The Wild Robot

The hype that surrounded this film upon release does it a disservice. While it does look good from a visual standpoint, it’s nothing so great that audiences can be truly wowed by it. Seemingly, we have reached the limit of animation's state-of-the-art, at least as far as realism or naturalism in motion or appearance goes. You can’t get more real than reality. So the visual side of this flick only takes the viewer so far. Then the story has to do the rest of the work, and here that story is surprisingly mundane and reliant upon familiar tropes, if not outright cliches. It’s cute and occasionally funny, but, again, it is hardly groundbreaking, and in some instances—particularly the ending—it is mildly disappointing and even somewhat baffling. Indeed, much of the story’s setup had me asking questions—Is this supposed to be the far future? A different planet?—that only served to distract me during the early scenes. I wouldn’t call this movie bad by any stretch, but as noted, it isn’t exactly paradigm-shattering either. Like most animation that comes out of the major studios today—at least in this country—this will satisfy children, but leave the rest of us wishing for more. That seems to be the plan most of the time. Task partly, but by no means totally, completed. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Never has a superhero action movie dealt so deeply in sadness, both real and fictional. The sense of loss is palpable throughout this story; indeed, it forms the core of the tale. And then, grafted onto that you have the demands of a relatively standard action movie. The result is something that is, for the most part, entertaining, though not entirely successful. Among other issues, this story has to contend with certain political necessities (the fraught nature of brown vs. brown battles) that shape how the whole plot ultimately plays out--and that fact somewhat tempers the ultimate output. It will be interesting to see, in the future, how ensuing installments overcome these issues. Time will probably heal the impact of the loss; the problem of political appearances will likely represent a thornier issue to resolve--though there are hints of how that will ultimately play out (i.e, they can avoid the problem of by having them team up to fight against evil Whitey). Bottom line: this is an acceptable, maybe even necessary, sequel that clears the deck in the face of unexpected tragedy and sets the stage for what may come in the future--so a full scale judgment must be withheld. Just call it good enough for now, and bide the time until the next, clean slate effort makes its appearance.

Black Panther

I detect a metaphor, one that relates to a similar metaphor that first showed itself in...Casablanca? For sure, this is a radically different movie from that earlier production, but there is at least one element that unites the two stories: the question of whether isolationism is or is not a practical policy in today's world. I can't say this film answers that question definitively; all I can say is it gives you something to think about. Indeed, the thinking parts of this movie are its strengths; the contemplative stuff works, and makes a lot of the nonsense a little more human. The action stuff is the usual hodgepodge, and at this point has grown unimpressive. This film certainly gets credit for being visually stylistic and impressive; there's good world-building here, in fine detail all over the screen. And overall, it remains entertaining and holds the interest throughout. But then again, I walked away from the movie appreciating it, but also feeling thankful that I didn't pay to watch it. So good, sure, but nothing close to the masterpiece it was made out to be.