Soul

Two separate music teams scored this film, and knowing that sets expectations correctly. Jon Batiste wrote and played the jazz for the New York passages, while the ambient music of the realm before birth came from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails. Close to half of the hundred and one minutes is not a jazz picture at all but a synth scored metaphysical comedy, and anyone who came for the piano will feel the ground shift. The second thing to know is the argument around it. Joe occupies his own Black body only at the beginning and the end; for a long stretch between, he is a shapeless soul and then a cat, with a white actress, Tina Fey, speaking from inside his body. Critics filed this alongside Tiana in The Princess and the Frog. If you plan to show the film as a piece of representation, go in aware of that objection. Kemp Powers became Pixar’s first Black co director, brought in on a twelve week writing contract that kept being extended, and the studio convened an internal group of Black staff plus outside consultants including Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones. Not for: young children, given how squarely the film sits on death and the question of purpose.