In director Tim Burton’s marvelous version of Alice in Wonderland, 6-year-old and very sleep-deprived Alice has continuing strange dreams of a white rabbit (Michael Sheen), a giant rabbit hole, a mad tea party, and plants and animals that can talk. About 13 years later, a less than enthusiastic Alice (Mia [...]
Friday 04 Jun 2010 |
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action/adventure, blu-ray, kid's & family, movie reviews, sci-fi / fantasy
The moment a sweet old lady with razor-sharp teeth started spewing obscenities and crawling on the ceiling, I knew I was in for a good time with Legion, an angels-at-war horror flick starring Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid that one could sum up as The Prophecy meets Assault On Precinct [...]
Friday 14 May 2010 |
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action/adventure, movie reviews, sci-fi / fantasy
It’s a peculiar thing to review a movie that has grossed enough money to launch the space shuttle twice or to build a complete Virginia-class nuclear fast attack submarine. Is there actually a point in doing so? If I say it’s overrated will that stop anyone from renting it? If I [...]
Thursday 22 Apr 2010 |
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action/adventure, movie reviews, recommendations, sci-fi / fantasy
For those of you who are not in a book club, The Lovely Bones is the story of a 14-year-old girl who is murdered in a cornfield near her home in 1970’s Pennsylvania. She narrates her tale and watches her family cope from the “in-between”–a perfect place to hang out before [...]
Thursday 22 Apr 2010 |
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blu-ray, drama, movie reviews, suspense/thrillers
Disney makes a much-heralded return to its 2D hand-drawn animation roots with The Princess and the Frog. The return to a medium considered dead (at least in the eyes of dimwitted studio execs) is historic enough. But it also marks the debut of Disney’s first black princess, Tiana. The setting for the [...]
Saturday 20 Mar 2010 |
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animation, blu-ray, kid's & family, movie reviews, music & musicals, recommendations
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart again suffer mightily as a tortured teenage vampire and his seriously sulky soul mate in this follow-up to 2008’s toothless Twilight, but not nearly as much as the audience does in enduring 130 minutes of dreadful dialogue, awful acting and co-star Taylor Lautner and his [...]
Saturday 20 Mar 2010 |
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blu-ray, drama, movie reviews, romance, sci-fi / fantasy
First of all, anyone worried about this film staying true to the art of the original should know that author Maurice Sendak gave his full approval to director Spike Jonze, writer Dave Eggers, and their conceptual interpretation of his classic of childrens’ literature Where the Wild Things Are. This is not the Sendak book I [...]
Friday 05 Mar 2010 |
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action/adventure, blu-ray, drama, movie reviews, recommendations, sci-fi / fantasy
Anybody reading this who knows the name Hayao Miyazaki probably won’t need any convincing from me to check out his latest film Ponyo. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Japanese master animator, he is widely and ever-increasingly recognized as one of the greatest filmmakers working today, and you owe it to yourself [...]
Friday 05 Mar 2010 |
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animation, blu-ray, kid's & family, movie reviews, recommendations, sci-fi / fantasy
Ricky Gervais‘ The Invention of Lying is a comedy that takes place in an alternate reality in which the human species has never discovered how to deceive one another. In this reality, Coca-Cola’s advertising slogan is “Please continue buying Coke–it’s very famous” and its competitor’s is ”Pepsi–when they don’t have Coke.” Films are produced, but without any capacity [...]
Thursday 21 Jan 2010 |
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comedy, movie reviews
Even before I took my three younger nephews (ages 4, 6, and 7) to see this somewhat frantic, effects-filled kid flick about super spy guinea pigs, they were quoting one-liners from its trailers. Especially funny to them was the sight and sound of one of the rodents farting inside a tricked-out, super-fast hamster ball.
Thursday 17 Dec 2009 |
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action/adventure, kid's & family, movie reviews