Parade Picks

A MINECRAFT MOVIE

A Review by Alexander Hall – ‘The Parade Movie Guy’

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MINECRAFT MANIA PACKS A PUNCH!

Upon reading this review, A MINECRAFT MOVIE has already become the biggest grossing movie worldwide of 2025 in less than two weeks of release.  Plus, claimed the largest ever ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday’ USA opening for its studio, Warner Bros. Pictures – bigger than BARBIE and any BATMAN movie.  ‘Minecraft Mania’ is huge!

Over the past year, chats amongst the movie and gaming communities were whether A MINECRAFT MOVIE could live up to the expectations of hailing from the ‘highest selling video game in world history’ (first released in 2011).  Plus, reactions to the movie’s initial ‘teaser trailer’, sprung at the end of 2024, had many cringing at the sight of hyper Jack Black as ‘Steve’, the beloved central everyman ‘miner’ character from the original game.  Plus, many shuddered upon seeing former BAYWATCH: HAWAII hunk, Jason Momoa, appear with a funky haircut, wearing a pink jacket!

Memories of other computer game/comic book/toy flops also came to mind – SUPER MARIO BROTHERS (1993), HOWARD THE DUCK (1986), and MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987).  Would A MINECRAFT MOVIE join the ranks of these well-known duds?  Was this going to be the next titanic stinker like THE MARVELS (2023)?  Was potential doom on the cards for its cast?

The answer to all these questions…is a big boisterous booming NO!

A MINECRAFT MOVIE is a sensational smash hit, knocking the block off all negative assumptions.  Firstly, the box-office numbers speak for themselves.  And, somewhat surprisingly, all the cast bring their A-Game of self-confidence performing inside a crazy make-believe world.  Jack Black is never better as the sugar-rushed Steve.  Momoa stuns in a career-defining ‘out-there’ performance.  And sidekick, actress Danielle Brooks, plus the kids, Sebastian Eugene Hanson and Emma Myers, are all charmingly excellent.

For lovers of 1980s cinema, elements of WAR GAMES (1983), TRON (1982), THE GOONIES (1985), come into play within A MINECRAFT MOVIE.  This is not an unofficial homage to these childhood favourites, but the new film totally re-captures the essence of the ‘can do’ ‘win-win’ ‘must-do’ mentality of the 80s.  It is back!  And greatly needed in modern self-absorbed downbeat 2025.

But what is key is that A MINECRAFT MOVIE stays loyal to the fun and fantastic creative nature and emphasis of the game.  Warner Bros. and their producing partner, Legendary Entertainment, had the ‘fans first’ in mind, rewarding them with a chalice to cherish.  This is no woke catastrophe like SNOW WHITE (the seven dwarfs oddly not mentioned in the title).  A MINECRAFT MOVIE successfully focuses on simple, sometimes thinly rendered, but important themes of friendship, the need for fair healthy creative expression, self-redemption, and simply being cool without guilt.  Everyone works together in the movie, regardless of age, gender, or appearance – they are all in it together!

At numerous screenings for A MINECRAFT MOVIE in the USA, teen gamers in attendance have routinely been quoting aloud lines from the movie drawn from the original Minecraft game.  Popcorn wars have broken out to celebrate the event.  In Utah, honouring the famous “chicken jockey” line, one guy brought a ‘real live chicken’ into a screening’!

This is a moment – a movement of gamers and a specific demographic, male and female, coming together to appreciate their childhood inspiration!  A joyous occasion uniting kids back into cinemas after the imperial social absurdities of the past five years.

Most impressively, A MINECRAFT MOVIE is utterly believable.  This is thanks to its brilliantly designed and realized organic sets and computer-generated environments.  Credit to the film’s American director, Jared Hess, known for quirky comedies (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE).  With immense self-assurance and creative flair, he handles it all brilliantly.

The project was mostly filmed at Auckland Film Studios, New Zealand, and local locations – former home to Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS films, plus currently for James Cameron’s upcoming AVATAR sequels – proving how in some capacities Hollywood has left Hollywood.

If you are wondering what the actual story is for A MINECRAFT MOVIE, well, that would be a shame to give away as a spoiler.  In the end it is a game.  And must be experienced to fully understand and absorb the effect of the outpouring of ideas, inspiration, and love from the movie.  The answer is to clearly be part of ‘Minecraft Mania’ yourself.  To miss out is to miss being part of history…

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FLOW

Animated Adventure

A Review by Alexander Hall – ‘The Parade Movie Guy’

CAPTIVATING FOR ITS SHEER ORIGINALITY AND SIMPLICITY!

With FLOW winning the Best Animated Feature at this year’s 2025 Oscars’ ceremony in Hollywood, that alone signifies the legitimate and deserved recognition that this unusual project is receiving.  And a trustworthy reason for seeing the film!  Plus, for fans of animation across the board, FLOW is a must-see addition to one’s viewing resume of all styles in this exciting always evolving medium.

Clearly, FLOW is not the standard ‘animal animated adventure’ done brilliantly in the past by ‘vintage’ Walt Disney, Pixar Animation, and Dreamworks Animation, to name but a few.  Here, there are no cutesy animals chatting and joking.  These instead perform imaginative yet more human actions, such as ‘Kung Fu Panda’ fighting off his enemies – CHOP-POW!

FLOW is more a semi-documentary-style tale about a group of animals.  A cat, a golden retriever dog, a capybara (large rodent), a lemur, and a secretary bird unite on an unmanned ‘ark’ sailboat in order to prevail during a global biblical-scale flood.  Survival and working together, despite one’s differences, is the broad theme and purpose of the storyline.  Plus, standing up for each other, even when one’s own ‘breed’ acts in a threatening manner.  Though all admirable themes, keep in mind that this is as broad as the movie goes.  Simple to say the least, though the plot is not without merit.

In addition, the animation style of FLOW is far from the sharp slick computer-generated style of 2023’s mega-hit THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE.  Nor is this the crossbreed of traditional hand-drawn-style 2D and 3D CG animation used in the sensational PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH (2022).  FLOW, which also stars a cat, who only speaks in ’mews’ and ‘whines’ (no PUSS IN BOOTS one-liners here), has been fashioned with 3D animation that is not always ‘fully rendered’, thus creating a distinctly layered unfinished organic quality to the characters and environments.  

While children will likely find the artistically conjured world of FLOW captivating, adults potentially will also respond to the more mature themes and realities on display.  Uncertainty, environmental dangers, and destroyed economic infrastructure are all in play.  These are not necessarily comforting themes to digest, but important ones.

However, one of the hopeful effects of FLOW’s distinctive style is that it will impress on cinemagoing children to ‘concentrate and analyse’ the storyline better than they might in a more festive commercial ‘popcorn’ animated yarn.  A lesson in the importance and benefits of having to fully focus is not a bad trait, rather than be governed by constant hype.  Or lazy distractions such as endlessly glancing at a smartphone for a fix.

For the animation movie industry, it is inspiring to see the likes of FLOW coming out of territories other than the dominant Hollywood.  In this case, an ambitious small creative team spread across Latvia, Belgium and France is responsible for FLOW, spending an impressively low 3.5 million Euros on the budget, making more than $36 million worldwide so far.  Not a bad take-home, hopefully opening the door for more similar projects to come, though unlikely FLOW itself with have a sequel…or a toyline!

Coincidentally, FLOW shares the recent era of impressive, animated movies with the excellent THE WILD ROBOT, costing $78 million, made by Dreamworks Animation.  Both have storylines revolving around how animals respond to environmental dangers caused by either nature, humans, or technology.  All valid educational points worth making in a balanced manner.

To think that Walt Disney’s breakthrough animated feature SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS came out in 1937, almost 90 years ago, it is comforting to know that with FLOW, the animation medium is continuing to break new ground not just sailing the same seas over and over again…

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SEPTEMBER 5

A Review by Alexander Hall – ‘The Parade Movie Guy’

*****

CLOSELY BEHIND DUNE: PART II AS BEST MOVIE OF 2024

The XX Olympiad, otherwise known as the Munich 1972 Summer Olympic Games, are infamously marked as a tragic event.  ‘Black September’ terrorists ambushed members of the ‘Israeli Olympic Team’ inside the Olympic village, later taking several hostages to a nearby airport, killing nine athletes, a trainer, and a referee during the brutal nightmare.  The sport’s television crew of the American news network, ABC, in Munich, covered the story for the world, seen by over 900 million people.

SEPTEMBER 5 tells the extraordinary story of how the TV sport’s crew, not a proven ‘news team’, were unexpectedly drawn into this terrifying situation.  There were two aims. The crew wanted to show the global viewers directly how the Israelis were suffering, but also some had a desire for acclaim.  An intriguing conflict of ‘moral conscience’ and ‘opportunity seeking’ is at the heart of this horrific episode.  Most captivating is witnessing how the TV crew ingeniously utilised their primitive studio technology, by today’s standards, to capture the shocking events at hand.  It is compelling insight into how, even in times of terror and grief, human beings can hurdle tough challenges and succeed.

Without question, SEPTEMBER 5 is easily one of the best movies of 2024, closely behind DUNE: PART TWO and KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.  Interlopers and over-hyped monstrosities such as THE BRUTALIST and EMILIA PEREZ, come nowhere near.  Whereas SEPTEMBER 5 draws the audience along with a clear streamlined compelling insightful narrative, other so-called recent movie masterpieces fail miserably while being shockingly praised.

Thankfully, SEPTEMBER 5 also gets ‘back to basics’, by telling its story in real time, not being annoyingly too clever for its own good using flashbacks and too many plot threads that tend to choke many movies these days.  Looking back at last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, OPPENHEIMER, which was far too long, bloated, and stylistically stale, SEPTEMBER 5 puts Christopher Nolan to shame.

Swiss Director, Tim Fehlbaum, at the helm of SEPTEMBER 5, unquestionably has his own unique filmmaking style which makes him a standout.  He is above the current crowd, particularly those in Oscar contention.  However, Fehlbaum’s imaginative and artistic quilt-like approach to connecting shots and scenes, not just relying on random camera footage pieced together predictably in the editing room, reminds one of the legendary director Steven Spielberg’s brand of efficient imaginative direction.

Coincidentally, Spielberg’s own excellent MUNICH (2005), an earlier rendition of the Munich Games attack that focused on the secret Israeli hit squad who hunted down the Black September masterminds, firmly feels like a close ancestor to SEPTEMBER 5 in style and execution.  One is not sure if this was an intention of Director Fehlbaum.  If so, he fills Spielberg’s shoes better than most in the movie game right now.

Casting across the board is fantastic and feels authentic on camera.  American, Peter Sarsgaard, as Roone Arledge, who ran the ABC Sports operation in Munich, usually plays slippery characters memorably.  Here he has never felt more suited to the role.  British Actor, Ben Chaplin, is the Jewish American sports journalist, Marvin Bader (later to become a titan of ABC Sports Olympic coverage).  He supervises the decision making inside the traumatized yet focused Munich sport’s studio.  Chaplin, no relation to Charlie, brilliantly inhabits the role with gravitas and chameleon-like qualities.

A standout is German Actress, Leonie Benesch, the initially timid translator who was the glue between the English-speaking TV sport’s crew and the German crews, news and police, at ground zero of the Munich massacre.  Her presence is nicely handled.  It intriguingly shows the challenges for a skilled woman inside a competitive all-male TV crew of the 1970s, without bashing viewers on the head with a cliched ‘feminist’ plot thread.

To think that SEPTEMBER 5 has been overlooked in the both the Oscar Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress Nominations (while WICKED was), and more shockingly no Editing or Cinematography nod, is a disgrace.  More for the reason that lesser but more over-hyped work containing ‘trendier themes’ have filled the spots.  Regardless, the educational, while also highly entertaining, SEPTEMBER 5 is a must-see movie for these reasons and all the above…

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CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD

A Review by Alexander Hall – ‘The Parade Movie Guy’

‘A RED HULK WORTH WAITING FOR!’

If you are a fan of MARVEL superhero movies, seeking an escape for a couple of hours to enjoy big-screen simplistic popcorn entertainment, then CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD is the movie for you.

This is not breakthrough high standard storytelling or filmmaking, rather more the synthetic generic style of the ‘last’ MARVEL superhero movie – whatever it was!  Nor is it of the exemplary quality of earlier MARVEL adventures from their ‘Phase 1’ era, such as IRON MAN (2008), THOR (2011) and the first CAPTAIN AMERICA movie in 2011.  But on a basic level, there are enough cheap thrills in the new movie to keep one from leaving the cinema mid-way.

In all great adventure movies, an impactful hero is needed, played by a charismatic actor or actress.  Here, Anthony Mackie is ‘Captain America’, having inherited the identity, responsibilities, superhero suit, and most importantly ‘vibranium shield’ from former original ‘Cap’, Steve Rogers.  This took place in the earlier smash-hit, AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019).  Though Mackie exudes some charm, he generally feels like he only inhabits his limited screen space.  He does not fully connect with the audience.  The impressionistic skills of someone like Robert Downey Jr. or Eddie Murphy are just not quite there.

Opposite Mackie, also receiving top billing, is legendary actor, Harrison Ford.  He plays gruff, but in charge, ‘President Thaddeus Ross’, formerly ‘General Ross’.  Ford replaces the late great William Hurt who appeared as Ross in several earlier MARVEL movies.  As expected, thankfully, Ford brings a degree of needed gravitas and catchphrase ‘smirks’ to the story, even though he is a degree shaky on his feet at times.  But full kudos to Ford for his determination to keep rewarding audiences with performances at the ripe age of 82.

The much-teased pay-off at the end of CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, when President Ross finally mightily turns into the iconic rampaging ‘Red Hulk’, is definitely worth sitting around for.  Nothing beats a good old ‘Hulk slam’!  Ford rarely plays aliens or mutant beings, so seeing him transform into this type of persona is fun.

However, the supporting cast around Mackie and Ford are barely worth mentioning, but for veteran, Carl Lumbly (anyone remember the TV show CAGNEY & LACEY?), as reformed former ‘super-soldier’, Isaiah Bradley.  Who cast this movie is the big question?  Much of the supporting cast feel miscast or flat or exuding a lack of acting chops or both.  If you look back at the original SUPERMAN from 1978, every single main part, small part, bit part was carefully chosen with thought and finesse.  Hollywood is definitely losing its grasp of the phrase, “it’s all in the details”.

The storyline for CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD is somewhat hard to retell, due to its patchy framework: The President of the United States is targeted by a secret villainous mastermind to make him angry, thus turning him into the Red Hulk as a form of vengefully discrediting him.  And Captain America must stop The President from harm and harming others.  Is that a Plot?  Probably the best solution is to not try and figure it all out but just enjoy the movie for what it is, munching on snacks and sipping sodas as a distraction to the confusion.

In the post-credit’s scene of CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, we are teased with the revelation that ‘another’ alien from outer space will soon attack Earth in a further sequel.  How many times cans this type of storyline be regurgitated?  Worth considering is that new inspired MARVEL Studios leadership is surely needed, enlisting fresh new writers outside Hollywood conventions.  This could allow things to be reinvigorated, rather than beating the same drum over and over…

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