Reviews of the Bosch

What even is a toy in 2026? It used to be that there was a very clear distinction between toys and other kinds of entertainments for kids, but that has gotten much more blurred in the last couple decades, especially in the era of widespread digital technology. Toys still have their function of course and the toy industry still flourishes, but it seems kids are being introduced to devices like smartphones and tablets earlier and earlier, competing for their attention and entertainment with the more traditional “child’s playthings” as one cowboy once described them. Honestly, it is a very interesting theme to tackle with a Toy Story movie in this modern age -really the only theme to tackle that would be compelling for the franchise at this point, which has a pattern of exploring themes of adolescence, growing up, and even existentialism through the vantage point of plastic dolls and their relationships to the children who play with them. Every Toy Story movie after the first has to so...

I’ve maintained the arguably bold declaration pretty consistently for nine years now that Inside Out is the best Pixar movie. It’s certainly the one that captures the platonic ideal of a Pixar movie to me, even if it may not be as iconic as Toy Story  or as sophisticated as Ratatouille , and has probably inspired more than a few of the awful animated films of the last decade. But there’s a reason it’s had a pervasiveness no other Pixar film of the 2010s has enjoyed. Besides its sheer conceptual creativity, at its heart it so perfectly understands how to communicate the rich complexity of emotions to kids, and does so with that considered and beautiful Pixar pathos that is just as effective and moving for adults. A real gem of an animated film that gets to me every time. But the double-edged sword of Inside Out  being the rare original movie hit for Pixar in those late predominantly sequel-oriented John Lasseter years, unfortunately meant that it became a prime target for a c...

It’s long been a joke that Pixar will make movies anthropomorphizing anything just to show they can. Starting out the gate with Toy Story  it makes some sense that kind of a creative instinct would just inhabit their DNA; they made the bug movie , the monster movie , the fish movie , but it was the car movie where I first remember it starting to get a bit ridiculous. For a little while the company avoided the gimmick in favour of more inspired original ideas like Ratatouille , WALL-E , and Up , but then Pete Docter (now Pixar CCO) came back to it with the extremely out-there idea of anthropomorphizing human emotions . It wound up working though, even being one of Pixar’s best movies, and it set the stage eight years later for this comparably abstract movie concept about living elements of nature. And boy did we make fun of it! In fairness, the generic trailer with extreme emphasis on the gimmick didn’t do it any favours, but even beside that, Elemental  seemed to be the lazie...

So this is the one that was worth coming back to theatres for? Pixar’s Lightyear  is of course their first movie to release in cinemas in over two years, and it’s fairly likely the only reason for this is because of it’s tie-in with a known I.P. - Toy Story . Of course the nature of this tie-in has been convoluted and much made fun of -ever since Chris Evans’ bizarre tweet attempting to explain the nature of the title character. The movie does a better job: it’s opening text laying out clearly that this is apparently the in-universe movie that Andy loved so much as a kid that he got the action figure from it. But of course this itself is just the awkward excuse to justify what is essentially a reboot of this marketable character. Same for why Evans is voicing the part instead of Tim Allen -who hasn’t for a while been a bankable star (notice how even his role as co-lead of the Toy Story  series was drastically reduced after the second movie ), and given his outspoken right-wing...

I’ve been looking forward to Turning Red  ever since Domee Shi’s short film Bao  premiered ahead of The   Incredibles 2 in 2018. It was probably the best short Pixar produced in the last decade and I was excited to see Shi get her chance to make a feature one day. I didn’t think it would be so soon, but that day has come. And though it’s been disrespectfully shunted off to Disney+ as its’ two predecessors from Pixar have , it’s no less worthy of cinematic consideration. In fact, it might be one of the most unique and necessary movies the company has ever produced. It’s certainly the most personal and inarguably one of the most bold. The title should give it away, but in case it’s not quite obvious enough, Turning Red  is a movie about puberty, specifically girls’ puberty, encased in the metaphorical text of a girl spontaneously turning into a giant red panda in response to high emotions or burgeoning sexual feelings. Not all of it is subtext even: menstruation is di...

Way back in the days when Pixar would attach an animated short to their feature theatrical releases, one of the best was a little film called La Luna , which released with the movie Brave . Even among the versatility of the Pixar short films, it was notably stylistically unique and intrepid. You felt the personal touch of its’ director, an Italian animator Enrico Casarosa. Ten years later he’s finally made his feature debut for Pixar, and it’s a delight to see that his artistic vision has translated largely intact from one form to the other (it’s nice too that he seems to have brought over the characters from La Luna  in a minor role).  Luca  is not quite like any Pixar movie preceding it. I said the same thing about   Soul , and I’m glad to do so again. At the very least it doesn’t look like any other Pixar movie. The character designs are rather particular, less logical in shape and expression and more visually interesting than other Pixar movies about humans. Thei...

Every Pixar movie has its moment where it tries to make you cry. It’s become essentially a part of Pixar’s brand at this point, that no matter the movie, it will build to a big emotional peak with regards to its’ storytelling or character arcs that will tug at your heart in just the right way to make it burst. It’s a talent that almost seems unique to that studio and we always anticipate it. The big emotional moment in Soul though is subtler perhaps than any I can recall. It’s a silent, personal moment of clarity without a level of high emotion on-screen or grandiose sentiment (not that there’s anything wrong with either). But it’s packed with some of the richest meaning Pixar has ever put into any of their films. And it worked as well for me as any from director and Pixar CCO Pete Docter, who having overseen the opening sequence of Up  and the devastatingly bittersweet emotional climax of Inside Out , can fairly be considered an expert at this. Not long before this scene and the g...

Since watching  Onward , I’ve been trying to decipher the meaning of its’ title. It doesn’t quite coalesce with any major themes of the film except in the basest sense of character and journey progression, nor is the word given any real significance in-text. I think I came to the conclusion it’s mostly a marketing name concocted by the brand executives at Disney, given they’re in the business lately of simple one-word titles for any animated features that aren’t sequels, but it’s declaratory function is still important and useful. Pixar isn’t the same company it once was. The bastion of strange, original concepts in family entertainment that shepherded the animated forms’ capacity for heartwarming values and artistic ambition in the United States has become mostly just another branch of the mainstream Disney behemoth in recent years. Most of their output in the 2010s have been sequels, with only three truly great additions to their canon ( Toy Story 3 , Inside Out , and...

A sequel to Toy Story 3  always felt like a remarkably bad idea. There are only a few perfect movie trilogies: The Lord of the Rings , the  Apu  trilogy, the Before  trilogy, possibly the original Star Wars  trilogy, and the Toy Story  trilogy. Despite being made years apart (eleven between the second and third), they really felt like one story tied together through an increasingly evolving theme about growing up, which meant something so powerful for those of us who grew up with the series. Toy Story 3  was the perfect conclusion, ending with one of the most beautifully bittersweet closures of a movie series in recent memory. Nine years later though, Toy Story 4  comes to cinemas, directed by up-and-coming Pixar animator Josh Cooley, attempting to continue the story. It’s a monumental task to match up, and the movie doesn’t. But it is a very worthy addendum to the series, and specifically for the character of Woody. Two years after Andy do...