Maybe I shouldn't be blown away by the animation, and maybe it's been remastered some since then, but it's held up really well. It's clearly a style of a different generation (almost 90 years old), but it's still a quality visual product.
What stands out to me is how foreign Snow White's personality feels compared to today. And maybe it was an outlier then too, but what a kind gentle spirit -- which makes the huntsman being tasked with killing…
What's funny watching this was that without knowing I immediately had a feeling this was a late-90s/early 2000s creation. It just exudes the straight-to-dvd quality of that era:
-- The world feels emptier
-- The characters are not as well written and overall just sillier
-- The stakes are lower
What also stands out is the selfish "Follow your heart" mindset. Not a phrase you hear in the old ones. They also managed to maintain Cinderella and the Step Mother's animation to some degree, but everybody and everything else looks cheap.
I dragged my feet going to see this, expecting a "Racism is bad" movie, and was more than pleasantly surprised.
Racism is still bad (as it should be). But Green Book offers a much less black and white look at many complex issues beyond interracial ones, be it high and low brow society or a deeper reflection on what being your color means.
Mortensen and Ali are masters of their craft and credit to the director for allowing several scenes to be carried solely by body language.
It starts with an actual trigger warning and then turns into an obtuse progressive cultural anxiety fever dream from 2018. The smug lack of self-awareness and delusion in this film is astounding.
