Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

To get the pedantic bit out of the way first, the Japanese title of Miyazaki Hayao’s twelfth and probably final feature film, the 21st and probably final theatrical feature released by Studio Ghibli, the great animation company he co-founded in the 1980s, is 君たちはどう生きるか. This translates to How Do You Live?, which is also the […]

Wish, the 62nd animated feature produced by Walt Disney Animation studios, was very consciously, one might even say laboriously conceived to be the big capstone to the Disney 100 celebrations, in which the Walt Disney Company celebrates the anniversary of its incorporation, as Disney Brothers Studio, on 16 October 1923. Given that 2023 turned out […]

There’s a very strong argument to be made that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the best feature film yet made featuring the titular comic book superheroes, TV cartoon stars, and best-selling toys. This isn’t such a big deal as all that, given that there’s also an argument to be made that Teenage Mutant […]

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a little bit sloppy and narratively cluttered, it has unexceptional visuals, I didn’t buy either of its lead characters as written and only one of them as performed, and its modestly diverting action setpieces are hindered by how weightless the wall-to-wall CGI bringing them to life is. It is […]

DreamWorks Animation, once the unlovely home of such crimes against animation as Shark Tale and Bee Movie, has been quietly handing Disney and Pixar their asses on a platter for so long now that it should no longer come as a surprise when it happens, but it still feels like Puss in Boots: The Last […]

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is not a good film, which comes as absolutely no surprise whatsoever. It is surprising, perhaps, that it isn’t much worse – and “much worse” is, to be fair, in the eye of the beholder. Nothing could be more understandable than somebody subjecting themselves to this film and declaring it an unmitigated […]

I think the fair thing to do is to regard Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank not with contempt that it exists, but with amazement that it survived to be released. Though I think you could temper that amazement with a little bit of contempt. That would be fair. Still, let’s not get too […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: in addition to having the most soullessly branded title of any superhero movie this year, DC League of Super-Pets […]

To begin with, I find the very title of DC League of Super-Pets unpleasantly provocative. Not the League of Super-Pets part; that’s mostly just describing the content, though I might wonder why the film bothered to so subtly rename the comic book Legion of Super-Pets. Probably because Warner Bros. assumed (and with reason) that movie […]

A review requested by Devin, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! “It’s sophisticated enough for children, simple enough for adults!” reads the tagline on the poster for the 1970 […]

First, the positivity: the direct-to-Disney+ film Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a sort of update-reboot-remake of the 1989 cartoon TV show of the same name, is so much better than I expected it to be. It’s still bad in many ways and good in virtually none, but the standard of comparison here is 2021’s Space […]

A review requested by Jack, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! The NeverEnding Story comes attached to a very important fun fact: it was, at the time of its […]