A Few Good Eggs: GeekiAviary Movie Reviews

As you know at the GeekiAviary, we take our jobs about birds very seriously. Over the years we’ve done many film compilation articles but nothing compares to this golden goose of bird movie reviews. I will be rating the following films out of five eggs. And warning, I haven’t seen all of these movies, or haven’t seen them in a long time, so I’m sure I’ll do just fine. I basically live on memes and context clues. But since we’re the GeekiAviary now this is my job, I guess.

SPOILER WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the movies in this article and also probably some fun (and not-so-fun) facts. 

Migration (2023): I saw the trailer for this movie like seven hundred times and it looked cute if not a little too on the nose for family vacation movies. It has Awkwafina in it and I honestly don’t know what bird she plays. But I was at a cup sleeve event for my favorite Korean group (Seventeen, if anybody cares) and I overheard some people talking about the movie at the next table over.

Apparently, there’s a scene where the bird family somehow gets trapped in a restaurant kitchen and one of the dishes they’re serving is duck a l’Orange or Peking duck but it’s just the duck with its head cut off and like??? The little ducks see that? And imagine being a LITERAL CHILD GOING INTO THIS MOVIE and learning that HEY BY THE WAY this is the equivalent of having a headless human served to you at dinner? 

They did that to us in The Little Mermaid with Sebastian and the chef while he sings Les Poissons but I love crab legs so I guess I didn’t get the memo.

I don’t know how true the duck thing is and I didn’t bother to look it up, you’re welcome. 

Anyway, I’m gonna rate it 2 eggs for the trauma. 

Rating: 🥚🥚/5

Happy Feet (2006): I saw Happy Feet exactly one single time while sitting on the floor at my friend’s house while we played with her rabbits and put them in a Barbie Corvette car. It was released in 2006 so I paid about as much attention to it as any sixteen-year-old girl would.

It’s about a penguin named Mumble (played by Elijah Wood) who loves to dance, especially tap dance, because penguins can dance. I broke down and Googled this one because I remember nothing about this film. In the movie, all the penguins attract a mate by singing and since Mumble can’t sing, he simply dances.

And that’s how penguins are born, kids. 

I’m giving it a higher rating because it was genuinely a fun movie from the little I do remember. It boasted a star-studded cast with the likes of Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, and Hugh Jackman and won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Both the first film and the sequel were directed by George Miller (Mad Max franchise). Unfortunately, Happy Feet 2 just didn’t dance its way into audiences’ hearts quite like the first film. 

Rating: 🥚🥚🥚🥚/5

Free Birds (2013): This is another movie I have seen exactly one time even though I own the DVD and could probably re-watch it whenever I want. I bought this and watched it during my Woody Harrelson-obsessed phase. It’s kind of a Thanksgiving movie? It follows two turkeys on a quest back in time to prevent turkeys from being eaten at the first Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing remarkable about this movie except that it’s birds and that’s what we write about! Yet another cartoon animal movie to keep kids engaged.

Free Birds: 🥚🥚🥚/5

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023): Anybody who knows me knows I’m a huge Hunger Games fan. Like I’m uncomfortably obsessed with it. Unfortunately, I have not seen this movie but I’ve read the book, except for like 50 pages in between the end and the VERY end. I just needed to know how it ended and I thought the ending was unremarkable so I lost interest.

Not ultimately about birds but rather ~bird symbolism~, this movie is just a cash grab by Lionsgate to capitalize on nostalgia. There are many birds mentioned in the Hunger Games series, the most famous of which is the mockingjay. The mockingjay becomes the symbol of the rebellion against the Capitol in the later books and Katniss literally becomes the Mockingjay by nearly burning to death.

Songbirds and Snakes explores the relationship between a tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird, and her mentor, Coriolanus Snow (yeah, that Snow) in the 10th Annual Hunger Games. Lucy Gray sings, dubbed a songbird, and Snow… Well… He’s the snake. It’s all cute and fwuffy and then he gets traumatized because she leaves him blah blah blah.

Anyway, the idea that Snow hates mockingjays (and thus Katniss) is because they remind him of Lucy Gray Baird, is born in this book/film. Obviously, these are just my opinions but you should read the book and see for yourself.

Also boo long fluffy movie about a crappy villain who deserves no sympathy booooo. Tomato, tomato. 

Rating: 🥚🥚/5 (just because I like you, Suzanne Collins)

Birds of Prey (2020): This is a movie I’ve actually seen and I’ve seen it often. If you thought we were only going to talk about animal birds you should have known better.

I’m a vicious Harley Quinn fan, Harley Deserves Better, Give Us IvyQuinn, etc. This movie blew my socks off. A ton of comic book purists and dudebros whined about it on the internet but good thing I didn’t read any of it because I LITERALLY DON’T CARE.

This movie is much more adult than the first Suicide Squad film and it’s clear that it’s a movie by the girlies for the gorlies (gender neutral). The costumes, glitter bullets, the agony of having your breakfast sandwich destroyed, keeping a wild animal as a pet, Kesha playing at the end: it’s all for the girls, the gays, and the theys.

Of course, the main title refers to the DC Comics all-female superhero squad. In the movie the eponymous squad is comprised of Huntress, Black Canary, Renée Montoya, and briefly Harley Quinn and Cassandra Cain. In the comic series, Harley wasn’t involved with the Birds of Prey group until 2020.

This counts as a bird movie because a) the title, b) it has at least pigeons in it, and c) because I said so.

Rating: 🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚/5

Chicken Run (2000): This gem of a film was made and produced by Aardman Animation and Dreamworks Pictures. I grew up on Wallace and Gromit, also by Aardman Animations, as a kid so by the time Chicken Run came along, it was immediately integrated into my watch list. 

The plot is set around the unionization and escape of chickens on a farm to escape certain death via instant chicken pie machine. Our parents wonder why we’re so radicalized now when almost all our media growing up focused on sticking it to the man.

I haven’t seen this movie probably in over twenty years so I at least owe it to myself to check it out again. In 2023, a sequel to Chicken Run was released called Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and it’s available for streaming on Netflix. I know what I’m doing tonight!

Rating: 🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚/5

TW: mentions of animal cruelty

The Birds (1963): This is the movie that made everyone afraid of birds. Unnecessary bird fear-mongering. People should have been afraid of Alfred Hitchcock instead. Tippi Hedren, who plays Melanie, did sustain a facial injury due to poor filming conditions exacerbated by exhausted animals with their beaks rubber banded shut. Props men were throwing live birds at her to simulate a bird attack and the bird narrowly missed her eye.

For some reason, I thought she woke up and everything was a dream at the end but I’m very wrong about that; this isn’t The Wizard of Oz. Also, The Birds is based on a short story about an actual event of bird attacks in California which frankly makes this worse. 

Also, birds work for the bourgeoisie. 

Rating: 🥚/5 (for Tippi)

Angry Birds Movie (2016): This is yet again another movie I’ve only seen once and despite the fact that I don’t remember the plot (but I know it has to do with green pigs) I remember actually enjoying it a lot. 

Y’all remember when Flappy Bird was banned? I never played it but I played Angry Birds a lot in college when I was supposed to be taking notes. Apps and games were like brand new things and I was mystified. What do you MEAN I could get on the INTERNET on my PHONE? 

I can’t say whether or not the jokes aged well or not. 

Rating: 🥚🥚🥚🥚/5

Birdbox (2018): All of our weird obsession with pandemic stuff right before the pandemic is kind of weird to think about right? Anyway, I’ve never seen Birdbox, I don’t even know what it’s about, I’ve never seen trailers for it, I’ve never looked at reviews but from the various context clues I’ve picked up over the last six years it looks like a blindfold version of A Quiet Place. Like, if you see the Big Bad, you die? Or it burns your eyes out or something? Also, people did something called the Birdbox challenge and I didn’t watch a single one of those videos either. 

Why is it called Birdbox? Does the bad scary thing live in a birdhouse? Is it an allegory for Twitter before it became X? Am I asking too many questions? As long as it has Sandra Bullock in it, I can guesstimate my rating because I love her but I don’t love jump scares and Netflix says it’s a horror movie.

Rating: 🥚🥚🥚/5 (based on Sandra Bullock alone)

The Crow (1994): Listen. I’m not here to tell you fun or sad facts about this movie. In fact, I’m only going to reference it like three times and then never speak of it again. It’s only here because I thought putting a movie called The Crow in a list of bird movies would be really funny and would make some people angry. I did not like The Crow. I have only seen it once in recent memory and the person who showed it to me (if you’re reading this, I’m sorry) didn’t warn me about the plot and I thought it was about like, an even more goth Batman. It was not and I did not enjoy it.

That being said, the 2024 remake is irritating a lot of people. In the meantime, enjoy that other Skarsgård brother (there are 700 of them) covered in flash sheet tattoos. FKA Twigs looks fire though. 

Rating: 🍳 /5 (it’s fried) 

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What are some other bird movies we should review? Or honestly, what bird movies should we know about? We’re the Geek-Aviary after all. What the hell is Birdbox about? 

Honorable mentions to White Bird in a Blizzard, Rio, March of the Penguins, The Starling, and The Penguins of Madagascar. 

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Author: Bekah

Bekah has a B.F.A. in Theatre Performance from Anderson University and is the Executive Assistant at Saga Event Planning. She is a frequent convention attendee and cosplayer and co-hosts The Geekiary webcast “The Bitching Dead”.

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