Reviews of the Bosch

Moana 2  was never meant to be. The movie currently playing in theatres was designed to be a Moana: The Animated Series , a miniseries for Disney+ following up on the adventures Moana after saving her island. But then, likely prompted by the spectacular failure of last year’s Wish , as well as just the general diminishing returns in Disney’s animation output of the last several years, CEO Bob Iger earlier this year had it reworked into a movie for a holiday release (at no doubt immense pressure and excessive labour to everyone working on it). The likely rationale is that the established property will attract more audiences than the original movies Disney had been attempting of late, and that this is of course in step with the company’s philosophy going forward. And it does appear to be working, even though on an artistic, creative level Moana 2  doesn’t come close to saving the company. In fact it only signals a further decline. 2016’s Moana  was Disney Animation’s last g...

For a company that has come to conquer the American entertainment industry, it really feels like Disney didn’t notice that 2023 was their 100 th  anniversary. Sure, they put the number into their logo, but there seems to have been very little fanfare otherwise. No big event was held, no public efforts were made for a media celebration, there were no re-releases of some of their classic movies (which especially during the strikes would have been a really smart tactical move). It seems like the company just up and forgot, an immense missed opportunity, given so few media entities -especially ones this ubiquitous- can ever hope of achieving that longevity. Coming up to the end of the year, it looks like their only show of tribute is the movie Wish , a fairly pathetic one and the company seems to know it. It says a lot that the Disney movie designed to celebrate the studio’s centennial had a significantly reduced marketing apparatus around it that did very little to emphasize the miles...

You’d think Disney Animation would have learned its’ lesson by now not to make adventure movies. The two times they released movies that were explicitly in the vein of the classic adventure genre, Atlantis: The Lost Empire  and Treasure Planet , it resulted in a pair of the company’s biggest ever bombs. And while Strange World  is likely not on track to usurp Treasure Planet  as the company’s greatest financial failure, it did just suffer the studio’s worst opening weekend since Home on the Range  eighteen years ago. As one who appreciates homages to Jules Verne and his compatriots, I applaud the effort –but general audiences made clear long ago they’re not into it. At the same time, Disney has no one to really blame but themselves and their uncharacteristic inability to market this product, which got almost no traction in the months leading up to its’ release. Which strikes me as perhaps sabotage from a company more interested in pushing its’ Marvel p...

Disney Animation Studios tends to be very reliable. Generally, you know what you’re getting going in and it’s not often that one of their films truly surprises -it’s been a long time since they’ve produced a Hunchback of Notre Dame  or a Lilo & Stitch . But reliability has historically been Disney’s friend, and it’s animated films are among it’s only products where that can be a strength. The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin  -all are quite similar movies, but they’re all great. And it’s something I was keenly aware of watching Encanto . Not much in it was all that new or unique, its’ aesthetics and humour and pacing and plotting could be exchanged for those of just about any Disney film since Tangled . And yet I was enjoying myself in all its’ little mediocrities and familiar tenets. That’s not to say Encanto  is no different than any other Disney movies of late, nor that it’s actually a bad movie that I’m giving brownie points to in spite of creative ...

The last time Disney Feature Animation tried their hand at the high fantasy genre it nearly bankrupted the studio. 1985’s   The Black Cauldron  was infamously one of the Disney Company’s biggest failures, and is still only eclipsed by Treasure Planet  as the animation division’s greatest flop. So it makes sense Disney would be reluctant to return to that well, sticking to the known formula of fairy tale stories instead for their fantastical output. But of course now as Disney encroaches closer and closer to a wholesale American pop culture monopoly they’ve got less to lose in taking a risk on something like Raya and the Last Dragon . Now of course by “risk” I mean not really a risk at all. The film is still made to fit in with the general Disney family brand in its tone, thematic sensibilities, and approach to humour; even the exclusively South Asian aesthetic can’t be called a real risk in a cultural climate more receptive to non-white stories than ever before. And yet t...

Since its’ announcement I was skeptical about Frozen 2 . Not only because Disney used to be unique among animation studios in not producing theatrical sequels, but also because the story of Frozen was nicely wrapped up, the character and thematic arcs complete, and the world not quite alluring enough to warrant further exploration. And Frozen was just also such a great singular gem, the best movie from Disney Feature Animation of the 2010s, and a sequel ran the risk of diminishing that a tad, or worse falling into the traps of any number of Disney’s infamous direct-to-video follow-ups. Now having seen the film, the good news is that the former is untrue, that Frozen remains independent of its sequel or not, a remarkable work of animation and a spectacular piece of modern fairy tale storytelling. The bad news is Frozen II wouldn’t entirely be out of place next to The Lion King 2 or Aladdin 3 . No doubt the films’ defining attribute against that association is its animation, w...

For most of its history, sequels haven’t really been Disney’s thing -not high quality, theatrical animated canon ones at least. Ralph Breaks the Internet  (which ought to be called Ralph Wrecks the Internet ) is only their third after The Rescuers Down Under  ( the studio’s single most underrated gem ) and Fantasia 2000  ( which contains some of their best ever animation ). The arcade game world and creative premise of Wreck-It Ralph  actually did offer a lot of opportunity for a follow-up though, and I was really looking forward to what a sequel would do. Going to the internet wasn’t what I expected, but I remained optimistic even while the trailers for this movie were pretty insufferable, emphasizing mostly the shameless Disney Princess scene. Luckily, the movie is not as bad as the trailers, but it does have some bugs. Craving something new from her game, Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) is delighted when Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) creates a ne...

          When I heard that the next Disney movie, Moana was going to be based around Hawaii, I was tempted to say, “haven’t we been here before?’ It doesn’t feel like too long ago that we had Lilo & Stitch . I was more curious though when I heard it would revolve around Hawaiian mythological figures like Maui and fantastical monsters. But then I remembered Ron Clements and John Musker were the directors behind Hercules and I worried. However I needn’t have, as Moana is easily the pair’s best film since Aladdin .           A teenage girl called Moana, resident of a small isolated tribe on one of the Polynesian islands, is chosen by the ocean to be an emissary to the banished demigod Maui and convince him to return the Heart of the Sea (a small pounamu stone) to Te Fiti -the goddess he stole it from who’s cursed their world with famine as retribution.           Though this is a standard and fitting...

          Last week I noted the similar pattern this era of Disney has with the original Disney Renaissance. And in a way Zootopia is still continuing it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nowhere near as dark and shocking as The Hunchback of Notre Dame , but like that film it does address themes most of us previously thought Disney would never touch. But maybe it does it a little too much at the expense of story and character.           The film presents a modern world much like our own, except everything’s run by animals. And in said world, a humble country rabbit called Judy Hopps aspires to become a police officer in the big city Zootopia. However because she’s what society often calls prey (as opposed to predators), a small herbivore, it’s an uphill battle. But she actually overcomes the underdog story pretty quickly and once in Zootopia partners with a con artist fox called Nick Wilde to solve a series of missing person cases all rev...