Category: Awkwafina

WILDWOOD (2026)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Travis Knight
CAST: Carey Mulligan, Jake Johnson, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Mahershala Ali
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 99% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A young girl’s search for her kidnapped brother kicks off a gripping fantasy adventure in the forbidding forests outside of Portland, Oregon.


Wow.  Just…WOW.  Wildwood, the newest entry from director Travis Knight and Laika, the studio behind Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012), and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), pulls out all the stops and delivers the first stop-motion fantasy adventure epic.  The first trailers made it look like a loose retread of 1986’s Labyrinth, with a young girl in search of her baby brother who was kidnapped by shadowy, magical forces.  I was wrong.  Wildwood should be remembered as one of the best fantasy films ever made in any medium.

(Also, just in passing, please note, it earns its PG-13 rating.  Littler kids are likely to be traumatized by some of the visuals, as well as the numerous gruesome onscreen deaths.  You have been warned.)

After a grim prologue involving the suicide of what appears to be a primitive automaton, we meet the modern-day McKeel family: Mom, Dad, Prue, and baby boy Mac.  After numerous light-hearted, but still portentous, warnings to not leave the house with Mac and especially to stay away from the dense woods bordering their home in Portland, Oregon, Prue does exactly that, bumping into a nerdy acquaintance, Curtis, along the way.  In a scene right out of Hitchcock, a playground gradually fills with large crows in a series of clever edits.  This murder of crows swoops down in a cloud of caws and claws, grabs baby Mac, and soars away into the forest.  Prue gives chase with Curtis in tow, and when she arrives at the edge of the forest, something curious happens: the trees part to reveal a path after some blood from Prue’s hand, cut during her pursuit, touches an ivy plant.

What follows is a spectacular adventure that incorporates all the best aspects of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling…along with any other fantasy writer who uses initials for their first name.  Prue finds herself in a magical world where talking animals live side-by-side with humans.  (Wolves, for example, are soldiers, though they’re not always the brightest bulbs in the box.)  The land is divided into principalities, each ruled by a different species of animal, some of which will help Prue with her quest and others who will stop at nothing to prevent it. 

The riot of diversity in this world was a constant source of amazement for me, especially considering everything was made with stop-motion animation.  I won’t get into the technical details (I’ll assume most of you know what stop-motion is and how time-consuming it is), but that fact alone makes Wildwood nothing short of miraculous.  If it doesn’t win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature of 2026, it will be a grave miscarriage of justice.

For the entire running time (it’s also the longest stop-motion feature ever made), I felt a nostalgic echo of the great fantasy adventures from my childhood.  Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal (1982), The Secret of NIMH (1982), Willow (1988)…these were movies that had great stories, yes, but they strove to present unforgettable images to go along with their stories.  Wildwood isn’t content just to show us massive flocks of birds – in stop-motion! – or other fantastical creatures.  We also get a massive battle between two armies that plays and feels exactly like something out of The Lord of the Rings.  We get a dynamic, tragic story of a mother’s loss and the lengths to which she’ll go to find her son.  We get a surprise twist regarding Prue’s little brother.

And the entire time, that stunning animation is on display.  I had thought Kubo and the Two Strings would remain the high-water mark for stop-motion films for decades, but I was wrong.  Wildwood tops it, in terms of spectacle and storytelling.  It feels a little bit like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988): an astonishing technical feat that could be duplicated in the future, but who would want to?

I should also mention the darker aspects of the story, specifically how it involves death in a number of ways throughout the movie.  We get a suicide right at the top of the film.  At one point, several prisoners are literally murdered in their cages by soldiers with guns.  During the climactic battle, we aren’t shown a lot of especially gory details, but there is no mistake that both sides are out for blood and holding nothing back.  There is at least one unmistakable decapitation.  Wildwood remembers that, without high stakes, there can be no real suspense.  And when the final denouement occurs between Prue and the enemy leader, I gasped the same as I did when poor Wash got skewered in Serenity (2005.)  [If I ruined that for you, you need to watch more movies.]

So, seriously, please, pretty please, with a cherry on top: find a local theater that might still be playing Wildwood and go see it on the big screen.  It is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.  It is hands-down the best stop-motion film I’ve ever seen.  It will be money well spent, I assure you.

THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023)

By Marc S. Sanders

Film remakes can go either way.  It’s even more of a challenge for it to succeed artistically if the original interpretation is such a favorite among the masses.  The 2023 updated version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid directed by Rob Marshall is fair, but it also never overcomes the challenge.

The new film primarily repeats the same story that many are familiar with.  A youthful mermaid girl named Ariel dreams about living among the humans above the surface.  Her father refuses the idea as he finds humans to be vile and dangerous.  Ariel makes a deal to trade in her beautiful voice to Ursula, the sea witch, in exchange for becoming a human.  She is granted three days to fall in love with Prince Eric.  If at the end of the three days she has not kissed the prince with a means of true love, she will turn back into a mermaid and will remain a prisoner of Ursula forever.

To call this new film adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale a live action film is only partially true.  If we are to witness the undersea life of mermaids and talking fish, well then, it’ll have to be animated somewhat, even if it is done digitally.  Therefore, to have the freedom to animate the sequences set to unforgettable numbers like “Part Of Your World” and “Under The Sea,” I wish the filmmakers were paying a little more attention. 

Consider some lyrics to “Under the Sea:”

Down here all the fish is happy…

Up there all the fish ain’t happy

They’re sad, cuz they’re in the bowl

It doesn’t win my attention if Sebastian the singing crab is singing about fish while the heroine of the story, Ariel, is swimming among dolphins who are scientifically regarded as mammals!!!!!!  You can show me any number of different colorfully prancing ocean dwellers, and you show me dolphins?????  In a musical number, the choreography must serve the purpose of the song.  In the original 1989 film, every animated image of any particular song lines up with the lyrics of numbers written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.  Regrettably, Rob Marshall seems to have turned the sound off while reinventing this moment. 

Sadly, I didn’t care for the updated composition of “Under The Sea” (an Oscar winning number) or “Part Of Your World.”  Why alter the notes and vocal delivery of some of the most famed pieces in Disney’s musical library?  Steven Spielberg’s update of West Side Story didn’t do that.  Spielberg knows that if ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  These are favorites!!!!  I can’t be the only one who doesn’t like it when the artists change everything about his/her/their greatest hits when I’m at their concerts.  The same accounts here. 

Still, it’s not all bad in this new The Little Mermaid.  Most of the cast is quite good.  Newcomer Halle Bailey (sure to be memorable in the upcoming musical version of The Color Purple) is sensational and she’s wonderful to look at as either the mermaid or the human version lacking a voice.  She has a wonderful singing voice and she’s a terrific actor against a CGI world of complicated water shots and imaginary creatures serving as her companions.  Melissa McCarthy is unrecognizable as Ursula, the sinister squid sea witch.  Her voice has a gruff intimidating edge to it and her torso and head donned in purple texture flow nicely with the CGI tentacles.  Javier Bardem is not doing his best work here because the script doesn’t demand it of him, but he fits in nicely as Triton, king of the undersea and father to Ariel.

Jacob Trembley lends a preteen personality to Flounder whose role is significantly diminished in this update.  That’s a mistake.  Instead, we get more of Scuttle who doesn’t look like a pelican any longer but is a bird who can somehow hold his breath under water for long periods of time to carry on panicked conversations with her pals.  Awkwafina voices Scuttle, and though I heard some laughter from the audience in response to her performance, it just didn’t win me over.  I found this Scuttle to be a nuisance that took me out of the film with each appearance.  The hip hop rap number (written by Lin Manuel Miranda) she performs was a very underwhelming substitute for comedy.  What was sacrificed was the hilariously silly, slapstick number from the original, where the French chef enthusiastically sang “Les Poisson,” as he torments poor Sebastian in a kitchen full of knives, boiling water and searing hot stoves.

Sebastian, the well-known sidekick, is just okay.  Daveed Diggs is a talented vocal performer, but I don’t think the final product served him well.  Often, I looked at this little guy and was not impressed, as remembrances of disappointment came back to me when I saw Jar Jar Binks for the first time.  Just like that Star Wars character, the googly eyes are detached from the head and Sebastian only evokes expression in that one area.  Nothing is done with the tiny mouth or cheekbones or ears.  Not even his claws or tiny legs offer much to do.  This crab lacked life.  As my colleague Miguel simply put it, the crab was not funny.  He just wasn’t funny in the slightest. 

A nice surprise comes from Jonah Hauer-King as the dashing Prince Eric, rescued from a shipwreck by a mysterious woman with a hypnotically, sensuous voice.  Eric’s role is thankfully expanded with the inclusion of his mother the island Queen (Noma Dumezweni).  Grimsby, the Prince’s aid, is also a welcome appearance (Art Malik) with more to do this time around.

I know for sure that I preferred the second half of the film over the first where new surprises are offered.  Rob Marshall’s film switches the influence of the story to a calypso/Caribbean vibe which is different from the slightly implied Greek environment of the 1989 piece.  This change allows a variety of different people of color and cultures to blend nicely together with believability.  After Ariel transforms into a human and Eric guides her across the island for a day of fun and escape, the story and settings come alive in color and calypso harmony.  In this area of the picture, much of the script is concentrated on Eric and his debates with his mother and her disapproval of the undersea colonies.  Confidant conversations also arise between Eric and Grimsby that I liked.  There’s more innocent flirtations between him and Ariel.  Hauer-King has good scenes with all of his co-stars from Halle Bailey to Noma Dumezweni and Art Malik.  The first half of the film is where much of the underwater life takes place, and it only convinced me so far, really taking me out of the film with the reinvention of the movie’s most famous songs.

Ultimately, like the live action interpretations of Aladdin and Beauty And The Beast this new version of The Little Mermaid is not a must watch and as much as I’m impressed with Melissa McCarthy, Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer-King, I can’t recommend seeing it at $15 a ticket.  Why should you when the easily accessible and wholly original film is available?  This is just an unnecessary venture.

I’ve grown up as a Disney fan, but once again the Mouse House is demonstrating a lack of will to broaden its imagination.  They’d rather run in with another cash grab at the box office by issuing a substandard product repeat. 

SHANG CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

By Marc S. Sanders

Marvel’s installment of Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings boasts a good cast and set up for an Asian superhero and his band of allies.  I only have one question, couldn’t some of this stuff have waited for the sequel?

Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham wrote an adventurous screenplay for Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy) to direct.  It’s fun and frolicking with magnificent action set pieces that take place on an out of control metro bus on the streets of San Francisco (where every out of control vehicle or car chase work best) and later on a high rise scaffolding in Macau.  While some sequences easily reveal the CGI work at play, the edited choreography of these martial arts scenes work beautifully. 

During the bus sequence, spread eagle jumps and high kicks and low punches by Shang Chi (Simu Liu) are done like a fine dance number as he fights off a gang of thugs who are mysteriously after the pendant he wears around his neck.  Comedienne Awkwafina plays Shang’s best friend Katy who rides the bus crazier than Sandra Bullock ever did.  Later the pursuit of the MaGuffin pendant leads into a meet up with Shang’s equally capable sister Xu Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) and the high-rise scaffolding fight occurs.  Marvelous work in both of these scenes.  The CGI is certainly forgivable.

After that, the film calms itself down to bridge some exposition that was revealed in the prologue of the film.  Shang and Xialing seem to have some parental issues.  Their father Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) somehow acquired a set of ten magically powerful rings that he wears on both forearms.  Like other rings in fantasy/adventure films, these items take out armies and do nothing but conquer.   For once, could these powerful items just make a cup of hot tea or a decent wax job on my car?  When Wenwu uncovers a hidden majestic location to take over, he meets and becomes smitten with Ying Li (Fala Chen).  They fall in love and you’d think they’d live happily ever after, but if that were the case then there would be no movie.    

Beyond what’s described here, not much else mattered to me with this film.  The rings might as well have been Thor’s hammer or Captain America’s shield, or a Maltese Falcon.  A large, epic and very, very long climactic battle takes place so that one of Hollywood’s better known Asian actresses (Michelle Yeoh) can come into the picture and fight.  There’s also a return of a relatively unfavorite character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), the fake out terrorist from Iron Man 3, that pissed off a collection of die hard Marvel geeks yearning for an appearance of the known villain called The Mandarin.  Shang Chi reminds us that this once reputably “threatening” villain is named after an orange.  Yup!  Get over it.  He’s as scary as an orange.  Moving on!  Beyond these appearances, are kaleidoscopes of colorful fantasy creatures like flying serpent dragons and furballs with wings and no face, as well as lion like four legged creatures.  Plenty of stuff for Disney/Marvel to merchandise.

I was seeing a story in Shang Chi, and then I wasn’t.  The long battle sequence goes on and on and on as a means to show off new toys and stuffed animals for the kids.  It all looks very good but it doesn’t lend credence to any storytelling like say in The Lord Of The Rings fare, where an Org could progress a story.  Here, it’s all overkill. 

The strength of Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings lies in an enthusiastically fun cast and the outstanding martial arts moments that are presented.  The fantasy material is too much icing on the cake.  The graphics are good and all but couldn’t that fantasy stuff have been held for another film later on perhaps?  Go with one thing first and then another thing next, because after a while I forgot what kind of movie I was watching and why.

The cast is fine in their roles.  Just fine though.  Simu Liu has the athletic build for the title character.  He looks sharp in the costumes and fight sequences.  Though the fantasy material really takes away from the ranges that we could have appreciated from as an actor.  It’s clear this script is not giving him the same rightful opportunities for good super hero acting that was awarded to Robert Downey Jr or Brie Larson.  Equally same goes for Tony Leung and Meng’er Zhang.  They kind of plain jane.  Awakwfina is given the most to play with for the escapist humor as a fun loving karaoke singer and crazy valet driver.  Later, she quickly becomes an expert archer.  Good stuff there. 

Let’s face it the Asian community sect within Hollywood is not as well represented as it should be by now.  Box office numbers of the past have more than justified a need for Asian culture to be front and center in mainstream films.  There’s been some highlights in the past, most namely with the work of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and films of merit like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Crazy Rich Asians.  It’s pleasing to know that Marvel Comics created a character like Shang Chi back in the late 1970’s.  It just wasn’t capitalized back then as a marquee name like the Hulk or Spider-Man.  Still, Disney and Marvel could have tried a little bit harder here.  Just when I thought we were getting some dimension and checkered past subject matter for Shang Chi and his family to struggle with, Cretton’s film diverts into visual CGI fantasy Candy Land with no depth or substance. 

My recommendation on the next installment, is for Marvel and Disney to dig deeper.  I know there’s a wealth of storytelling here.  So, use a bigger shovel that’ll dig itself all the way to China.