There was a period of about 25 years, it now occurs to me, when I had seen every Pixar movie in the theater. It wasn’t some corporate brand loyalty bullshit, it was because for most of that time their track record was immaculate. They were the originators of computer animated features, and of their brand of storytelling, and no one could match them, though many tried. For a while I watched most of their competitors too, then I didn’t, but I still kept up with Pixar. 21 of them in a row. To me only CARS 2 was genuinely bad. Otherwise the worst ones were just forgettable. And that wasn’t many of them.
It was the pandemic that broke my streak. I can’t remember if theaters were even open here when ONWARD came out, but I wasn’t going until the vaccine, so I saw it VOD or something. I enjoyed the clever stuff they did with the premise of a sword and sorcery fantasy world evolved into modern civilization, but the emotional part rang false to me. Since it was about a son mourning his father I really thought it would wreck me, but I was annoyed how both the main character and the movie completely ignored that his mother suffered the same or greater loss. Made me kinda hate the kid. (read the rest of this shit…)
JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION* is not exactly the “dinosaurs running loose in the world” story I expected from the ending of 
Maybe that’s why some of the best stuff is before the plot really gets going – that part of a sequel that’s a loose set of scenes catching us up with the old characters and their new situations. First we get a nice web video about the state of things, featuring fun clips like a wedding where the bride and groom release doves and a pterodactyl swoops down and eats them. It’s in a joyful Dinosaurs Attack! spirit (though admittedly the cards themselves had an even better dinosaur wedding crasher – see right). Then we join 
When the trailers for UNDERWATER surfaced (get it, surfaced) it seemed kinda out of nowhere. Never heard this was coming, and it looks like underwater ALIEN (AQUALIEN?), it has long-since-cancelled T.J. Miller in it, maybe it’s been sitting on the shelf forever, and that’s why it’s coming out in January? Then people started seeing it and saying it was crazy and fun, or actually good, so I made the effort to see it.
