Author: tiki god

Avatar: Fire and Ash: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. Jake and Neytiri’s family grapples with grief after Neteyam’s death, encountering a new, aggressive Na’vi tribe, the Ash People, who are led by the fiery Varang, as the conflict on Pandora escalates and a new moral focus emerges. The next entry in the Avatar television series that’s hilariously being shown in theaters, this time we get the same exact story from the second one, but this time with some really weird commentary on past American wars and some very tiny tiny world building....

Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts: Directed by Bill Benz. With Kumail Nanjiani. After nearly a decade away, Kumail Nanjiani returns to Chicago, where he got his start in standup, in a special that tackles anxiety, the perils of buying drugs pre-legalization, and cat medication. A hilarious standup session with a mega movie star who decided to do stand up one day. This was a reference to a joke he made in this session. You see it’s funny because he was a stand up comedian before he was a big movie star and got all buff and muscled up. Worth your time...

The Cat Returns: Directed by Hiroyuki Morita. With Chizuru Ikewaki, Yoshihiko Hakamada, Aki Maeda, Takayuki Yamada. After helping a cat, a seventeen-year-old girl finds herself involuntarily engaged to a cat Prince in a magical world where her only hope of freedom lies with a dapper cat statuette come to life. Studio Ghibli released this back in 2002 and it hasn’t aged at all! The story is a fun and absolutely bonkers adventure that involves transdimensional travels to a cat kingdom and the journey a young woman goes through to find maturity. I’m very happy to have started this journey of...

The Muppet Christmas Carol: Directed by Brian Henson. With Michael Caine, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson. The Muppets put their spin on the tale of an elder, Christmas-hating miser who is visited by spirits who foretell his future and share secrets from his past and present, which helps change his view on life. For your enjoyment: Buy On Amazon!

Toy Story: Directed by John Lasseter. With Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney. A cowboy doll is profoundly jealous when a new spaceman action figure supplants him as the top toy in a boy’s bedroom. When circumstances separate them from their owner, the duo have to put aside their differences to return to him. Every year the animation in this film looks more and more rough, but the story and soundtrack still hit just as deeply. Buy On Amazon!

Elio: Directed by Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi. With Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly, Brandon Moon. Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be. The marketing that came my way for this film really made it feel like a generic movie about a kid going on a wacky space adventure, and while it’s true that’s a thing that happens in the film, much like other Pixar films,...

The Time Machine: Directed by Simon Wells. With Guy Pearce, Yancey Arias, Mark Addy, Phyllida Law. Hoping to alter the events of the past, a 19th century inventor instead travels 800,000 years into the future, where he finds humankind divided into two warring races. I feel victim to the TikTok algo again and this movie popped up enough times that I had to check it out…again. I know I saw it when it was released back in 2002, but I had forgotten how tightly packed this 90 minute long film is and how well it works. It has an unfortunate...