Christopher Robin: The Shadow of Childhood

Sometimes when a story revolves around a childhood favorite, it renews your love for that story, and for childhood itself. Sometimes though, it just reminds you how old you’ve grown. Returning the Hundred Acre Wood and its inhabitants makes you feel a little bit of both these things when you sit down to watch Christopher Robin – on the one hand, you will find yourself humming “Winnie the Pooh” over and over to yourself, and feeling a little thrill when you realize that the score is humming it along with you. You will fall in love with the stuffed animal forms of the childhood favorites (no matter how creepy the commercials may have made them seem). But, on the other hand, you realize that you don’t need the movie to tell you it’s okay to be a kid, and you don’t quite believe it when the movie tries to tell you that connecting with that childish side is the solution to all of your problems. Sure, it it a sweet thought to have, but does life really wrap up that way? Maybe, but only when the Winnie the Pooh gang is animated.

The Breadwinner’s Impactful Story Doesn’t Follow Through

As the only 2018 Oscar-nominated film that was not produced in the US, The Breadwinner definitely is bringing something different to the table compared to its fellow nominees. Namely, the decision to use a style mostly considered to be reserved for kid movies – animation – to tell the story of a girl living in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, which is a pretty deep topic. It weaves a spell over the audience that takes them into a world they may not recognize, one that doesn’t seem fair and one that unfolds through paint and paper cut-outs. The story is woven so well, in fact, that you can almost forget that it doesn’t really have an ending and that several plotlines are picked up and dropped just to kind of sort of move the plot along – almost. While the film is intriguing and the art style is wonderful, the story of the film is all about craftsmanship, rather than the end result.