Film Review – Accidental Education – An Exercise In The Random

Knight, Travis (Director). (2026). Wildwood [Film]. LAIKA Studios.

Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings are two of my favorite animated movies, so when Wildwood came out (all LAIKA Studios movies), I knew I needed to see it in the theater. Yes, movies tickets are expensive now, but if we want to see human made, creative storytelling in movies we need to support them. We’ve already lost most drive-in theaters. I’d be besides myself if we lost movie theaters as experiences, though I wish for some changes there. But I digress. Anyway…

Me, being a huge movie buff, would go anyway, if my finances allowed. But, things being what they are right now, I had to plan in advance to be able to take myself and the kid, and even then there was some static that threatened to prevent us. BUT, we made it, on Halloween, no less, an important day for us.

Prue and “The General” played by Angela Bassett

First of all, I didn’t pay attention to the rating. It’s PG-13, if you’re curious. Not knowing this and thinking of all LAIKA movies as kid oriented, when one of the coyotes says “You son of a bitch.” I audibly gasped. 😆 No, I am not new to swearing but I was really surprised. Also, there is a lot of violence…I mean war, heads being chopped off, sword stabbing, implied human sacrifice…was also surprised at first there, but it’s not overly graphic (I’ve seen far more graphic live action movies) I just wasn’t expecting it. So, understand this movie is meant for teens and adults.

Second of all, I was not prepared for how visually beautiful this movie is. I had seen from the trailer that the characters have a very waxy look to them, but dear god, the amount of detail and work that went in to creating these scenes and characters shot by shot in stop animation is mind boggling. It took them almost 16 years! It’s flat out stunning.

It’s also supposed to take place in Portland (Coraline also took place in Oregon) and they included so many pieces of Portland that it was impossible to not identify where they were. The bridge, VooDoo Donuts, Powell’s Bookstore, the cherry trees along the river in downtown, the old houses…I was pumping my arm in excitement for how spot on it was. Then again, LAIKA Studios is in Hillsboro just outside of Portland. But as a Pacific Northwesterner who has been to Portland more than a few times, I was jazzed to recognize these characters in the midst of it all. They even incorporated fiber arts, arts and crafts style decorating, espresso obsession and the man-bun. It was amazing.

And it all starts with these two. This is Prue and her little brother Mac.

Prue and Curtis in the Impassable Woods.

Just outside of town is the Impassable Woods, where they are told never to venture, but Prue has no choice when a murder of crows abduct her brother and fly away to the woods with him.

A neighbor kid, Curtis, inadvertently joins the trek and is actually the first to discover Mac’s whereabouts, in the coyote warren, amongst talking animals and the Dowager Governess, Alexandra, who is not only locked in delusional grief, due to the loss of her son, but has leveraged the coyotes (all the animals talk) as soldiers in a bloody war for the Woods (for nefarious purposes), against the “Bandits, (the former ancients of the Woods), the birds (but not the crows), and the current corrupt governor, who are all at odds with each other.

The Dowager is prepared to burn it all down to meet her own sad agenda.

Prue talking with the one of the Mystics (Iphigenia) in the Council Tree. (visually, one of my favorite scenes)

But Prue is determined to bring Mac home alive. But in order to do so, she will have to unite the warring factions and convince them to fight together against Alexandra, regardless of what they stand to lose in the process.

Run time is 2 hours and 12 minutes and not a single second of it is wasted or boring, so much so that even though we both had to pee for the last 45 minutes, we stuck it out, until the end of the final scene, because we didn’t want to miss anything. (So if there were post credit scenes I missed, tell me!)

The cast is phenomenal…Angela Bassett, Tantoo Cardinal, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, Carey Mulligan, Awkwafina, Marc Evan Jackson, Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine, Jacob Tremblay. (Check more out here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2056785/fullcredits ).

The movie is based off a book by Colin Meloy of the band The Decemberists, though he’s also a writer, composer and actor. Of course that means I now have to read the book and I am NOT mad about it.

The movie is dark but also full of hope. It deals with death and war, grief and vengeance but also love, joy, nature, family, magic and reconciliation.

The rendering is spectacular. I am SO glad I stuck to my guns and was determined to see it in the theater. It will be phenomenal at home too but the experience in the theater was practically immersive.

It’s just a phenomenal animated movie. It’s not just a phenomenal stop motion animated movie. It is flat out a phenomenal all-around movie, all-around.

I cannot recommend this movie enough.

Recommended Ages: 13 – Adult

Gillespie, Craig (Director). (2026). Supergirl [Film]. Warner Brothers Entertainment.

First of all, I should say that my expectations for most DC movies, aside from Batman, are pretty low. I think they have been struggling to energize the franchise the way that Marvel has. Therefore, I did not go into watching this movie with super high expectations, and being that my introduction to Kara Zor-El was Helen Slater in 1984, I didn’t know what to expect.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie. There was one minor adrenaline moment in the movie, which is better than none. I did learn to appreciate and like Milly Alcock’s version of Supergirl. And frankly, any movie which centers around a dog (Krypto) is hard not to like at some point, but there are some things I don’t like. But first, let’s discuss the premise.

Supergirl is out in the Universe, in her own spaceship, with her dog Krypto, drinking and fighting her way around the galaxy on planets with red suns, so that she can feel the effects of the alcohol, to numb her difficult memories. Then, when she hurts or gets a hangover, she holds up on a planet with a yellow sun for a while to regenerate. While in this middle of this self-defeating spiral, she meets Ruthye, a 13-year-old whose family has been killed by Krem and is looking for vengeance. At first, she tells Ruthye she won’t help her, even after Krem shoots Krypto with a poison that will kill him in three days and steals her ship. Kara is determined to focus on saving Krypto only. However, Ruthye keeps popping up, and eventually Kara sees in her something of herself, and declares she will help her, In this effort, she finds that the Brigands, the band that Krem runs with, has been abducting girls and women to become unwilling “brides” so that the Brigands can further their all-male race. That leads to some complications when the Brigands lure Kara and Ruthye to a planet with a yellow and a green sun, the green sun which will kill Kara. Then they abduct Ruthye. The rest of the movie is them attempting to defeat the Brigands, in particular Krem, save Krypto, and incidentally, save “the brides.” Then Supergirl will decide what she wants to do with her life.

Now on to the parts I had a hard time with.

While I do love Krypto, I do not like all of the CGI. I know you can’t get an animal actor to do everything Krypto does, but some of his actions and expressions are not terribly realistic, though yes, I do know that CGI is incredibly difficult to generate. But, when it looks less than realistic, for a dog, it breaks the flow of the movie and the story, especially because when the CGI is spot on Krypto is ADORABLE and a menace, and I love him. In fact, he is what got me to watch the last Superman movie.

Then there is the villain, Krem of the Yellow Hills, played by Matthias Schoenaerts. I love Matthias Schoenaerts performance in “The Old Guard,” and he is a disturbing villain in this movie. Sometimes he is too much to take, and other times it feels like he is holding back. So, I can’t tell if that is the actor or the editing, but it makes the character difficult to believe in (as a villain) and hard to track.

I also had difficulty, in the beginning, watching Supergirl binge drinking, fighting, and partying, but given the context (she was older when she left her parents and planet than Clark, so has more trauma tied up with loss and starting over on a new planet) and that the first Supergirl movie had her character played as VERY naive, it makes sense that I would have a little dissonance there.

That being said, in general the effects were good. Characters and space creature development was fun and varied and I have seen worse super-hero movies do better at the box office. So, what gives?

Part of me thinks, it’s the female superhero subgenre. Superhero movies and comics have been strongly regulated, or in some cases, dysregulated, by some very opinionated men who have a very specific ideas of what a female character should do and/or look like in a comic book or comic book movie. The controversy, and less than stellar box office performance of “Captain Marvel” or “The Marvels” comes to mind immediately. (I love Captain Marvel…even though it is not perfect).

Then you have your purists who object to changes made to character arcs, appearance, and storylines from the books. I get that, I do. But SO many were able to look the other way, eventually, with Marvel movies that had a lot of machismo. So, you can’t tell me that a female led superhero movie with the same level of sarcasm, intellect, and action, theoretically, couldn’t also get around that objection.

Then there is the subject of human trafficking and subjection of women. That topic, while it is very much happening today, might be too “icky” and on the nose for some people to feel comfortable with, but those are exactly the sort of issues that people DEALT with in comics to begin with! They would tackle what felt uncomfortable, in a less threatening, more accessible manner, than say, the news and would bring attention to local and world issues that needed to be addressed. But there are those who will say, they just want to watch a movie and forget about the world for a while. I get it. But, some of these issues are woven into the story lines of those other movies we watch. Is it just that they were done more subtly, and thus, they became more palatable? Is it because it came with a whole host of larger, more well known actors/star power? Who knows, but these are things that we need to be thinking about. The fact that female superhero movies are being made is a step forward, but if nobody shows up for them like they did for these big budget male led comic movies, they will start to step into the background again. I think that would be a shame.

Regardless, for the most part, I think the movie was decently made, and while it is not immediately re-watchable as many times as I have rewatched other comic book movies (and I don’t think that had anything to do with the acting…I think the acting was pretty phenomenal), I might rewatch it again and I think more people should give it a chance.

Recommended Ages: 10 and up

Tag: Film Review

Review: Wildwood [Film]

Review: Supergirl [Film]