“It’s not the action, it’s the distraction.” Animated movie buffs will find a joyful surfeit of both in the new DreamWorks flick The Bad Guys 2, a sequel to the 2002 hit that surpasses it in almost every way. Every primary and a few secondary characters return in a snappy heist film that has enough […]

“The Art of The Boy and the Heron” opens with director Hayao Miyazaki’s self-deprecating Project Memo: “Isn’t it proof that you are aging when you imagine you’re still capable, but in fact you have memory loss due to senility? I would say yes.” Audiences who saw the Oscar-winning film would say “no.” The Japanese title […]

Set free at last from playing ridiculous basketball games that did nothing to showcase them; three venerable Looney Tunes characters showed a new generation of animation fans what the good old days were like. Many fans recognize Porky Pig and Daffy Duck in their 1950s-60s Chuck Jones incarnations; Porky is a straight man to other […]

Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois are among the most influential names working in animation today. Their record includes Lilo and Stitch for Disney and the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, with DeBlois directing the last two installments for DreamWorks. They have teamed up again for a highly regarded new film, The Wild Robot. DreamWorks […]

To anyone who knows the enchantment of animation, many of the people in this new documentary are superheroes. Among the generous abundance of studio clips and nearly a dozen on-camera interviews, all have something of value to add: animation artists, historians, and celebrities, including Mulan’s Ming-Na Wen, who narrates. But in chronicling the saga of […]

Some stories must be told, especially to those caring enough to understand them, lest they eventually destroy the teller. Such is the theme of Keichi Hara’s 2022 anime, Lonely Castle in the Mirror. (Henceforth “Castle” for the purpose of this review). Adapted from a novel by Mizuki Tsujimura, The story concerns seven middle-school students who […]