Tag / patton oswalt

by Jaime Rebanal

Ratatouille Review: A Testament to the Artists Working on their Craft

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Brad Bird’s second animated film for Pixar may not be an action-packed ride in the same way that his previous animated films were but knowing what it is that Ratatouille stands for, it’s hard not to love the sort of experimentation that it sets out for as far as the work of Pixar has gone. But of course being the Pixar apologist that I am, I can’t help but find myself being brought into a whole other world when looking at the beautiful animated backdrops being utilized to their very fullest and Brad Bird’s touch also helps in setting that into place with Ratatouille. In coming back to the familiar and backhanded criticism that animation is recognized as being geared primarily towards children, Pixar’s films have always found a way to resonate with adult audiences over the years but in looking at the story that they are telling in Ratatouille perhaps something more is coming along the way. In this story of a rat who is doing everything that he can in order to become a cook for as unorthodox as it is, we have another tale about the way art impacts others – something that is only set to resonate with viewers of all sorts.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Sorry to Bother You, But You Should See ‘Sorry to Bother You’

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I had zero idea what I was going to expect from the way in which Sorry to Bother You was marketed but walking in with somewhat of a basic idea of what the film was about definitely did not prepare me for what I was about to experience. The directorial debut of rapper Boots Riley of The Coup already has a weird enough premise with an idea based around African-American telemarketers mastering a “white voice” in order to win customers over but somehow it only turned out to be the least crazy of many things that Boots Riley showed us in Sorry to Bother You. But to talk about what goes on in Sorry to Bother You would be spoiling the film, and the film is best experienced walking in completely blind – because what you’ll see in Sorry to Bother You simply isn’t something that can be repeated again so quickly. But even trying to talk about it would be challenging enough because it’s just so off-the-walls in a way that would never be expected to work, yet it does.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Circle (2017) – Review

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James Ponsoldt’s directorial credit should already have been enough for me to think that there was something decent inside of The Circle, but what also caught me was the fact it came from a novel by, and was co-written by Dave Eggers. This name already caught me eye more than anything else about The Circle because Eggers also was a co-writer of Spike Jonze’s underrated but wonderful Where the Wild Things Are. Now that The Circle has come out I’m just wondering how everything had gone so terribly wrong for both Ponsoldt and Eggers because both filmmakers have created fairly thoughtful material prior to this and now comes the worst Black Mirror episode disguised as a feature film. Then again, at least Black Mirror even at their very worst had something to say and yet this one doesn’t even know in the slightest what it wishes to do and at its worst, has to preach everything in your face to the point it becomes so irritating.

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