Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: Pixar Animation Studios’ love affair with franchising continues with their first-ever prequel, Monsters University. In keeping with my quest […]

The responsible critic is supposed to at least give a movie the chance to defend itself, and this I did not do with Bambi II: I approached it with knives drawn, and have only myself to blame for hating it as much as I had every intention of doing. This is not, after all, like […]

All things being equal, 42 should not be even as good as it is, with the caveat that as good as it is still has some definite problems. But it’s an inspirational biopic, and with the monstrously unprepossessing track record that those have, “good with some problems” is like, just one or two steps down […]

The critic must not try to hide his biases when they might get in the way of the review; and boy, did I ever head into Silver Linings Playbook, at long last, with a basketful of biases. “Bradley Cooper as a romantic lead” is very close to the least appealing combination of performer and role […]

The worst thing about Rust and Bone is that it was directed by Jacques Audiard, and that’s also the best thing: the best, because it is nothing shy of miraculous that the director could navigate such difficult, borderline trashy material (whale trainer amputee meets, loves underground boxer who doesn’t know how to be a good […]

So as it turns out, the cultural hegemony angle on The Impossible is a bit of a non-starter. You know the one I’m talking about, if you’ve been paying much attention to the talk around the movie: the first major international film about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which tells the story of how hundreds […]

I should not speak ill of Yann Martel’s humongously popular 2001 novel Life of Pi, because I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Got a third of the way through, decided that one day, I was going to die, and on my deathbed, I didn’t want to find myself reflecting on the time I wasted […]

And now we go right over the edge. Initially, the Disney direct-to-video sequels were horrible, mercenary, awful things that despite being horrible and mercenary, made sense: they were all based on recent hit films (no accident that the first two of the things were follow-ups to Aladdin, the first animated feature to ever crack $200 […]

According to the original plan, at this point in our study of the dubious and uncertain matter of the Disney animated sequel, we were to have arrived at Hercules: Zero to Hero, a direct-to-video compilation of episodes of the television series spun off of the 1997 feature Hercules. Sadly, all of my powers, including those […]

Screens at CIFF: 10/15 & 10/16 & 10/19World premiere: 23 September, 2012, San Sebastian International Film Festival Part of me wants to eschew convention and not bother with any kind of synopsis for The Cleaner, the first feature by Peruvian writer-director Adriana Saba; and I will not indulge in this wish only because I am […]

Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: those of us mostly excited for Magic Mike on account of its director, Stephen Soderbergh, need to resign ourselves […]

Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: after this many entries in their surprisingly durable franchise, the zoo animals of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted are […]