HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is a sunny little animated film about vampires and other assorted creatures of the night. Co-written by Robert Smigel, he who makes those divine animated shorts for Saturday Night Live, there is enough, youll pardon the expression, bite to the humor to make this a mostly painless experience for adults. The film, though,… Read More »
FRANKENWEENIE
Decades ago Tim Burton created a short stop-motion animated film called FRANKENWEENIE, and this tale of a boy who brings his beloved dog back to life became Mr. Burtons entrée into the world of cinema. He revisits this tale in a feature length version, the which he has directed from a screenplay that John August… Read More »
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4
With PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, we see the decline of a once fresh and robust franchise into something dull and predictable. Worse, with this installment, we see the franchises transition into yet another entry into the slasher genre. The tale is still told via rough cinema-verite footage from surveillance cameras and other assorted forms of home video.… Read More »
SINISTER
SINISTER has the all too rare virtue of being a horror film with a fine gloss of originality and genuine surprise to it. Rather than going for the usual assortment of jump-and-scare tactics, it broods atmospherically on the evil that humankind is capable of, and not necessarily the gruesome acts of violence on which the… Read More »
TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN, PART 2, THE
The most persistent question about THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN 2 is why it is that the human character, the one adrift amid all the assorted vampires and werewolves, is the one who is the most engaging. That would be Charlie (Billy Burke), the father of the now undead Bella. In roughly 10 minutes of… Read More »
MOONRISE KINGDOM
MOONRISE KINGDOM is a piquant masterpiece that will be as fresh and as relevant 50 years from now as it is today. The ironic tone and the artificial conceit form a wry tension with the genuine sentiment at work here, forming a quintessence that parses the mystery and absurdity of the human condition with a… Read More »
PLAYING FOR KEEPS
PLAYING FOR KEEPS is a slow drip of a movie that refuses to make up its mind about what it wants to be as it circles the drain. Less than the sum of its parts, it essays the rom-com, the domestic drama, and the heartwarming personal redemption genres all at once, and manages to hit… Read More »
GUILT TRIP, THE
THE GUILT TRIP could have gone many ways, most of them unfortunate. Yet, in the able hands of Barbra Steisand and Seth Rogan, what could have been a painful excursion into the murky depths of schmaltz is, instead, a sharp and funny look at mother love and filial duty and what happens when the two… Read More »
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL — WORLDS AWAY 3D
Cirque du Soleil never really found a purchase in those specials to be found on television. The small screen was far too diminutive, even in its larger versions, to convey the ambitious, aethereal, and surrealistic flights of fancy that are the Cirques trademark. That and the inherent flatness of the medium. All that has been… Read More »
PARENTAL GUIDANCE
PARENTAL GUIDANCE is a sloppy concretion inadvertently showcasing pretty much everything that can be done wrong in filmmaking short of forgetting to remove the lens cap. Though in this case, that last might actually have been an improvement. The story is incoherent, the characters are as thin as the wispiest of vapors, and the jokes,… Read More »
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