Excellent seafaring adventure, kind of in the same tonal vein as How To Train Your Dragon.
Animation, performances and production design are all top-class, with great action and colourful creatures for the kids, and elements of historical revisionism and imperialist undertones for the adults.
Would be genuinely surprised if this didn’t turn into Netflix’s flagship animated film franchise, since there’s plenty of room to grow from here.
Recommended.
Well this was a fun surprise.
Basically, it’s modern-day Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, all the way from blended animation/live action through to the Noir mystery detective story.
Cameos are an absolutely hilarious mix of unexpected cuts, absurd jokes and examples of just how deep Disney’s bench of IPs actually is these days.
Mulaney and Samberg are perfect casting, the animation is great, the concept and execution are excellent.
Solid comedy, well recommended.
It’s great!
An absolute celebration of women, mothers, sisters and friendship — all wrapped in kinetic, vibrant style.
The animation is fun, the story’s emotionally resonant, the soundtrack is a brilliantly pastiche of early 00’s boy bands by Finneas/Billie Eilish.
Bursting with personality, passion, and charm. Well worth your time.
Pixar have been killing it lately. Highly recommended.
Simple and charming little story about a family who are granted magical boons on their coming of age day.
Music is unmistakably Lin Manuel Miranda, animation is colourful and lush, characters are fun.
Not quite as intensely charsmatic as this year’s Luca, but is still an easy and incredibly endearing watch, and a wonderful sort of magical fantasy for kids.
Recommended.
It’s not bad!
Look, it’s missing a bit of the punch and slickness of editing and action that made the anime series so memorable, but the cast is great, the soundtrack bops and it’s mostly a fun, silly scifi romp.
Not without its criticisms, however. The extension of the villain’s story does little to establish him as a credible threat, and some of the VFX look very unfinished. Action can be kind of stitled, which is a shame because it has glimmers of real creativity and excellence that shine through and unfortunately serve to highlight the flaws.
But mostly the characterisations are fun, albiet slightly different takes to the original. If you want slavish dedication to the source material, just rewatch the anime. The prime three (John Cho, Daniella Pineda and Mustafa Shakir) are all totally on point for this interpretation.
My main disappointment was that the show didn’t adhere to the brilliant sylisation of the promotional segments, or at least leaned harder into some kind of hyper-realism to make it pop. That could have been truly special.
If you’re willing to take this on its own terms, it’s a totally serviceable space action adventure.
Good, not great.
A high water mark for animation, bringing fantastic art design and execution to a rich and detailed fantasy world.
From my understanding, knowledge of League of Legends (the game franchise this is based on) is unnecessary, and it certainly seems interested in making itself both accessible and engaging.
Action is kinetic and complimented by exceptional VFX work. Characters are complex, and their relationships shift and change to keep you wondering who will survive, ally, betray. It’s a big cast, but it’s very well balanced, even when it occasionally feels like it’s spreading itself thin across too many threads.
Plenty has already been said about the stunning visual style, and it’s all warranted. Better though, the story feels like it barely scratching the surface of a huge world.
Already renewed for a second season, and incredibly promising.
Highly recommended.
A colourful celebration of Latin American music, soundtracked by and starring Lin Manuel Miranda as the titular kinkajou.
Skews to a younger crowd, with bright colours and high antics. Some of the designs are honestly pretty ugly but the story has heart and the songs are all original Mirandas, including some great performances from Gloria Estefan.
Good for the kids, but lacking that extra layer of depth that makes an animated film truly great and memorable.
Robot Chicken-style supervillain sitcom.
What better character to explore the weird supervillains and goons dynamic of the Marvel universe than a gigantic head in a floating chair?
Tonnes of in-jokes, Patton Oswalt is perfectly cast, the whole thing is light, silly fun.
Recommended.
Possibly the lightest, summeriest Pixar film to date — one that’s thankfully not interested in heavy emotional subject matter but would rather just present a nice, simple story and it delivers a delight.
Two young sea monsters sneak up on land to win a triathalon so they can buy a Vespa. Friendships are formed, hijinx ensue.
The visuals take on a sort of extremely advanced claymation quality, complimented by saturated colours and an expressive animation style.
Charm in spades, it’s a warm and easy film that unfortunately might end up overlooked due to skipping a theatrical release in favour of jumping straight to Disney+.
Don’t sleep on it though, it’s great.
Solid family adventure film with the obligatory gorgeous Disney Animated visuals.
At what point do we stop commenting on how pretty each new one is, given that the next one will inevitably somehow manage to surpass it? Nonetheless, design aesthetics are fantastic here, and unique among their animated collection.
It’s a Disney princess film with a SouthEast Asian setting, no love interests and a vaguely post-apocalyptic bent.
Potentially questionable moral for young children about trusting untrustworthy people, but overall it’s pretty great.
Recommended.
NERVE.SQUID.PILOT 