Ernest & Celestine review: bear and mouse are friends
Might be the most ridiculously cute movie I’ve ever seen, in a way that transforms adorableness into something honest and wise and deeply satisfying.
animation
The Wind Rises review: Jiro dreams of flying
Visually ravishing, as you’d expect from Hayao Miyazaki, but there is, disappointingly, no drama and no conflict here.
The Lego Movie review: take the brick pill
You’ve seen this all before — it’s Toy Story meets The Matrix — just not done in Legos.
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts (86th Academy Awards) review
The French “Mr. Hublot” creates an utterly real yet completely fantastical world, a palpable steampunk environment of gorgeous mechanical loveliness.
Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie review: where is an extinction-level event when you need one?
Sub-vaudeville 1950s sitcom humor and a horrifically dated message about boys as heroes and girls as the heroes’ property. You know, for kids!
Frozen review: I have chills
The showstopping central musical number is a glorious anthem to female power and ability… and so, in fact, is the whole wonderful movie. Disney is finally getting it. (new DVD/VOD US/Can)
The Congress movie review (London Film Festival)
A hugely ambitious film reminiscent of The Matrix and the works of Terry Gilliam while also carving out its own apocalyptic sci-fi space.
Planes review: crash commercialism
“Good” for nothing but the electronic babysitting of toddlers and fomenting consumer desire in impressionable children for the new line of made-in-China Dusty Crophopper extruded plastic. (new DVD/VOD US/Can)
From Up on Poppy Hill review: gentle as a seaside breeze
Joyously warm and gentle… though perhaps too gentle to be entirely satisfying.
The Smurfs 2 review: a smurfeit of Smurfs
I am haunted by the crazed desperation in Jayma Mays’s eyes. She may have been blinking out a Morse-code SOS, but I can’t be sure…
