Author: aliceklar

The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022)

Where to find it: Cinemas for now, Disney+ later
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: The Belchers get involved in a murder mystery
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: the song and dance numbers, characters I love from the TV show, increased animation budget and cool scene transitions
What I don’t like about it: could be better, basically an extra-long episode

Review:
Bob’s Burgers is a TV cartoon that has been running for over a decade and this, the obligatory movie version, fits in well with it. It won’t blow anyone away, especially people new to the franchise as a whole, but it’s funny and diverting and most everything one could want from a Bob’s Burgers movie

Content notes (may contain spoilers): innuendo and peril, buried alive, cartoon corpse

Wolfwalkers (2020)

Where to find it: Apple TV+
Length: 100 minutes
Synopsis: A curious young girl defies her father’s orders and frolics in the woods with a werewolf
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: gosh, everything – the impressionist art style with guide lines left in, the buddy relationship between the two main girls, the themes of colonialism, urban growth and conservation
What I don’t like about it: nothing – I wouldn’t change a single frame of this movie

Review:
Cartoon Saloon is an Irish animation studio with a 100% success rate since blowing the animation world away with The Secret of Kells and this movie refines that movie’s techniques to an awe-inspiring level. The film finds us in the thick of the Plantation of Ulster and introduces us to a young girl who lives in a walled colonist city. Her father ventures out every day into the untamed, natural Irish forest to hunt wolves who are threatening the city’s woodcutters. She follows him one day and meets a girl who lives in the woods and can turn into a wolf. This sets up a conflict against the judgement of her elders as she sympathises with the wolves and attempts to stop the systematic destruction of their home. Its ripe ground for exploring worthy themes and the film doesn’t miss any of them, coming down didactically hard on the side of nature, Ireland and paganism as it jolly well should. These films are only ever made thanks to EU funding, they never seem to find an audience but they really deserve one. This film is perfect, please watch.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): cartoon (but serious) violence and peril, especially against animals; patriarchal control; fire

Hawkeye (2021)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: Six 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: The guy from the movies tries to protect a young woman and stop a threat in time for Christmas with his family
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: Hailee Steinfeld, the dynamic between the Hawkeyes, fun and followable action, the deaf stuff
What I don’t like about it: never quite delivers on its themes, these MCU things never have real stakes

Review:
The switch from movies to TV is working out very well for Disney’s Marvel project, they’re much more diverse in tone than the films, generally less dark and more fun and this is a good example of that. Partially adapted from the Matt Fraction/David Aja comic book that was the hottest thing in comics ten years ago, this series finds Clint Barton reluctantly mentoring Kate Bishop, a young and impetuous archer, as they have silly battles with the velour-tracksuited Russian mafia. In this adaptation, Clint is dragged into the situation even though he would rather be home celebrating Christmas with his family, while Kate seems to be enjoying the adventure. Impulsive youth vs. responsible adulthood is a definite theme here – “What are you, 18?” “I’m 22!” “There’s no difference.” – but it never really pays it off by having Clint tell off Kate and she really deserves it in this one, but they just play the dynamic for laughs. It’s fun but it seemed like it was going to be better around episode 3

Content notes (may contain spoilers): general superhero fighting and peril

How To with John Wilson (2020)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Twelve 30-minute episodes so far
Synopsis: One man’s view of New York City
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: it’s hilarious, it’s the most neurodivergent show on TV, it makes more points in an episode than most series put together, it’s a realistic view of a city I couldn’t bear to live in
What I don’t like about it: some of the footage is uncomfortable to watch, it can be a bit formulaic after a dozen episodes

Review:
John Wilson is an anxious New Yorker who never leaves home without his camera. He has assembled this collection of footage into half-hour episodes of meditation on the city and modern life. At the start of each episode, Wilson introduces a theme and “How to…” title for the episode but it soon meanders as he gets into mischief and social adventures, interviewing weird and wonderful humans and giving us tantalising, if comedically ‘played up’, views into his personal life. His choice of footage is always wonderful and played for laughs, a favourite trick is to juxtapose what he’s saying and what he’s showing until they converge on a double meaning. Many things about the show make it feel of special interest to autistic people – there are constant attempts to explain social rules which are soon shown to be inadequate when met with human behaviour, some interactions are engineered to be extra awkward and capture (primarily) neurotypical responses, John’s obsessive documenting and editing and his adorable, (extra)ordinary life. Watch it if you can!

Content notes (may contain spoilers): real-life footage of roadkill, car accidents etc., nudity and pornography

The Dead Zone (1983)

Where to find it: Any given cardboard box full of VHS tapes, Channel 5 on a Wednesday night
Length: 105 minutes
Synopsis: A man wakes up from a coma to find he has developed clairvoyance
Recommendation rating: 1/5

What I like about it: it filled some time, has one decent shot
What I don’t like about it: it didn’t succeed at anything it tried

Review:
This movie finished five minutes ago and I’m already forgetting about it

Content notes (may contain spoilers): death, violence, fire

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

Where to find it: Disney+
Length: 95 minutes
Synopsis: Dale tries to convince Chip to reunite their double act to cash in on nineties nostalgia
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: funny, meta, well-paced and easy to watch
What I don’t like about it: Andy Samberg, animation can be a little janky, feels like a cover version of a Phil Lord and Chris Miller movie

Review:
The premise of this one can be a little disconcerting; it involves a parallel Earth in which cartoon characters live among humans and the 90s cartoon of the same name was shot on a live-action set by the cartoons themselves. It’s odd but soon established and then the writers begin to cram in jokes. Some are really quite funny: Dale has gotten “the CGI surgery” to make himself more appealing to the youth but it hasn’t worked out and he’s working nostalgia conventions alongside some notable and hilarious characters that I won’t spoil here. The main problem with this one is acknowledged in an early line from Chip: “Dale, absolutely no one wants to see our cartoon rebooted” – it’s enough for a fun, distracting Sunday afternoon movie but not enough to bring any real excitement to the viewing experience and that puts a ceiling on the enjoyment level. The team behind this one is basically The Lonely Island and it is funny and competently made but this nod-wink “we know you don’t want it so we made it meta funny” thing has been done over and over since 21 Jump Street and it starts to feel like when you’ve seen one, you’ve heard the joke(s).

Content notes (may contain spoilers): cartoon body horror

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

Where to find it: Netflix
Length: Nine one-hour episodes
Synopsis: Young woman looks after creepy orphans in spooky manor house
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: occasionally has excellent unsettling sequences, the child actors were great, as were the characters
What I don’t like about it: completely lost the plot by halfway, has an entirely skippable uninteresting penultimate episode

Review:
Mike Flanagan has a great formula for horror but there are better examples of it than this. What starts out promising, albeit with plenty of filler, soon evaporates and there’s an episode at the end that seems designed to kill the goodwill of anyone who invested their time in it

Content notes (may contain spoilers): general horror tropes, animal abuse, it’s very dark

The Double (2013)

Where to find it: Rent on BFI Player or wait until it’s on Film4
Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: A meek office worker finds his life usurped by an assertive doppelgänger
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: the retrofuture aesthetic, arresting visuals, music
What I don’t like about it: slow and quiet, demanding lots of attention

Review:
Jesse Eisenberg ably plays the double role of nerdy doormat and arrogant charmer but the real star here is Richard Ayoade, setting up visuals and sequences that Kubrick would be proud of. The music, a mix of staccato stings and Asian crooning, is another highlight. Worth watching if you don’t care much for plot.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): stalking behaviour, suicide, violence, cutting, depersonalisation

The Other Two (2019)

Where to find it: Prime Video maybe, sometimes on All4
Length: Twenty half-hour episodes over two seasons so far
Synopsis: Twentysomething siblings trying to make it in New York have to deal with a new reality when their kid brother becomes a viral superstar
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: the jokes (“I’m going to an exclusive unveiling later – they’re debuting a new Hadid sister”), it’s really funny and absurdist and has actually good gay jokes, the subtle way they depict things
What I don’t like about it: the pacing feels off sometimes, the main characters are so aloof that they’re hard to connect with

Review:
This is the funniest show I’ve seen in quite a while and it also has more depth than most, I love the subtle touches like how Chase seems so much younger when not performing and the way they use split-screen to compare the situations of the main sibling characters.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): mental health (anxiety), occasional sex scenes

Our Flag Means Death (2022)

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Ten episodes, roughly 30-minutes each
Synopsis: A clownish band of pirates, led by a rich dandy, get more than they bargained for when their underwhelming adventures are interrupted by the fearsome Blackbeard
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: Taika Waititi, fun writing, good drama in the latter half, lovely romance and Taika Waititi (seriously if he doesn’t get an Emmy it’s a robbery)
What I don’t like about it: the first few episodes are very underwhelming, the mix of history and pure fiction can be hard to understand and delineate

Review:
This show has a secret! It begins as a middle-of-the-road comedy and feels, for the first couple of episodes, like a failed attempt to make “What We Do in the Shadows but with pirates” but that hides its true nature. The show “grows the beard” in episode four when Taika Waititi’s Blackbeard is introduced. His name has been enough to get me interested in a project since Boy, but his acting ability has been criminally underutilised since then and he brings this project to another level – giving me chills at least once an episode towards the end. Rhys Darby brings his unique charm to the role of “The Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet and the rest of the cast glue as an ensemble as it goes on, Ewen Bremner being a particularly memorable highlight. Check this one out if you have enough time to sit through a few not-so-great episodes.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): Comical, but occasionally vivid, violence and injuries; relationship problems; mental health (BPD, DID)