Most films about faith are rooted in at least one book. While Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a graphic memoir published in several volumes throughout the early 2000s, is not a holy text itself, it does contain lessons, stories, and cautionary tales about faith. In its examination Read More …
There is a single concept that drove The Wild Robot author Peter Brown, inspired the filmmakers adapting the story, and even guided the titular character within the film: kindness can be a survival skill. The Wild Robot stars Roz, a housekeeping robot marooned on an Read More …
A plot description makes Flow sound like a high-concept kiddie film. Animated animals on a boat attempt to survive a surging flood. To do so a cat and a dog and a bird and a capybara must learn to check their instinctual animal enmity for Read More …
“How do you live?” is the fundamental question posed by Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. It’s the question posed to Mahito Maki, the angry 12-year-old boy at the film’s centre. Having recently lost his mother in a fire in Tokyo during World War II, Read More …
In a year of excellent documentaries—Cameraperson, The Witness, O.J: Made in America—Tower is a film of immense emotional heft. The film serves as a formal exercise in collective memory, a memorial recording both the horrors of human depravity as well as the redemptive courage that can emerge out Read More …
It is safe to say that I never expected to have my soul ministered to by a tiny, one-eyed mollusk wearing orange sneakers, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a stop-motion animated mockumentary that depicts its namesake protagonist’s determined efforts to find his lost family Read More …
The Lego Movie took critics and audiences by surprise not only by elevating itself beyond a massive commercial but by the thematic depths it plumbed and its ability to blend humor with serious strands of thought through the centuries. The film navigates the nuances of Read More …
The “Disney Renaissance” of the late 1980s and early 1990s pushed the boundaries of animation by taking the formulas of Broadway musicals, applying them to fairy tales, and selling the results to grown-ups who might never have considered going to a Disney cartoon. So when Read More …