​Disney’s Zootopia doesn’t have to try as hard as it does on its story.  In its telling of an enthusiastic outsider trying to break into her dream job, the film could easily have the lead do exactly that and keep its identical ending of gazelle-Shakira singing an aspirational pop song.  Instead, drawing from a multitude of writers and directors with experience on the Simpsons and superb comedies like Cedar Rapids, Zootopia drums up its biggest cachet from its interest in prejudice and bias, especially amongst the police animals who make up much of the cast.  It’s an animated comedy that wants to be taken seriously, an attempt to bridge the gap between Disney’s mass-appeal blockbusters and Pixar’s emotional maturity.  The ploy worked, with Zootopia receiving every major film award in the animated world and a boatload of cash, but when the film’s taken on its own terms, it reveals a strain of happy-go-lucky liberalism that I find particularly loathsome.  Zootopia hasn’t thought through its world, as it offers a picture of friendly animals skipping hand in hand towards an Orwellian dystopia, but hey, that fennec fox sure is cute.

When confronted by her daughter on the inherent differences between their upper-lower-middle class family and the wealthy denizens of the local country club, Marge Simpson famously replied, “Yes, they’re better.”  Depuffing that particular American idea, that wealth bequeathes goodness, among other things, is a reliable satirical strategy, and it’s one on display in the terrific Thoroughbreds. The rich in Cory Finley’s striking debut are only better in their own esteem, and their resources allows them to fool a broader swath of the population.  Within their sturdy mansions are only flimsy approximations of human beings, faking what they are incapable of understanding and using their wealth to cover for whatever’s left. ​

​Alex Garland’s Annihilation, the follow-up to his other heady sci-fi film Ex Machina, has apoptosis on the brain.  This biological process, in which a cell is induced to commit suicide due to damage or simply outliving its usefulness, is vital in the entropic soup of a multicellular organism, preventing negative effects like cancer.  It’s the biological equivalent of a soldier throwing oneself on a grenade, an altruistic act in miniature.  Destruction in pursuit of survival and reinvention.  The characters in Annihilation, all badly scarred in their own ways, are going through a similar process, both literally and figuratively.  Annihilation demands the viewer’s attention, and though Garland still has difficulty building up the emotional sides of his films, it’s encouraging that someone with his interests is able to create at this level.