Those Old Scientists" (Technically a "Brave New Worlds" episode, or it would totally be on the list), "First First Contact," "Hear All, Trust Nothing," "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place," "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption," "Caves," and "The New Next Generation."

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Hello "Helluva Boss"

I liked Vivienne Medrano's "Hazbin Hotel," enough that I sought out her other series, the independently produced "Helluva Boss," which has put out a  pilot and fifteen episodes over the last five years (at the time of writing).  It's a rare successful web-distributed cartoon, a gleefully vulgar, noisy piece of work that feels like it came out of the most anarchic depths of the internet.    

"Helluva Boss" takes place in the same universe as "Hazbin Hotel," though a different neighborhood.  The I.M.P. (Immediate Murder Professionals) consist of Blitzo (Brandon Rogers), Moxxie (Richard Horvitz), and Millie (Vivian Nixon), all Hell-dwelling imps who have set themselves up as professional killers.  They take jobs from the recently deceased to assassinate their enemies on Earth, usually in the most scorched-Earth way possible.  Blitzo's adopted daughter Loona (Erica Lindbeck) and boyfriend Stolas (Bryce Pinkham), also make regular appearances.  Like "Hazbin," there's a song number or two in every episode, lots of cursing, and lots of characters who look like overdesigned furries (Loona's a "hellhound," and Stolas is an anthropomorphized owl demon).  Unlike "Hazbin," the animation is rougher, the storylines are more chaotic, and it doesn't feel like the plot is in any hurry to get anywhere.  And that's just fine.  

The first eight-episode season is very crude, with inconsistent animation quality, some performances dialed up way too high, and adult content overkill.  Sometimes this is funny, but not as often as I hoped.  The episodes that actually follow the stated premise of I.M.P. going on missions to Earth are usually the most boring ones.  "Helluva Boss" doesn't hit its stride until it shifts its attention to more character-centric stories, which have been more earnest and sincere.  Medrano clearly has a penchant for LGBT+ romances, father-daughter reconciliations, and stories about overcoming abusive relationships.  In the second season, "Helluva Boss" spotlights peripherally connected characters like Blitzo's childhood friend Fizzarolli (Alex Brightman) and his boyfriend Asmodeus (James Monroe Iglehart).  Stolas and Blitzo have emerged as the show's most solid leads, both deeply flawed single dads with a lot of personal baggage.  While I like Moxxie and Millie and their terribly sweet romance, they don't have a whole lot to do compared to the rest of the cast.    

I don't mind the show constantly going off on tangents, especially as they're expanding the universe and showing how the various parts of Hell function.  And I don't mind that the stories are getting more touchy-feely as we spend less time at I.M.P. and delve into everybody's backstories.  However, it's clear why the "Helluva Boss" fandom is so notoriously contentious, because this definitely isn't the show that Medrano and company started out making in 2019.  There's still plenty of vulgarity and some beautifully animated carnage in most episodes, but the emphasis on humor has waned considerably.  Instead of fighting murderous human tots or making chumps out of annoying cherubs, episodes are now devoted to mental health struggles and toxic relationships.  Some of the major characters are also feeling sidelined.  Loona, for instance, was pretty well established in the first season as a surly Goth teenager who works as the I.M.P. receptionist, and bails the gang out of trouble when necessary.  She disappeared for most of the second season, along with all traces of the tentative self-discovery storyline she seemed to be starting on.       

On top of this, "Helluva Boss" is a true independent production, without the backing of a major studio or streamer, so the releases have always been kind of a mess.  Long hiatuses are the norm, and Medrano doesn't seem to be the best at marketing or curbing expectations, so the fanbase is pretty feral.  Still, I think it's a positive that Medrano and her collaborators can do things like hold back the final episode of the first season to fix production issues, and roll ahead with the release of the second season in the meantime.  The production quality is getting better, and attracting some interesting collaborators and guest stars.

"Helluva Boss" feels like the most 2024 show I am currently watching - culturally, aesthetically, and experientially.  I binged most of the episodes off of a Youtube playlist and wound up down a rabbit hole of analysis and reaction videos in the process.  There is definitely more fan-made content than official content out there.  A recent trailer promises that the rest of the second season is supposed to release in 2024, but we'll see.  I think the show is worth the wait and the frustration though.  There's definitely nothing else quite like it.    

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Checking In to "Hazbin Hotel"

I've thought long and hard about how to describe the adult animated series, "Hazbin Hotel."  I'm going to go with a dark Disney musical that takes place in Hell, where most of the heroes are demonic furries, and everyone curses a lot.  The art style is very mid-2000s Cartoon Network, crossed with Tim Burton-y aesthetics.  The characters wear lots of suits with bowties.  Lots of stripes.  Lots of gigantic eyes.  

Finding the origins of the show led me down several intriguing internet rabbit holes, to "viral creator" Vivienne Medrano, aka Vivziepop.  She's a popular independent animator who built up a following through Youtube videos and webcomics, and managed to crowdfund the pilot for "Hazbin Hotel," which she posted to her Youtube Channel in 2019.  At the time of writing, it has 100 million views and a passel of rabid fans, so it's no wonder A24 took notice.  Five years later, the first season was released on Amazon Prime.  And it's fascinating stuff.

Charlie Morninstar (Erika Henningsen) is the bubbly, do-gooder princess of Hell.  As a naive nepo-baby, she wants to help the denizens of Hell with her latest project, the Hazbin Hotel - intended to redeem the damned and help them ascend to Heaven.  Charlie has the support of her girlfriend Vaggie (Stephanie Beatriz), a very untrustworthy Overlord of Hell named Alastor the Radio Demon (Amir Talai), and his minions Husk (Keith David) and Niffty (Kimiko Glenn), who work as hotel staff.  They start out with two guests - sex worker Angel Dust (Blake Roman) and slithery Sir Pentious (Alex Brightman).  Unfortunately, Heaven hasn't signed off on this idea.  They only seem interested in sending down stabby Exorcists every year to murder Hell's inhabitants (yes, you can die again in Hell) as population control.

"Hazbin" is initially a very tough watch.  There are a ton of characters to introduce, complicated worldbuilding to explain, and lots of different arcs and mysteries to set up.  And frankly, it does this pretty badly.  The pace moves way too fast and I frequently felt like I was missing information.  The chaotic first episode also does that thing that all adult animated series seem to feel obligated to do, which is to pile on the adult content in the first episode to make it very obvious that children should steer clear.  The overkill is not pleasant, and I nearly jumped ship after the premiere.  I think that it's helpful to watch the original "Hazbin Hotel" pilot on Youtube before the rest of the series, because it handles some of the introductions better.  There are also "Hazbin" comics and music videos, which provide a few more answers and bits of context.

I didn't give up after the first episode, however, because the show does a couple of things very well.  The first are the musical numbers.  We get two in each episode, infectious Broadway style songs written and composed by Andrew Underberg and Sam Haft, and sung by stage vets who know what they're doing.  I was not enjoying the exorcist leader Adam (Brightman) until one of his rants turned into a fantastic villain song, "Hell is Forever."  Or there's the villain song that gets taken over by a different villain, "Stayed Gone."  And when Charlie's dad Lucifer (Jeremy Jordan) shows up, of course he gets a number, "Hell's Greatest Dad."  I think Angel's traumatic "Poison" is probably my favorite though, along with the more cheerful "Loser, Baby" duet that gives Keith David a chance to shine.   

 

Also, once things settle down a little, the lead characters are an appealing bunch - Alastor's my favorite for his old-timey radio announcer voice and serial killer vibes.  They're very LGBT friendly, with a lesbian couple front and center, plus others who are genderfluid and/or queer-coded.  There are definitely a few cross-species romances going on.  When you get past all the vulgarities and debauchery, there's a lot of heartfelt talk of emotions and friendship and never giving up in the face of adversity.  A whole episode is devoted to Charlie reconnecting to her dad in a terribly wholesome way.  The darkest material - and the show does get dark - is handled with surprising sensitivity and care.  

So, there's a lot less parody of Disney musicals than I expected, and a lot more of, well, actually sticking to formula and being a Disney musical.  "Hazbin Hotel" talks dirty, but it's got so much earnest theater kid energy, it's no wonder that its audience skews young and obsessive.  However, there's plenty of room for improvement.  A few characters are so over-designed it hurts to look at them.  And the writer's room desperately needs reinforcements.  And it really should not have been so difficult to find the prequel comics that explain how Angel met Charlie.

It's going to be a long wait, but I look forward to season two.

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"Wish" and "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"

So, "Wish" is a financial disaster, and I'm afraid that it's mostly deserved.  The film on its own isn't bad, but looks woefully mediocre next to all the other animated features from the past twelve months that have managed to do just about everything better.  The Disney take on cel-shaded CGI looks a little basic next to the recent "Spider-verse," "Ninja Turtles," and "Puss in Boots" movies.  The characters are highly derivative from other recent Disney musicals, with leading lady Asha (Ariana DeBose) entirely too reminiscent of Mirabel from "Encanto" and Anna from the "Frozen" movies.  Worst of all are the songs, which are aping Lin Manuel-Miranda something fierce, but some with lyrics that are so inept as to be unsingable.  And if you've made a Disney soundtrack that is unsingable, you're in deep trouble.

The worst part of this is that the entire concept behind "Wish" is serving as a sort of origin story to many of the famous tropes and concepts from the Disney animated canon.  The Wishing Star from "Pinocchio" is its own character here, who comes down from the sky to help Asha when she wishes on him.  She lives in the kingdom of Rosas, where the sorcerer king Magnifico (Chris Pine) has manipulated the populace into giving him their deepest held wishes - which manifest as glowing crystal balls - and are sort of parts of their souls?  It's not very clear.  Anyway, Asha has help from seven dear friends, some talking animals, and eventually her own magic.  The Disney references come fast and furious.  But even if they're by design, it doesn't make the patchwork of familiar tropes less awkward or the story less half-baked.  Many of the recent Disney animated features have felt incredibly rushed, often with parts of multiple ideas weirdly mashed together in the script.  "Wish" is absolutely rife with this, especially the musical sequences that were clearly written for different characters, or different versions of characters.  

As a lifelong Disney animation nut, I can't say I didn't enjoy picking out references, or that Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine didn't try their hardest, or that there wasn't clearly a lot of love packed into the film.  However, like too many other Disney projects lately, "Wish" was clearly rushed out the door and suffered for it.  The attempts to be metatextual inevitably felt cynical and pandering, often due to the sheer volume and arbitrary nature of the references.  I've seen a few jokes online about how the movie was written by ChatGPT, and it certainly feels that way at times.  It irks me because I can see the potential for a much better film here, and the audience certainly exists for one.  However, by not taking more care with this production, Disney has not only flubbed "Wish," but it's flubbed what was supposed to be a celebration of Disney's artistic legacy, and now the movie stands for nothing except corporate hubris.

On to "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget," a direct sequel to the 2000 Aardman film "Chicken Run."  I was probably influenced by seeing this right after "Wish," but it was such a relief to see a competently handled, old school animated feature.  Aardman's stop motion animation has improved over the last two decades, and there's probably a lot of invisible CGI I'm not aware of, but there's still a lovely handmade quality to the puppets and their miniature world.  Several of the original voice actors have been replaced, notably Zachary Levi filling in for Mel Gibson as Rocky the Rooster, but you'll hardly notice after the first five minutes.  And instead of a prison escape movie patterned off of WWII POW action films, "Dawn of the Nugget" has a spy themed caper with a mad scientist and a few aesthetic nods to James Bond and the swinging '60s.   

   

There's not much in "Dawn of the Nugget" you haven't seen before.  Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky's daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey) is a mischievous little escape artist who runs away from the safety of the bird preserve to see the world.  She's quickly caught and sent to Fun-Land Farms, which looks like a chicken paradise, but is really a high-tech processing facility run by the nutty Dr. Fry (Nick Mohammed).  Ginger and Rocky, naturally, dust off their old capering skills to break into the facility and get Molly out.  However, there are many complications, including the return of their great enemy, Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson).  However, for me the familiarity was exactly what I wanted, particularly the well-constructed visual gags, the very British humor, and Babs (Jane Horrocks) being a cheerful dim bulb at every opportunity.  It's not nostalgia being evoked here, but instead a sense of continuity.    

Aardman films are few and far between, and I haven't seen one yet that I didn't enjoy.  "Dawn of the Nugget" often feels like a throwback to much older animated projects, but is constructed with such care and such commitment that I wish they made more like it.  I have no idea if modern kids will respond to its earnestness and cheesy punnery, but I adored every second. 

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"Pantheon" Year Two and "Pluto"

I'm not sure that "Pantheon" is ever legally going to make it to most of the world, since Amazon Prime acquired the show from AMC, it has only released the second season in the Australia/New Zealand region, and nowhere else.  However, VPNs are a thing, and if you're a fan of the first season of "Pantheon," you're going to want to see the second.

This picks right up where the first season left off, following Caspian and Maddie in the wake of the global blackout as the world becomes aware of the U.Is.  The story takes several twists and turns, which I won't spoil, but they involve the further attempts of Stephen Holstrom's team to find a cure for the existing flaws in the U.Is, and the attempts of the world powers to respond to the reality of U.Is.  There are several time jumps, several wild leaps into more theoretical realms of science-fiction, and the love story you may have suspected was developing in season one resolves in a satisfying way.  I was critical of the first season for being so careful not to step too far into abstraction and ambiguity, but that's not true of the second season.    As the show explores more facets of U.I., the worldbuilding really steps up.  The second season also explores artificial intelligences, introducing the character of MIST (Thomasin McKenzie), an A.I. who latches on to Maddie.  

Fans who liked the paranoid thriller elements of "Pantheon" may be disappointed that the show focuses less and less on thrills as time goes on.  There's plenty of geopolitical conflict and occasional action scenes - the U.I. fight each other and a new anti-U.I. program called Safe Surf - but most of the mystery and conspiracy elements are phased out.  However, I like that "Pantheon" leans into extrapolating all the consequences of U.I. instead, from early fears about them taking over the world to the possibilities of integration into human society.  I like the way that the characters grow and change, including Ellen (Rosemarie DeWitt) involving herself in politics and reconnecting to Peter Waxman (Ron Livingston), and Maddie eventually figuring out her own path toward enlightenment.  The ending is one of the headiest, weirdest, and most fitting jaunts into the unknown that I've ever seen, even in science-fiction.  Not everyone is going to appreciate this, but I'm thrilled that "Pantheon" exists for those who will.

And now, I feel  I should say a little about "Pluto," which was an anime that I had been looking forward to since it was announced.  Based on a manga by Naoki Urasawa, which was itself a modernized adaptation of one of Osamu Tezuka's "Astro Boy" stories, the show is a detective mystery about a future world where robots are common, and a mysterious force that is going around killing off the most powerful ones, along with their human creators and defenders.  An android detective named Gesicht (Shinshu Fuji) determines that the perpetrator is a mysterious new robot named Pluto (Toshihiko Seki).  In order to stop Pluto, Gesicht enlists the help of the robot boy hero Atom (Yoko Hisaka), his sister Uran (Minori Suzuki), and the other robots that Pluto is targeting.   

I've seen most of the anime based off of earlier Urasawa manga, including "Monster" and "Master Keaton," and enjoyed them.  Urasawa is great at tales of suspense and criminal masterminds.  Unfortunately, he's not so good at action, and despite so much of "Pluto" being about these powerful robots who can cause great destruction, any real fights are brief or anticlimactic.  Pluto himself is often treated like a sinister supernatural entity, capable of generating huge storms and tornadoes that obfuscate what's really going on with the early robot deaths.  The mystery itself is also underwhelming - very talky with a lot of characters to keep track of.  It was a bad idea to have forty-minute episodes, since the pacing  frequently slows to a crawl.  I'm not fond of what Urasawa did with Tezuka's premise either, which revolves around the major players all being involved with a Middle-Eastern war in the past, lots of convenient amnesia, and way too much ham-handed hand-wringing about robot and human relations.  The Middle-Eastern characters in particular come across as very tropey and outdated.  

The animation doesn't help.  Urasawa's characters always look a certain way, and that's fine, but they don't offer much opportunity for interesting visuals.  Tezuka's robots, on the other hand, are usually very dynamic and exciting.  I was very disappointed to discover that the robots in "Pluto" are very much Urasawa characters, who mostly stand around talking in very ordinary environments.  When they do fight, it tends to look less like "Ghost in the Shell" and more like a gritty, depressing, real-world war drama.  Add some bad CGI and no humor whatsoever, and you wind up with a slog.  "Pluto" might have come off better if there weren't half a dozen other, much more interesting animated shows for adults that came out in the same month, but that's how it is.      

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"Leo" and "Mutant Mayhem"

Let's talk about some movies starring animated reptiles today.

Netflix's animated film "Leo" was a hard sell for me.  Adam Sandler's has a mixed record when it comes to films he'd written himself, and I hadn't enjoyed any of the animated ones.  Also, the title character that Sandler plays is an elderly lizard who sounds like all the other off-putting elderly characters that Sandler has played over the years.  Fortunately, Leo is considerably more interesting than most Sandler comedy leads.

Leo and his turtle pal Squirtle (Bill Burr) live in the terrarium of the fifth grade classroom of Mrs. Salinas (Allison Strong) as class pets.  When Leo learns that he's reaching the end of his natural life span, he starts secretly talking to the kids in the class to give advice on their problems. He helps talkative Summer (Sunny Sandler) be more considerate and make friends.  He helps rich snob Jayda (Sadie Sandler) become more grounded.  He helps held-back class bully Anthony (Ethan Smigel) and Eli (Roey Smigel), the kid with helicopter parents who have a literal drone following him around.  He even helps the miserable substitute teacher, Mrs. Malkin (Cecily Strong), who takes over while Mrs. Salinas is on maternity leave.

As you can probably tell from how many of the kids are voiced by children of Adam Sandler and co-writer Robert Smigel, "Leo" is a vanity project.  However, it's well-written, keenly observed, unusually timely, and completely kid-appropriate.  There are a lot of fun little running jokes and subversions that I appreciated, like the kindergarteners acting like swarms of piranhas, and none of the major characters really being a villain, though several of them do villainous things.  The animation is just good enough that it doesn't draw much attention to itself, and thankfully avoids a lot of the gross-out tropes I associate with some of Sandler's past efforts.  If you're a "Hotel Transylvania" fan, many of the same creatives are involved.  I went in with low expectations, and was happily surprised.

The new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie, however, was one of the better films I saw from last summer.  I'm very familiar with the '90s Turtle cartoons and movies, and frankly this was never my franchise.  However, the new "Mutant Mayhem" movie from director Jeff Rowe, and written by a team that includes Rowe, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg, is one I can count myself a fan of.  It's a total reboot, starring the four mutant turtle brothers, Donatello (Micah Abbey), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon), and Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), who now sound and act like actual, real-world teenagers.  They spout pop culture references, constantly talk over each other, sneak around behind the back of their protective foster father Splinter (Jackie Chan!), and get excited and silly when they discover something cool.  There's this wonderful new energy and verve to the characters that is so appealing and infectious.

In this version of the story, the Turtles want very badly to join the normal, above-ground world, but they're aware that they're scary mutants and have to stay hidden.    They decide the best way to win over the public is to use their ninja skills to become heroes, and soon befriend a high schooler named April (Ayo Edibiri) who helps them out.  There's a larger criminal conspiracy going on involving the evil corporation responsible for their mutations, and a bunch of other mutants voiced by celebrities who are the result of other accidents and experiments.  However, the bulk of the screen time is wisely devoted to the four Turtles and their growing pains. 

   

I love the way this movie looks, taking the "Spider-verse" film as a starting point, and creating a much more rough-hewn visual style that sometimes looks like choppy stop-motion animation, and really goes for the more exaggerated expressions and movements associated with old school traditional character animation.  Everything looks a little uglier, a little weirder, and a little more off-kilter than the depictions of these characters that we've seen before, but there's also so much more personality and emotion there too.  April finally feels like a real person.  The Turtles aren't just collections of tropes, but distinct individuals.  This is one of the best reboots of any franchise I've ever seen, especially since it makes so clear that the current generation of kids is the target audience, and the creators are concerned with appealing to their sensibilities more than anyone else's.  And thank goodness.

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"Harley Quinn," Year Three, and "Battle of the Super Sons"

Spoilers for the first two seasons of "Harley Quinn" ahead.

I've liked the animated "Harley Quinn" series pretty well up until this point, but I feel like the series has turned a corner that wasn't in its best interests.  We've moved past Harley wanting to prove herself as a supervillain and trying to get past her ex, the Joker.  Now she's officially hooked up with Poison Ivy and is facing a new set of problems - being in a new relationship, Poison Ivy's burgeoning megalomania, and some confusing encounters with Batgirl (Briana Cuoco) and other members of the Batfamily.

Maintaining an anarchic, subversive comedy program that also has a lot of continuity and sincere character progression can be a tricky balance, especially in later seasons.  The fun of the more mean-spirited humor starts to wear off, and B-villains making sarcastic, self-aware quips feels old hat.  "Harley Quinn" has never had the dramatic underpinnings of something like "Rick & Morty," so when it tries to have its main characters do some real soul searching, it can feel out of character.  Ivy developing a taste for world domination after two seasons of being relatively chill is probably the season's biggest blunder.  I think the larger problem is that the show's initial premise has run its course and some of the characters really don't have anything to do.  There's a whole subplot involving Clayface impersonating Billy Bob Thornton for a James Gunn movie that doesn't really work.  Frank spends most of the season as a kidnapping victim and MacGuffin.  Joker's continuing adventures as an upright citizen are starting to come across as a little bizarre.  

Fortunately, we spend a lot more time with the Batfamily this year, and they're revealed to be as dysfunctional as the villains.  This is relatively uncharted territory, so most of the jokes still land.  Bruce Wayne (Diedrich Bader) is especially screwed up, in an unhealthy relationship with Catwoman (Sanaa Lathan), and still obsessed with his dead parents.  Easily the best episode this season is when Harley gets to go spelunking in Batman's psyche, and remind everybody that she used to be a psychiatrist.  I think Harley growing up a little more and sorting out her priorities this year worked fine, but the show is juggling so many other characters now that she's gotten a little lost in her own show.  There's still plenty to love here, especially for the DC nerds, but "Harley Quinn" is running out of steam.       

Over in another corner of the DC animated universe, Warner Animation's direct-to-video animated features about DC universe superheroes have been quietly proliferating since 2007, and now there are nearly fifty titles.  I've seen a handful of these over the years of varying quality.  They're much closer to the DC comics continuity than most of the other film and television adaptations, and they've done direct adaptations of famous stories like "The Death of Superman," "The Long Halloween," and even the notorious "The Killing Joke."  Many of these are aimed at more mature fans, but one of the latest is very kid friendly and surprisingly entertaining: "Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons."

In case you weren't aware, Batman and Superman are both fathers in the DC comics.  Superman (Travis Willingham) and Lois Lane (Laura Bailey) are the parents of Jonathan Kent (Jack Dylan Grazer), a rambunctious kid who learns that he has superpowers and a superhero father on one very special birthday.  Unfortunately, this also happens to be at the same time a mysterious alien force is threatening Earth.  So, Superman and son end up in the Batcave consulting with Batman (Troy Baker).  The latest Robin is Bruce Wayne's son Damian (Jack Griffo), an edgy little ex-child assassin who is still adjusting to being one of the good guys.  Naturally, Jonathan and Damien have to team up, when their fathers are put out of commission.  

"Battle of the Super Sons" is a nice entry point to get to know this set of characters.  It's an origin story for Jonathan, and offers an introduction to Damian without getting into his complicated history.  The cel-shaded CGI animation looks pretty close to feature film quality, the actors are all solid, and the fight scenes are especially cool.  I could easily see "Super Sons" as a jumping off point for a series or many further direct-to-video outings.  Frankly, the premise is so good that I'm surprised Damian and Jonathan haven't found their way into any of the live action adaptations yet.  On the other hand, the second that they do, they probably won't be allowed to be half as much fun as the versions we see here.  

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The Prophetic "Pantheon"

The AMC series "Pantheon" is a rare U.S. produced animated drama.  It reminds me of the late '90s and early 2000s science fiction anime that used to be popular in nerdy circles, before the YA action franchises took over.  There are direct references to "Ghost in the Shell" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion," but the obvious precursor to "Pantheon" is "Serial Experiments Lain," which is as much of an existential horror series as it is a terribly prescient story about the early internet age.  

"Pantheon" is based on the short stories of Ken Liu, and revolves around the concept of Uploaded Intelligence, or U.I., where human minds are scanned and uploaded into computers to live out a purely digital existence.  A teenager named Maddie Kim (Katie Chang) receives strange messages from someone online - maybe her father David (Daniel Dae Kim), who died four years ago.  Her mother Ellen (Rosemarie DeWitt) is obviously keeping secrets.  Meanwhile, a disaffected young hacker named Caspian (Paul Dano) discovers that his parents (Taylor Schilling, Aaron Eckhart) aren't what they seem, and have ties to Logarhythms, the company founded by deceased tech genius Stephen Holstrom (William Hurt).  Then there's Chandra (Raza Jaffrey), a brilliant engineer who we see being kidnapped in the first episode, and then having his mind forcefully and horrifically uploaded to the cloud in the second.  

While not as cerebral or as scientifically rigorous as some of its progenitors, "Pantheon" succeeds at being a techno-thriller that is both intelligent about the ideas it explores, and also genuinely thrilling to watch from episode to episode.  With a little shadowy espionage, a little body horror, and a stellar voice cast, "Pantheon" is genuine hard science fiction aimed at discerning adults.  The mysteries unfold at a satisfying pace, and come together in a gratifying way.  The animated medium allows it to be more ambitious than anything comparable in live action.  I want to tread lightly because of the spoilers, but how the U.I. appear and interact with each other, their virtual environments, and how everyone uses technology is all very thoughtful and well considered.  There's a lot of nerdy content here, from Maddie having emoji-only chat sessions, to Caspian running through logic problems at the dinner table.  At the same time, the writers are careful to keep relationships and emotions at the forefront.  A lovely, self-aware  tidbit of information from an early episode reveals that U.I. are less productive in the absence of emotion, because emotion is a prime driver of problem solving.      

One area where there's room for improvement is the show's animation.  "Pantheon" is a rare animated series where the episodes are forty-plus minutes, and even for an eight episode season, the budget couldn't have been insubstantial.  However, I wish the designs weren't so bland and familiar - the whole main cast could blend in with the background extras from "Invincible" or "The Boys: Diabolical."  We get some interesting depictions of digital spaces, but so much more could have been done here.  While I appreciate that "Pantheon" is very accessible and the writing and characterizations are especially strong, I wish it would take more chances when it comes to the visual storytelling.  A big reason why anime like "Lain" and "Ghost in the Shell" are so iconic is they pioneered so much of the visual language of how we depict the internet and virtual worlds.  Pantheon is clearly very fluent in this language, but also feels a little compromised in how literal and dialogue-heavy it is, always careful not to step too far into abstraction and ambiguity.  

And while "Pantheon" flirts with darker horror and paranoid conspiracy elements in the early episodes, eventually this gives way to a much more straightforward narrative about the morality and philosophy of creating a new technology.  I love the way that the show keeps escalating from episode to episode, never letting the status quo remain unchanged for too long.  It really commits to exploring multiple facets of the U.I. from several different points of view.  The societal implications are wonderfully grim, though never nihilistic.  I want to stress that this is a series for adults, despite the relatively low incidences of onscreen violence.  There are deaths and disturbing subject matter galore, about on par with something like "Black Mirror." In the end, though, "Pantheon" is more optimistic, and more about the better side of humanity than I was expecting.

Best of all, a second season has already been greenlit.  I can't wait to see more.

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"Turning Red" is Turning Heads

I never thought I'd see the day when PIXAR would make a movie aimed so directly at thirteen year-old girls, and one committed to existing in that awkward, gawky space inhabited by thirteen year-old girls.  It's a world of boy band obsessions and inappropriate crushes and uncomfortable conversations about periods - yes, this PIXAR movie acknowledges menstruation - and taking those first steps toward independence.  This feels like the movie "Brave" wanted to be, but didn't have the guts or the supportive creative environment to be.  

However, it's a different world at PIXAR now, and Domee Shi, the director of "Bao," has been able to make a very personal, very specific coming-of-age story with "Turning Red." Mei (Rosalie Chang) is a thirteen year-old who lives in Toronto with her temple keeper parents, Ming (Sanda Oh) and Jin (Orion Lee).  She's a good student and dutiful daughter at home, but secretly loves the 4*Town boy band, and hanging out with her trio of friends, Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park).  One day, Mei wakes up to discover that she's temporarily turned into a giant red panda, and it'll keep happening every time she can't keep her emotions under control.

"Turning Red" doesn't feel like a PIXAR film in many respects, and I mean that as a compliment.  The visuals are much more stylized, with flatter, more simplified character designs, a pastel color scheme, and an altogether cuddlier aesthetic.  The animation benefits from this, allowing for more cartoony, exaggerated movements and expressions.  There's still plenty of PIXAR's vaunted attention to detail.  "Turning Red" takes place in 2002, and the filmmakers gleefully recreate the specific little pop culture trends and visual hallmarks of being a Canadian eighth grader in that era.  Tamagotchi!  Friendship bracelets!  The Toronto SkyDome!  As an Asian-American viewer, I also award high marks for getting many cultural details right, like Chinese soap opera broadcasts, the army of Mei's aunties (with accents of varying degrees), and all the beautiful food.

Mei - who I probably identify a little too much with - is a great lead character.  She's much closer to a real girl than you usually see in cartoons, allowed to be a little bit of a brat and allowed to have inappropriate thoughts about cute boys.  Ming is your classic tiger mom, of course.  She loves Mei, but is often overbearing to the point of absurdity.  Mei may be struggling with the onset of puberty, but her mother is arguably even more caught off guard, totally unprepared for her little girl to start acting out and pushing back against her expectations.  The film is as much about her as it's about her daughter.  Some of the material that works the best comes in early scenes, where Ming reacts badly to finding Mei's sexy doodles of her crush, or shows up at her school with sanitary pads - both awful humiliations that fuel Mei's rebelliousness.  The "Teen Wolf" transformation hijinks are fun, but the mother/daughter conflicts are where "Turning Red" really offers something worthwhile.    

When you look at the last couple of PIXAR films, the studio is starting to tackle more specific types of experiences - like middle age malaise in "Soul," and siblinghood and grief in "Onward."  "Turning Red" shares a lot of common ground with "Inside Out," but from a much more boisterous and funny angle.  I love "Inside Out," but Riley is so idealized that she doesn't feel like a real kid, and most of that film is really from Joy's point of view as a parental figure.  Mei, on the other hand, despite how exaggerated her behavior is, rings much truer to someone going through the agony of early adolescence.  So, it makes sense that "Turning Red" makes for a much wilder, weirder, and unusual kind of movie.

I've seen some pushback about the film's content, which is more explicit about girls' growing pains than anything I've ever seen out of Disney, and very rare to see in an animated film from a major studio.  However, there's nothing here I'd say was close to inappropriate, especially in the age of "Steven Universe" and "Big Mouth."  It might spark some uncomfortable and challenging conversations for squeamish parents, though, which honestly might be a good thing.  

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"Sonic 2" and "The Bad Guys"

Let's take a look at some recent kids' movies.  

I liked the first "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie, and the sequel is more of the same.  This installment is more comfortable with the material, letting the evil Dr. Robotnik look more like the video game villain and less like Jim Carrey, and adding a few more characters from the franchise - notably Tails the Fox (Colleen O'Shaughnessey) and Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba).   Sonic (Ben Schwartz) is still living in Green Hills with his human pals Sheriff Wachowski (James Marsden) and his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter), but they're off to Hawaii for the wedding of Maddie's sister Rachel (Natasha Rothwell).  So, when Dr. Robotnik launches his latest attack, Sonic has to deal with it by himself.

"Sonic" is a very easy watch because it's calibrated to appeal to the very smallest children.  It's a lot of slapstick humor, gentle life lessons, and flashy chase sequences.  I appreciate that Sonic is a kid in these movies, full of chaotic energy and silly notions.  He gets into trouble at the drop of a hat.  The plot may be about finding a magic emerald, but the stakes are about Sonic making new friends, and cementing his bonds with his supportive found family.  There are plenty of little nods to "Sonic" lore for the fans of the franchise, but the movie is super approachable for kids on every front.  Adults, however, are not going to get much out it.  Sonic and his pals are all noise and excitement.  The human characters get their chances to be funny, but aside from Jim Carrey they stay on the sidelines.  There's a whole subplot with the wedding that the movie doesn't even bother to pay off in the end, though all due credit goes to Natasha Rothwell for being a very entertaining bridezilla.   

Now the latest Dreamworks movie, "The Bad Guys," has more for grown ups.  It's essentially a parody of heist and caper action films, starring a gang of five nefarious animal criminals, the Bad Guys: Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), and Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson).  They exist in a world inhabited by both human beings and "Zootopia" style anthropomorphized animals, where the Chief of Police is the hot tempered human, Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein, and the governor is a fox, Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz).  The Bad Guys are the most successful gang of criminals in operation, with a hideout full of stolen loot, and a long string of successful jobs.  Their latest target is a golden dolphin statue, intended for local do-gooder Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade), a guinea pig.

From the opening scene echoing "Pulp Fiction," to Mr. Snake's fashion choices, to the freeze frame jokes stuffed along the sides of the frame, this is a very self-aware movie.  However, it's also a movie that is very mindful of what it's trying to be, which is a well-rounded family picture.  There are butt and fart jokes, but not too many.  There are movie references, but nothing that gets too obtrusive.  The Bad Guys get to have fun being dastardly criminals for the first half of the movie, but soon Wolf discovers the benefits of being good, and decides to prod and poke his friends into reforming along with him.  The movie gamely embraces the absurd, and the characters have fun personalities and are allowed to interact in fun ways.  Mr. Snake is a grump who eats everything in sight.  Mr. Shark is a master of disguise and super dramatic.  Mr. Wolf is a charming rascal who knows he's the George Clooney of this bunch.

The look of the film won me over more than anything.  This is not a film that had a high budget, but it uses a tremendously appealing visual style, with 2D hand drawn animation over 3D CGI animation.  The line art adds that extra bit of oomph to facial expressions and action to sell the comedy and the silliness.  The animals are caricatured in fun ways that make use of their animal characteristics - Mr. Snake is shamelessly stealing moves from Sir Hiss from the Disney "Robin Hood," and it's fabulous.  Add the snazzy Daniel Pemberton score, and a strong cast of actors who all seem to be doing impressions of other actors, and it all adds up to a thoroughly good time.

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"The Matrix Resurrections" and "Encanto"

Here are some quick thoughts on some recent holiday streaming premieres…

There's no good reason for a fourth "Matrix" movie to exist, and co-writer/director Lana Wachowski is keenly aware of this.  "The Matrix Resurrections" is a strange, winding journey that starts out in a world where the original "Matrix" films were a video game series, created by Thomas "Neo" Anderson (Keanu Reeves), who subsequently had a mental breakdown and attempted suicide.  Now he's working on a new sequel for a Warner Brothers subsidiary, surrounded by sycophants, and constantly being distracted by an attractive mom (Carrie-Ann Moss) at the local cafe.  Significant chunks of the film acts as a metacommentary on living with the success of the original "Matrix" trilogy, and having to figure out a way to revisit it.  

This is not the only genre franchise film that has taken this approach, but it surprised me how much "Resurrections" digs into its examination of nostalgia, leans into the deja vu, and remains so self-aware about what it's doing.  Clips of the original film are used as flashes of Neo's memory throughout, similar to the way Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting" sequel incorporated bits of its original film.  There are scenes of writers discussing what made the trilogy special, and trading fan theories.  One character even has a nice rant on how "The Matrix" furthered along the blockbuster-fication of the movies.  Eventually the plot gets down to the business of chases and fights and gun battles, introducing new characters like Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and The Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris), and new versions of characters like Morpheus (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Agent Smith (Jonathan Groff).  Though the sequence of events is familiar, the universe gets updated considerably, checking in on old friends and showing how the status quo has changed during the long gap between films.

However, "Resurrections" keeps the story simple.  Neo wants to be with Trinity, and everything boils down to reconnecting the two of them.  Though it shows off a lot of fancy CGI and stunt work, this "Matrix" film is far less interested in set pieces and new effects technology.  Instead, all the narrative emphasis is put on Neo reorienting himself and learning to prioritize his feelings.  "Resurrections" is emphatically a love story, and how much you're invested in Neo and Trinity's relationship is going to determine how well the movie works for you.  Fortunately, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss are as magnetic as ever, and I had no problem taking some improbable leaps with them.  Those "Matrix" fans more interested in the philosophical and visually bombastic elements of the series, however, may come away less satisfied with its "love conquers all" attitude.  

Now, Disney Animation's latest feature is "Encanto," a musical set in Colombia, with songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  We're introduced to the magical Madrigal family, a clan of refugees who were granted a "miracle" long ago when they needed it most.  An enchanted haven, an "encanto" was created, along with a magical, sentient house, "Casita," for the family to inhabit, which became the cornerstone of a thriving new community.  Each Madrigal family member was also granted a superpower, their "gift" - all except for one granddaughter, Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz).  However, Mirabel is also the only one who seems to notice that cracks are forming in the house and the Madrigal family, and she decides to take the initiative and save the family's miracle.  

"Encanto" is packed full of detail and color and motion - maybe a little too full, because it's yet another animated film that I frequently wished would slow down long enough for me to appreciate more of it.  And Lin-Manuel Miranda's rapid-fire lyrical style sure doesn't help combat the sensory overload.  However, this is a film designed to be replayed over and over again, and I found myself being infected by the catchy earworms regardless of how I felt about the music or story.  As with all of Disney's recent films featuring under-represented cultures, like "Raya and the Last Dragon," and "Moana," "Encanto" is very carefully constructed to show the best of Colombia, adding bits of Spanish dialogue and references for Colombian viewers.  The specificity of using one country's culture instead of an amalgam of multiple places helps the creators' efforts feel more genuine. 

More importantly, "Encanto" has a stronger story than most.  Mirabel's struggle to be seen and appreciated in a family where everyone is special is very relatable.  The film explores all kinds of family issues, from sibling rivalries to intergenerational trauma to stifling performance pressure.  It's not just Mirabel who's struggling, but also the family matriarch, Alma (Maria Cecilia Botero), Mirabel's older sisters Luisa (Jessica Darrow) and Isabela (Diane Guerro), and her uncle Bruno (John Leguizamo), the black sheep of the family.  I found the ending a little iffy, and the rules of the miracle and the magic are vague at best, but "Encanto" is much more substantial and dramatically interesting than the usual hero quests of something like "Moana."  And I think it has a much better shot at becoming a Disney perennial.

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A Quick "Rick and Morty" Update

I caught up on the latest batch of "Rick and Morty" episodes recently, which were a noticeable step down from previous seasons.  I figured that this was a good time to put down some thoughts on how the series has been doing.  I haven't written anything directly about the show in a few years, since the episodes have been released in small batches and the show doesn't really have any longer storylines or much character progression.  Sure, Beth and Jerry separated for a bit, and there's a Beth clone running around in space, and Morty's love life isn't quite as dead as it used to be, and a ton of backstory has been revealed, but the most nihilistically snarky show on television has found a status quo and is sticking to it.  And as a result, "Ricky and Morty" has plateaued hard.

Part of the issue is clearly the show's own success.  In 2018, Adult Swim ordered a whopping 70 episodes of the series, and at its current pace of ten episodes a year, this thing is going to run until 2026 at least.  You can't burn through material at the rate that the first few seasons did when you have 70 episodes to fill.  So now, the series feels like it's pacing itself.  While the Smith family is having insane adventures every week, the family unit is staying more or less intact.  The show is also doggedly trying to improve Rick and Morty's mental health, while only very superficially dealing with their endless emotional baggage.  While the show does confront Rick's megalomaniacal self-destructive tendencies and existential malaise, it also tends to find handy shortcuts for processing them.  It doesn't help that there are so many formulaic episodes this year, where Rick is essentially a wacky grandpa being chased around by old enemies or getting into hijinks - very disturbing hijinks, but nothing we haven't seen before.  

And that's another problem.  The shock value of Rick's behavior has steadily declined over time, because we've been exposed to it so often.  After fifty episodes, watching Morty accidentally destroy a civilization, or seeing the Smiths murder endless variations of themselves isn't novel anymore.  The show isn't treating these events as particularly weighty either, the way that it used to in the earliest episodes.  Instead, the Smiths maintain this remarkably blase attitude toward the worst of their depravities.  Morty and Summer accidentally create a giant incest baby?  Well, that's annoying, but nothing to get upset about.  With no real consequences in play anymore, there are no stakes to any of the adventures, and episodes rarely leave much of an impact.  The absurdity is still fun to watch, and I frequently find myself appreciating the writers' ingenuity and sick sense of humor, but it's just not the same.

This is not to say that I don't think "Rick and Morty" still has a lot of mileage left in it, or that the creators can't get themselves out of this rut.  What was so fascinating about this series from the start was the psychological complexity of the major characters, and even though the Smiths are currently in a comfortable holding pattern, they don't have to stay there.  In fact, I'm surprised we haven't seen bigger changes already.  The show potentially has a decent roster of recurring characters who are only very slowly being sketched in - Jessica, the President, Birdperson and Tammy, and of course the barely glimpsed ex-Mrs. Sanchez, Diane.  There's also a lot of perilous emotional terrain left to explore.  If the show simply let the kids get older and start forming real relationships outside of the family, it would open up so many more avenues for insanity - and provide Rick with more victims.      

  

The fandom has long wanted more of the slowly percolating Evil Morty storyline, and while I'm glad that the writers finally gave in and pursued this in the finale, I'm also not sure where we go from here.   Part of me hopes that since Evil Morty sort of won and got what he wanted, this will be the last we see of him, and the show can move on to other things.  

Oh, and the Christopher Lloyd and Jaeden Martell teaser was adorbs.

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"Luca" is the Perfect Summer Film

Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a young sea monster who lives off the coast of Italy, and has been warned by his protective parents (Maya Rudolph, Jim Gaffigan) to stay away from the surface and human beings.  However, Luca befriends Alberto (Dylan Jack Grazer) another, slightly older sea monster boy, who lives on a deserted island and shows him the fun of breaking the rules.  The pair discover that they transform into human beings when they dry off, and eventually find their way to the seaside town of Portorosso, and the yearly triathlon competition where their new pal Giulia (Emma Berman) aims to dethrone the reigning champ, Ercole (Saverio Raimondo).

Director Enrico Casarosa isn't shy about stuffing all the nostalgic Italian imagery he can into "Luca," and it's notable that his major aesthetic references are decidedly not other PIXAR films.  Instead, this feels like one of Hayao Miyazaki's early features, full of gorgeous scenery and picturesque locales, that the characters explore at a lackadaisical, unhurried pace.  The film takes its time to really enjoy its setting, in this case the picture perfect little town of Portorosso, where the kids are constantly eating gelato and playing soccer.  There's  a lot of influence taken from the sunny Adriatic vistas of "Porco Rosso."  The characters are more stylized and look a bit like Aardman Animation stop-motion creations, mostly around the mouths.  They behave more like traditionally animated cartoons too, with more exaggerated expressions and movements.  

After years of chasing photoreal visuals, you can feel PIXAR taking a step back from realism, and it's to the movie's benefit.  "Luca" is a beautiful blend of the real and the stylized.  You have characters like Machiavelli the cat and Uncle Ugo (Sacha Baron Cohen), who are utterly cartoons, but are made to credibly inhabit more realistic places.  Portorosso is an idealized destination, built of old memories of Italian films from the 1950s, but there's a nice tactility to the narrow streets and brightly painted buildings.  And then you have all the rain and water animation, which look as good as any effects work that PIXAR has ever done.  This is one of those films that I'd recommend just on the strength of how good it looks, and the kind of relaxing, idyllic atmosphere that it's able to conjure up.  I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we saw a spike in Italian tourism after this.   

And while it may not be to everyone's taste, I appreciate that "Luca" is not an epic adventure that deals with terribly weighty subjects.  It's a smaller scale story that is mostly about a trio of kids becoming friends and growing up a little over one happy summer.  Many exciting things happen, with everyone training for the big race, and the sea monster kids having to keep up the ruse that they're visiting humans from out of town, but all the stakes are fairly small and personal.  It's the right size adventure for this set of characters, and I wish more animated films were comfortable enough to do this.  We get a lovely resolution at the end of the story, but also a credits sequence that hints at everyone's further adventures - a format that Studio Ghibli uses frequently.   

I debated over whether to say anything about the LGBT narrative that's formed around the film, which honestly feels like wishful thinking to me.  The kids are all prepubescent, and their behavior isn't suggestive of anything more than platonic friendship as far as I can tell, but you can't stop people from speculating.  The film is rated PG for some mild language and risky behavior - Luca and Alberto enjoy riding their homemade Vespa scooter down very steep hills - but is otherwise completely safe and inoffensive.  "Luca" is easily the best kids' film of the summer, and I hope its absence from theaters won't dissuade PIXAR from making more original films like it.    

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The First "Lupin" and Ghibli CGI Features

The anime industry has been making CGI animated films for a while, but we've recently seen the release of two major titles that are higher profile than anything we've seen so far.  Studio Ghibli has released their first CGI feature, "Earwig and the Witch," based on the last book written by Diana Wynne Jones, and directed by Goro Miyazaki.  Meanwhile, Marza Animation Planet, which gave us the "Harlock" movie a few years ago, is responsible for the first CGI "Lupin III" feature, titled "Lupin III: The First," and directed by Takashi Yamazaki.

From everything that I'd heard about "Earwig and the Witch," I was expecting a disaster.  Goro Miyazaki had the unenviable task of trying to make a film using an entirely different system of animation at the famously old-school  Studio Ghibli, and he hasn't had the greatest track record as a director.  However, despite a few bumps and snags, I found "Earwig" a perfectly charming, modest little Ghibli movie.  A bratty orphan girl named Earwig (Kokoro Hirasawa), is adopted by a demanding witch named Bella (Shinobu Terajima) and an unfriendly fellow named Mandrake (Etsushi Toyokawa), who can control demons.  They live in a magical house with a lot of secrets.  Though her new guardians initially seem frightening and harsh, Earwig soon takes advantage of the situation, befriends Bella's feline familiar Thomas (Gaku Hamada), and starts learning magic. 

You can tell that "Earwig" is a Ghibli film from its design sensibility, which takes all the familiar visual cues we associate with Ghibli and translate them into CGI forms, sometimes rather awkwardly.  While the lush vegetation and the cluttered interiors are passable, the character designs leave a lot to be desired.  Earwig and her friends are plasticine and stiff, and look about a decade behind, technically, than the other major studios.  The only character who really comes across right is the cat, Thomas, who looks  exactly how you'd want a Ghibli cat to look in CGI.  I appreciate that pains were taken to try and preserve some of the little animation tics and design features that always helped to set Ghibli films apart, but I think that the artists played it too safe.  The camera stays stubbornly static for most of the film, and compositions are clearly still designed for two dimensions instead of three.     

I've heard some complaints about how short the film is, and how it seems to be missing a third act where Earwig finally gets some of her questions answered.  I would have liked a more concrete ending as well, but I found the characters and the story charming enough that I didn't mind that it stopped where it did.  Other Ghibli films like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Kiki's Delivery Service" have had similar non-endings.  "Earwig and the Witch" is clearly one of the studio's cheaper, less ambitious features, made by mostly younger members of the staff, and often feels like a training exercise or a test run of the animation technology.  However, I still found it entertaining, and enjoyed spending some time with Earwig and her strange little family.  I think it would have been better if it had been traditionally animated, because Ghibli still has a lot of kinks in the CGI to work out, but it's still a perfectly good piece of work.

"Lupin III: The First," on the other hand, looks absolutely fantastic.  I was a little worried about this project, because the "Harlock" film was so dark and murky, and the character animation wasn't much to talk about.  "Lupin III" is a huge improvement, beautifully translating the cartoon designs and movements of the goofy Arsene Lupin III (Kanichi Kurita)  and his band of merry cohorts into dazzling CGI forms.  All the old physical gags, famous poses, and the most importantly the facial expressions are perfect.  Lupin goofs and blusters and banters in CGI as well as he ever did in traditional animation, and he's as charismatic and fun to watch as ever.  Takashi Yamazaki takes full advantage of the CGI animation, staging huge, complex action sequences, using lots of different environments, and executing plenty of complicated shots.  

Once you get past the fun of the visuals, however, "Lupin III: The First" is a pretty typical "Lupin III" adventure.  A young woman named Laetitia (Suzu Hirose) teams up with Lupin, in pursuit of the famous Bresson diary, a book that will lead them to a mysterious treasure.  Lupin gets help from his usual crew - Jigen (Kiyoshi Kobayashi), Goemon (Daisuke Namikawa), Fujiko (Miyuki Sawashiro), and even Inspector Zenigata (Koichi Yamadera).  The villains this time out are an unscrupulous archaeologist, Lambert (Kotaro Yoshida), who is backed by a Nazi revivalist, Gerard (Tatsuya Fujiwara).  The film is set in the 1960s, and has fun with vintage vehicles and period touches.  It takes its cues from Indiana Jones, Tintin, and James Bond, of course.  Compared to other "Lupin" media, it feels toned down to appeal to general audiences.  The recent traditionally animated Lupin shows and movies have been geared more toward adults.  In this outing, Lupin barely bothers flirting with Fujiko.

I got a little impatient with "Lupin III: The First" toward the end.  The film puts Laetitia front and center as often as Lupin, and her story is pretty bland and predictable.  I don't think we got nearly enough of Zenigata, Jigen, Goemon, or Fujiko, though I was happy with what we did see of them.  There are a few winks and homages for Lupin fans to look out for, but this outing seems more interested in catching the eyes of new viewers.  And there's nothing wrong with that, especially when it's a feature as beautifully put together as this newest "Lupin III" film. 

    

  

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