Big Hero 6

Oh, No. Beware families! Disney is releasing another movie right around the time that they released Frozen last year!!! That was pretty much my thought when I saw the first teaser trailer for Big Hero 6. I loved Wreck It Ralph. I thought I liked Frozen (that definitely changed). And I will say right now that Big Hero 6 is better than both of those movies....yeah, I said it. 

The Bullet points: San Fransokyo. A dark alley, late at night. Hiro Hamada, boy genius, illegally bets on Bot Fights. No robot can match his simple machine. After being caught by the police and failing to learn his lesson, his older brother Tadashi decides to give him new direction and takes him to Tadashi's college. A college that is made up of nerd genius's who experiment on the cutting edge of science. Who, as Professor Callaghan says, will change the world. It works and Hiro is determined to get into the school and begin his own inventing and discovering. As one character observes: "Our origin story begins!" 

Big Hero 6 is not just another Disney movie. It also isn't just another Marvel universe starter. Both influences are noticeable but this is Disney with more bite and higher stakes, It's Marvel with an actual heart. The best way I can describe it is, this is Disney's answer to Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon...and I mean that as an enormous compliment. If animated movies like these keep getting made then maybe we can all finally let Frozen go.  A  (Hairy Baby!) 

Interstellar

Back in December of 2013 (yes, all the way back then) when I made my list looking at the big movies of 2014 (Which you can still check out here) I listed Interstellar as my number one most anticipated movie of the year. I love Christopher Nolan films and I don't care if that makes me a Nolanite or not, Memento was sheer brilliance, the Prestige was magical, Inception was amazing (even if it was pretentious), and Nolan made the greatest superhero movie ever made. How could you bet against him? Especially when you realize that he inherited the project when Steven freaking Spielberg backed out! But I forgot one thing: That for Spielberg's Schindler's List, Jaws, or Saving Private Ryan, even he had a 1941. (just look it up)



The Bullet Points: A blight has wiped out most of the crops on earth. The food shortage has led to the abandonment of 'unimportant' pursuits and the need for everyone to tap into that farmer inside them. Cooper abandoned a career as a pilot to become a farmer. But time is running out and the earth will eventually die along with everyone on it. Humanities one hope is to relocate a la nearby black hole that could lead to inhabitable planets in distant galaxies. But can Coop save humanity and his family?

Interstellar is not the best film I've seen this year. (That still belongs to Rise of the Planet of the Apes) Interstellar is not the worst film of the year. It's not Nolan's best film and its not his worst either. It boasts incredible visuals, an inspired score, and solid acting. It's a movie of grand ideas, questions, and concepts but answers all of them with one answer: Love. In one sense that is a bold and great answer. But to borrow from Nolan's other film, It's not the one we need right now. I wanted my mind completely blown in the way we've come to expect from Nolan and Love just seemed like a let down. If you want my opinion as to whether you should see this in theaters or would I see it again the answer is a definite yes. The visuals alone make the price of a ticket worth it. But does it live up to the hype that even I was fanning? Definitely not.    B+