Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022) Review

Time: 100 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Jenny Slate as Marcel (voice)
Dean Fleischer Camp as Dean
Isabella Rossellini as Nana Connie (voice)
Rosa Salazar as Larissa Geller
Thomas Mann as Mark Booth
Lesley Stahl as herself
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Marcel, a 1-inch-tall shell, lives with his grandmother, Connie, the only residents of their town after their neighbors’ sudden, mysterious disappearance. When discovered by a guest amongst the clutter of his Airbnb, the short film he posts online brings Marcel millions of passionate fans and a new hope of reuniting with his long-lost family.

For the past months I had been hearing about Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It seemed to be some animated movie which ended up being one of the most beloved movies of 2022. I never saw the trailer, but from my brief glimpses of it, I admit I was somewhat confused by the love. I wasn’t sure that I would get into it, but after it was nominated for best animated film, I thought I should at least check it out. I was pleasantly surprised.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On actually originated as a series of shorts which I haven’t watched myself, but after watching the film, I am interested in checking them out. The movie is a mockumentary about the protagonist Marcel, a living shell, and his grandmother. Things develop over the course of the film, but there isn’t a whole lot driving the plot, and its mostly just watching Marcel’s life. You’re sort of just along with the ride, and if you’re not on board in the first 30 minutes, then you’ll probably find the rest of the movie to be a bit of a drag. On the whole. I’d say that it was a pleasant watch. It’s charming, funny and witty, and quite optimistic on life. It goes for something somewhat profound and touching without feeling disingenuous. It’s not all cheery, there are some melancholic and bittersweet moments, and there are some unexpected tonal shifts. While these shifts can be sudden, there’s a pretty good balance throughout. While Marcel might be appropriate for kids, it does seem like adults would get more out of it than children, mainly with some of the mature themes and the dry humour. Marcel is about 90 minutes long and that was the right runtime, it didn’t feel like it overstayed its welcome.

There is a very small number of characters here, but it fits the contained nature of the film. The living shell protagonist Marcel is voiced by Jenny Slate and her voice helped bring this character to life; he’s likable and carries the movie well. There’s also his grandmother voiced by Isabella Rossellini, and director Dean Fleischer-Camp even plays one of the main characters too, playing the director of the documentary (also named Dean). I liked his dynamic with Marcel, considering he’s in much of the movie (albeit mostly off camera).

Dean Fleischer-Camp directs this well. Marcel is partly live action and partly animated, with everything appearing to be real except for the stop motion shell characters. The stop motion animation especially shines in the live action shots, and it feels real. It’s also deliberately filmed as a mockumentary/faux documentary, and it does appropriately resemble a real documentary, from the zooms, camera movements, audio and even some of the way dialogue is delivered. Finally, its accompanied by a nice and light score from Disasterpeace.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a funny, witty and heartfelt mockumentary with good stop motion animation. If you heard about how everybody loved the movie, I’d recommend keeping your expectations in check. It is a light and relaxed movie with very little drive, but I liked it for that.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Review

Time: 139 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, offensive language, sexual references & content that may disturb
Cast:
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Quan Wang
Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang
James Hong as Gong Gong
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra
Tallie Medel as Becky
Jenny Slate as “Big Nose”
Harry Shum Jr. as Chad
Director: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

When an interdimensional rupture unravels reality, an unlikely hero must channel her newfound powers to fight bizarre and bewildering dangers from the multiverse as the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Everything Everywhere All at Once was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. The immediate thing that made me interested was the fact that it is directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who directed Swiss Army Man which I really liked. Then there’s the trailer itself, the movie looked wild and creative. Then there was so much hype and acclaim upon its release that I ended up lowering my expectations before watching just in case they didn’t live up to all the praise. Yet I was pleasantly surprised.

I will say this, I would recommend going into it not knowing too much. With so many comic book movies and shows utilising it in their universes, the idea of a multiverse is very common these days. However, EEAAT has to be the best multiverse movie so far. Part of that is that it doesn’t have ties to fulfilling franchise requirements, it is very much its own thing. Also, it actually uses this trope have its take on generational trauma. You can already tell going into it (even just by the trailer) that the movie is bonkers, and it certainly is; very eccentric and possibly learning into absurdism. At times it feels like its being random for the sake of being random, but I still liked it, and it’s endlessly creative. There’s a lot of quirky humour that I found funny, however you’ll probably figure out early on whether its for you, because I can already tell that it’s not for everyone. However, it is also surprisingly sincere and heartfelt throughout, even existential, compassionate and strangely relatable. Even with the multiverse aspect, it still works as a hard-hitting family drama, and it really all comes home in the third act. There’s a good mixture of emotions of humour and drama and overall, it works. As for issues, with everything that happens in this one movie, it can be overwhelming and hard to process. In some ways, it takes on a bit more than it can handle, which messes with the pacing, especially in the second act when a lot is happening.

This is Michelle Yeoh’s movie and she’s spectacular in the lead role, conveying a wide range of emotions and works sells the drama, action and humour. This isn’t just her though, the whole cast is great, especially Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Daniels directed this phenomenally, it was quite an experience watching it in the cinema. Its style is visually kinetic and energetic from beginning to end. Sometimes it pays homage and tribute to different types of films including 80s Hong Kong action flicks to even Wong Kar-wai films. The action is greatly choreographed and filmed, and its quite entertaining to watch. The editing is perfect and helps the movie to be even better, and the score from Son Lux is great too.

Everything Everywhere All at Once was quite an experience. Bonkers, absurd and entertaining, yet heartfelt and sincere, it really surprised me. It was written and directed excellently by the Daniels, and the performances were all great, led by a phenomenal and career best Michelle Yeoh. It really does feel like a movie that I need to take some time to process, I was just overwhelmed by the end, and I think I’ll need to watch it again. I’m also aware that this movie won’t be for everyone, but for me, it’s already one of the best movies of the year.

Venom (2018) Review

Time: 112 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence & offensive language
Cast:
Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom
Michelle Williams as Anne Weying
Riz Ahmed as Carlton Drake/Riot
Scott Haze as Roland Treece
Reid Scott as Dr. Dan Lewis
Jenny Slate as Dr. Dora Skirth
Director: Ruben Fleischer

Journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is trying to take down Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), the notorious and brilliant founder of the Life Foundation. While investigating one of Drake’s experiments, Eddie’s body merges with the alien Venom — leaving him with superhuman strength and power. Twisted, dark and fueled by rage, Venom tries to control the new and dangerous abilities that Eddie finds so intoxicating.

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Venom was on my most anticipated movies of 2018 list. A Venom movie has been in development ever since Spider-Man 3, and they eventually got it made by Zombieland and Gangster Squad director Ruben Fleischer. With the involvement of Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed, I was intrigued by a solo villain movie that’s more darker and different than most comic book movies nowadays. With that said, there were some reservations about it. This Venom movie doesn’t feature Spider-Man at all (something which is hard to picture considering Spider-Man is instrumental in his origin in the comics) and knowing how Sony botched some of their Spider-Man movies, you can see why people would be nervous about what they would do with this movie. Sony also are building their own Spider-Man cinematic universe (without Spider-Man) not connected to the MCU, and while that sounds interesting, it sounds rather peculiar and very familiar of Sony trying to build up the Sinister Six before they canned it. Nonetheless, I was sure that Venom would be a very entertaining movie, and I was actually somewhat right. Venom isn’t a very good movie, it’s very messy, the writing is flawed, it feels dated and all around there are a ton of problems. However, it is at the same time unbelievably entertaining, crazy and hilarious and I had such a fun time with it.

The first act of Venom is necessary but its quite slow, drawn out and is not very interesting. It doesn’t seem like it would be that much of a problem, but it is one of the worst parts of the movie because it’s not entertaining like the rest of the movie is. Not to mention despite how dull it feels, it feels really rushed and even the editing is really choppy, like they knew it was not as interesting or fun as the rest of the movie but wanted to keep the essentials of the scene so edited them down to the bare minimum. Venom picks up a little after a random 6 month time jump (which it really didn’t need) and especially once Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock comes in contact with Venom, just before (or at) the second act. Just so you know, it takes about an hour into the movie before we see Eddie Brock in full Venom beast mode. I think one of the biggest disappointments of Venom is the fact that the plot as whole is very generic and familiar. What’s in the trailers is pretty much what’s in the movie (in fact in typical Sony fashion they actually showed a little too much). Honestly I think plotwise there’s not really anything to spoil. With that said, what could actually be spoiled is some of the insane moments, particularly the things that Eddie does in the movie (I’ll get a little more into that aspect when I talk about Tom Hardy). The second act is really good and is full of insane Tom Hardy/Venom moments that are endlessly entertaining. One of the best (if not the best) part of Venom is the dynamic between Eddie and Venom, which is done almost perfectly. It’s hilarious and entertaining watching these two interact with each other and from what I can tell it is straight out of the comics. The third act however feels rather abrupt and loses a lot of the energy from the second act, it becomes a pretty standard comic book movie at this point. Also, throughout the whole movie its been building up this character of Riot and while at certain points he’s great, in the third act he doesn’t feel like that much of a threat in the end. Really, it’s the second act that works the best. Venom is an hour and 50 minutes long which is a little short, I kind of wished we got a longer movie (and by that I mean a longer second act with more of that kind of content). In terms of other problems in general, the dialogue can be weak, even terrible at times, and the film in terms of writing can feel very dated, in fact the writing on the whole wasn’t that good. It actually had 3 screenwriters who did the script, which probably explains one of the biggest problems of the movie: Venom wants to be so much, a buddy comedy between Eddie and Venom, a cheesy creature feature, a body horror movie, a really dark comic book movie and it all tries to do all of that and more at the same time and it doesn’t quite work. It tries to do multiple things at once (with only some of them succeeding) and it would’ve worked a lot better if it just settled on one type of movie. The movie actually worked fine enough without Spider-Man, when it comes to the long list of problems that Venom has, the lack of Spider-Man is pretty low down on it. Venom has two credits scenes, one setting up for a sequel, and the other is another Sony Spider-Man related movie. With the first of the two, I like the implications of it but some aspects of it came across as a little goofy and hard to take seriously. Both I think are worth staying around for.

Tom Hardy is one of the best actors working today, putting everything into every one of his performances, and his performance as Eddie Brock/Venom is no exception here. This is a less villainous take on Eddie Brock (let’s just say that Topher Grace’s Eddie Brock in Spider-Man 3 was much more villainous than Hardy’s version), this version of Brock is much more likable and while it is a departure from the comics, it does actually work well for this movie (especially when he’s contrasted against the Venom symbiote). There is no other way of putting it, Tom Hardy is the reason that this movie works. A lot of his performance is very comedic and most of the insane things that happen in this movie involves him, and Hardy absolutely commits to these scenes. For example, without revealing anything there’s a scene that takes place in a restaurant involving Tom Hardy and it’s probably one of the most hilarious scenes of 2018. Even for all the other good aspects that this movie has, this movie would not work without Hardy, he’s the glue that is holding everything in this movie together. He is great at the comedy but also sells the emotional moments that his character has, when he’s scared finding out that he’s having all these powers and finding himself doing weird things, it is really believable. He really does seem like someone who is forced to share a body and mind with another alien being. Earlier I mentioned about how the Eddie and Venom interactions are some of the best parts of the movie and Hardy really helped to sell that aspect (it helped that he actually voiced Venom as well). The rest of the cast are decent enough but don’t reach Hardy’s level (not necessarily their fault however). I think the problem is that there’s almost a disconnect between Hardy and the rest of the cast. Hardy seems to know that he’s in a cheesy and comedic comic book movie, whereas the rest of the cast play everything very seriously, and whenever Hardy isn’t on screen, things fall a little flat. Michelle Williams does play the ex girlfriend character to Hardy and while she does get some things to do than most characters that fit within this type, most of the time she isn’t really used to her fullest potential. Williams does elevate her performance slightly however. The chemistry between Hardy and Williams is a little hit or miss sometimes but it works okay enough. Riz Ahmed plays Carlton Drake, the villain of the movie and he is a little cartoonish, having these long speeches about humanity and how symbiotes combined with them are the higher life forms and other things like that. He isn’t a very memorable villain and is pretty generic but Ahmed does play up the silliness of the role well and ultimately still gives a pretty good performance.

Ruben Fleischer directed Venom and it is a bit over the place with some aspects being good, and some other aspects not being quite as good. The CGI on the whole is a mixed bag. The CGI on Venom actually looks pretty great and impressive. When it came to other parts though, especially in the climax, it could looked look a little cheap at times. Almost all of the action scenes are pretty good, especially when Venom is involved, they really made him such a hugely powerful figure. The last action scene however wasn’t that good, as it was a little hard to see what’s going on. As for whether Venom needed an R rating, it worked fine without it, they still do well enough with the PG-13 and push it as much as they can, managing to still have some dark and scary imagery at times and even featuring Venom eating people. However, an R probably would’ve allowed them more freedom with the things that they could show and would’ve made it a little more entertaining as well. I think there may have been some heavy edits and cuts to the movie, and you can feel it a little in the first act, for example there’s a scene between Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams and the sudden cuts and the lack of continuity is really obvious. Most of the time its fine but you can really notice it sometimes. I also have mixed feelings about the look of the overall movie. At times it can look great but at other times it can look really dated, like it should’ve come out in the early to mid 2000s.

Venom is an odd movie to say the least and one of the most unexpectedly entertaining movies in recent years. No it’s not really that good, it has a ton of problems, but it has a lot of entertaining aspects, the highlights being Tom Hardy’s performance and his dynamic with Venom. With the potential that a sequel would have, I really want to see the teased sequel. Hopefully this sequel will be R rated (which would probably be wise considering the implications of the credits scene), focuses up on what kind of movie it actually wants to be and is just overall much better than this first movie. Honestly, I can’t tell whether or not you’d like this movie, you will just have to take into account all of what I’ve said about this movie and decide for yourself if this is something that you feel like you would enjoy.

Zootopia (2016) Review

Time: 108 Minutes
Age Rating: Some scenes may scare very young children
Cast:
Ginnifer Goodwin as Officer Judy Hopps (voice)
Jason Bateman as Nicholas P. “Nick” Wilde (voice)
Idris Elba as Chief Bogo (voice)
Jenny Slate as Dawn Bellwether (voice)
Nate Torrence as Officer Benjamin Clawhauser (voice)
Bonnie Hunt as Bonnie Hopps (voice)
Don Lake as Stu Hopps (voice)
Tommy Chong as Yax (voice)
J.K. Simmons as Leodore Lionheart (voice)
Octavia Spencer as Mrs. Otterton (voice)
Alan Tudyk as Duke Weaselton (voice)
Shakira as Gazelle (voice)
Director: Byron Howard, Rich Moore

From the largest elephant to the smallest shrew, the city of Zootopia is a mammal metropolis where various animals live and thrive. When Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes the first rabbit to join the police force, she quickly learns how tough it is to enforce the law. Determined to prove herself, Judy jumps at the opportunity to solve a mysterious case. Unfortunately, that means working with Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a wily fox who makes her job even harder.

Before seeing the movie, Zootopia didn’t interest me at all. It looked like a passable, ‘fun’ animated kids film, which could be poorly written or maybe even a little annoying. I don’t know, it never really looked that appealing to me. To my utter surprise, Zootopia was actually a really great movie. This film is quite smartly written and layered story, has memorable and likable characters, is very entertaining and has quite a lot of depth. Zootopia ended up being one of the most surprising movies of the entire year.

This movie is very entertaining and hilarious, it’s fun to watch this movie and see this world which was created. Zootopia itself is very creative and unique, I’m impressed with how original it was, this is a super original movie, I’m surprised we haven’t gotten a movie like this sooner. But also, despite the trailers not showing it, Zootopia is actually quite a mature, deep and emotional movie. It almost feels like it was a film made for adults but with cute animals inserted into it. This film actually goes into some relevant issues such as racism, stereotypes and many others, and it’s all done in such a smart way. But it’s not ham fisted or forced, it’s subtle and it actually does have a purpose and benefited the movie immensely. This movie is so well written overall. If there’s any flaws with the movie, I guess the opening of the film has a whole lot of exposition just thrown at you all at once explaining the world, but that didn’t bother me a whole lot. Maybe it could’ve been done better but it was fine.

The characters were great and memorable and the voice actors were perfectly cast. The pair of the main two characters, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman) were so great and fun to watch, they had excellent chemistry together. There were other memorable characters as well such as Idris Elba’s Chief of Police Buffalo character, which were relentlessly entertaining. I won’t say too much about other memorable characters, you’ll just have to see them for yourself.

It isn’t really surprising at all that the animation and design of the characters and the world was really great and overall done well. As I said earlier, Zootopia is very creative and the looks and designs of the world and characters really reflect that as well. It’s very easy to get sucked into this unique world that has been created. The soundtrack by Michael Giacchino was also really good and fitted the movie well.

Zootopia surprisingly turned out to be one of the best movies of the year. It’s entertaining and fun but is also smartly written and was a much deeper movie than I was ever expecting it to be. You should definitely check out Zootopia out when you can, even if it doesn’t look that good to you, at least give it a try. Trust me, the movie is a lot better than the trailers and the marketing made it out to be.