Disney

The Aristocats

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Aristocats
  • IMDb: link

Originally released in 1970, I first saw The Aristocats during one of its re-releases in theaters. The last film to be personally approved by Walt Disney, the last film to be released during co-founder Roy O. Disney‘s tenure as CEO, and notably worked on by five of Disney’s core animators, the film is an interesting mix of classic Disney animation with splashes of French styling and jazz thrown into the mix as well. Much like Disney’s next feature Robin Hood, released three years later, you can feel a change in the studio’s continued direction away (at least temporarily) from the classic princess films that built so much of the magic kingdom.

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Lilo & Stitch

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Lilo & Stitch (2025)
  • IMDb: link

“This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little, and broken, but still good.”

Disney’s latest live-action remake gives us a story of friendship and family that would make Dominic Toretto proud. With a few notable exceptions, most in the final act of the film, the new Lilo & Stitch follows the events of the original faithfully starting with the exiled Experiment 626 (Chris Sanders) crashlanding on Earth. The early sequences involving the United Galactic Federation are all CGI, but to limit the amount of effects needed on Earth, outside of the alien “dog” whom Lilo (Maia Kealoha) adopts, we get Dr. Jumba Jookiba (Zach Galifianakis) and Agent Wendy Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) holographically disguised as humans for the majority of the film.

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Lilo & Stich

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Lilo & Stitch
  • IMDb: link

While its themes fit quite easily into the Disney canon, from a story perspective Lilo & Stitch was a major departure from your typical Disney film during the studio’s more experimental period of the early 2000s. The film focuses on an escaped alien creation of mass destruction who finds acceptance and family on Earth. Renamed Stitch (Chris Sanders) by a lonely young Hawaiian girl named Lilo (Daveigh Chase) who mistakes him for a dog, the concept by co-writer/co-director Chris Sanders explores friendship and family through their unlikely pairing.

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Moana 2

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Moana 2
  • IMDb: link

Offering more of what was delivered in Moana, albeit without a memorable musical number, Moana 2 delivers more adventure for the titular character in continuing her journey into the wider world. After bringing her people out of isolation and back to the ocean, Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) continues to search for other people leading to her next quest following the footsteps of her ancestors’ greatest wayfinder Tautai Vasa in searching for the lost island capable of reuniting the people of the ocean.

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