The first thing you should know about Blue Lock: Episode Nagi is that it’s halfway between a recap movie and a side story. We've come a long way from the dozens of standalone, non-canon features based on popular anime like Dragon Ball and Naruto, but Episode Nagi isn't an essential next chapter in an ongoing series like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train or Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle. Instead, it's set before and during the events of the first season of Blue Lock, the popular, ludicrous, and thrilling soccer anime about a Squid Game-like competition/training program intended to create the world's best forward striker.

The focus is on the titular Seishiro Nagi, a standout character from Season 1, and his best friend, Reo Mikage. This means that Episode Nagi repeats a lot of the structure, and even plenty of scenes, from Season 1. But make no mistake: This is no mere recap or compilation film. It’s not even another Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - To the Hashira Training situation, providing a sneak peek at upcoming episodes following a whole lot of recap. Instead, it primarily consists of new material showing Nagi and Reo's first meeting and blossoming friendship in the lead-up to them joining the Blue Lock program, and their experience with the first couple of rounds of eliminations. What Tom Stoppard’s dark comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet, Episode Nagi is to Blue Lock, as we explore some of the events of Season 1 reframed from Nagi and Reo’s point of view – which reveals their own trials and tribulations.

Much like the recent Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle, the emotional crux of Episode Nagi is the protagonist's complete indifference toward sports, and the question of whether he'll be able to learn to love them. When we first meet Nagi, he only cares about video games. His life revolves around making the least amount of effort because otherwise everything is a hassle to him – like eating, which leads to brushing his teeth, which is a waste of time. The attitude could become rather annoying rather quickly, but voice actor Nobunaga Shimazaki gives Nagi enough of an innocent charm to make him funny and never irritating. Indeed, it's easy to root for Nagi – to relate when he tries to leave Blue Lock the moment they tell him he can't use his phone, or when he learns he'll spend all his time in the program training (and only training).

It’s also easy to root for him as he slowly opens up to Reo, who starts out as a rich kid pushing Nagi to be his soccer teammate and becomes a true friend. What was a mostly one-note character on the show now gets as much depth as the first season's main character, Yoichi Isagi. That alone makes Episode Nagi an essential addition to the overall Blue Lock experience.

Though there are times when the first season's wonky CGI rears its ugly head – particularly during previously seen scenes like the match between Team V and Team Z – Episode Nagi takes advantage of its bigger budget to deliver some thrilling 2D animation. The matches are fast-paced, detailed, and exhilarating, with a good blend of actual soccer skills and over-the-top superpowers. Particularly great is the visualization of the characters' auras as their egos awakens alongside their talent: Isagi's spatial awareness appearing as puzzle pieces falling into place, or Nagi's ability to kill a ball's momentum with one touch represented by a grim reaper.

Unfortunately, the feature-length format leads to some bizarre choices, like cramming all translations into two subtitle lines – meaning every time there’s text on screen, it’s translated alongside dialogue, which goes by so fast that it's easy to miss out on a lot of information. And despite devoting most of its runtime to new material , the last 10 of Episode Nagi nearly ruin what comes before. While a natural and effective climax arrives when Nagi teams up with Isagi, the film keeps going, condensing the remaining 12 episodes of Season 1 into a single montage that comes across as forced and clunky. It rushes past a face-off between Reo and Nagi, which runs counter to everything Episode Nagi has shown us up to that point. My advice: Leave the theater when the montage starts and rewatch the show on your own.

Few directorial debuts have arrived as fully-formed as Annie Baker's Janet Planet. Set in rural Massachusetts in the early '90s, the gentle coming-of-age drama traces the relationship between an awkward 11-year-old who can't seem to find her place in the world, and her wayward hippie mom, a free-spirited woman with a similar conundrum. A distinct sense of time, place, and mood permeates every scene, filling the frame with bittersweet nostalgia as its drama slowly unravels, revealing moments that veer between sharply funny and deeply heartrending.

In the dead of night, the young, withdrawn Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) concocts a plan to leave her summer camp, where she feels alone. This introduction is both emotionally charged and wryly funny: over a curt phone call to her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson), Lacy threatens to kill herself if she isn't picked up the following day. Janet obliges, but brings her distant, short-tempered older boyfriend, Wayne (Will Patton), of whom Lacy is none too fond. This kicks off the first of several chapters within Janet Planet – this one simply titled "Wayne" – during which its plotless meandering is deeply purposeful. The story is set over Lacy's lengthy summer vacation, the kind of escape during which time passes slowly. While she doesn't seem eager to be back at school, she doesn't really want to be at home either, in her mother's forest cabin. In fact, she doesn't want to be anywhere.

Janet Planet is pulsing with dry, acerbic wit, but there's a purity to it. A goodness, even it at its most macabre, like when Lacy builds a morbid shrine of glass figurines to play with, or winds up a toy that chimes Mozart's Lacrimosa, which she doesn't seem to realize is a funeral march. She's imaginative, but doesn't yet grasp the full extent of her imagination; the film's humor is occasionally ironic, but never insincere. Though Lacy claims to be friendless and suicidally depressed, she likely doesn't know the meaning of the words, and even harbors the suspicion that she'll grow out of it. When she clings to her mother, their swift, back-and-forth dialogue has specific intonations. It's never quite over-pronounced, but enough to create an amusing rhythm, albeit one that's eventually interrupted when Janet begins relying on Lacy for emotional support in ways that force the young adolescent to grow up far too quickly.

Janet feels just as adrift as her daughter, but in quieter and more concerning ways. Janet Planet is structured around the arrival and departure of major characters in her life, starting with Wayne and culminating with another man she falls for, but this creates a listless sense of impermanence, and she can't help but blame herself for it too. Janet, though she hides most of her problems from Lacy, comes off as bothered and burdened, courtesy of Nicholson's wildly alluring tightrope act. She plays the kind of mother you'd expect to eventually snap, but never does, if only out of resigned acceptance.

But the secret weapon is newcomer Ziegler, who crafts a singular performance through her curious and observant gaze. Lacy tries to understand the adult world around her, and she often does, but knows better than to get involved. It's hard not to wonder if she feels Janet's sense of impermanence too, especially given the way the title cards are written. Wayne's "chapter" begins with his name, but when he eventually leaves, it ends with its own title too ("End Wayne"), and a new act doesn't fully begin until someone else – a new lover, or an old friend – waltzes into Janet and Lacy's lives. This leaves a gap in which both mother and daughter seem to wait for something to happen, for some spark that may never come.

These transitional moments especially allow Ziegler to create a wholly unique and lived-in performance that feels wise beyond her years. Through her awkward, stiff posture, and from behind her way-too-large, tomboyish T-shirt and her enormous eyeglasses, she absorbs sorrow like a sponge – though she has plenty of her own of which to speak. Well before the topic is explicitly broached, there's a specific queerness to her isolation, expressed in her body language s – especially when she seems to make a new friend in a euphoric moment that sends the camera charging through a shopping mall – and the way she wraps herself in a protective cocoon. It's hard not to consider Janet Planet a bold entry in the canon of performance-driven queer kid cinema, alongside Andrew Ahn's Driveways and Koreeda Hirokazu's Monster.

Baker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, has long woven eccentric character dynamics into tales of loneliness and yearning. These themes simmer just beneath the surface in her most recent play, Infinite Life, which opened off Broadway last year, around the same time as Janet Planet premiered at Telluride. They make for interesting companion pieces. Baker's most recent work seems to reckon with the implications of aging: Infinite Life follows characters dealing with chronic pain; Janet Planet, meanwhile, reads like its spiritual equivalent. (Janet herself is an acupuncturist, treating clients in a second, smaller cabin that shares its name with the film.) Physical pain can be located, but the kind of ethereal sorrow that permeates Janet and Lacy's lives is harder to recognize and name. Janet and her old friend Regina (Sophie Okonedo), a former cult member, certainly try to pin it down when they catch up after several years apart, but this subplot opens up entirely new concerns about how lost, melancholic souls become vulnerable to cults in the first place.

With Janet Planet, Baker also takes complete advantage of the new cinematic tools at her disposal to create a vibrant sense of time and place. The film has a photographic quality, between its 16mm film grain and slightly blown-out highlights that create a sun-lit radiance. The image is ever-so-slightly faded, like a memory not long enough in the past to be forgotten, but just long enough – in this case, 1991 – to need the assistance of old film and photographs to be completely remembered.

You can pinpoint the geography, time of day, and even the season and temperature of a given scene thanks to Maria von Hausswolf 's precise cinematography and Paul Hsu's meticulous sound design – there are traces of blowing wind and trilling insects to be heard in the latter. There's hardly a moment in Janet Planet that doesn't evoke specific memories, which Baker imbues with equally specific moods through her off-kilter framing. Sometimes, Lacy or Janet will be partially out of frame, but in ways that enhance their relationship to the space, to the ongoing drama, or to each other. The camera is a stage over which Baker has complete control, and she takes full advantage of this, and turns in a transformative visual work that gets to the heart of how people feel in between the vital chapters of their lives – and more importantly, why they feel. Most of all, Baker knows the power of a good close-up; she uses them sparingly and to create meaningful emotional impact, aided entirely by her impeccable performers.

WondLa is now available to stream on Apple TV+.

Take a kid-friendly version of Prime Video’s Fallout adaptation, combine it with Max’s spectacular Scavengers Reign, subtract a lot of the violence, and you’ve got WondLa. Alas, if only the results were as fun as that sounds. Within the animated Apple TV+ series, there are some elements that have carried over from Tony DiTerlizzi’s The Search for WondLa, a complex yet still accessible children’s sci-fi novel about life after the end of the world. But for every aspect that hints at how it might thoughtfully build upon the deeper ideas and surprising darkness of the source material, there are many new attempts at expanding the story that go nowhere. Though showrunner Bobs Gannaway is an animation veteran with a résumé full of Disney films and TV shows, WondLa lacks anything approaching the charm and creativity of those projects. Instead, it proves to be a superficial adaptation that merely goes through the motions.

Right from the jump, the way that WondLa looks immediately feels off. The design of the underground “sanctuary” where young protagonist Eva (Jeanine Mason) has been raised is devoid of any of the details present in the book, and the character models often feel stiff. This is most felt with Eva's robotic caregiver, Muthr (Teri Hatcher), who looks like a knockoff Mii with limited expressions and none of the vibrancy that was present in the illustrations from the novel. Changes are inevitable in even the best page-to-screen translations, but already there’s a sense that this version of WondLa is content to play most things down the middle and avoid taking any risks.

The world outside is slightly better, with brighter colors that pop off the screen, but the designs of the animated landscapes still can’t hold a candle to DiTerlizzi’s striking descriptions. It’s this setting that Eva is thrust into on the night of her 16th birthday, after the sanctuary is attacked by the massive Besteel (Chiké Okonkwo). Guided only by a torn scrap of paper bearing the word “WondLa,” she and Muthr encounter mysterious creatures like the lanky alien Rovender (Gary Anthony Williams) and the telepathic water bear Otto (Brad Garrett) on their journey to find a new home.

WondLa is the second major project from Skydance Animation – following 2022’s lackluster Luck – and it provides a further glimpse of what to expect from the studio under the guidance of disgraced former Pixar and Disney Animation head John Lasseter. Though this series has a stronger foundation than Luck, it also runs into many of the same problems in terms of how it’s put together. (A cutesy reference to Luck doesn’t do it any favors, either.) Both create obstacles that feel like they’re there due to a lack of confidence in and patience with their world-building. A random fetch quest early on in WondLa bogs down the proceedings; you wouldn’t think a seven-episode season where the episodes clock in at under 30 minutes would need padding, but here we are. But the strangest allusion to WondLa’s creative lineage arrives when a character says they’re not flying, but gliding. It’s impossible not to hear this as a rip-off of the iconic falling-with-style scene from Lasseter’s original Toy Story – only without the emotional payoff Buzz and Woody earned.

That lack of feeling is WondLa’s biggest disappointment. Kids are capable of appreciating stories with thoughtful and complicated character dynamics – the popularity of The Search for WondLa proves this. But WondLa misses out on the opportunity to lay out more thoughtful journeys for its motley crew by reducing most of them to broad archetypes: Muthr the nagging matriarch, Eva the petulant teen, and Rovender the ornery loner. Rather than authentically grow and change, they just bicker for the purposes of mostly grating, hit-or-miss comedy. Season 1 ends with a tease for more WondLa on the horizon, which could be promising: DiTerlizzi has two additional books that Gannaway and team might do a better job with. But the way they rush through – and even contradict – many of the key closing notes of The Search for WondLa doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

This review is based on a screening at the 2024 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

We may never get to see Coyote vs. Acme, which was shelved by Warner Bros. Discovery last year due, in part, to studio leadership’s belief that modern audiences don’t care about Wile E. Coyote and his animated associates. But there’s another feature-length showcase for the Looney Tunes waiting in the wings, and it serves as a loud rebuttal to baffling executive bias against some of the biggest, most beloved and influential figures in the history of pop culture: The uproarious Daffy Duck-Porky Pig team-up The Day the Earth Blew Up. A casualty of the Warner chopping block itself – it was originally set to stream on Max, but premiered at Annecy earlier this month in search of a new distributor – The Day the Earth Blew Up isn’t just a smart homage to the classic gags, animation style, and storytelling of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts. It’s also a hilarious introduction to the chaotic, yet surprisingly heartfelt energy that made these characters stars in the first place.

The Day the Earth Blew Up is directed by Looney Tunes Cartoons’ Peter Browngardt, and like much of that excellent streaming series, this is all about the dynamic between Daffy and Porky (both voiced by Eric Bauza): the straight man (with temper issues) and the nutjob with a desire to smash everything in sight with a wooden mallet. Beginning the movie as babies (well, a duckling and piglet), the duo are adopted by a human named Farmer Jim (Fred Tatasciore) – an instant breakout character and one of the best things to come out of Looney Tunes in decades. This origin story is the funniest section of The Day the Earth Blew Up, with Browngardt and his team of 11 writers (in a rare, pleasantly surprising move, the storyboard artists are given writing credit) showcasing an idyllic childhood that gives way to present-day woes. Now adults, Daffy and Porky are forced to find employment in order to save the home bequeathed to them by Farmer Jim.

An extended montage showing all the amusing ways the two best friends and roommates manage to screw up their new jobs plays out like a vintage Looney Tunes short – the disregard for physics, the inventive perspective echoing the work of Golden Age animators like Rod Scribner. And like those cartoons, much of The Day the Earth Blew Up consists of homages to and parodies of other screen classics, like The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When Daffy and Porky finally get a job at a gum factory, they inadvertently uncover an alien-invasion plot, which leads to several funny and clever twists.

This is truly a gem, no matter your familiarity with the characters. On the one hand, Daffy and Porky get to be their classic selves, spared from the character assassination of Space Jam and its overripe sequel. Daffy is disorderly and daft, but has some pathos to him. Porky's straight-man routine hides a vulnerability and resentment toward his brother; he’s also dealing with his feelings for the lovely lab rat Petunia Pig (Candi Milo). Their relationship is the heart and soul of The Day the Earth Blew Up, and also the core of many jokes, with Bauza pulling double duty and making it seem effortless.

Despite the '50s sci-fi plot, it all feels quite modern. The (gorgeous) animation is slick and fluid, and the pacing relentless – the jokes-per-minute ratio is astounding. The influence of 21st century cartoons like The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Chowder is apparent; there’s a randomness to the humor that echoes absurdities like the running Nosferatu gag on SpongeBob SquarePants. At the very least, The Day the Earth Blew Up proves that these characters are more than capable of carrying their own movie (and without Bugs Bunny!) and make it a laugh-out-loud riot. Hopefully, the lack of a "That's all Folks!" tag at the end means this is not the last we’ll see of the Looney Tunes on the big screen.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure is now open at Magic Kingdom in the Walt Disney World Resort. The Disneyland version is scheduled to open later in the year.

In 2009’s The Princess and the Frog, Tiana’s late father, James, told his young daughter to "never, ever lose sight of what’s really important." We saw her live up to her father’s words in the film, and now, thanks to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, we see that the message is stronger than ever for the Disney Princess. The selfless heart that lifted her community is on display in this wet and wonderful new attraction that has replaced Splash Mountain, and it has helped take it to new heights and secure its place among Disney Parks’ best.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure takes place one year after the events of The Princess and the Frog and it kicks off with an Audio-Animatronic of Tiana, who is voiced once again by Anika Noni Rose, and she needs our help to find a band for her upcoming Mardi Gras party. Bayou Adventure’s 48 Audio-Animatronics are extremely impressive in the way they move, speak, and feel pulled right from the movie (especially jazz-loving alligator Louis and voodoo priestess Mama Odie), but not everything is perfect. During a press preview, I saw a few instances of mouths not moving and mistimed lip-syncing, which broke the immersion of the experience for me because the Audio-Animatronics are so front and center. (This was a few weeks before the attraction’s scheduled opening, so there was still time to work out the kinks.)

That aside, they add a lot to the colorful and enjoyable river voyage, as do various arrangements of songs from The Princess and the Frog. I was singing and dancing like nobody was watching, but I was still able to notice plenty of little details that make Tiana’s Bayou Adventure feel alive. Not only could I smell the grass as I entered the bayou and see fireflies dancing beautifully, but each adorable critter recruited for the Mardi Gras band is playing a makeshift instrument built from some natural and/or man-made material. Gritty the Rabbit was the standout for me: He’s fashioned a license plate into a washboard – the very same license plate that’s missing from the Tiana’s Foods truck parked outside the actual attraction. World building, my friends!

The rest of the ride has a lot of fun moments I won’t spoil here, but there are clever tricks that occur that change things up in a cool way. And that legendary 50-foot drop is still as thrilling as ever, providing great relief on a 100-degree day in Orlando and a spectacular view of the castle. It didn’t soak me as much as I thought it would – the ride vehicles protect guests from the worst of the splashes. I still recommend a poncho if you’re worried about getting too wet, but don’t anticipate a drenching that’s going to ruin the rest of your day at the park in most cases.

As for the story, it’s a charming albeit simple one that shows Tiana giving back to those who helped realize her and her dad’s dream of opening Tiana’s Palace. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it serves its purpose and never gets too scary. A handful of attractions, including The Seas with Nemo & Friends, have one or two parts that can get a bit too much for the younger crowd, but this one never delves into that darker territory. This is a happy story and it’s all the better for it.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure culminates in the previously mentioned Mardi Gras party, and it’s a finale mostly worthy of praise. While the good times roll with dancing, singing, fancy attire, and more of those impressive Audio-Animatronics, the celebration is filled out by a few CG characters who appear in windows. While it’s great to see characters like Eli “Big Daddy” La Bouff again, the new 3D art style they’re rendered in is a departure from the look of The Princess and the Frog and a bit too shiny in a way that makes it off-putting.

Furthermore, the finale is too good to end as quickly as it does. There is so much to take in, including the brand-new song called “Special Spice” – sung by Rose and written by Grammy-winning New Orleans native PJ Morton and – and it’s frustrating that it’s over in less than 30 seconds. I was able to ride Tiana’s Bayou Adventure five times, and I still feel like I missed a lot of what was on display.

All in all, however, the 10ish minutes of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure are a resounding success with far more positives than negatives. I had a huge smile on my face the whole time, and loved being back in the world of The Princess in the Frog while anticipating each small and big drop and burst of speed.

The Princess and the Queue

As great as the attraction is as whole, the queue, shockingly, had me excited about getting back in line. From the moment you enter the waiting area of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, you’re taken from Orlando to New Orleans circa 1927. Disney’s Imagineers went above and beyond and brought so much of the Crescent City to Disney World to help with the wait, including murals on the walls from local artists and musicians contributing to a radio program with songs from the film and more. In fact, you’ll even be able to hear Leah Chase Jr. – the daughter of the famed New Orleans chef Leah Chase who was a huge inspiration for Tiana – sing a version of Louis Armstrong’s "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans."

Once you’re inside, you are first taken to Tiana’s office and can read newspaper clippings and letters on her desk and on the walls to catch a glimpse of what’s been happening in her life since the credits rolled in The Princess and the Frog. We are also introduced to Tiana’s Foods – the employee-owned co-op Tiana started after the success of Tiana’s Palace – and the employees’ aprons and clock-in cards are all there as if this were a normal day.

Tiana’s kitchen is next, and you can smell the beignets that are sitting right on the table, see some of her recipe cards – stained with ingredient splatter for an added touch of authenticity – and even catch a glimpse of the pot she and her dad used for gumbo.

Surrounding the kitchen is a section dedicated to her father: We learn they won a gumbo contest at the Louisiana State Fair when Tiana was six, that he became quite popular in the 369th Infantry Regiment thanks to his cooking, and that he sadly passed away during a battle in World War I while rescuing other soldiers.

What really hit home for me, as someone who lost my father five years ago, were the letters he wrote to Tiana when he was overseas. These letters, which you can read on the walls near the kitchen, brought me to tears, as they showcased their love in a whole new and surprisingly honest way. James didn’t hold back in talking about how tough it was in the war, but he wove in his love for Tiana and that she was the shining star that lit up even the darkest moments.

This is storytelling at its finest, and it made everything in the queue and the attraction mean so much more – filling it with love, emotion, and that oh-so-sweet smell of beignets. Every move Tiana has made has been with the help of her father, mother, friends, and community, and the story of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is about giving back to all of them and making them proud. In the world of the attraction, Tiana never lost sight of what was important and she proved, once again, that dreams do come true in New Orleans.