Steve Purcell | 21 mins | streaming (HD) | 16:9 | USA / English | U
The second Toy Story TV special, and the fifth short adventure for the characters that perhaps should have had their last hurrah in the third feature film, is little more than a crushing disappointment.
When Woody, Buzz, and a selection of the now-extensive supporting cast are taken to a friend of Bonnie’s for a play date, they get lost in his toyroom and come across the Battlesaurs, a line of toys who — ignored by Bonnie’s friend, who does nought but play on a games console — have established a whole society, ignorant of the fact they’re plastic action figures.
Toy Story That Time Forgot manages the tricky feat of feeling both too rushed and too long. There’s no time for mystery or surprise as it hurtles through the plot — not that there’s too much of that, either. Half of it recycles Buzz’s arc from Toy Story 1 (he doesn’t know he’s a toy! Then he finds out, and he comes to love it!); the other half is a villain with what I think is an original idea (he’s delighted the kid doesn’t want to play with them because it means he can rule over the other toys), but isn’t given enough time to be developed.
It’s pretty obvious how all of this will play out, meaning that, even with a frantic pace, it feels like it takes too long to get through it. It doesn’t go anywhere much with the concept, so feels repetitive in the middle — Buzz and Woody are captured then set free three times. Three. If that time was spent building up the world or characters’ motivations, it’d be fine, but those elements are only seen in snatches, or raced past in single lines of exposition, with time instead devoted to adequate but uninspired action sequences.
The whole thing just feels undercooked. Apparently it took three years to make, with two of those dedicated to development. The Battlesaurs toy line was imagined in full, for example. There’s evidence of that on screen, but it’s just an impression that there’s a lot of background work we’re not getting to see. A TV special gives them limited time to explore the new world they’ve created, of course, but Toy Story of Terror used the time perfectly, almost feeling longer and more significant than it was. By contrast, Toy Story That Time Forgot feels short, wasteful, and insignificant.
Tomorrow, Sky Movies Disney are airing the Toy Story trilogy and its two TV spin-offs on a loop from 6am until 2:40am.
The final film in the Thin Man series sees married detective duo Nick and Nora Charles (the ever-excellent William Powell and Myrna Loy) getting embroiled in the world of jazz musicians, after a friend’s fiancé is accused of murdering a band leader.
Apparently Loy made it clear before filming began that this was to be the last Thin Man film. Somewhat odd, then, that it’s one of the few to end with an allusion to Nick continuing his detective work in the future, whereas normally he’s being dragged out of retirement each time and happy to return to it by the end (which we don’t believe, of course). Either way, it was probably a wise decision on the part of Mrs Charles, as the law of diminishing returns had kicked in by this point.
This year’s Best Animated Film Oscar winner is not this year’s best animated film. Not by a long stroke. What it is is one great character, one great emotional plot/subplot, and a lot of stuff that feels like every other big-budget action-orientated CGI animation of the past few years. Most succinctly, this is little more than (as 
The element that is an unequivocal success is Baymax. A soft robot — made of inflated vinyl so as to be genuinely huggable — he’s sweet, funny, and always entertaining. Memorable moments abound, in particular a sequence where his batteries run low, and his interpretation of a fist-bump (a recording booth improvisation by Adsit that was worked into the film). The movie truly comes alive whenever he’s on screen, but conversely loses some magic whenever he’s pushed into the background.
Big Hero 6 is by no means a bad film. It will certainly entertain its target age group, especially if they haven’t seen the other CG spectacles it nabs from. That aside, the entire thing is worth a look purely for Baymax and a few stand out moments — all of them involving the aforementioned vinyl robot, of course. Otherwise, it’s pretty by-the-book. The five-star-level praise it’s attracted in some quarters is completely unwarranted.
After four glamorous adventures, high-living sleuths Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) head to small-town America to visit his parents (Harry Davenport and Lucile Watson), and naturally find themselves embroiled in a murder plot.
then no one would’ve been murdered. (Probably.)
Despite looking like a 100-minute toy commercial with an irritating theme song, plus a moral message about nonconformity that seems like it’ll get bungled (but doesn’t), The Lego Movie is so much more — and better — than that.
The first film to be advertised in space (
That said, it’s probably a good thing this isn’t a whole movie of “fictional characters in the real world” — you can imagine how that would play out; all the predictable “fish out of water” hijinks. However, at just over two hours, this isn’t a short film, and cutting out some of the middle wouldn’t have hurt.
This time it’s not personal for Nick and Nora Charles (the joyous William Powell and Myrna Loy), as they stumble upon the murder of a race-fixing jockey and the subsequent killing of a corrupt journalist… and then one of their friends (Barry Nelson, aka 
As murder mysteries go, the Thin Man series tends to offer plots that are somewhere between perfunctory and over-complicated to the point of being unsolvable, and Shadow is a typical example. But that doesn’t matter a jot, because the story’s abundance of incident keeps things moving, and the real entertainment value lies in the comedy chops of the three leads: Powell, Loy, and, of course, Asta the dog.
The debut of director Daniel Minahan — who’s since helmed episodes of over a dozen TV shows, including HBO hits 
After being dumped by his long-time girlfriend, Joe (
It’s a fine line to tread, and it seems to me that Knights of Badassdom manages it well. You get a sense of why people choose to do this and the fun that it can be — indeed, the final epic battle between the two factions of LARPers, complete with grand pre-fight speeches from each army’s general, and an awesome surprise, is kinda cool. Equally, the film doesn’t hold back from riffing off the sillier aspects of LARPing, including the rules of combat.
if that’s your bag, there are plenty of films to cater for it; is a comedy about role-players really the occasion? There are elements of the film that could do with tightening up — the beginning is a little slow, as well as the issues with the middle, and towards the climax it’s sporadically jumpy in a way that makes it clear something has been excised — but just adding gore is not what this film needs to improve it.
As it stands, Knights of Badassdom is an entertaining way to spend just under 90 minutes. A more restrained approach might yield a tighter movie, one that could be funnier by percentage (the trailer remains popular, and you don’t get more condensed than that), but I think it’s still well enough constructed to keep genre-minded viewers entertained.
Husband-and-wife detective duo Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) — now with a baby in tow — are once again coerced into investigating a crime when the manager of Nora’s estate fears a dismissed employee is plotting murder.
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