Cinematic Chills for Children

Pixar goes down a gorgeous but frightening path with The Good Dinosaur

Filmmakers at Pixar have been experts at eliciting all kinds of emotions from audiences since Toy Story premiered 20 years ago. For their latest, The Good Dinosaur, they’ve gone where they’ve never gone before: making a truly frightening film.

Now that might not have been the intention of director Peter Sohn and his team, but it certainly was the result. The Good Dinosaur exists in a world where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs never hit Earth, leading at least some of them to evolve into creatures with recognizable human abilities.

Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) and his family are farmers, using their long necks and strong bodies to plow, plant, and water cornfields. When a small human boy (Jack Bright) is discovered stealing the family’s corn, it sets into motion a series of events that causes a family tragedy and separates Arlo from his family.

With nowhere else to turn, Arlo is forced to rely on the boy, whom he names Spot, for help in surviving and finding his way back home. The two seem to be in constant peril, fending off attacks from other dinosaurs, negotiating raging rivers and narrow mountain paths, and encountering multiple other hazards in the prehistoric world.

To say that the film is dark is only slightly overdramatizing things. The filmmakers don’t shy away from how dangerous things are for Arlo and Spot, although they both learn how to handle themselves because of the situations they go through. There are several moments that are genuinely shocking, even for adults. There is also a continuous thread of sadness, with the film returning to Arlo’s family tragedy on multiple occasions.

Naturally, they balance matters with more lighthearted elements, most notably in the way Spot acts. This still being a prehistoric era, even one well past when dinosaurs should have lived, Spot acts more like an animal than a human. He crawls around on all fours, grunts and howls instead of actually speaking, and charges fearlessly around. It’s a fun twist on the owner/dog relationship, and one that pays off nicely at the end of the movie.

As one would expect, the animation of the film is gorgeous. The cartoonish nature of the characters is juxtaposed with that of the natural world around them, which is as close to photorealistic as animation has ever been. If it weren’t for obvious clues to the contrary, there are times you’d swear they just superimposed the characters onto real landscapes.

Even though the film contains such well-known actors as Jeffrey Wright, Frances McDormand, Steve Zahn, Anna Paquin, and Sam Elliott, none of them truly make a difference in how well the film succeeds. Aside from Elliott, you’d be hard-pressed to recognize any of their voices anyway.

Coming so close on the heels of the exquisite Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur can’t help but pale in comparison. It has its fair share of great moments and earns its emotions, but it’s not likely to earn a spot in the pantheon of great Pixar movies.

Arlo and Spot are in almost constant peril in The Good Dinosaur.

Scene from The Good Dinosaur

Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Arlo and Spot are in almost constant peril in The Good Dinosaur.

Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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