Disney

The Little Mermaid has always been both a good memory and problematic for me. It was a good memory because of the people I watched it with and the Howard Ashman/Alan Menken songs we wouldn’t stop singing for years. Problematic because, well, the film’s “change everything you are to get the boy” message isn’t exactly […]

Author’s note: There’s something weirdly awesome and kinda nuts about watching a screener of a movie called Hellraiser and seeing a “Property of Disney” watermark pop up every now and again. Welcome to the new Hellraiser, a surprising revival and reboot of this 35-year-old film series. Like the ten films before it, Hellraiser is based […]

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 […]