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Pixar’s Existential ‘SOUL’ Sparks Curiosity, Purpose 

As life-affirming and unabashedly profound as it is cerebrally curious and gorgeously animated, Pete Docter’s Soul is yet another Pixar masterwork. Easily the best output from the once-flawless studio since 2015’s Inside Out (also directed by Docter), Soul also ranks amongst Pixar’s best work to date, putting it in league with Toy Story 3, Ratatouille, Up, and Wall-E. Since their acquisition by Disney, Pixar has placed an increased focus on franchising, churning out decent-enough sequels but letting the once limitless creativity that once defined them fall by the wayside. As sequels began to dominate their slate, that spark of creativity dimmed. Though he hadn’t changed, that little Pixar light had a little less bounce in him. Expectations of grandeur lowered in sync. With Inside Out, Pixar nouveau reasserted themselves as a house of bold choices that played to the adults in the audience just as much as the children and Soul affirms this direction with its every fiber.  Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘BABY DRIVER’

It’s been a hot minute since Edgar Wright has graced us with his genius. The man responsible for such perfect fare as Shaun of the Dead andHot Fuzz, Wright has long been a pioneer of the Trojan horse comedy, trafficking highbrow laughs in with genre trappings. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wright is known for his masterful command of visual language, finding laugh-out loud moments in sharp editing, frame composition, camera operation and a great ear for music that amplifies the deadpan, pun-happy, tongue-in-cheek writing gushing from the page. As the mainstream moves more and more toward studio comedies disemboweled by flat visual palettes that fail to embolden jokes with any discernible directorial decisions, Wright has further articulated and championed his particular filmmaking flavour and the world of cinephiles has been the more fortunate for it. Which takes us to Baby Driver. Read More

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SXSW ’17 Review: ‘BABY DRIVER’

It’s been a hot minute since Edgar Wright has graced us with his genius. The man responsible for such perfect fare as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Wright has long been a pioneer of the Trojan horse comedy, trafficking highbrow laughs in with genre trappings. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wright is known for his masterful command of visual language, finding laugh-out loud moments in sharp editing, frame composition, camera operation and a great ear for music that amplifies the deadpan, pun-happy, tongue-in-cheek writing gushing from the page. As the mainstream moves more and more toward studio comedies disemboweled by flat visual palettes that fail to embolden jokes with any discernible directorial decisions, Wright has further articulated and championed his particular filmmaking flavour and the world of cinephiles has been the more fortunate for it. Which takes us to Baby Driver. Read More