A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
French and French-language Films
Cécile Guillard, Lana Choukroune, Yijia Cao, “Out of Range” (2019) In the Gobelins animated universe, the most mundane incidents can give rise to major transformations in…
Q-rais, “The Lost Breakfast” (2015) Where some cartoonists treat the weekday early morning ritual of getting up and getting ready to go to work, including the…
French and French-language Films
Bruno Cohen, Germaine Colajanni, Rohan Deshchougule, Ronit Kelkar, Isabella Littger de Pinho, Diego Porral, Yujia Wang, “Blind Eye” (2019) After seeing Muhammad Houhou’s 2018-released short”Ostrich Politic”,…
French and French-language Films
Florencia Atra, Leonard Hicks, Man Luo, Claire Matz, Luana Nguyen, Marine Petri, “Oasis” (2019) Compared to other Gobelins animated shorts I have seen so far, the…
Chinese and Chinese-language Films
Jiaozi, “Ne Zha” (2019) A loud, noisy and overblown blockbuster animation fantasy made to please most people, this film is loosely based on a legend about…
Kim Heeyae, “Shadow Thief” (2018) Done entirely in black and white and shades of grey with no dialogue, this animated short is a brilliant critique of…
Bill Tytla, “Little Audrey – Tarts and Flowers” (1950) Part of a series of cartoons about a cute kindergarten-aged girl called … well, what else? ……
Sid Marcus, “The Mad Hatter” (1940) Mocking the faddish nature of women’s fashions, this animated short can be surprisingly critical of the nature of everyday work…
Laura Neuvonen, “The Last Knit” (2005) Technically this digital animated short is well done but the very simple plot of a woman addicted to knitting a…
Dave Fleischer, “All’s Fair at the Fair” (1938) Best known for their Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, US animators Max and Dave Fleischer occasionally made animated…