If ever there were a movie that exemplifies the recent viral social media phenomenon known as “Man or Bear,” in which women are asked if they would prefer to be alone in the woods with a man or a bear, it’s Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour. If you’re unfamiliar, an overwhelming majority of women, when given the opportunity, would take their chances hanging out with a grizzly rather than risk possible violence at the hands of an unknown man. Stranger danger, indeed.
Kendrick, with the help of Ian McDonald’s focused screenplay, imagines the world in a way that I would assume looks very familiar to many, if not most, women. It’s a world in which women are subject to men’s relentless quest to get sex out of them. Female utility begins and ends with their bodies, and if a woman insists on using her own agency to upset the status quo, she risks incurring the anger, or worse, of a man.
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I was 15 in 1995 when the first Toy Story was released. That’s a bit older than the target audience for Pixar’s inaugural feature film, but I vividly remember seeing it and being dazzled by both the story and the groundbreaking animation. I’ll be 40 next year. I’ve been wowed by each successive Toy Story installment released over the last quarter century. Both the astonishing leap in digital animation technology and the touching stories involving old pals Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of the gang – Toy Story 2 and 3 consistently bring me to tears with every revisit – get better with each new film.
That’s definitely the case with the seemingly impossible jump in animation quality between Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4. The plot, however, isn’t quite up to the level of the earlier films, especially Toy Story 3, probably the strongest of the series. While “cash grab” is too strong a phrase, this is the first entry in the franchise that feels like the artistic vision got a little fuzzy.
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