Movie Review – Black is King

TL;DR – A visual masterwork and required viewing if you have Disney+    

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

Awards:

Nominated: Beautiful Cinematography & Stunning Costumes
Winner: Stunning Costumes

Black is King. Image Credit: Disney+.

Review

Today we review a film that might be the oddest film I have watched from a conceptional perspective. It is a reinterpretation of the story of the Lion King remake, a movie I thought was okay but not much more. But this reframing is the barest framework the film uses throughout to explore everything from religion to music to race and more. This should not work, but it does.      

Black is King. Image Credit: Disney+.
It explores many themes during its runtime and gives each and every one of them the justice they deserve. Image Credit: Disney+.
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Movie Review – The Lion King (2019)

TL;DR – An animated marvel that unfortunately comes off as a disjointed mess at times   

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

The Lion King. Image Credit: Disney.

Review

I’m going to be honest right from the start here, I had some real trepidation on walking into The Lion King today. I consider the original animated film to be one of my all-time top animated films. In the 25 years since I first watched it, it still holds a special place in my heart, even though those 25 years were filled with hot takes about authoritarianism and plagiarism accusations. However, something about this remake just was not jiving with me. Well now that I have seen the full film I am happy to say that it was not the disaster I thought it would be, but wow does it have issues.

So to set the scene, and if you have seen the original film you can probably skip this section. We open with dawn breaking on a very special day in Pride Rock. Because this is the day that the new prince Simba (JD McCrary) is being presented to the animal kingdom. As Rafiki (John Kani) raised the young cub up in front of all the animals that have gathered Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) watch on with pride, but someone is missing. Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) the brother of the king is absent and his absence is notable. He wants the throne for himself and he will stop at nothing to make that happen. Well, one day when young Simba and Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph) escape their watcher Zazu (John Oliver) and take a trip to the elephant’s graveyard an opportunity lands in Scar’s lap.

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Countdown – My Personal Top 10 Animated Films of All Time

TL;DR – There are so many great animated films and I struggled to limit them to just 10

Countdown

Last year I went through and made a list of my Top 10 Films of All Time, and it was only after I posted it that it occurred to me that no animated films made it into my Top 10. This was an odd revelation because I loved animated films and while a couple came close to getting into that 10th position and I think today that my top animated film would be on that list somewhere, I thought it was time to give animated films the showing they deserved.

There are so many animated films released every year and a lot of the time there are just awful, when you are aiming your films at 5-year-olds quality it seems is not high on the list. However, every year creative geniuses throw that stigma aside and create works of art that sit in my head and make me think of them years later. So today we are going to look at my personal top ten animated films of all time, but before we start a couple of quick notes. Firstly, these are my favourites and they may be different from your favourite films, so let me know what ones I missed in the comments below. As well as this, they are current to when I am writing this list in 2019, it may change in the future, and the top three are mostly interchangeable, but I had to put them in some sort of order.

As with all our lists, there has to be some kind of criteria or else there is just no way you can keep it to just 10 entries. So for this list, they are:

  • Films that are examples of beautiful art
  • Films that use the medium to tell interesting stories
  • Films that are always re-watchable
  • Films that have added to my love of the art of cinema

Now before we begin the list here is our list of ‘Highly Commended Animated Films That Almost Maybe Could Be On The List, Oh No I Am Rethinking Everything’ are: An American Tail, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Big Hero 6,Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, Fern Gully, Finding Nemo, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder, Inside/Out,Ghost in the Shell,  Kubo and the Two Strings,Kung Fu Panda, Monsters Inc, My Neighbor Totoro,Mulan, Pete’s Dragon, Princess Mononoke, Robin Hood, Shrek, Space Jam, Spirited Away, Tangled, The Incredibles, The Jungle Book, The Cat Returns, The Great Mouse Detective,The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones,The Land Before Time,  The Lego Film, The Lego Batman Film, The Nightmare Before Christmas,The Prince of Egypt,Titan A.E., Up, Wallace and Gromit, WALL-E, Wreck it Ralph & Zootopia. Well before I re-question all my list let’s dive in and explore my Top Ten Animated Film of All Time, and no they are not all going to be Disney, and there may be some spoilers in there for the films.

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Countdown – My Personal Top 10 Films of All Time List

TL;DR – Today we countdown my Top 10 films of all time; from towns where there are a lot of ‘accidents’, to all forms of Sci-Fi, to do you know the man with six fingers on his right hand, and everything in between.

Countdown

Recently I watched the CineFix crew countdown their Top 10 films, and it had me thinking what are mine? Now it was at this point where I of course naturally spiralled as how can you reduce thousands of films that you have seen into only a Top 10. Just before I threw my hands up in resignation and chucked in the towel I happened to catch an episode of Movies with Mikey on how he determined the best sequel. With this in mind I wondered if there was a set of criteria that I could use to categorise the films into a list that I would be happy with, and after some work, I came up with the following criteria that work for me.

  • Films that are beautifully constructed
  • Films that mean something to me
  • Films that are always re-watchable
  • Films that have added to my love of the craft of cinema

With this criterion in mind I went through all the likely candidates and with a bit of a struggle I think I have been able to come to a final list, well at least until I change my mind next week, which is always a chance.

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