Pluskylang
Great Film overall
Alistair Olson
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
Taha Avalos
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"La Luna" is a 6-minute animated short film from 2011 written and directed by Enrico Casarosa. It's his only directorial effort so far, but he also worked on "Ice Age", "Ratatouille" and "Up" in less influential roles. And currently, he is the the co-writer for Pixar's "The Good Dinosaur" which will hit theaters soon. Could be a huge breakthrough for him if it turns into a quality movie. But back to "La Luna". It was nominated for an Annie Award and an Academy award, but lost both to, in my opinion, inferior films.We see two men "one of them looks a bit like the dad from "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs") and a boy in a boat named "La Luna". It becomes obvious that they are grandfather, father and son and the two men take their son to show them their profession for the first time. There is not that much humor in this short film, maybe except the funny looking two men with their massive beards and eyebrows. But there is some decent emotion for this short running-time. You could actually imagines how, maybe 30 years back, the father was the son and the now-old man showed him the business back then. Or also the boy's big eyes because everything he sees here is no new and amazing. Apart from that, "La luna" is certainly a winner in terms of visuals. The moon is amazing to watch and so is his mirage in the water. And the scene with the boy letting one big star explode into many is perfect to watch. But it's also nice to listen to. The sound effects of the clinking stars are maybe the most memorable thing about this short film. The only problem I had with it was maybe that I did not really understand what they were doing for the entire movie. But with the very last shot, this problem is solved as well in a truly creative manner so that everything makes sense now. Excellent short film. Recommended.
TxMike
We saw the movie "Brave" on DVD and this short film, "La Luna", is on the DVD as an extra. We had no idea it was there, or what it was, but I usually enjoy at least browsing the extras to see if I can find anything interesting. My wife usually leaves when I do that, but she stuck around for this one.The good thing about a film short, especially one as brief as this one, is you don't have any chance for character development, you basically see a small slice of something. Here the "slice" is a young boy taking his first boating adventure at night with his dad and grandpa.As the scene begins all we see is the three people in the small boat on the water at night. Then in dramatic fashion the giant moon rises. At that point I commented "look how great the colors are." Then the story really begins.The rest contains SPOILERS so you may not want to read further if you have not seen it, but it is a very pleasant short film. Totally fantasy, but enjoyable to watch.As the moon rises up into the sky the boat stops. The men pull a tall ladder from a hatch in the front of the boat, pointing it towards the moon. They give the boy a small anchor on the end of a rope, he fastens it around his waist, then climbs to the top, almost able to touch the moon. He throws the anchor, and climbs onto the moon, its surface littered with small, yellow glowing star-shaped objects that have accumulated there. Maybe it is supposed to be star dust. The three of them proceed to sweep up the little stars, when a larger one crashes into the surface. The boy climbs to one point, then hits it with a little hammer, and it all crumbles into the smaller ones. They finish their job and climb back down to the boat and we see the moon is no longer "full" but only a crescent where the bright little stars have been swept to.
Robert Reynolds
A short done by the Pixar studio, this is a very visually beautiful film, which is par for the course with Pixar. It's somewhat different for Pixar in that it doesn't go right for the funny bone. It's charming, sweet and sentimental in nature. At roughly six minutes, it develops a rather fascinating idea with visual brush-strokes (so to speak). Any discussion of depth must necessarily divulge something about the film, so there are mild spoilers below: Three generations set out in a boat-grandfather, father and young boy. At moonrise, the viewer finds out why they're out in the middle of the water. As the film develops, it becomes a sort of coming of age fable, with the young boy showing more common sense than either of his elders.This opened before the film Brave and is also on the DVD release of Brave. A good case can be made that it's more successful than Brave, at least in terms of storytelling, though both films are quite good in and of themselves. La Luna is well worth watching and is recommended.
Cory M Huff
Preceding Brave is the Academy Award nominated short film, La Luna. What we have here is a silent film that tells the tale of the lessons a son learns from their father, and vice versa. This is nicely juxtaposed next to Brave, which is about the lessons mothers and daughters teach each other. La Luna is a gorgeous and moving little film that manages to tell a better story in a few minutes (with no dialogue) than most of its two-hour long counterparts. To go into too much detail would really ruin the fun of discovering just why this boy is at sea with his father and grandfather. Just know that the few minutes this short film lasts are very moving and are something to behold.Follow me on Twitter @Mrhuffsmyfather for all my movie reviews!
