Just from this description you’ve written I recommend the Nic Cage picture Lord of War
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Good to know! Looking into it, apparently Jormungand actually homages the film, so I’m definitely keeping an eye on it.
My partner grew up never really watching any animated movies because her family growing up were very poor. I started rewatching some renaissance Disney over Christmas and it’s turned into her discovering she loves 90s-2010s Disney/Pixar. It’s been fun for me reevaluating them and having someone with no nostalgia to just enjoy them with. I hadn’t watched a lot of these in a while and it’s interesting seeing what holds up. Alan Menken is just good shit imo (what a hot take!). Pocahontas has aged the worst of this era but was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Tarzan and Hunchback on rewatch. My partner got really into Moana and Coco so that’s the only music I’ve been hearing for a while.
We also saw Elemental, which I’d not seen before. Never really heard any discourse or critical reception about it but we enjoyed it. My partner resonated with it as a 2nd gen immigrant and the Chinese/Korean coding never got uncomfortable despite the worldbuilding of it being something you have to kinda ignore. Like, there’s never been ‘interracial’ couples prior to this? Surprised it kinda passed everyone by, I’ve not seen it recommended much.
Also been caught in the algorithm by channels that recommend ‘obscure’ anime and enjoyed a couple of shorts. Watched Toujin Kit from the anthology Genius Party Beyond. I liked it’s reuse of static shots that change over time as it builds to its climax. Girl who breeds alien beings for an unknown purpose is apprehended by the authorities. Go interpret. Really cool effect on the alien bodies.
Also saw Bat Man of Shanghai which is very short but mainly worth watching for Catwoman’s whip animation in the fight choreography.
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Started watching Anne Shirley, the Anne of Green Gables adaptations from last year, and it seems like a really smart adaptation. I haven’t seen the one from the 80s. But Anne Shirley is sort of a natural anime character, which this show’s seamless depiction of her fancies and whimsies is really spelling out to me.
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I was at half price books and was surprised to see these. It’s been eons since I’ve seen any Ben 10, but I’ve been consistently collecting the action figures ever since back then.
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Izubuchi directed Patlabor with the ugliest CG you’ve ever seen, please spare me
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when a low man wants elegant trash, he wants kawajiri; looked up vampire hunter d: bloodlust, a later entry i’d missed entirely
naturally it’s handsome in a way j-toons seem to refuse to be in 202X, also uncomplicated of plot, disappointing of soundtrack but they did put some kind of effort in the dubbing in general and mike mcshane as a palm-borne symbiote in particular
could’ve been gorier
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they just did a 4k re-scan and resto from the 35mm film, last year, which got a new regular blu-ray release - but in typical fashion there seems to be no plan for an actual 4k-uhd disc (or even streaming/digital) release. I haven’t seen it since the original dvd release, but have also been thinking about how good looking it was, randomly, over the past few months, though I remember little to none of the plot, what a movie.
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I actually saw this in the theater when it had a very brief/limited release as such when first made available in the States. I recall thinking it was a heck of an experience but I don’t think I’ve seen it since.
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Luca and Onward are painfully boring and I can’t quite put my finger on why. The fantasy element is just rendered uninteresting by how much everyone hates the unique elements of their world and all the characters are just treated like shit all the time it just feels miserable.
We watched Alice and Wonderland and a bunch of other fairytale Disney like Sleeping Beauty and despite how structureless and conservative they are, they at least feel fresh and vital through imagery and what now feels like very ethereal music. Snow White is a fucking trip, she is such a dumb baby/living manifesto for what guys in the 30s loved about their dames. It’s kinda fun watching her bumble her way through attempted murder and homelessness. ‘I’m sure everything will be alright’.
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Pixar have become incredibly bourgeoiscore, Soul is like this too. And I assume that movie where the fire wants to fuck the ice or whatever. The fantasy is always meaningless, the question is always “how can I reconcile the genuinely strange & fantastic parts of my life with what really matters, having two Starbucks drinks a day and being able to buy a new comfy sweater off of Amazon”
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I liked Onward but maybe it landed more with me because my dad is dead
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I ended up enjoying Elemental since it worked a bit more as a straightforward romcom. We struggled through the whole of Luca and bailed on Onward early after our experience there.
Soul was just baffling how strange and bad it was.
saw the premise of soul was that a little tina fey creature was puppeteering a dead black man’s body for some reason and was like there are other cartoons i’m good
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huh, seems like i’m going to be a bit contrary there:
(disclaimer, have been watching it several times and it grew on me ever since watching it the first time, currently sitting at 5/5 
in my lists, so beware of a skewed opinion incoming here)
So — don’t know where the lukewarm reception for Soul is coming from, but if it was anything, then def not a black man being remote controlled for lulz kind of movie, nor a whites are better-vehicle. It actually succeeds in that it didn’t matter what skin color the main cast have and had…. if anything, the Jerrys (the rather obnoxious pedantic manager-types) felt like they could be white (well technically they actually were), but even then - since a large part of the movie deals with finding what you really care for - it also doesn’t judge in a wagging finger in-your-face way that one way is ultimatively better than the other, but rather shows how dangerous (or sad) singular focus can be if you end up forgetting to enjoy the tiny, normal everyday moments of our life inbetween. It is a love letter to the boring things we take for granted, and presses all the right buttons for me to become a sappy miserable mess and yet make me remember that i can enjoy something insignificant as a song i like, a good cup of tea or enjoying a breeze or sunrays on your skin. Maybe it helps if you’ve been close to a proper burnout before, or maybe the therapy afterwards helped having fine-tuned sensors for picking up on the tiny, insignificant things, but it is exactly that why it clicked for, and with me, so so much.
A Citizen kane it isn’t, agreed, but def not a mediocre animation-festa hell-bent on grabbing as much cash as possible by playing it save on all fronts and not having a statement at all.
I mean, just listen to it with proper headphones, it uses sound as much as graphical fidelity when it didn’t have to. In short, i love it way too much and probably attribute too much to it, but i firmly believe that in 10,15 years it will definitely stand out amongst the disney/pixar output of this decade (not that there was much to challenge it, granted)
So yeah, tl;dr i love it for having a heart, blame me for it 
but i would go to bat for it anytime.
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Moko-chan directed The Ghost In The Shell with the ugliest CG you’ve ever seen, please spare me
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surprisingly tame for gits
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