MOVIE: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie Year: 2023 Rating: PG Length: 92 minutes / 1.53 hours I’ll admit that I was skeptical about this movie going in. Some of the casting decisions were questionable, but I also knew Nintendo would have a much tighter hold on their intellectual property after Super Mario Bros. (1993). An animated take on a simple video game concept was the better way to go, but I also know Illumination has a reputation for somewhat “cheap” CGI movies. All this being said—nostalgia is a heck of a drug. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) is bright, colorful, and a lot of fun to watch. I felt like the character designs were definitely on-point—which wasn’t hard to do when Nintendo already has 3D models of almost every character that appeared in this movie (something the previous attempt at this movie did not have). While the plot was simple, it’s not like a game from 1985 really had that much plot to go off,...
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MOVIE: Toy Story (1995)

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Toy StoryYear: 1995Rating: GLength: 81 minutes / 1.35 hours One benefit of having children is revisiting movies from my youth. I saw Toy Story (1995) in theaters and was immediately struck by how amazing it was that they made the entire film with computers. While this is no longer something that causes awe, there is something about the first movie to make this leap. Almost 30 years later, Toy Story shows its age in some of its visual aspects. However, the cinematography and storytelling here are top-notch and often made me ignore the CGI which is comparatively less polished than today’s effects. To Pixar’s credit, they did the best they could by focusing on slightly easier-to-animate characters than humans or animals. The people and pets in Toy Story look horrific (sometimes on purpose) but there has to be grace for the limitations of the time. Still, with the immense flexibility of the digital camera, some shots in Toy Story that would have...
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MOVIE: Chip ‘n Dale – Rescue Rangers (2022)

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Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Year: 2022 Rating: PG Length: 97 minutes / 1.61 hours Nostalgia can be tricky to balance. There's nostalgia that feels pandering, even to the demographic it's aimed at. Then there's nostalgia that's so meta that only those deep scholars of the source material would get the inside jokes. As a Millennial, I found Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) scratched an itch for balanced nostalgia I didn't even know I had. It's a shame that Disney tossed it onto Disney+ instead of getting a wider theatrical release because the comedy in this movie was top-notch. This movie was so smartly written that I laughed out loud more often than not. All the brief references it hid in plain view, but without drawing a cringey, eye-winking nod to it, was a welcome change to how most movies handle nostalgia reboots. Even modern references like Ugly Sonic were hilarious, mostly because they "went there." Of course, the movie still brought attention to...
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MOVIE: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Year: 2022 Rating: PG Length: 122 minutes / 2.03 hours It's amazing to me that the original Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) movie pulled out a passable film despite decades of sub-par video game movie adaptations. While it didn't dive into much of the lore other than the conflict between Sonic (Ben Schwartz) and Doctor Robotnik (Jim Carrey), it set the stage for something better in its sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). With nostalgia being a huge factor in this franchise, it pleasantly surprised me that this film knew which moments would achieve that intended effect. At first, I was worried that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was lumping too much new material together with the introduction of both Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey) and Knuckles (Idris Elba). Still, the combo—along with Robotnik's traditional video game look—really gave the impression that this movie cared about its source material. The huge action set pieces were the highlights of this film and I was grinning from...
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MOVIE: Mortal Kombat (2021)

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Mortal Kombat Year: 2021 Rating: R Length: 110 minutes / 1.83 hours In the last few years, it feels like Hollywood has finally come to grips with adapting video games into movies. There has been such a sour taste from the initial wave of video game-inspired movies from the mid-90s that it’s taken 25 years to finally delve into this genre again. As these movie franchises are being rebooted, it’s nice to see that the writers and directors (mostly) understand the appeal of the source material and can translate it to the big screen. It also helps that CGI technology has advanced to the point where the special effects in these films aren’t nearly as campy. While the original movie version of Mortal Kombat (1995) was OK, there were definitely a few odd choices in its production (inducing casting and some script issues). For the reboot, I felt Mortal Kombat (2021) nailed the aesthetic and the characters with just enough plot to make the reason...
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VIDEO GAME: Shovel Knight (2014)

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Shovel Knight Year: 2014 Rating: E Time Played: 27.33 hours I grew up in the era of retro video games. My favorite was the Mega Man series, but I appreciated what games like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link were trying to accomplish. While Shovel Knight isn’t a spiritual successor to any one game, it lovingly paints the pixelated beauty of classic video games in vibrant homage. I played through this game and all three of its free DLC add-ons on the 3DS, and I found the stereoscopic effect to be just as mesmerizing as the stunning visuals it used to create the effect. Shovel Knight managed to create a world filled with lore and unique characters that far surpasses anything programmed on the NES. Granted, there was a bit of a cheat in not being wholly constrained to NES graphics or audio, but I’d rather have a great game that fudges some nostalgia than one that suffers because of...
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MOVIE: Bumblebee (2018)

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Bumblebee Year: 2018 Rating: PG-13 Length: 114 minutes / 1.90 hours While I’m nowhere close to being a fan of the Transformers series, I’d occasionally watch the latest installment when it came to the cheap theater in town. I stopped doing this after the third film and only saw the fourth one on Redbox. I never even bothered with the most recent one. Then comes along this spinoff to the main storyline, Bumblebee (2018). For once, I was legitimately interested. The trailers made it seem like a cute little prequel/backstory for the practically mute robot in disguise. In the end, I was not disappointed, as Bumblebee was a fun and charming romp that showed what this franchise could have been like if Michael Bay didn’t direct. I appreciated how this movie essentially went full-in with its nostalgia. After all, since the Transformers originated in the 1980s, why couldn’t a film take advantage of this timeline to also reference lots of other 80s pop culture? Fortunately,...
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MOVIE: Ready Player One (2018)

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Ready Player One Year: 2018 Rating: PG-13 Length: 140 minutes / 2.33 hours Ready Player One (2018) is a rare film for me, mostly because I had read the book well before the movie came out. In fact, I read the book shortly after it was released, and was impressed by the sheer volume of pop culture references. Consequently, I figured such a film could never be made. Just based on the incredible amount of coordination it would take to get rights approvals from so many different places, the legal side of such a film would be a nightmare. If it was made into a film, I imagined it would certainly be a fun and flashy romp through cyberspace. The film version, while not entirely faithful to its source material, certainly lives up to my imagination. While the book spends paragraphs describing all the pop culture references, the movie does it one better and gives quick, flashing glances of something that fans of pop culture will...
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MOVIE: Pokémon the Movie – I Choose You! (2017)

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Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You! Year: 2017 Rating: PG Length: 98 minutes / 1.63 hours Over 20 years after its debut, it seems that Pokémon is not a fad and will be here to stay for the long haul. Of course, considering the mania surrounding the first games in the series back in the mid-1990’s, by now enough time has passed for nostalgia to be a contributing factor to the franchise’s continued success. The children who grew up with Pokémon are now adults in their late-20’s and early-30’s (i.e., “millennials”). In an attempt to cash in on this nostalgia, Pokémon’s latest movie, I Choose You! recounts some of the memorable first moments of the anime, but with a slightly different storyline. Initially, I was worried that this plot would be a pared-down selection of key moments from the anime, much like what has been done with other anime movies like One Piece’s The Desert Princess and the Pirates (2007) and Episode of Chopper Plus(2008). Fortunately, this film managed to...
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MOVIE: Lady Bird (2017)

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Lady Bird Year: 2017 Rating: R Length: 94 minutes / 1.56 hours It’s weird to think that 2003 was 15 years ago. As someone who graduated high school in 2004, Lady Bird (2017) hit me right in the nostalgia. While there have been plenty of coming-of-age films over the years, Lady Bird simplifies the experience to a quick-paced trot through the senior year of high school for the titular character (portrayed to great effect by Saoirse Ronan). All the trappings of the coming-of-age story are there, including experimentation with drugs, sex, and alcohol, but done in a way that is still innocent and child-like. In the end, Lady Bird is about independence and defining who we are as individuals. What really hits home in the narrative of this film is the things we do to make ourselves stand out. From declaring that our name is different from the one our parents gave us to choosing which friends we spend our time with, we inevitably realize that we’re seeking approval and acceptance...
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MOVIE: Power Rangers (2017)

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Power Rangers Year: 2017 Rating: PG-13 Length: 124 minutes / 2.06 hours In one of the many gritty reboots of a nostalgic 1990’s franchise, I didn’t have much expectation for Power Rangers (2017). The original show was pretty campy, with a tried-and-true plot structure that didn’t change much from episode to episode. In fact, I probably couldn’t tell you the specific plot of any of the episodes. They’d usually follow this format: the main villain would go about trying to obtain some goal via their minions/henchmen, the Power Rangers would morph and fight the minions/henchmen, the minions/henchmen would grow large and start destroying everything, the Power Rangers would call their Zords out to battle, and (finally) the Zords would combine into the Megazord and the foe would be vanquished. While Power Rangers did follow some of the structure of the television show format, it also managed to create characters with some depth and background to them. From a disgraced football star to an autistic teen...
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