Beautifully simplistic.
I love how The Orphan shines an almost comedic spotlight onto the adopting couple's latent homophobia, to the point that they'd rather manufacture a separation than have a queer foster child.
Kauan Alvarenga is fantastic with just fifteen minutes to work with in portraying that world-weariness that orphans/foster children generally and unfortunately possess.
Leonardo is a nine-minute, whistle-stop overview of the genius (or perhaps lack thereof) of Leonardo Da Vinci, and even suggests that his greatest achievement was made possible by mere coincidence.
While it doesn't feel particularly breathtaking, my favourite thing about this short film is the animation style - it truly feels like it has been animated 'straight from the page' thanks to its hand-drawn aesthetic.
It's such a shame that Spider-Man has become one giant walking meme because it is a solid superhero adventure from a time when solid superhero adventures still didn't really exist.
Much like Bryan Singer's X-Men, this film could be blamed for starting the glut of superhero films that we are (un)fortunate to have these days, but it's also a product of its time in the sense that it did a lot of the heavy lifting for the genre in establishing…
If nothing else, I think the humour of Thor is really underrated amongst the plague that exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: quipping. The humour in this, which is helped out a lot by Thor's fish-out-of water predicament, is really subtle and understated. For example, Thor smashing a mug and shouting "ANOTHER!" is hilarious because he knows this to be a sign of respect and gratefulness for sampling the wonders of the universe, but we Earth people don't like noise and outsiders.
2011 ranked
Marvel Cinematic Universe ranked
Kenneth Branagh ranked
