Films and Feelings

  Pixar's newest feature film, Luca , landed on Disney+ this weekend, prayerfully the tail end of a long train of theater-bound movies booted directly to streaming in response to a global shutdown. The motivations for this particular change are still mysterious. Perhaps it was a necessary measure to ensure that the film still made some kind of summer release.  That would certainly make sense. Pixar's latest film is sunshine in a bottle, a child's forgotten midsummer dream, and it's bound to become a rite of summer for many a cinephile. The titular Luca is a sea monster fascinated by the surface world (even harvesting its discarded trash) despite his overprotective parents' cautions about the hostile humans who live there. Don't get ahead of yourself--Luca's call to action isn't rescuing the human prince from drowning, but rather befriending Alberto, another sea-monster with a little more daring. Together, the two of them share their mutual fascination w...

  I can pinpoint the exact moment in the theater I was certain I was going to like In the Heights after all. There's a specific shot in the opening number, I believe it even features in one of the trailers, that has lead character Usnavi staring out the window of his shop observing the folks of his hometown carried away in dance. The reflection of this display of kinetic dreaming is imposed on the window over Usnavi's own yearnful expression as he admires from behind the glass plane. He's at once a part of the magic, yet totally separate from it. The effect has an oddly fantastical feel to it, yet it's achieved through the most rudimentary of filming tricks. This is but one of many instances in which director Jon M. Chu finds music and light in the most mundane of corners. Viewers won't have to work so hard to find the magic with In the Heights.      The film is anchored in the life of storeowner, Usnavi, as he comes to a crossroads. For as long as he's run his...

     Despite being a Harry Potter fan for most of my life, I didn’t make it to "Harry Potter Land" at Universal until November of 2019.      Some relatives invited me on a SoCal theme park tour, a trip which also saw my last visit to Disneyland before the shutdown. And when you and a bunch of other twenty-somethings are walking through a recreation of Hogwarts for the first time, you inevitably start playing this game where you call out every artifact on display and try to trace it back to whatever movie or even specific moment the mise en scene is trying to invoke. There’s the greenhouse from "Chamber of Secrets." Now they’re playing the “Secrets of the Castle” track from "Prisoner of Azkaban." Here we are loading in the Room of Requirement from "Order of the Phoenix." From start to finish, the attraction, like the franchise from which it spawned, is just one giant nostalgia parade.     See, t he Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened in Ca...