Rectangular_businessman Reviews

Beluga (2011)

The Little Match Girl as a horror tale

[7/10 · 21 May 2024]

An eerie animation loosely inspired in The Little Match Girl fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen: Here, instead of a series of comforting Christmas visions, the little match girl sees a strange, surreal vision of horror and violence, involving a tale of children rejected by their parents, their revenge towards the world, and the harsh comeuppance unleashed upon them by the adults.

A very bleak, hopeless tale where the cruelty of the plot is only somewhat mitigated by the stylish animation.

At least the little matchgirl didn't die in this version, though but that's hardly a silver lining considering the overall tone of this short.

Cipher (1989)

The soundtrack was nice

[19 May 2024]

Discovered this short anime while I was looking for similar movies to Interstella 5555: The main problem here is that this seems to be aimed to the people who already has familiarity with the source material; to everyone else, this will merely appear as something completely random and disjointed. (Case point: The main love interest basically disappears after the Let's Hear It For The Boy sequence, despite supposedly being the protagonist, at least according with the plot summary)

The 80s soundtrack is nice, with some pretty good songs and some nice covers, being the strongest aspect of this animation.

There is an "incomplete" feel here, with the story seemingly going at first in one direction and then simply going nowhere.

Also, what's up with the weird incest subtext on the latest part?

Liquid Television: Episode #2.2 (1992) Season 2, Episode 2

Are you comfortable?

[19 May 2024]

A shame "The Listener" (the first animation made by Chris Landreth) doesn't have its own page on the Internet Movie Database, leaving me with no choice but to write this review on the page of the Liquid Television episode where it was featured instead. (Another early work by him, named "Data Driven: The Story of Franz K" is also missing from this website)

From the very beginning of his career, Landreth already showed a pretty original artistic vision for his CGI shorts, displaying a very creative use of imagery which still feels fresh disregard of the dated technology.

A brief, but fascinating experience which does a lot with very little elements. Kinda wish more 3D animators dared to be more experimental with their work instead of just aiming for realism and generic cuteness, but then again, it's an understandable consequence of thinking all animation is exclusively a children's medium, something very limiting for the creators involved.

Starry Night (2008)

That's it?

[18 May 2024]

This was available here on the Internet movie database, so why not give it a look?

I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but this felt more like a drawing tutorial than a proper short, with a half of it dedicated to show the same previous footage in reverse as the CGI recreation of Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night gets undone.

Like the other review points out, this kind of stuff was probably something completely unheard of back then in the 2000s, so I guess this could be seen like some sort of "tech demo", but not as interesting as those early experimental CGI tests from the 80s and early nineties.

The Temptation of St. Anthony (1898)

Saint Anthony in film

[18 May 2024]

Considering how The Temptation of Saint Anthony is such a popular artistic subject and was used as a motif in many haunting classical paintings, it's a bit weird to consider that it never has been adapted to film with the sole exception of this one minute short directed by Georges Melies. (According to Wikipedia, there was also a previous short made by Eugene Pirou, but is nowhere to be found)

Done properly, the story of Saint Anthony could be made into a great religious horror film (It could take the Flaubert novel as inspiration). At least it would be a nice variation for this subgenre instead of yet another exorcist film.

Viking Tales (2018)

Fun Mexican animation

[7/10 · 17 May 2024]

Viking Tales is a charming series of shorts made in Mexico produced for the Latin American feed of Cartoon Network.

Very colorful and wacky, it has a similar vibe to the early episodes of Adventure Time, featuring a whimsical setting where anything could happen.

While the animation might be a bit uneven (Also I'm not entirely about the voice of the main character), I found these shorts to be quite enjoyable to watch, and with a lot of great potential to be developed into a full series, something I would like to happen in the near future.

With time and some development, this could easily become a worthy sucessor for Adventure Time.

Din of Celestial Birds (2006)

Do not be afraid

[17 May 2024]

Hello and welcome.

Do not be afraid.

Be comforted

Remember

Our origin

Love or hate it, there is no deying Begotten was simply one of the most unique films in the history of cinema, being perhaps far more inscrutable than stuff like Eraserhead or Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

Definitely not for everyone, but I found it to be pretty fascinating, disregard of its extremely haunting (and sometimes indecipherable) imagery.

Din of Celestial Birds is some sort of "sequel" of that movie, though far more abstract and less gruesome; most movie websites label it as an "animation", though in a short like this is very hard to know how much of it is animated and how much is edited live-action footage. (The credits mention the use of "sculptures", though I can't tell where do those were supposed to appear, despite rewatching it several times)

If you enjoyed Begotten, then you probably like this. If you hated that movie, then you probably will loathe this even more, since it is far, far more weirder.

I personally find it to be quite mesmerizing and darkly beautiful, even when I'm not really sure of what all this was supposed to be.

Watching it on Youtube doesn't make this any justice. Something as otherworldy as this deserves to be seen on a big cinema screen, in order to experience its haunting nature on its entirety.

The Unlucky Hamster (2019)

Poor little hamster

[7/10 · 16 May 2024]

A cute CGI animation, with a very pleasant art style.

Even when the plot is not particularly groundbreaking, the nice visuals made it very enjoyable to watch.

Despite being intended as a humorous short, at one point it's easy to feel sorry for the bad luck of the little main character, but is simply unable to catch a break.

And to be completely honest, I think the people who buys hamster, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits or any other animals from a pet store in order to feed snakes are sick in the head, similar to the people who buys kittens and puppies just to record videos of themselves perfoming acts of animal cruelty on social media. (I bet that people justify doing such kind of thing saying there is no difference of doing that kind stuff with eating meat)

Seriously, how snobbish one person has to be to keep a snake (A feral animal which probably would largely prefer to be in the wild than in a glass tank) as a pet? Even as a kid, I thought it was a stupid, try-hard thing to do in order to appear edgy.

The casual way many of those snake owners brag online about how they love feeding their exotic pets with small animals was enough confirmation for me of such impression as an adult. What a bunch of pathetic cretins.

Super Rhino (2009 Video)

A cute addition to Bolt

[8/10 · 15 May 2024]

Bolt was a charming movie: Without being a masterpiece, it was quite enjoyable to watch from beginning to end, having a cast of fun, endearing characters.

While it was kinda overshadowed by the following Disney films (Such as Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, Big Hero 6 and the first Frozen movie in particular), back then it was rightfully seen as a step in the right direction for the company after the Chicken Little fiasco and the somewhat forgetable Meet the Robinsons.

This short was a cute little addition to that movie. I honestly Rhino is a fun enough character to carry his own movie or at least television series. Unfortunately, it seems that Disney wants to forget its output of the 2000s decade, focusing now in endless sequels and trashy live action remakes. What a shame.

Swamp Thing (II) (1990–1991)

Swamp Thing! ...You are amazing!

[13 May 2024]

The Swamp Thing reimagined as a Saturday Morning Cartoon, with all the common archetypes from the genre: The kid sidekicks, the G. I. Joe-esque vehicles, the incompetent goons at the service of the villain, the environmentalist lessons...

Sure, it's cheesy. But it's kind of cheesy fun which is actually pretty enjoyable to watch, despite its many differences with the source material.

Shame it was so short-lived (It was even shorter than Fish Police!), since this could have been a much better ecological cartoon for the 90s than Captain Planet. Or at least much more fondly remembered, since Swamp Thing is way cooler than that corny character.

The theme song was quite awesome, nobody can deny that.

Osmosis Jones (2001)

The animated parts are fun, the live action parts are depressing and annoying

[6/10 · 11 May 2024]

Apparently Chris Rock has commented in a interview that, from his perspective, the movie would have worked better as a fully live-action movie, since in his opinion the Farrelly brothers' style of comedy doesn't really lend itself well to animation, or something like that.

I personally think the opposite: The movie should have been entirely animated. In my opinion, all the live action parts were awful, and frankly depressing, being the awkward result of that time when the Farrelly brothers were still trying to mix their trademark toilet humor with pathos and sentimentality: The result is just bad, being horribly unfunny, with Murray playing one of the worst characters of his entire career, a guy with extremely gross eating habits who only keeps making things worse for his daughter, often humilliating her with his embarrasing behavior.

He felt like Homer Simpson at his very worst and with none of his likeable traits.

On the other side, the animated parts were pretty well done, with very stylish designs and a fun setting. Maybe the jokes were a bit sanitized in order to be turned into a more family friendly film via executive mandate, but were still far more enjoyable than the live action part by a mile.

The villain was cool.

The whole movie would have worked much better as an animated buddy cop parody.

Legend: A Dragon Ball Tale (2022)

Visually impressive fan animation

[10 May 2024]

It's kinda amazing how Dragon Ball managed to inspire so much people around the globe, isn't it?

Sure, some people might dismiss that series due the simplicity of the plot, but nobody can deny the huge cultural impact and influence it left to this very day, with many modern battle shonen anime series still wanting to follow its footsteps.

Its influence is also present in many western works, as this fan-made animation shows. And for a fan-made project, the result is quite impressive, featuring a very nice, fluid animation which actually surpasses many official releases from this franchise.

On the other side, the script has a solemnity quite unusual for Dragon Ball (From what I heard, the English dub of the series altered some lines of the characters, giving Goku a more conventionally heroic personality, and this might be somewhat influenced by that) which honestly felt a bit awkward at moments, but the animation alone made the whole experience worth-watching for every Dragon Ball fan.

Candyman (2020)

A beautiful teaser

[9/10 · 9 May 2024]

I have yet to see the Candyman remake from the year 2021, but I really liked a lot this promotional teaser which depicts the tragic backstory of the titular character via shadow puppetry.

The result is quite beautiful, depicting a harsh tale of racism and societal injustice in an incredibly stylish manner.

Without a single spoken word, it manages to deliver its message in a rather blunt manner through its haunting use of imagery.

A very creative way to promote a horror film, which captured my interest from the very first second. And personally, I think this teaser was way better than the actual trailer of the movie, which felt a bit generic in comparison.

8.5/10.

Hey Good Lookin' (1982)

Hey Good Lookin'

[6/10 · 8 May 2024]

This was the last Ralph Bakshi film I had yet to see; now that I have finally seen it, I must say I had some mixed feelings about it, as with other animations by this same directors.

After his version of The Lord of the Rings, American Pop and Fire and Ice, Hey Good Lookin' feels like a throwback to Bakshi's first three movies, being a satirical picaresque tale about an hedonist antihero with some bitter undertones.

Yet strangely enough, this movie feels somewhat tamed in comparison with Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin in particular. But then again, almost every animated film would feel pretty tamed in comparison with Coonskin.

There is also the fact that this movie is actually different from what Bakshi originally envisioned, wanting to make a mixture of animation and live action. Unfortunately, Warner considered said kind of film would be "unreleasable", resulting in most of the live-action footage being deleted and the original dialogue changed and recorded again.

That said, a lot of the distinctive aspects of Bakshi's ouvre are pretty much present here, with plenty of bizarre, surreal moments and his trademark raunchy humor.

On its favor, the story feels more coherent and less episodic than in his seventies movies, having a more striaghtforward narrative.

In all honesty, I would like to see the original cut, never released to the public. I personally think it's a shame when artists had to compromise their personal vision due studio interference.

Something similar happened with Cool World, the movie that almost killed Bakshi's career. While the final results had interesting elements, they are clearly an inferior version of what we could have got.

Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943)

The "education for Death" still persists to this day

[8/10 · 6 May 2024]

I mean, it would be very easy to see this movie like yet another propaganda war animation about how bad the Nazis were, but I think the most chilling aspect from this animation is the fact that the type of indoctrination depicted here is still pretty much alive in the modern world: It often manifests as the idea many people still have about their respective countries as a paragon of virtue, opposed to the "degenerate foreigners", with such kind of mentality being used to justify all kinds of atrocities.

No matter how cartoonishly evil the behaviors depicted here might look, grotesque ideas about how might makes right are still deeply ingrained in the collective unconscious, with open calls for genocide blatantly posted in social media, dehumanizing others in a rather repulsive manner.

"The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." That quote rings today truer than ever.

South Park: Unaired Pilot (1997) Season 1, Episode 0

Fun, but the final version is better

[6 May 2024]

An unaired early version of the first South Park episode.

Among the most notorious differences between this and the aired episode, is the completely different intro sequence (With a slower, more monotone sounding version of the regular intro), and a very brief scene where two deleted characters appear: Cartman's father and sister.

While this version has its fair share of laughs, I must say I prefer the final cut, which has a much funnier conclusion with the cows using the alien mind control device on Officer Barbrady.

Kenny coming back to life at the end of the episode was a nice touch, however.

Home Movies: Get Away from My Mom (1999) Season 1, Episode 1

A solid beginning for an underrated series

[8/10 · 5 May 2024]

Pretty much like Dr. Katz, I also overlooked Home Movies back then.

Maybe it was due the art style, which in my opinion was much cruder looking than Dr. Katz, almost resembling the kind of scribbles a kid would make using Microsoft Paint.

Or maybe it was the way in which the show was promoted in my country, making it look as something pretty stupid, but I never gave it a chance back then, not even after reading the good reviews written here on Imdb.

Now that I've finally seen a couple of episodes, I regret my decision of not watching this series while it was on air.

Despite the poor art-style, Home Movies had a pretty clever writing, and likeable characters, deserving all the praise it got online.

Personally I think Coach McGuirk steals the show from the very beginning, being a rather lovable character despite being a jerk.

I definitely will continue watching it, rediscovering this series is like finding a buried treasure.

When Lynch Met Lucas (2010 Video)

A fun little animation

[7/10 · 4 May 2024]

It's so weird to think how David Lynch was considered as one of the possible directors for Return of the Jedi, but I guess that after all the mainstream acclaim The Elephant Man got, such idea didn't seem so crazy back then.

But who knows, maybe it would have been a pretty fascinating film (Though one does have to wonder how much artistic liberties Lynch would have been allowed while working in a project like that)

In all honesty, I respect Lynch's decision. Instead of becoming a director for hire of a project he didn't have any passion, he decided to stay true to himself, even if that meant losing a large sum of money.

And considering the poor reception Dune got, maybe it was for the best, not to mention the utter mess Star Wars has become in the recent years.

At least Lynch was able to focus the rest of his career in more personal, distinctive films which allowed him to fully achieve his status as one of the most unique directors from American cinema.

Bear (II) (2023)

Everyday masks

[8/10 · 3 May 2024]

Even when rotoscoping tends to be a somewhat divisive technique among animators (To the point some of them don't even want to consider it "real" animation), I personally think that it could be done pretty well, often with pretty stylish results. Take for example movies like Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly, or Bakshi's American Pop.

Hey, even some beloved Disney classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs used rotoscoping, so I never got the hate towards this type of visual presentation.

I guess some would say shorts like this one could have been easily made in live-action, with its animation being just a gimmick. But even if that was the case, I think the gimmick worked, because it managed to capture my attention from the very first moment despite the ambiguous nature of the story, giving it a certain hypnotic film from beginning to end.

Milkman (2004)

Messed up

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

Without doubt, one of the most macabre works ever done by David Firth. And considering we are talking about the same guy behind stuff like Salad Fingers and Spoilsbury Toast Boy, that's saying something.

Besides of the graphic, gratuitous violence, child murder and necrophilia, there is also a heavy nihilistic vibe here, particularly on its extremely bitter conclusion.

Was this entirely made for mere shock value, or there is any sort of meaning underneath? Who knows. But while personally I don't consider this one of Firth's best works, I do have to admit this is a unforgettable watching experience, going beyond the limits that other edgy online animations wouldn't dare to cross.

And all that in less than two minutes. Wow.

Chaud lapin (2014)

Good suspense CGI short

[8/10 · 30 April 2024]

At first glance, the visual aesthetic reminded me of the German short "12 Years" by Daniel Nocke, which also depicted the characters as humanoids with semi-realistic animal heads.

But while "12 years" had a more humorous tone, "Chaud Lapin" had a more tense, eerie feel.

Without a single spoken word, the story is delivered in a rather perfect manner, with the murder plan of the two lovers towards the abusive boar husband becoming evident with each passing minute, leading to an unexpected black comedy element on its conclusion as the icing on the cake.

The result is pretty solid and interesting. Definitely worth-watching!

Cream (I) (2017)

Ice cream and misanthropy

[30 April 2024]

Not to be confused with the David Firth short of the same name, "Cream" is a strange stop-motion short with some misanthropic undertones: Everyone seems to be a jerk here, displaying some form of cruelty in one way or another.

I must confess I'm not really sure about the meaning behind this, but it was interesting to watch anyway, mostly due its unusual visual aesthetic and the unpredictable nature of the plot, which almost seem to follow some sort of strange dream-logic.

The poster image somewhat spoils the main climatic scene, but the ending managed to take me by surprise anyway. It also gave me the impression this was going to be much more disturbing than it actually was, almost looking as something from a horror film.

Definitely not for everyone, but fascinating nonetheless.

Cream (II) (2016)

When greed destroys hope

[8/10 · 29 April 2024]

Of all the animations made by David Firth, this might be the most accessible one.

Sure, it does its share of weirdness, but in general lines, the plot is quite easy to understand, with a message delivered in a pretty straighforward manner.

Despite its humorous tone, Cream is a very cynical tale about how the rich and powerful will do anything in order to perpetuate the status quo, being even willing to screw things for everyone as long they are allowed to keep their privileges, with people always falling for their dirty tricks.

Cream might not be a real thing, but if it was, things probably would have turned out as in this short.

Billionaries and corporate overlords are not our friends. They never were, and they never will, no matter how "friendly" they might seem on their social media profiles.

Jerry Jackson (2005– )

Remembering Jerry Jackson

[28 April 2024]

Amazing how some episodes from this actually aired on BBC. And it has a higher score on IMDb than Salad Fingers itself, lol.

Jerry Jackson it's pretty much a cultural artifact of the early 2000s, parodying several trends from that era, particularly mocking some poorly made online animations uploaded to Newgrounds, with its satirical tone becoming more evident as the series progressed.

However, as crudely made this series was, it also has an undeniable charm. Watching some of the shorts made me feel nostalgic for the old internet, before social media and advertisements took over most websites.

Sure, there was a lot of bad stuff, with lots of edgy tryhard content, but at least there was a certain "sincerity" behind the bad stuff. One could tell that even in the most amateurish works the (usually experienced) artists were putting all their heart, unlike the modern scammers using apps to do all the job for them.

Back then, teens made a lot of offensive jokes online, but weren't genuinely hateful. Nowadays, even adults took offense at the most milquetoast content, starting culture wars over the casting of some trashy live-action Disney film. And they are petty, genuinelly hateful people.

As the world keeps turning into a progressively worse place, stuff like Jerry Jackson has a much more innocent vibe, as a relic from better times that won't come back.

Sock (2005–2012)

David Firth's dream journal

[9/10 · 27 April 2024]

A very fascinating series of shorts made by David Firth, creator of Salad Fingers and Burnt Face Man, supposedly inspired in some dreams he had.

Unsurprisingly, these shorts follow a rather nonsensical storytelling, randomly jumping from one thing to another through scenes; but the way in which David depict those scenes always manages to be something quite fascinating to behold, filled with lots of surreal situations and imagery.

The last two shorts in particular were beautifully nightmarish, with a rather visceral feel which manages to be both repulsive yet oddly captivating.

Hope the Sock series continues. Its unpredictable beauty and horror is perhaps one of the most creative online shows I have ever seen.