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Dave’s Movie Korner™️: Titan AE

Rarely do I broach an animated movie in this column, mostly because there isn’t much worth writing about these days. There are Minions movies, sequels to Cars, and every three years Pixar vomits up some Oscar bait to reassure Disney’s Academy Awards supremacy. But today my friends we journey back in time to the year 2000, when Fox Animation Studios threw the cinematic Hail Mary pass that was, unfortunately, incomplete. I’m of course talking about Titan AE, a fascinating last gasp in traditional animation. Before describing the film itself, a bit of (a)historical context is needed. A man named Don Bluth once worked for Walt Disney Studios as an animator, but in 1980 he resigned from Disney over “creative differences”. In essence, he felt children’s movies were too soft; “you can show a kid anything, as long as there’s a happy ending.” He made several modest hits over the years, including American Tail (where Jewish mice get massacred by Bolshevik cats), All Dogs Go to Heaven (where a dog gets hit by a car and is briefly dragged to hell), and of course The Secret of NIMH (where a wizard is crushed by a cinderblock & a rat is graphically killed with a throwing knife). In the late 90s Bluth sought victory over Disney animation with an epic sci-fi space opera adventure, with a star-studded voice cast that included Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, and Nathan Lane. It was a sure fire hit. Until it flopped at the box office and bankrupted Fox Animation. So why talk about this weird quasi-adult animated film that flopped hard 22 years ago in this column? It’s simple: The n-word. Nostalgia! Nostalgia is one of my most hated words, used today as an excuse to tolerate the garbage thrown up on screen. (see The Rise of Skywalker) Too often do people don a pair of rose-colored lenses and look upon their childhood favorites with undo fondness; You see a reference, and you clap because you understood it. Everything you saw as a child must remain cool because you were a child and it was SO COOL then. This brings us back to Titan AE. The movie is overall adequate, the voice acting is kinda lame, the matte paintings are awesome but the CGI is dated, blah blah blah. As a kid, my brother & I rented this stupid movie about once a month, along with Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet. Imagine my delight when YouTube decided to auto play this film in it’s entirety after I looked up a shepherd’s pie recipe. These movies all flopped, their scripts are all over the place, and the quality of the animation is especially all over the goddamn place. However, Titan AE and it’s aforementioned ilk hold a special place in my heart. It introduced me to steampunk, dieselpunk, grimdark sci-fi, an entire universe of lore explicitly teaching worldbuilding. Nostalgia, it seems, isn’t all bad.

#titanae #moviereview #dmk #review #donbluth #atlantis #treasureplanet

[davesmoviekorner]

Dave’s Movie Korner™️: Greyhound

Thanks to Hearts of Iron IV, this author is on a WWII kick right now and decided to review some Apple TV+ movie that literally no one will see; it’s on Apple TV+. The people who pay for it are the same weirdos that owned a Zune in 2006 or would swear in front of their friends’ parents. Y’know, lunatics. But as streaming services scooped up 2020 movie casualties once bound for theaters like men clinging to driftwood, Greyhound had the unfortunate distinction of being bought by Apple. I know, a WWII Tom Hanks vehicle exclusive to Apple TV+? You may as well have shit in Tom Hanks’ open mouth with the amount of waste released. On paper, this movie is too fucking expensive to release on such a garbage service. It’s your dad’s favorite movie he’s never seen; Tom Hanks, naval battles, WWII, not challenging or stimulating to the viewer, obvious green screen… TaylorMade® for fathers everywhere. The plot is simple: Tom Hanks is captain of a destroyer escorting a convoy in WWII, and *record scratch* hijinks ensue! It’s the most threadbare war movie plot in a while, and I’ve seen American Sniper.

It’s a fine movie, especially for people who like WWII porn such as myself. It’s quick, it’s technically accurate, and besides a couple shit-ass green screen effects it looks fantastic. It’s a pretty technically impressive film that deserves a big theater with a hefty sound system. Unfortunately, it didn’t get a theatrical release, and even worse, there is literally no characterization in this movie; there’s Tom Hanks who is dating Elizabeth Shue, and he’s religious, and he wants to go home..? Hanks plays the only real character in the movie and even he has no character. It is perhaps the thinnest of thin motivations in a motion picture.  If we’re talking side characters in Tom Hanks movies, fucking Wilson has more character than the crew of the Greyhound.

Would I recommend Greyhound? Well, if you like war movies and love Tom Hanks (i.e. if you’re a red-blooded American) you’ll find it okay. History and war movie nerds will especially love it. Naval battles, tense sonar cat-and-mouse, snappy realistic dialogue, it’s all very well done. But the characters don’t exist at all, and what could have been the American answer to Das Boot is just sorta… there. At no point will you have any reason to give a sailing fuck about these characters. Even worse, it’s a theatrical movie that’s not in a theater, but on your TV. Which requires Apple TV+. Ew. But all told, it’s good enough. Watch it with your dad, he’s guaranteed to love it. Just remember to cancel your Apple TV+ free trial after you watch it; I know Ted Lasso won an Emmy but the service just ain’t worth it.

#greyhound #moviereview #review #appletv #dmk #davesmoviekorner