The Goods: Film ReviewsSo witty and utterly beautiful as an Austen adaptation that all the rest look a bit stiff by comparison. Anya Taylor-Joy is spellbinding as the title character; Mia Goth is possibly even better. A thrill and a joy, especially the production, especially especially the costumes.
The first Peanuts special without Bill Melendez as director, though he still produced. It’s a Snoopy-centric special but not especially funny. I do love a few of the backgrounds, though. Highly inessential, even for Peanuts fans.
Most large publications have avoided reviewing What is a Woman?, and with good reason: It is very clearly a piece of hate-fomenting and fearmongering propaganda against transgender people.
I’m not sure why I watched it (rest assured I found a way to view it without putting a penny in its creators’ pockets), but since I did, I have the choice between ignoring it or condemning it. I’m not going to write a full review of it or put it on the site’s front page, but I do want to notate that it is the worst and most angering film I’ve seen all year. It fails to achieve any rhetorical goals. It is not intellectually curious. It does not raise thought-provoking points. It simply rehashes hate speech and misinformation we’ve seen a million times. This is no Riefenstahl situation where there’s cinematic genius leveraged by a hateful political mission. It’s just a bad film, a nutjob’s YouTube video essay with a budget. No more sophisticated than that.
There are challenging, complicated questions to answer in a world where definitions and perceptions of gender are rapidly changing. And there are affirming ways to ask and answer these questions without dehumanizing trans and nonbinary people. This so-called documentary is not interested in doing so. It just provides an echo-chamber to make it easier for bigots to stay bigoted. And, worse, it might discourage people who might genuinely want to understand these concepts better from confronting their own biases and preconceptions.
Don’t make the mistake I did and give it any of your spare time or brainwaves.
The title is the best part of this special, unfortunately, but it still has a faint dusting of that golden age Peanuts special magic.
Like most mid-era Peanuts specials, this one is not bad so much as inessential. The story follows Snoopy chasing down a sexy poodle and joining the circus. There’s more of a dark tone here than some other Peanuts specials, but not to an especially interesting effect.
Early trick film in the “lightning sketch animation” subgenre/technique that was a precursor for real animation just a couple years down the road.
Great character animation and design endure through decades. Even centuries.
An early demonstration of cel animation. It increases the energy and expansiveness from early animation pieces by an order of magnitude. Holds up as a historical curiosity, though the expressiveness of the art would come a long way in the next few years.
The first Felix the Cat cartoon, back when he was still Tom. Dark and funny (and very horny) with some vintage “rubber hose” animation.
The first Technicolor animated short, and it makes full use of its innovation: the tone and texture of the vibrant colors add so much richness to the short. The grumpy tree is my spirit animal.