As I stated more than a month ago , 2025 was a particularly good year for movies, producing multiple films destined to become classics. The Academy Awards celebrating those films was perhaps not quite reflective of the bombast that might deserve, but that was okay. The Oscars are meant to be a ceremony not a spectacle, and it feels like it has taken some time for them to fully understand that. The spectacle is certainly still there in some respects -hello, grand elaborate performances of “I Lied to You” and “Golden”- but it does feel more earnestly about the honouring of artists itself, if maybe reluctantly so. A few times through the night where the music was cutting off a winner’s speech it soon cut back to them to let them finish. I wonder if the stigma against the show’s producers from the artistic community and the Oscars’ chief viewership might have spooked them? Or maybe it was just Conan O’Brien refusing to play along. Conan proved a fantastic host at last years’ Oscars -a nat...
If you look deeply and between the lines, there is a profound sentiment at the heart of Pixar’s Hoppers . All nature, animals and humans, exist in symbiosis with each other, and the preservation of that natural contract depends on empathy and working together for the good of everyone and everything. It is a notion that we should all be able to get behind. But one person’s good is sadly not everybody’s. And though director and story architect Daniel Chong may disagree, not everyone can be compelled to do the right thing. Especially in the world of environmentalism and conservation, fights are rarely won (and then only pyrrhically) through compromise. He may understand this himself, his film openly notes the inconsistency of the laws that make up “Pond Rules”, but he is happy not to interrogate that for the sake of his broader theme. It’s a real shame because the film suffers for it. It’s not the only problem with this film, though it is rather blatant. Even in this very formless era...