MOVIE: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Year: 2022 Rating: PG Length: 117 minutes / 1.95 hours Disney has dominated the fairy tale adaptation for so long that it’s refreshing to see something like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) take a different approach to the story of Pinocchio instead of merely copying the 1940 version. Fittingly enough, using stop-motion for this movie was a great way to be creative as well as align with the whole “talking wooden puppet” motif. And while the time jump into World War II Italy obviously doesn’t make this a faithful adaptation of the original work, it’s at least grittier than the more colorful animated versions have come to represent. I appreciate all the work that goes into stop-motion animated movies. I enjoyed Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), so it’s nice to see other animation companies like ShadowMachine enter the feature-length movie realm with their work. That being said, the...
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MOVIE: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Kubo and the Two Strings Year: 2016 Rating: PG Length: 101 minutes / 1.68 hours We live in the future, and it is incredible. I’ve found stop-motion animation to be a fascinating medium, not only for its “dirtiness” when compared to CGI, but also because of the painstaking care it takes to produce a full-length feature with this process. Animation studios like Aardman and Laika are really starting to take advantage of all the tools at their disposal to create some awesome stop-motion movies. We’ve come a long way since the films of Henry Selick, the most famous one being The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). Through Selick, we now have a handful of fantastic films through the Laika brand. While their previous work, The Boxtrolls (2014) had started the trend away from more morbid themes and plots, Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) shows just how capable the stop-motion medium is to tell a fantastic story. With an origami motif existing throughout, Kubo and the...
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