MOVIE: Inside Out 2 (2024)

by benmweilert1 Comment
Inside Out 2Year: 2024Rating: PGLength: 96 minutes / 1.60 hours Inside Out 2 (2024) is one of those rare sequels that build upon the first movie in new ways that expand the narrative of the world. There were already hints of a puberty subplot at the end of the first Inside Out (2015), but adding new emotions to the mix really helped round out that teenager experience. As a parent, I loved how the first film made it easy to talk to my kids about emotions, but now there's a whole extra level of parenting I can unlock by using this movie as well. Most of my gripes about Inside Out 2 are minor—partly because the first movie had these issues as well. For a head full of emotions, there really is only room for a story about one or two of them. That there were four new characters added in this movie felt a bit much, especially when most of the...
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MOVIE: Inside Out (2015)

by benmweilert1 Comment
Inside OutYear: 2015Rating: PGLength: 95 minutes / 1.58 hours It's amusing that a movie studio like Pixar—which has been making us feel all our emotions for decades— made a film solely about those emotions. They already succeeded in making me cry in almost every other film of theirs, and this is no exception. And while they've always had some significant lesson in them, Inside Out (2015) feels like the best kind of therapy you can buy to make discussions with your kids much more approachable. After all, emotions are part of the human experience and everyone can relate to these feelings in some small way, at a minimum. Visually, Inside Out is great because it combines some well-done realism with the spectacular imaginative world inside a pre-teen girl's head. There are a ton of great jokes based on wordplay that are both funny and somewhat educational. The voice acting is superb, and the plot is a solid exploration of how to navigate...
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MOVIE: The Founder (2016)

by benmweilertNo Comments
The FounderYear: 2016Rating: PG-13Length: 115 minutes / 1.92 hours I hate to admit it, but many of these biopics about successful individuals all come off as the same story. Some down-on-his-luck guy stumbles across an idea that he steals (or has stolen from him) and makes his own to enormous success, betraying his friends and family along the way. We saw it in The Social Network (2010), Jobs (2013), Joy (2015), and The Greatest Showman (2017). The Founder (2016) is just another in this almost cookie-cutter genre that covers the origins of the McDonald corporation we know today. That’s not to say that The Founder isn’t entertaining. As an engineer, I was fascinated at how the McDonald brothers were able to be successful by creating efficiencies and eliminating waste in the process of selling hamburgers and other fast food. The trick is that the titular character, Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), is half protagonist (the one you want to root for) and half...
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