Films and Feelings

 Once Upon a Time, Disney's Enchanted reminded us that deep down inside, even the most cynical of us was pining for a fairy-tale. In those days, a musical rom-com featuring hand-drawn animation and overtly referencing films of the Disney animated catalog actually felt novel, even daring. But today is a different climate. Disney fairy-tales are unambiguously a popular presence in modern pop culture. They are regularly referenced, discussed, and abused both by their parent company and the public at large. Any sequel to such a film wouldn't have the same opportunity to feel revelatory or groundbreaking.  But this proves to be an inadequate defense for this movie's shortcomings. Turns out, you can sing about fairy-tales for two hours without earnestly exploring what makes them so special to begin with. I say shortcomings deliberately because there's not a lot that's actively wrong with this movie. Almost everything about this movie could have worked if it had been pr...

    Raise your hand if you honestly thought we'd ever get here.       It's the truth: the number of posts from Films and Feelings has now reached the triple digits. The current tally stands at 41 essays, 41 reviews, 6 Professor's Picks (counting this one), 10 monthly reports of The Great Movie Conquest of 2022, and 2 Years in Review. This is the kind of threshold that generally merits some sort of celebration or commemoration, so why not do something special today? To celebrate one hundred posts, I've assembled a list of my favorite film for each year over the last one hundred years.      Let me alleviate some of your fears here and now: this will be mostly a visual experience. It far exceeds my writing prowess to be able to give 100 unique explanations for why specifically I enjoy each movie. And for many of these films, true expression of what it means to me escapes my ability anyhow. In  cases where I have already written extensively...