In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Saturday, 3 October 2020

The Iron Giant (1999)

Based on Ted Hughes' 1968 novel The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights, it tells of a friendship between a spirited nine-year-old youth named Hogarth and a fifty-foot iron giant from space who eats metal, which is an activity that doesn't go unnoticed by the townspeople. When a busybody federal agent begins snooping around, believing the visitor to be a foreign threat, he causes more problems than he had intended to solve.
The 1957 setting has a wonderfully rich aesthetic, populated with well-fleshed out secondary characters, purposeful cold-war caricatures that personify governmental paranoia and coercion, and many loving nods to 'atomic age' science-fiction movies. Crucially, beneath its era-specific strengths is an inspiring emotional layer that's uplifting and unquestionably timeless.

5 duck + cover sirens out of 5

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