Disney+ Watchlist & Reviews

[theCMG]

Updating my watchlist:

Muppets Now looks to be releasing one episode at a time so that's ongoing. DW and I have started watching The Imagineering Story. DD and I will watch Black is King, the Beyonce visual album project thing.

Aside from this it's the newest films I haven't seen to go onto the list - Coco, Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4. For the sequels it's been years since I watched the earlier movies so I'll watch them all in order, roping in family members as and when they're interested:

Watchlist:

Muppets Now
Coco
The Incredibles
Incredibles 2
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
The Imagineering Story
Black is King

[YorkshireT]

This charging for Mulan is really poor. Netflix often spends $150m per series or per movie and has a constant stream of this stuff. Irishman cost $150m, Six Underground the same, the Crown is $130m every series etc. Disney is spending $1bn on original content- Netflix $17 bn! Yet Disney charges $30 to watch its $200m movie.
BTW I finally watched The Irishman, absolutely fantastic.
I do love Mandalorian though.

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

This charging for Mulan is really poor. Netflix often spends $150m per series or per movie and has a constant stream of this stuff. Irishman cost $150m, Six Underground the same, the Crown is $130m every series etc. Disney is spending $1bn on original content- Netflix $17 bn! Yet Disney charges $30 to watch its $200m movie.
BTW I finally watched The Irishman, absolutely fantastic.
I do love Mandalorian though.

See more...

Irishman is excellent, slow compared to most contemporary stuff but worth the time. Loved Ricky Gervais's gag at the Golden Globes "Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere, and by the end his date was too old for him."

Disney couldn't have imagined a worse global crisis than one which almost obliterated cinema trips, cruising and theme park visits in a single hit. It was fortuitous they had Disney+ ready in one way but I agree with you that paying £30 for a home watch of a cinematic release is a no go, can't see them making up for many >$1bn releases like this but guess they have to try.

Hopefully people stand firm and don't pay for it. But Pay per View boxing doesn't feel like good value (at similar prices), or the Premier League rights and people still pay those prices so who knows. Mind you Disney will need some amazing anti-counterfeiting technology if they want to sell more than one copy in Asia

Just finished re-watching The Incredibles. Review to follow tomorrow.

[Gill H]

Oh yay, Once Upon A Time is there now! Haven’t seen it since Channel 5 dropped it.

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by Gill H

Oh yay, Once Upon A Time is there now! Haven’t seen it since Channel 5 dropped it.

See more...

I'd never heard of that, looks like DD's sort of thing - I might make it through one episode, will recommend it to her thanks

Latest Watchlist:

In Progress
Muppets Now!
The Imagineering Story
Zenimation

Planned
Coco
Incredibles 2
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 4
Black is King
The Jungle Book (original animated version)
Lady and the Tramp (the new live action one)
Moana

[theCMG]

The Incredibles (review)

I’m going to level with everybody. I don’t like Mr Incredible 😐 Granted; he’s shown as being kind in this movie (helping out his insurance claimants) but he’s also self-centred, egotistical, and clearly top heavy. His response to an irritating boss is to hospitalise him… Know that if Mr Incredible is your avatar I will judge you

Anyway this is a movie of two halves for me. It’s just shy of 2 hours long and most of the first hour is a snooze, 2/10 stuff in my book. Even the much vaunted Edna Mode sequences haven’t aged well. An Anna Wintour haircut, silly accent and dialogue that wouldn’t get near an episode of Absolutely Fabulous aren’t doing it for me.

Happily it picks up around half way when the true hero of the story 😀 Elastigirl starts to get an equal share of the screen time, she rules. The last hour is a pretty good animated movie. The villain and his tricks are decent, the animation style looks good and the action sequences are solid. Overall I find this a confused effort by Pixar’s high standards, it takes way too long to get going and also has about 3 endings (2 less than Lord of the Rings Return of the King so maybe it was an early 2000’s thing).

Disney+
Elastigirl and to a lesser extent the super-kids
Features cinema’s coolest hollowed out volcano lair
Samuel L Jackson’s Frozone
Strong action sequences in the second half
Premise of a nuclear family of superheroes is relatively novel

Disney-
Mr Incredible is not a protagonist I warm to
First half of the movie is as flabby as the above (before shaping up in the 2nd half)
Messy ending, mole creature?
A lot of the humour falls flat or hasn’t aged well

Rating 5/10. Not Pixar’s best for me but after a gap of almost 15 years and with Elastigirl apparently centre-stage in Incredibles 2 I’m optimistic ahead of watching that I’ll like it better.

[theCMG]

Toy Story (review)

After my Incredibles review I guess I should start by saying Woody is controlling, jealous and machiavellian but hey it’s Tom Hanks so we can forgive him anything as long as he starts doing the right thing by about 20 minutes in (he does, it’s Tom Hanks). Loved re-watching this, I’ve probably seen it 4-5 times but not for (10?) years and it was great to come back to, early Pixar at their best

Noting that this was over 30 minutes shorter than The Incredibles and that makes a big difference on either a re-watch or if viewing with fidgety children. The opening scenes where Andy’s playing with the toys and then they come to life is a joy and it’s worth remembering back to how amazing that animation seemed when it first came out, it still looks good now.

After watching this, I can’t wait to see 2 and 3 again. I’m still not sure 4 was warranted. Time will tell. And maybe one day Disney will open a Pizza Planet restaurant worthy of the name!

Disney+
Buzz thinking he’s really a Space Ranger is a piece of pure genius in the writing
You’ve got a Friend in Me (Randy Newman), written for the film and fits it so well
The way the mechanics of each toy works with the animation is so clever
Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Woody

Disney-
Doesn’t have the emotional heft of the sequels.

Rating 8.5/10 The fact that later Toy Story movies increase the stakes and the number of characters shouldn’t obscure the fact that the original is a straight-up classic.

[stecee]

For what it’s worth, Coco has become one of my favourite Disney/Pixar films. I will be interested in what you think of it.

[theCMG]

Originally Posted by stecee

For what it’s worth, Coco has become one of my favourite Disney/Pixar films. I will be interested in what you think of it.

See more...

I'm looking forward to Coco. I enjoyed The Book of Life which had some similar themes coming out a little earlier. Hoping to find time to see this over the weekend.

Got a little distracted this week with DW's insistence on watching every movie on Disney+ with a husky in it so the next update will be an Alaska special as opposed to Mexico

[theCMG]

Toy Story 2 (review)

This is great, even watching it in 3 parts across multiple days didn’t dent the brilliance of this sequel. Pixar at the top of their game. I don’t know if they always planned to create a gang and a backstory for Woody like the Woody’s Roundup storyline but this is a brilliant addition that creates the perfect drama, without it this could easily have been another story about toys trying to move around in the outside world.

Toy Story 2 is clever, beautifully animated and self-referential throughout - Rex reading the magazine about how to defeat a video game Emperor Zurg, Buzz meeting another Buzz. It’s also funny - the introduction of Barbie and the whole sequence in Al’s Toy Barn especially

Disney+
Strong storyline, a proper hero’s journey for Woody
Hones down to a central core of characters (Woody plus Hamm/Rex/Buzz/Slinky/PotatoHead) which allows them to introduce new toys like Jessie and Barbie without overwhelming the viewer in this and future episodes.
Overflowing with creativity. Was this the first animated film to create ‘bloopers’ for the end credits?
Bullseye (Woody’s horse) is a cuteness overload

Disney-
Nope, I got nothing

Rating 9/10 the sequel is just that little bit better than the original in this case. Bigger in scope, funnier and with the emotions ramped up...it’s the Empire Strikes Back to Toy Story’s Star Wars (they even spoof that movie’s most famous scene with Zurg/Buzz).