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396. The Wild Robot (#154)

Posted on October 26, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney, this week with special guest Deirdre Molumby, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This week, Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot.

On a remote island, a freak storm brings a surprise visitor: a top of the line service robot. Without any humans around to give her a task, the robot searches for purpose among the island’s animal inhabitants. She stumbles across a young gosling, taking on the task of raising the small bird. Although parenting is not part of her programming, this wild robot discovers that love is a powerful force.

At time of recording, it was ranked 154th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: animation, anthropomorphic animals, chris sanders, deirdre molumby, dreamworks, DreamWorks Animation, environmentalism, family films, imdb, lupita nyong'o, motherhood, pedro pascal, podcast, survival, The 250, the wild robot, This Just In | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Revenant

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Darren

The Revenant is a beautiful and visceral piece of work.

Sporting a troubled production history, The Revenant is surprisingly straightforward film. Based on the tale of famed fur trapper (and tall-tale-teller) Hugh Glass, The Revenant charts one man’s journey from near-death back to civilisation against the harsh and unforgiving American wilderness. The Revenant is essentially a journey in a straight line, as Glass struggles to find a way back to security and revenge himself upon his colleagues who left him for dead. The film’s biggest structural issues lie in a desire to distort or convolute that straight line.

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However, the fairly linear and straightforward plot is really just a framework for director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to present the audience with striking vistas and symbolism that ranges from blindingly obvious to wilfully obtuse. The film is absolutely stunning, capturing its tone perfectly and presenting any number of memorable images and moments. Even when the visual trips sideways or backwards feel indulgent or unnecessary, they are still beautiful.

The Revenant is perhaps a little too fixated on over-complicating what is a fairly straightforward narrative, with a script that can seem unexpectedly obtuse for what is basically a single long chase movie crossed with a classic “man against nature” survival film. Nevertheless, the result is a striking piece of work that is awe-inspiring in visual (and visceral) terms.

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