The Bad Guys 2, directed by Pierre Perifel, is the latest theatrical release from DreamWorks Animation, and is the sequel to 2022's The Bad Guys, which has gone on to become very popular with furries. The titular "Bad Guys" are a gang of "scary" animal ex-thieves featuring Mr. Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (voiced by Marc Maron), Miss Tarantula a.k.a. "Webs" (voiced by Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (voiced by Craig Robinson) and Mr. Piranha (voiced by Anthony Ramos), plus Diane Foxington (voiced by Zazie Beetz), the current fox governor of the state of California and also secretly an ex-thief known as the "Crimson Paw", who, unlike the Bad Guys, was never caught. Having given up their lives of crime last movie, this movie begins with the Bad Guys living the trials and tribulations of ex-cons.

The movie is already available for digital purchase, despite the movie only being out a little over two weeks. However, DreamWorks Animation has been playing Moneyball recently, spending about half as much as most of the other major studios on their theatrical releases, so they've already made back most of their money domestically, and are in the black (more or less) counting international grosses. It's not a big hit, but it is a "base" hit, and that's what DreamWorks is aiming for. DreamWorks Animation has never gotten past the billion mark (Shrek 2, way back in 2004, was the closest), and the company seems to have accepted this fact. If anything, when they make a "big swing" anymore, it's an Oscar play rather than box office, like last year's The Wild Robot, which ultimately did not win (once again, Shrek is DreamWorks's only Best Animated Feature, despite being the second most nominated studio in the category).

But the point of bringing up this "inside baseball" bit about box office is that this has already been earmarked as a DreamWorks franchise. Ironically, they were bumped by The Wild Robot in the studio's logo sequence this year, but that seems to be more about DreamWorks wanting to avoid having them appear in front of their own movie than lack of confidence. I'm very confident there will be a The Bad Guys 3, and am looking forward to it, because both movies have been a lot of fun.

B.B. Wolf And The Three LPs

JD Arnold’s reimagining of the classic fable of The Three little pigs with the riveting illustration style of Richard Koslowski is certainly one of the best, and most overlooked versions. The novel takes the story so very far away from the original, using only its skeleton. Through realms suggestive of Alex Haley, Stanley Kubrick, Ralph Bakshi, and for sure a pinch of Stephen King, the wolf is the focus.

As a consistently-struggling blues musician intent on protecting his property and remaining family from the racketeering little pigs, who employ all kinds of legal loopholes to seize and destroy it. The pigs naturally have the law on their side (I trust I need go no further on that) and enjoy high profile connections with sleazy origins as far away as Chicago. That’s plenty of motivation for the wolf’s reported “villainy” when huffing, puffling, and blowing it all down.

It’s a strong study on class struggles and the clashes of midwestern culture that goes the “full Monty”, shall we say, with the intended allegory. Given current political and social climates, most readers are likely to find this entry at least a timely diversion.

Mom’s Cat is an intense, yet quiet, short film by Hungarian writer/director Annabella Schnabel, who produced it for her diploma project at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest (you can watch a preview here). It has already garnered several awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at the 29th Chicago Underground Film Festival, First Prize at the 19th Pannonfíling Film Festival, Best Short Film at the 8th Nefiltravane Kino Film Festival, and Best Young Director at the 13th Short to the Point International Film Festival. It was screened at several Oscar-qualifying festivals, such as the 70th Melbourne International Film Festival, 40th Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, 52nd Nashville Film Festival, and the A-listed 43rd Moscow International Film Festival, earning a spot on the 2023 Student Academy Awards long list. I had the opportunity to watch this 18-minute film, and I can say the plaudits are deserved.

As the sleepers awakened from their slumber in early June, a total virtual attendance count of 26,405 and a total of $109,000 was raised for the returning charity, The Center of Orlando Florida, at the 2025 virtual gathering of Furality. The sleep in the ninth iteration of the gathering was not always an easy one, with a VR Chat system outage during Saturday’s peak times. But in relation to the prior year’s experience, things actually went much smoother for the event itself. It continues to be a wonderful experience for people who like to explore new worlds, and the revel creation of their fellow eccentric dreamers.

This year we’ll go over the worlds and environment and their purposes, and other general thoughts now that I have been to two and can see the foundation and standard layout. Preliminary thoughts about Virtual conventions in general and their comparisons to real world gatherings can be found in last year’s Umbra review found at this link which remain generally unchanged in this passing year.

Nimona (trailer) is a 99-minute American animated movie released in 2023. It was eventually directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, with a script by Robert Baird and Lloyd Taylor (plus additional writers), and was adapted from a webcomic/graphic novel by ND Stevenson. Originally it was produced by Blue Sky Studios, whose parent company was acquired by Disney before the project was finished. Disney cancelled it, likely due to its overt LGBTQ+ themes, and closed down Blue Sky to focus on their own, pre-existing animation studios. Luckily, they were willing to let Netflix acquire the rights, and it was completed by DNEG Animation and Annapurna Pictures.

And I am the wrong person to be reviewing this movie.

In my years of writing reviews, this is the second time this has happened. The first time was when Kyell Gold sent me a copy of Green Fairy to review. By no fault of Kyell's, or the story itself, aspects of the book set off multiple buttons in my head due to personal experiences from my past. This caused my brain to mis-map story elements, and it didn't work for me. I tried writing a review, and I couldn't bring myself to publish it at the time. It wasn't fair to the book, nor to Kyell's writing craft.

And so now I'm facing a similar dilemma with Nimona. This time, I'm going to attempt a review, but without all of my internal brain slop. You'll be getting some of it, but believe me when I say I'm leaving a lot out. (Deep breaths. Focus on the positive.) At this point the film is two years old and I'm assuming that most folks here have seen it, so I'm not going to be shy about major plot details.

However, despite my personal opinions, let me be clear: If you haven't watched this film, it's worth a watch. It's good. It's just I'm not the audience it's for. And that's ok! I still appreciate it for what it is. Stop reading here to avoid spoilers.

On the menu today is: Cult Of (The) Lamb with a side of Science Dog.

Sound good? Well then, let's partake of a somewhat kosher dinner of allegory. Notice that these works have firm connections to other media. As is only right, we'll open with the appetizer.

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
-Chikn Nuggit, "An episode made for Tik Tok in case the app gets banned for real"

"I missed."
-Pepé Le Pew, "For Scent-imental Reasons"

Animation, at least in America, feels a bit weird right now. Maybe a bit unhealthy, but not in a "sick and dying" kind of way, but in a "your diet is messed up" kind of way. My most recent review besides this one is Flow, a micro-budget independent movie from Latvia made with Blender, while The Day the Earth Blew Up is the latest iteration of major studio Warner Bros.'s most famous IP, featuring marketable characters older than World War II. And yet, somehow, the former review feels like an unnecessary noting of something everyone was already aware of anyway, while this review feels more like a spotlight on a small unknown that deserves a wider audience.

"'Cause the good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems"
-- Billy Joel, "Keeping The Faith"

I would submit that the ways in which we use our oh-so-superior creative tools nowadays, from spellcheck to AI, reveals far more tolerance for the past than we'd care to admit. All across social media you'll find more "icebergs", "rank" lists, and things "you didn't notice" than you can shake a VR trigger at. Proof springs eternal, oddly enough within the very works of art that are cranked out. This is certainly evident in the comics reviewed below (Scrapper and The Ruff and Reddy Show), which, to beg your pardon, are more analog than digital in nature.

Three reviews today, starting with the trailers for:

The first two can be skipped, and the third is a maybe.

It’s time for the third annual review of furry shorts released the prior year. In these I go through the previous year’s released animation shorts released, typically on YouTube, to see which ones stood out to me. I will note however that this year really was all kill and no fill on the recommendation list. I’m glad to see that there are so many passionate fans finding good content out there and the improvement over all.

I will admit I did miss a bit of the “what the heck did I just watch” surprises for this year. Hopefully things don’t get too sterile. But when it comes to short stories worth a watch there is no shortage of goodness this year.

So without further ado, let’s continue.

(Prior Years: 2023, 2022)

Welcome to my top ten list of movies for 2024. It's pretty self explanatory, and I've explained "the rules" plenty of times in the past, but I think I should explain one qualification for what constitutes a "2024" movie for my list, as it applies to one movie this year and has caused confusion in the past. Basically, I'm going by theatrical release, not festival premiere, like IMDB does.

Other than that, just a reminder that this isn't supposed to be a specifically furry list, even if this is a furry site, but I will award a Best Furry Movie, with this year going to The Wild Robot. At the start of the decade, this had a pretty high correlation with the Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture, with victories for Wolfwalkers and Raya and the Last Dragon, but in the last two years, I seem to have lost my short status as furry middlebrow tastemaker, as Turning Red lost to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 lost to Nimona. All four of my picks for Best Furry Movie also ended up being my number one pick those four years, as well (spoilers for this year's list?). I also, just for fun, as a fox fan, give out a Cutest Vixen Award, and this year that goes to Zhen from Kung Fu Panda 4. In less furry accolades, I do sometimes list a movie from the previous year that might have made the list if I'd seen it before publication (not that this is a correction) and for 2023 I'll say The Holdovers was pretty good.

Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds (trailer) is a 2D children's animated fantasy film, a Franco-Belgian production released in 2023, directed by Benoît Chieux who co-wrote it with Alain Gagnol. Imdb rates it 7/10.

Carmen and Juliette are sisters, whose mother drops them off with her friend Agnes to babysit for a day. Agnes has forgotten they'd be coming, and asks if they can be quiet for a half-hour while she takes a much-needed nap. She's the author of a long-running book series called Sirocco, and had been staying up all night writing.

Unable to sit still, Juliette rifles through one of Agnes' books, weird stuff happens, and the sisters end up in the world of the book, transformed into cats. After Juliette gets them in trouble with the local mayor, they embark on a quest with an avian opera singer named Selma to find the elusive Sirocco, a mysterious, reclusive, and mercurial sorceror.

A janitor finds himself on the night shift as a desperate CEO presses for his employees to work later into the dark for the week. This would normally just be an annoying inconvenience, but for Kyle the janitor, there are far worse implications to this situation as in the darkness of night, the humble cleaner becomes a bloodthirsty werewolf. As the head of security, Daryl, starts to become wary of the presence of the beast and becomes obsessed with bringing him down, will our precariously employed wolf be able to clean up the messes assigned to him and not create any new ones caused by satisfying his carnivorous appetite? The hunt is on.

The game’s premise is quite simple, and the game is short, which is probably why it is offered for no cost on Steam. When I streamed the game I was able to beat it in about an hour, and subsequently was able to replay the pre-designed levels for each day to lower my times and be as pacifistic as possible. It took me one additional hour to get all the visible accolades.

L'ogre Lion is a three-volume French hardcover comic published from 2022 to 2024. The story and art are by Bruno Bessadi, with colouring by Joo, and it was published by Drakoo. Reading it with mid-level French, I had to look up a lot of words, and I doubt that it'll get an English translation, so... spoilers ahead!

This is an action-fantasy comic with lots of anthropomorphic mammals! The story begins in a medieval European setting. A badly-scarred lion stumbles through the woods, not native to this part of the world. (People keep mistaking him for a lynx.) He's afflicted in three ways: with amnesia, with a recurring nightmare of his dead children, and with an extremely angry, vengeful spirit inside of him.

Whenever the lion dies, he suddenly transforms into an 8-foot-tall antelope who slaughters any carnivores nearby, before the pain of manifesting in the mortal realm becomes too difficult to bear. The antelope then retreats into the spiritual realm, and restores the lion to life. Needless to say, the lion is not happy.

Flow is about a black cat who lives alone, and then one day, it doesn't anymore. Because one day water came, too much water, and all the land was flooded. The cat ran away from the water, but it couldn't run forever, so it went to live on a boat with a friendly capybara. Together, the cat and the capybara followed the water, which flowed towards a giant pillar in the sky. It seemed like this would be the last dry land in all the world. Along the way, the capybara and the cat met a lemur, a dog and a secretary bird. Did they become friends? Probably.

There is no dialogue in this movie. Nobody explains anything to each other, for the convenience of the audience, because all the characters are animals, and they only say cat things like "meow" and dog things like "woof woof" and capybara things. If man could talk the animals, perhaps they would only find out that these animals don't really know what's happening either. Where did the water come from? Where did all the humans go? This is a world that has passed on.