"Come on-a / Moana / Go get your destiny"

All due respect to Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, but MAN, the songs are lacking. Lin-Manuel Miranda's absence is palpable and it's particularly telling that this movie ends with "We Know the Way" from the original. FROZEN 2, for as jank as its screenplay was, at least had a handful of bangers; can't say the same at all about this sequel.

Music aside, it's so incredibly evident that this began as…

Typically I review movies the day I watch them, but I finished this so late on Saturday night and then just didn't feel like it on Sunday, so I've had a lot of time to think about this one.

PORCO ROSSO is a fairytale, Beauty and the Beast with biplanes. I can see why this never garnered the popularity of, say, even PRINCESS MONONOKE, mostly because there's not as much for Western audiences to glom on to. It stars a…

"Toros and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"

I loved Yura Borisov's impressive Cro-Magnon brow and the emotion he was able to convey with it. The guy's got like twenty lines total but he's always just furrowing that forehead and staring into the middle distance to avoid making eye contact with everyone else and it's great. My roommate told me he's a Russian propagandist which is too bad but he was probably my favourite part.

Inadvertently broke my…

I watched this while high on mushrooms Saturday afternoon after already having seen the first half with my roommate that morning, which was an absolutely surreal time.

ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is already a feast for the senses when you're sober, and I won't say the psychedelics hurt the viewing experience any. Feeling adrift from reality may have made it difficult to follow the narrative at times, but it was a helpful reminder that this isn't your standard cut-and-dry superhero narrative.…