[8] Disney’s 50th feature-length animated movie is their best in many years. Tangled recaptures the charm, humor, and spirit of the studio’s second renaissance, the late 80s/early 90s period that saw such hits as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Quite simply, I laughed and I cried, thoroughly engaged with the characters and the storytelling. And when I thought I had Tangled figured out, it gave …
[7] Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) takes the reigns and casts Tobey Maguire as the famous web-slinging superhero. The script is ripe with pointed dialogue, but I’ll be darned if the cast don’t pull it off more often than not. Raimi’s approach is decidedly ‘comic booky’, full of color and frenetically paced, with all the grace notes and emotional high points bent toward operatic. As …
[6] While this is definitely a better movie than the first one, my attempt to enjoy it is still hampered by constant annoyance. First, the bad: This shit is still way too long. Dragging this story out into three movies is looking more and more like a fatal error. Then there’s the computer-generated imagery. I know I sound like Old Mister Wilson telling Dennis to …
[7] First of all, Batman Forever is not Batman and Robin, which came out two years later. For whatever reason, nearly everyone tends to confuse the two or lump them together. Both were directed by Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Flatliners), but in my mind they are very, very different movies. I enjoy Batman Forever way more than I should, but Batman and Robin is …
[6] This may be a guilty pleasure, but I also think it inherited an unfair reputation, too. George Lucas wanted to produce a comic film noir. No matter how well it was done, it would never be a huge hit. His name proved cancerous to the movie, unintentionally promising universal appeal for what is really a niche movie. The critics took their best shots and …
[2] There’s precious little to keep you interested in this hideous-looking and busily boring shit-fest of a film that is both a nadir for director Tim Burton’s creative trajectory and emblematic of everything wrong with Hollywood in the early 21st century. Much muchness? Indeed. Alice in Wonderland is the cinematic equivalent of a priapism.
[6] If you were making a movie based on a famous toy line and you had no choice but to cast Dolph Lundgren in the lead, you probably couldn’t do much better than Gary Goddard did with Masters of the Universe. The screenplay by David Odell (The Dark Crystal) transplants the action from He-Man’s homeworld to our own planet. I’m sure this was a cost-cutting …
[8] Disney’s Frozen borrows ideas from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen and follows closely in the footsteps of Tangled before it, but it’s also a bit more. For one thing, there’s an interesting sister dynamic at play here. One royal daughter, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell), is the care-free sort, while the older daughter Elsa (Wicked‘s Idina Menzel) is born with a curse – …
[5] They were re-writing the script for Jack the Giant Slayer while they shot the movie, and it shows. It’s a bit of a hot mess. I’m a fan of director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) and I’m down to watch Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, Warm Bodies) carry a film, but the film never hooked me. The only character who musters any emotional …
[8] Anything but ‘more of the same’, Tim Burton’s sequel dives into the troubled psyches of its headlining trio — Batman, Catwoman, and The Penguin. Michael Keaton’s Batman still plays second fiddle to the villains, but what fascinating villains they are. Burton is careful to show us how they become their alter egos, giving each of them full character arcs complete with bittersweet resolutions. Danny …
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