mickeythechamp

Road to the Oscars 2025: this is nominated in 1 category best short film.

Anuja was a charming look into a sad truth. Knowing that this is real and that a foundation that helps people like Anuja exist makes you think about how our world is designed. Nonetheless we get a charming little slice of life movie with a great ending.

2 sisters who lost their parents work at a bag factory. One of the sisters are given the opportunity to start in school for only 400 rupees. The sisters try to get the money.

I really liked the cute and believable sisterhood in this movie. Anuja and Palak act believable for their age and their relation and that helps the movie a lot. This is also just a well-made film through and through.

This is a hard truth movie. While it is packed with optimism as you kind of have to in a situation like this, it is hard to think that this is something that happens every day.

I really liked the open ended ending of this movie. Really showing the complexity of the situation the sisters are in. This is not just a moral easy question, it´s hard because you know what the cost is for all the lives involved and if that is something that happens every day it´s hard.

Overall I was charmed by this short. It´s well made and good. It is the most clean Oscar film I have watched so far, but somehow that works for it. It´s nothing insane or special, just competent.

Oscar Predictions: Political undertones, check. When it comes to the academy they like to make a political statement with their choice sometimes and in this case this check a box, but shorts like "A lien"(2022) and "I´m not a robot"(2023) dies the same with a more pro what we want in America angel. This is the winner so far to me. The most clean of the short, pure Oscar bait but it works and it´s good. I root for this!

Why did It had to be political? Of course everything is political in some sense or form but you end up sounding like an idiot when you talk about a movie like this, especially when you didn´t really like it. Nightbitch wants to talk about a really complicated thing but isn't really competent enough to really do it. It is a surface level analysis of the griefs of motherhood that doesn't really know what it wants in the end and that's a shame, since this could have been a rather competent film. But please remove the dog parts, I did not really get why that was here.

A mother is having a hard time adjusting her life to be a stay at home mom, she starts to slowly become more nature like, maybe even doglike.

Where this movie falls apart is what it wants to say. It has this roller-coaster mentality when it comes to what the characters want and need and conflicts come and go. Our main character wants to have help, yet be a dog, yet not, she wants to not be with her husband, yet she wants to. It is all over the place and the final message seems to go against so many of the previous presentations of what our main character wants, since she is happy to do this and this, but I guess it wasn't really what she wanted. The movie needed to be longer and then present to us that some happiness isn't enough, since the movie in my opinion could have ended why sooner if it was all about making out main character happy. She was happy before the end.

This movie is actually well edited. The opening is really well put together and I liked the overall flow of the movie.

I think this is an adaptation of a book and it was hard to translate into a film somehow. The constant narration that tells you what you are supposed to feel at the moment in situations where the viewer clearly can read the situation for themselves. The dog metaphor not really working here, actually I didn´t really understand it and the movie would just have been a basic motherhood drama if removed. That would have been more basic but made more sense in the context of the movie.

Amy Adams gives a good performance here. She sells the burned out mother pretty well.

I think there is a good message hidden under all the confusion here though. There is a movie that wants to break free from the mess it´s in. A movie about the many downsides of motherhood but also all the light that´s in it. It´s a complicated affair.

And with that there is only to say there is a competent movie in here somewhere. The plot is fine and the overall moviemaking is good, but it´s just a huge mess that swallows the good ideas in here.

Road to the Oscars 2025: this is nominated in 1 category best animated feature.

When I saw this was nominated I became so happy! Knowing that the academy once again wanted to highlight the art of Aardman is always nice. This was a delight to watch. It was so fun and just enjoyable. It´s been a while since I just watched a solid movie. It´s doing anything extraordinary, but it is doing everything just right.

Wallace once again down on monkey makes a garden gnome that can help Gromit with his gardenwork, everyone else also wants some help from the gnome. Meanwhile the evil penguin Feathers McGraw is planning to escape his jailcell.

If you have not watched the original short "the wrong trousers"(1993) do yourself a favour and watch that first. It will make the context of the movie a bit more coherent and impactful.

The animation here is absolutely incredible. The stop motion and Claymation at display is insane and everything looks and feels so smooth here. I forget sometimes I´m looking at animation and that is a huge compliment. Characters movements are smooth, the effects like water are charming, it is just a great peak of stop motion animation.

The humour is great here! A lot of different forms of comedy is used here and they all land pretty well. From spoken jokes, to puns to silent humour it all works very well and I laughed a lot during the movie!

This is also just a solid plot. It works great for what it wants to be, nothing to grand here just a simple A and B plot that meets in the middle. It´s not a movie that tries to do anything big and that works in its favour. This movie also has some really horror inspired elements with the gnomes later it was pretty fun and unemptied.

But I have a few things that did not work fully for me. There is a bit too little Feathers McGraw in this movie. It was even hyped up to be his big return but to me it just didn't really feel like that focusing more on the gnomes. I´m still not a huge fan of Wallace´s character here but I feel like they rushed his redemption in this movie. The third act is both fun but also rushed in what it wants to do and say. While I liked the redemption of Wallace even though it was rushed I did not like the backtracking on the comments on AI

Okay a small rant. It was so refreshing having a movie not liking AI or robots for once. If you haven´t noticed it has been a huge trend that robots and AI might be the good guys now since studios really wants you to like it so it doesn't seem that bad when they make AI make movies. That was a huge "conspiracy hat" moment for me, but this movie actually criticized AI and robot use. Saying that it makes everything feel sterile and it´s easy to hack and control. But then it kind of backtracks on that at the end sadly. While a robot that is a hand comes in to help (hands will always be better than robots maybe?) the gnomes are now kind of good to use, again I feel like they just dropped the ball with what they wanted to say.

Non the less, this is a solid movie that I just sat down and enjoyed. It does a lot of things exactly right and delivers a just entertaining movie that is so well made. Hearing the iconic score for Wallace and Gromit tells you, you are in for a fun time and this movie proves it.

Oscar predictions: I have only watched this and "inside out 2"(2024) in this category and I want this to win of the 2 so far. But let´s be honest "The Wild Robot"(2024) has been cleaning the awards so far and I think it has the biggest chance of winning.