Mike Goes To Movies

Toy Story 4 (2019) It is a true testament to the excellence of the Toy Story series that sometimes you actually wish for the films to not hit you as hard as they do. The visceral emotions that this series evokes is on par with anything you will find in a non-animated or 'adult' film. Woody being replaced by Buzz, Buzz realizing he is only a toy, Woody being shelved for his broken arm, Jessie and Lotso's backstories, and, of course, the tragic scene in Part 3 where our beloved toys accept their deathly fates taking each other by the hand and waiting for whatever comes next... goddamn... Like it's three predecessors, Toy Story 4 has its own debilitatingly-impactful moments - though I will surely not spoil them here. In fact, the general story and arc at the core of the newest instalment may be one that will strike home for adults more than for its adolescent audience making it a film that people of all ages should make an effort to go out and see. Again, it would be...

Missing Link (2019) + Discussion with Chris Butler I am a huge animation fan, especially films/project that try to do new things with animation, and, as such, I am a devotee of animation studio, Laika. The studio's last film, Kubo and the Two Strings, is one of my absolute favourites  (as seen in my previous post, it is in my top 10 animated of all-time). This is why I was very excited to get tickets to a special TIFF screening of the studio's new film, Missing Link, with a special discussion / Q&A with the film's director/writer, Chris Butler. As with most of my experiences attending these special screenings, the discussion with Butler after the film was fascinating and delved deep into both the philosophy of Laika - to push the boundaries of animation, and specifically stop-animation - as well as Butler's own ideas on story-telling and how they were applied in Missing Link. To be completely honest, other than the gorgeous animation in the film (which one wou...

Love, Death & Robots (2019) Love, Death & Robots is the highly-anticipated Netflix anthology series headed by directors, David Fincher and Tim Miller. It is a re-imagining of sorts of the Heavy Metal reboot that the two had, for long, planned on making. The series is eighteen standalone science fiction stories, each brimming with violence, nudity and profanity; though the series is animated in gorgeous fashion, it is definitely not for children. As with most anthologies, LD+R can be somewhat of a mixed-bag; for every successful segment, there is likely an equally weaker one. The genres range from strictly action, to philosophical and existential, tense thrillers or straight absurd comedies, all within a unique sci-fi setting. As mentioned, one area where the series succeeds across the board is in its highly diverse and exceptional animation. You can see from this images that the segments range from fully-rendered and realistic computer animation, classic hand-drawn ani...