#31: Frozen (2013)

Disclaimer: I dislike 3/5 of the current Disney Princess movies that are in the official line up.

• "Brave" is a missed opportunity.
• "The Princess and The Frog" is an insult.
• "Moana" kind of has the same issues as "Frozen" regarding the screenplay but it's a lot more tolerable because it doesn't drag.
• "Tangled" is the best. 

This one?

Took America by storm in 2013 because there were two nearly identical white woman models singing songs. Man, these people would not hear a word against this movie. Say "I don't really care because it's a bunch of same-faced white people", and you would be considered the devil.

 I was impressed with the ideas, not the story outline, execution, screenplay or pacing way back in 2013. I am genuinely interested in the sequel later this month, so I decided to put my biases aside and try again.

#6: Zootopia

I have always been a humongous lover of anthropomorphic animal tales. I talked about Redwall, but there's also Mistmantle, and Geronimo Stilton, and Hermux Tantamoq and I totally understand that I just said a bunch of gibberish and you don't know what any of it is but it meant the world to me as a child.

Just 7 short years after making their first black princess a frog for most of her movie, the geniuses at Disney Animation Studios made a bare-bones, kind of muddled story about discrimination. Is Judy discriminated against because she's a rabbit? A herbivore? Small?

It's about Prey vs. Predators, and you can fill in the power imbalances yourself with whatever you like! Mayor Bellwether (My favorite character) talks about a "Mammal Inclusion Initiative" but mammals can be predators or prey.

Yeah, this movie doesn't have the bite of actually making a clear allegory, but the people who made it are mostly white men, and while their lives have had individual challenges, they don't immediately understand that everyone outside of that demographic has had far bigger challenges because of race and gender.

#68: Wreck It Ralph

Dang, who ever thought we'd get a sequel to this? Not me - but I'm glad for it.

Also I love the teaser poster to both this and the second movie. The rest fall into that typical CGI cartoon nonsense but the pixellation of this + the cursor and searchbox of the sequel poster are awesome to me.

Let's get this out of the way; This could have gone badly. Every time Disney hint at putting some kind of semi-modern spin on its movies, people get into a panic that it'll be "too much" or "it won't age well."

This movie doesn't have that problem. Now, the sequel, dealing with the internet, very well might. But this isn't about that.

This is about a man who does a job and everyone hates him for it it both in and out of game. Kind of like job recruiting.

The overwhelming message here is...what is the aesop here?

#57: Kong: Skull Island

I've always found the Monsterverse to be okay. It got the job done. At least, unlike the Dark Universe, it didn't start off bad and get worse, but simply started off okay and got....okayer. 

So remember when I said in The Last of The Film Ones that out of all the 2017 movies I mentioned, there was one I hadn't mentioned in that post, because I admitted to myself that I hadn't given it a fair shot, and wanted to revisit it?

Well, this is it.

I originally saw this in DBOX, and that was my first DBOX experience.

It was totally worth the 0$ I paid. Normally it's about 18$ but thank you, Fandango's shitty network infrastructure! Glitched out and charged me nothing while giving me a ticket. But seriously, it was fun, and I would totally recommend you try it for action movies.

Also, WB cannot legally use the phrase King Kong in any of their movies. Reason why Godzilla vs. Kong isn't Godzilla vs. King Kong.

And there are technically two Godzilla cinematic universes between three studios, and the Toho Godzilla movies are very different than the Americanized Godzilla movies, as we saw earlier this year.

What were we on about again?

How the production value and design is actually amazing? It is, it really is. I also firmly, firmly believe that this should have won some kind of cinematography award for the Oscars. Really, it's so beautiful. Or costuming. Or set design!

Also a resounding round of applause that while this is a war movie, IT'S NOT ABOUT WORLD WAR II! It's about Vietnam. Parallel to Vietnam.

Oh!

How this movie has way too many good actors squandered.

#55: Rio 2

Music and a weaker show.

Rio 2 stars Anne Hathaway, Jermaine Clement, and Kirsten Chenowith, so it's already pretty cool.

It's less annoying on the "Characters have children in movie number 2" than in the Hotel Transylvania series (Seriously, the second movie was awful. Same with Despicable Me 2.)

And this is going to sound weird but props for ... body diversity in Blue Spix Macaws.

If you're going to laugh at me for this quote at least link to my blog.

 Also there's no hiding how many brown people are seen in this movie, even if it's not about them. This is Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, after all.

Though it would take nearly two years until an American mainstream animated production would star brown people.

The story - We have seen this before, loser does not fit in with wife's family and former flame, ecological warfare - but I didn't record and rewatch this for the story. The difference is it focuses on a genuinely endangered species that isn't a made up animal variant.

I rewatched this because the vocal soundtrack is fantastic.

#44: Chronicle

Gosh, I wonder what Josh Trank followed up this near masterpiece of a film with. 

This is a fantastic (ha), and pretty heartbreaking movie. The first time I saw it, being in a fairly depressed mindset, I was seriously shaken and it took me a week to watch another movie.

There is an interesting balance between the folly of youth and showing a sensible and sensitive side to young men.

It really should have been an anthology movie...I would say "Like Cloverfield," but haven't we seen how that works out? Not so great.

Sometimes, Sci-Fi just has to stand alone.

The hand-held camera aspect is pretty cool, and on rare occasion will the tables turn and have someone have a camera on Andrew, the lead character.

In this day and age, it takes a lot for me to feel sad about the fates of men, especially white men, but
this movie can be easily summed up as "What happens depressed people get superpowers and it doesn't fix your problems."

#41: The Incredibles

This movie has permeated pop culture deeper than anyone expected.

I can't say anything about this movie that you probably haven't heard.

It's only flaw is that it shows its age visually. 

So instead, let's talk about how much this has permeated pop culture.

I'd say this is probably the most pervasive Pixar property out there. Sure, people can quote "To Infinity and beyond," and ... maybe two other lines from Toy Story, but I tell you to quote something, anything, from this movie, and what will you give me?

Probably an Edna Mode quote. As it should be. Or even something that doesn't seem special but sticks out.

"You're in charge, Violet." "What!" "You heard her."

"How are you doing that?" "I don't know!"

And, of course, "Where's my super suit?!"So, why has, what seems to be a truly one off film, lasted so long?

#37: What We Do In The Shadows

Vampires; They're just like us!

This is the second full length film by New Zealand wonder Taika Waititi, based upon a short from 2005.

I have seen Hunt For the Wilderpeople (loved it) and Thor: Ragnarok (Very, very tiring), and his humor works far better here and in Wilderpeople than in Ragnarok.

Which isn't a bad film, no, I appreciate the themes of colonialism, but Waititi's humor has a tendency to be very drawn out and droll, which makes it feel refreshing in his smaller, more personal movies than in something like an MCU film where jokes are constantly flying at you and it's sensory overload.

Shadows is a documentary about vampires in New Zealand leading up to an Unholy Masquerade;

Or can we call it a fauxumentary? We can just make up words, right.

#36: WALL-E

I'm less impressed with this now than I was when it came out.

 I will give it one point in that despite the main characters clearly alluding to typical gender conventions (Curves are for women, angles are for guys), EVE's design is pretty cool. The other robots are pretty ambiguous but I guess Pixar didn't expect an American audience to attach itself to some that's not vaguely shaped like an organic lifeform.

"A love story between robots," No, it's just a typical story about a lonely guy bothering a woman trying to do her job but with a lot less creepy stalking factor because, you know, for kids.

It's not as "Technology is bad," as one would expect, but it's there.

I just really find nothing charming about this movie except the "voicework" and the little cleaning robot on the Axiom. I'm not angry this won Best Animated Feature over my favorite movie of all time, but.... the story does nothing for me, trite, typical, and empty are how I describe it.

#34: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Would have been more ... ironic if this was #77, but either way, it's The One that started it all.

I haven't seen the original Star Wars movie since 2015, and not on television. I remember being impressed by how cheesy but yet not totally outdated it looked. The consistency. Nothing really looks like it shouldn't belong. The wonder of practical effects.

I fell in love the moment I saw Mos Eisley. Like, look at ALL of that!

Though this is (obviously) the edit with some weird shots of CG animals and the absolutely awful jerky-shoulder movement with Han vs. Greedo and a very strange looking Jabba.

I don't remember how C3-PO ended up on Leia's ship right now. Something must allude to that in some of the Disney-Era materials, I imagine. Though the book Leia: Princess of Alderaan matches up neatly to the beginning of this movie.

Also, one of the most iconic scenes in Star Wars now stars dead people 😔 Godspeed, Kenny Baker and Carrie Fisher.

I like how we're immediately thrown into something with maybe a minute's worth of text.

 This shit would not fly today, even Valerian had a two minute sequence of meeting aliens that spelled everything out.

Seeing the Binary Sunset sequence on a TV screen was something beautiful to behold.

#18: The Lion King II: Simba's Pride

Disney's love of Shakespearean lions continues. 

I much preferred this one to the original as a little girl, but rewatching it as an adult....the darkness is pretty impressive, but the humor is, just like Hunchback, severely undercuts any kind of tension.

And if it's not the humor, it's the very cheap animation that hits you full on in the face when there's a closeup of the characters.

There is one aspect where it has the original movie soundly beat -