TheRetroCritic

I talk a bit about Pixar's Coco .

Critically acclaimed and comfortably ruling the top of the box-office, it looks like nothing can stop Pixar's Coco from becoming another significant hit for Disney, not even sticking a vastly unpopular Frozen  20 minute short at the front of it. Coco is the story of 12 year-old Miguel who dreams of becoming a musician like his idol Ernesto De La Cruz except his family has firmly been anti-music for generations so when they destroy his home-made guitar and forbid him to follow that path, he runs away to prove himself by playing music during the Día De Muertos festival. As he attempts to steal the long-dead De La Cruz's guitar in a cemetery, he is somehow transported to the Land Of The Dead where he learns that he'll need to get his family's blessing in order to come back to the land of the living. Revealing any more than that would be cruel so let's leave it at that story-wise. There's something familiar about Coco from the musical skeletons ( Corpse Bride

I talk about my favourite (and not-so favourite) Pixar movies.

Another year, another extended Chanel advert. Unfortunately, unlike Coco Before Chanel , this doesn't have much to work with. What we get is not so much a Chanel biopic as a vague Stravinski biopic awkwardly stuck inside a sexy Chanel bubble. The main problem is that, really, the film has nothing interesting to say: Chanel and Stravinski had an affair...they had sex...buy our perfume! This is literally it. Having said that, Jan Kounen does a remarkable job making such an empty narrative interesting. The cinematography is stylish and well crafted and the score is beautiful. A terrific scene involving a Stravinski concert going awry is definitely a highlight. There's good performances here. Anna Mouglalis' over-cool but genuinely manipulative and really pretty dislikable Chanel is a lot of fun and Mads Mikkelsen conveys a lot with the shameful 5 lines he was given to work with (!). His performance, although practically silent, is nevertheless the most compelling in the e