You have to begin by asking yourself, do we really want an origin story for Peter Pan? J.M. Barrie certainly didn’t seem to think we needed it when he first wrote the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up in December 1904. The book we’re more familiar with, Peter and Wendy, didn’t…
It’s entirely possible that I am simply too old to enjoy Krampus. The built-in audience for the movie seems to be families with perhaps older kids who still want to see a movie together for the holidays. It’s a safe movie in that way, with broad humor and a more passive approach to scaring people…
Say what you will about Tom Cruise as a person but as an actor and producer, he is one of the strongest performers in Hollywood. For the last 19 years, he has been responsible for Paramount Picturesâ Mission: Impossible franchise and has turned it into a goldmine. The fifth installment, Rogue Nation, arrives tomorrow in…
There’s a quote from [[[The Tale of Genji]]] that has stuck with me since I read it more than a decade ago (and I swear this is going to be a review of The Good Dinosaur so stick with me a moment here) in which they describe a painting Genji made for a painting contest…
Marvel’s Ant-Man, which was an international box office smash this summer, is also a schizophrenic movie demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of working within a shared universe. Where James Gunn was given a corner of the universe to play with the Guardians of the Galaxy allowing him to be cheeky and amusing while introducing cosmic…
The Harry Potter franchise is, of course, a cultural institution. It was the formative literary experience for a generation of young people and a monstrously successful film franchise. Unfortunately, it also popularized splitting a climactic book in to two movies; a practice that has since gone rampant leading to the division of the very thin…
I was a huge fan of Peanuts when I was a kid. I can vividly remember staying up late in bed reading collections of the comic strip until I could barely keep my eyes open. This should make me the ideal audience for The Peanuts Movie, but instead it just serves as a reminder of…
In Casino Royale, a bartender asks James Bond if he wants his martini shaken or stirred and Bond looks back at the man and responds, “Do I look like I give a damn?” and if your theater was anything like mine the crowd went nuts. It was a clear signal that we were discarding some…
Amy Schumer has become quite the comedienne, taking the stage, television, and now film by storm. Trainwreck, her starring vehicle for director Judd Apatow, was my first sustained exposure to her and thought the fresh eyes could glean what the fuss is all about. Still trying to figure it out. The story is about a…
In his wildly popular book on screenwriting [[[Save the Cat!]]], Blake Snyder suggests that every movie needs to fulfill the promise of the premise; to give the audience all of the things they expect to see in the movie based on the title and the promotional materials. You can’t make Legally Blonde without having scenes…
There was a wonderful science fiction romance in James Cameron’s original 1984 film The Terminator. It had a touch of everything: time travel, killer androids, romance, and hints of a technology gone haywire. It was shot on a modest budget with a familiar but not star cast, anchored by the hulking presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger….
James Bond endures, with the 24th film, Spectre, scheduled to open November 6. The sinister organization has plagued 007 from the earliest films but have yet to rear their hoary heads in the current incarnation with Daniel Craig as Bond. For those who are new to MI-6 and international espionage, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) and Twentieth…
