The Poetic Storytelling in Frozen II

I can't help but feel like the poetic way in which the sisters' stories are told in the second half of Frozen II is seriously master class stuff, especially since it's all done without the movie ever drawing attention to itself and what it's doing. The movie makes the claim that both Anna and Elsa are two sides of the same bridge, and that's certainly shown in the ways in which their journeys play out and parallel one another, working in opposite manners towards the same endgoal:

• Anna consoles Elsa, who's crying tears of sadness, and hugs her. Then they part.

• Anna is sent against her will into a body of water, a river, where she's met by one of the elemental spirits (the earth giants). But she avoids confrontation, leading her into a cavern, where she then removes her outer layer of clothing after having gotten wet, and she starts from the bottom and has to climb her way back out out.

• Elsa removes her outer layer of clothing to prevent it from getting wet, then purposefully makes her way into a body of water, an ocean, where she's met by one of the elemental spirits (the water nokk). She directly confronts it, riding it to Ahtohallan, and enters into a cavern where she starts at the top and gradually makes her way further and further down.

• Elsa sings a song of pure joy in a scene that's filled with magic and spectacle, and undergoes a critical transformation. Elsa hops down to the deepest depths of Ahtohallan and finds the answer she's looking for, sacrificing her life in the process, and giving up everything to deliver her message to Anna.

• Anna receives the message, and in turn loses everything with the death of her sister, as well as Olaf dying in her arms.

• Anna sings a song of pure grief in a scene that's grim and grounded, and undergoes a critical transformation, as she climbs out of the cavern into the sunlight, standing tall enough to see the entire enchanted forest beneath her.

• Anna engages with the spirits she encountered earlier, using them to destroy the dam and break the curse. This causes a tidal wave barreling straight for Arendelle.

• Newly revived, Elsa is aided by the spirit she encountered earlier, who helps her back to Arendelle, where she creates a dam of ice to stop the tidal wave from destroying Arendelle.

• Elsa and Anna reunite, and Elsa consoles Anna, who's crying tears of happiness, as they embrace once more with a hug.

And the movie does all of this in a way that doesn’t draw attention away from the story they’re telling, or the journey that our characters are going on. It keeps the spotlight on the characters, but the poetry is still there all the same for those who may want to dive in deeper and appreciate the storytelling on another level.

I have seen some people claim, as a result of watching the documentary Into the Unknown: Making Frozen II, that this movie was somehow rushed or poorly plotted out. But I didn’t see that to be the case at all. The documentary shows that the filmmakers knew the story they were trying to tell, they were just having trouble figuring out how to quite pull the whole thing together. And it just so happened that it was late in the game that they came across their “Aha!” moment, that being the inclusion of the reprisal of All Is Found in the middle of the Show Yourself sequence.

This, however, is no different from the first movie. They were similarly having a lot of issues with the first movie, and just how to pull it all together and make it all work. Again, they knew the story they were trying to tell, but were just missing that last ingredient that really tied everything up. It was relatively late in the game that they wrote the song Let It Go, which was the thing that did precisely that, and wound up re-shaping the movie and pulling the whole thing together.

I think some people took a lot of the wrong ideas from that documentary. And all it tells me is that most of the people criticizing the movie based on that documentary have likely never actually been involved in a creative process of their own. This is fairly common in creative works, where you know the story you’re trying to tell, but you’re just racking your brain trying to figure out how to tie it all together, until you’re hit with that sudden moment of inspiration that just makes the whole thing work in a way that it didn’t before. And I assure you, the creative process shown in the Frozen II documentary is not exclusive to that film. I’d be willing to bet that almost every Walt Disney Animation Studios production in recent times goes through more or less the exact same process as that movie.

You can’t help when these moments of inspiration hit you, just so long as they do, and that you’re willing to run with them when they do, even if it means going back and making adjustments all throughout the rest of the story. And in this case, that moment of inspiration absolutely did, and it pulled the whole thing together and re-shaped it in a way that made it work wonderfully. I think the movie was brilliantly planned out in that regard, just as I’d say the same about the first movie. And I thought it was all tied together in a beautifully poetic manner, to where I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My Neighbor Totoro - Movie Review

I thought My Neighbor Totoro was a very pleasant film. I went in knowing it was supposed to be mostly a “slice of life” movie, and that it was very lacking in actual plot, and that was certainly the case. I know these sorts of movies can go either way, where it can either drag and meander and basically bore me, or I can find myself completely wrapped up in the characters’ lives and enjoy the ride, and thankfully the latter was the case in this instance.

I think a lot of its success is in just how fun these characters are to follow. I loved spending time with this cast of characters, their sense of joy and wonder was just infectious, and even the side characters we’d occasionally run into I found myself invested in, such as the boy who gradually came to become friends with our leads.

I also found it to be a rather nostalgic feeling experience, as watching these characters wander around either through the house or out and about reminded me of being a kid and just running around playing with my brothers or neighborhood friends, back before everyone had computers in their homes or cell phones constantly distracting us from the world around us.

I also like how the fantasy element feels somewhat up to interpretation as to whether it’s real or if it’s just their imagination. Either way works I feel, but in any event, I also really enjoyed how it was incorporated. It kinda made me think of Shigeru Miyamoto’s explanation for his inspiration for Zelda coming from spending time working in his garden, and while this isn’t exactly an action adventure like Zelda, I can see a similar inspiration perhaps at play here as well.

So yeah, I quite enjoyed this. And that 90 minute runtime just flew by. I could’ve easily spent more time with these characters.

Seraphim Falls - Movie Review

Starring Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson in a 2006 western about survival and vengeance, I thought Seraphim Falls was brilliant.

It was actually just before the guy in the top hat at the pond shows up that the thought had crossed my mind that this journey feels like an endless purgatory, so to see first him and then the lady at the end show up certainly fit in with that line of thinking of what this movie was representing. It literally bookends itself with agony, starting in the freezing snow where Brosnan's character is trying to start a fire for warmth, and ending up in the blistering heat of the desert, leaving our characters desperate for water.

I thought it intriguing how both our characters' journeys move forward in opposite parallels. Brosnan's character starts off with a team of soldiers behind him, but after the incident, he finds himself alone and wanting to be left alone. He does some bad things along his journey, but it's all in the name of survival. He kills people to stay alive, he kills his horse out of mercy. Meanwhile, Neeson's character starts off alone and wanting for he and his family to be left alone. But after the incident, he forms a team to go on the hunt, and he does some bad things along his journey, and it's all in the name of his blind vengeance. People die under his watch, he kills people in order to exact his revenge, and he kills his horse out of pettiness after someone abandoned his mission.

But both paths lead these men to the same place in the end, that being an inescapable purgatory where the only way out is to let go. Brosnan finally stops running, and tells Neeson to end it. And Neeson lets go, and instead walks away, lest he lose himself in the process.

I thought this was excellent. And the survival aspect, particularly during the snow scenes, were exhilarating, and often reminded me of The Revenant. I had actually never heard of this movie before now, but seeing how good it is, I'm now a bit curious as to why that might be.

The Banshees of Inisherin - Movie Review

The Banshees of Inisherin is named after a song written in the film that is described as being sad, and I'd say that same description could be used for the film as well. Set on a small island with the fitting backdrop of a civil war brewing within earshot on the mainland, this is perhaps one of the smaller and more personal films that director Martin McDonagh has tackled so far, and it may well be his best yet.

I feel we've all probably experienced the abrupt end of a friendship at some point, whether we're the one suddenly cut off, or we're the one who's grown tired of someone and has as such cut them off. So in that way, I could certainly relate to the story and both characters' perspectives, up to an obvious point at least.

The betrayal that Colin Farrell's character feels is very real, the hurt and confusion and insecurity that comes from such a sudden cut off, questioning what you may have said or done wrong, and how you can possibly get to a place to fix things, even when it's well beyond your control to do so. His performance was phenomenal, and believably sold the range of emotions that one would likely feel in such a situation. And I like how the movie showed how such a breakup in such a small community can have ramifications that shake up the whole town.

And even from Brenden Gleeson's perspective, I can relate in certain regards. He's haunted by his mortality, he sees his life as being wasted, and is striving to leave a lasting impact on the world. I can understand that, and I've certainly reached a point with certain friendships where I've felt they were merely holding me back, at times when I was ready to move on to a new stage in life. But the depths to which he travels in order to cement his place in history turns him into an undeniable villain in the process. His cruelty infests the small island, which in turn transforms otherwise good people towards cruelty as well, which starts a domino effect that leaves behind a legacy of death and malice. He argues that kindness is not enough to leave a lasting impression on the world, and yet his actions take an otherwise beautiful landscape and fill it with darkness, mirroring his song which is both beautiful yet sad.

But despite all of this, he too feels like a real and complex character. He's cruel, yet he has moments where he shows regret for his decisions. He wants to end his friendship with Farrell, yet despite how much he pleads for Farrell to leave him alone, even he can't set aside his own humanity enough to just let Farrell's character be attacked by the police and left a beaten mess. He's a hypocrite, whether he knows it or not, but it all comes across as believable. From his perspective, he's the hero of his own story, until at last he finally sees that he's not.

It's a tragic film for sure, but the movie does a great job balancing just enough humor and lighter moments to keep it from being too bleak, and I loved a lot of the idiosyncrasies spread throughout the film. I always got a chuckle by Farrell always letting the donkey in the house when his sister was away, and got a good laugh when he lets in all the animals after she leaves for the mainland. I liked the simple-mindedness of the barkeep and some of the patrons, how they'd just mindlessly parrot one another, seemingly oblivious that they're even doing it. In fact, I like how real and lived-in this small community feels, and we get to know just enough about the background characters to where we almost get a feel for what it might be like living in such a community where literally everybody knows everybody, too.

(Also, Kerry Condon was quite excellent, and I may have formed a bit of a crush on her over the course of the movie.)

I'd say this was a deep experience worth reflecting on.

Belle - Movie Review

There’s a moment in the movie Belle where the background characters in U mention how Belle’s songs feel like they’re written specifically for them, and I definitely got that feeling watching this movie, that it was something almost made for me. A reimagining of sorts of Beauty and the Beast for the social media era, I personally found I was able to connect with the characters and thought they were incredibly compelling, and Suzu in particular was very relatable to me.

I thought a lot of the character interactions and their various arcs played out in a very satisfying manner. For instance, there's Suzu's best friend, who is just pretty loose at the mouth and can be almost rude and inconsiderate at times, yet one of my favorite moments in the film is when they’re having lunch, and she catches herself slipping up and saying something that she knows was super messed up. Suzu isn’t bothered, because she knows her friend enough to know she didn’t mean to offend her, but all the same she assures Suzu that no matter what she’ll always support her, and I don’t know, but I guess moments like that just kind of hit home and struck a certain chord with me. Even the rival singer in U who gets jealous of Belle, when she has a complete 180 after Belle is revealed to be Suzu, and she sees that she’s able to relate to her, her jealousy goes away, and she becomes a very vocal supporter. It's little moments like that throughout that made me find the movie just very charming.

I also liked how the musical aspect played out. For the most part, these are songs that Suzu had written in her past as it relates to her mother, but she’s never been able to express these thoughts and feelings in song until now. I like how we see her in the process of writing the song for the Beast, and I like how the last song she sings to him is actually a repurposing of another song dedicated to her mother, which was the song she was attempting to sing on the bridge earlier on, but was unable to do so at the time. It all ties in together, feels very organic, and shows how the artistic process can work for people, whether they have something happen to them that gives them a mental block from being able to express themselves, or showing how someone might be inspired and put that inspiration towards creating something beautiful with it. And I also liked how it showed that her raw talent alone wasn’t enough, but that she needed the help of her friend to basically act as her producer to really break out and get noticed, which I also thought felt very realistic.

And I love how it played out the story of how much Suzu takes after her mom, even in ways that she wasn’t aware of. She spends most of her adolescence not understanding why her mother did what she did, only for her to discover near the end that she is very much her mother’s daughter, and isn’t one to just stand by and let a bad thing happen. I like how the movie criticizes the mentality of “don’t be a hero”, and argues that you should help people in need, even if there’s risk involved.

Even as it regards U, I just really like the realistic manner in which it interprets the internet. The mob mentality (shown as a literal mob as they storm the Beast’s castle), and how a lot of people don’t really think for themselves online necessarily. I like how it takes a critical stance against the type who would try to dox someone in the name of so called "justice", and come away thinking they’re the hero for their villainous actions. And I like that it does this all in a manner that doesn’t ever put the movie on hold, it plays out organically along with the rest of the story. In a way, it’s almost chaotic, but there’s a calmness to the chaos that makes it so it never feels like it’s just meandering off subject as all these other side notes play out.

This is a movie I haven’t really written about because it’s one of those where I just have so many thoughts on it. After all, there’s so much I feel that’s worth talking about. But for me, I thought this movie was absolutely wonderful, and it’s easily my favorite of the 20s so far.

Warrior - Movie Review

For a while now, people have been telling me how they miss my movie reviews. Well, don't call this a comeback, but I figured I might share my thoughts on a handful of movies that have stood out to me in recent times, and we'll start things off this week with a movie that I thought was quite excellent, that being the 2011 film Warrior, directed by Gavin O'Connor.

In regards to the family drama, I like the way that it’s played out, where they give you bits and pieces of their history, enough for you to piece it together and see where everyone’s coming from, without straight up spelling the whole thing out for you. This could’ve very easily gone into heavy exposition, if not straight up flashback territory, but they managed to handle this whole aspect in a subtler and more realistic manner, which I found myself appreciating, and I thought was very well executed.

And as it regards to the MMA aspect, the fights in this movie are absolutely exhilarating. I was seriously on the edge of my seat watching these bouts. And the way they tell the story was almost poetic, where the older brother is the underdog fighting for his life, while the younger brother is just effortlessly steamrolling through the competition, all leading up to an emotional climax between the two, where everything comes to a head in an incredibly visceral and satisfying manner. They did an outstanding job telling these characters’ stories and translating their struggles into the MMA portion of the film I thought.

The performances all around are top notch stuff. These are seriously Oscar worthy performances from Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, and Joel Edgerton. Not to mention it was actually brilliant casting getting Hardy and Edgerton to play brothers. I never noticed before this movie just how much those two actually do look alike.

Also, I may have marked out a little when I saw Kurt Angle pop up. I didn’t know he was in this.

My Top 5 Movies of 2023

We've reached the end of another year, which means that it's time once more to count down my favorite movies that I saw from the past year. But first...

Honorable Mention from 2022

RRR
(S. S. Rajamouli)

Like with Belle last year, I once again find myself in a position where I didn't see my actual favorite movie from the previous year until we had already entered the new year. And this time around, that movie was RRR, which I was finally able to catch after it had gotten rereleased to theaters for a week earlier this year. Had I seen it in time, it would've easily topped out my list from 2022, so it certainly deserves mentioning now. I had heard people raving all last year about this film, and I was thrilled to finally see for myself that this one more than meets the hype. In fact, it shares a commonality with my #1 pick for this year in that it's just such a breathe of fresh air, and a reminder of just how good movies still can be.

Now then, onto this year's list...

#5

Big George Foreman
(George Tillman Jr.)

#4

The Creator
(Gareth Edwards)

#3

Sound of Freedom
(Alejandro Monteverde)

#2

Oppenheimer
(Christopher Nolan)

#1

Godzilla Minus One
(Takashi Yamazaki)

Some pretty decent films round out my Top 5 of 2023, but none of them come anywhere close to the quality of Godzilla Minus One, which stands leaps and bounds above the competition. Honestly, this film feels like an all time classic right on arrival, and as I mentioned above, it serves as a reminder of just how good movies can still be in the modern landscape of the medium. It's not just a great Godzilla film (and the best Godzilla film to date at that), but even beyond the kaiju genre, it's a genuinely outstanding film all around. With a gripping story, relatable characters, jaw dropping effects work, breathtaking action, and a brilliant utilization of the classic Godzilla themes, this is one to definitely check out on the big screen.

So there it is. For now, at least. Because who knows, if the last two years are anything to go by, I very well might still yet stumble upon another movie from this year that happens to best even Godzilla as my favorite from the year. We'll see!