On Friday, November 15, 2013, San Francisco was transformed into Gotham City as five-year-old leukemia patient Miles Scott became Batkid for the day. He and Batman saved citizens from danger and defeated their arch-enemies The Riddler and The Penguin. The day, which began as a simple request to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, turned into one of […]
Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out” is director Pete Docter’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Up”, which featured the most emotional opening scene in Pixar history. “Inside Out” is all about our emotions, and while I laughed at times, this film also desperately wants you to cry, but falls short in achieving that reaction. It’s good, but far from […]
The latest sci-fi adventure from “The Incredibles” director Brad Bird is Disney’s “Tomorrowland”, which is very loosely based on the theme park attraction. Outside of a brief and flat-out awful narration tactic at the start of the film, star George Clooney is missing for the first 45 minutes. His Frank Walker character is introduced to […]
“Paul Blart: Mall Cop” was one of the first and funniest films of 2009. As a New Jersey mall security guard who had one epic Black Friday, Kevin James proved to be an unlikely likable hero and established a modern classic comedy character. It took James more than six years to get back into the […]
“Home” is, for now, DreamWorks Animation’s only 2015 release. Thankfully, based on the early box office, it’s helping bring the studio back from the brink of financial disaster. Adapted from the novel “The True Meaning of Smekday” by Adam Rex, “Home” is a very simple, high-energy adventure that’s filled with color and imagination, and is […]
Disney’s animated “Cinderella” was released in 1950. Now, 65 years later, as part of The Mouse House’s current trend of remaking/reimagining classics from the vault (which will continue over the next few years with new versions of “The Jungle Book”, “Pete’s Dragon” and “Beauty and the Beast”), veteran director Kenneth Branagh brings to life the […]
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is a 2012, Golden Globe-nominated dramedy with an all-star cast of veteran actors playing seniors looking to re-live their youth and re-charge their lives by traveling to India and staying at a newly built, but poorly constructed hotel. It was solidly entertaining, but a little overrated and rather depressing, all […]
“McFarland, USA” is the latest “Based on a True Story” sports drama from the studio king of the genre, Disney. This time, the Mouse House employees had to go all the way back to 1987 to find their latest inspirational, underdog story. And, after using baseball, football, basketball, hockey, horse racing, golf, bobsledding, and even […]
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? If you don’t know the answer to that question by now, you’ve been living under a certain sea star’s rock. SpongeBob SquarePants has been a worldwide cultural phenomenon since his debut on Nickelodeon in 1999. In 2004, the sea creatures of Bikini Bottom went from TV screens […]
The trailers that The Weinstein Company released for “Paddington” were noisy and slapstick-heavy, making this family adventure, based on the iconic children’s book character, appear to be dreadful. They also decided to push the US opening date back from Christmas Day to the middle of January, normally a move made when a studio realizes that […]