BE REEL

(Source: TeePee Drive-In )  WRITER’S NOTE: The following is based on notes I made between May and July of 2025, during each film’s initial release.  How to Train Your Dragon (2025)  It’s interesting that, in the early months of the summer of 2025, we got two live-action remakes of animated films from the last twenty-five years that were helmed by filmmaking duo Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders. The former made his directorial debut in live-action with (what turned out to be) a shot-for-shot remake of DreamWorks’ 2010 animated take  on Cressida Cowell’s beloved children’s book, How to Train Your Dragon . It was also a first for a live-action version of a DreamWorks Animation entry (released by parent company Universal).  The same premise and story are present: Hiccup, a young outcast in a colony of Vikings, befriends a mysterious dragon and discovers that everything they’ve been taught about the beasts may not be all it seems. The main difference with this Drag...

(Source: IMDb )   I wasn’t aware until recently that  Super Mario Bros.  is celebrating 40 years this year . Growing up, it was the first video game I ever remember, the first that I ever played, and the one that spawned what may be the greatest video game ever made,  Mario Kart . Parent company Nintendo partners once again with animation studio Illumination for one of this year’s most anticipated releases in this cinematic universe.  If 2023’s  Super Mario Bros Movie  largely echoed the video game phenomenon of the late-20th Century, then this year’s  Super Mario Galaxy Movie  mirrors the numerous spin-offs that have been produced in the franchise throughout the early-21st Century. This 2026 follow-up takes our iconic cast of characters (and a few new ones) to some new places, presenting more of an episodic ensemble piece.  Mario Galaxy  alternates between mini-adventures of plumbing duo Mario and Luigi (Chris Pratt and Charlie Day...