Disney

Right away, Jungle Cruise throws you off with an altered Magic Kingdom logo underscored with a repeated E-G-B-E-B-G note sequence which suddenly becomes all too familiar once more instrumentation is added. Then you find yourself wondering, “What the hell is Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’ doing as the musical score of a Disney flick?!” Everything about […]

Here we go again… the good ol’ “make ’em afraid, then watch ’em squirm” Disney movie. From The Little Mermaid onward (and kind of reversed with the original Pete’s Dragon), this theme is a mainstay in children’s programming and films. Yes, it’s a metaphor for growing up and into the world around us, but isn’t it a […]

If we were to boil Kelly Marie Tran’s character Raya down to her bare essence, it would be this: You can’t lose what you don’t give away. After six years of running from monsters and enemies, she’s bitter and hard, the result of being bitten by betrayal and loss, especially at so young an age. […]

There’s a realness to Disney/Pixar’s Soul that rises above its animation, music, and script. It has a life, vibrancy, and urgency which recalls shades of Inside Out, a similar story where two beings must work together to find home, but Soul takes a different path. Here, writer Mike Jones and co-directors/writers Pete Docter and Kemp […]

The cultural impact of 2013’s Frozen still resonates six years after its release. Children can be seen dressed up as the film’s heroic sisters on Halloween; its insta-hit song “Let It Go” is performed annually at school talent shows; film geeks are constantly parsing its many references and in-jokes; and even before the sequel’s first trailer dropped, toys […]

To be honest, 2014’s Maleficent was off-putting to me, but not in a bad way; that it made me feel uncomfortable was one of the film’s strong points. Here was a movie which had the balls to make its bones with metaphors for the patriarchy, date rape, single parenthood, and unwanted children. Maleficent has now […]