The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (review)

More like Voyage of the Yawn Treader, actually. Little kids will surely find this collection of fantastical geegaws enthralling — look, a talking mouse! hey, a minotaur! — but as a grownup fan of the magical and the mysterious, I was almost totally bored by this third, and perhaps most tryingly pious, installment in C.S. Lewis’s fanciful spin on Christian mythology.

The Nutcracker in 3D (review)

You already know the score — duh da-duh-da-duh! duh da-duh-da-duh! — but in case you’ve forgotten, The Nutcracker in 3D will attempt to mainline it into your brain, fuel-injecting sugar-plum fairy juice into your festivus lobe at the drop of, um, a sugar plum. If you think that’s a horrendously mixed metaphor, it’s got nothing on this polar-express train wreck…

Tangled (review)

Between the title change and writing in a male character who appeared to be taking over the film, Disney didn’t seem at that interested in making a Rapunzel film that was actually about Rapunzel. But I should have trusted. Because if there’s one thing Disney has in spades — besides pink princesses — it is a capability to transform simple cartoons into cinematic magic.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (review)

I’m almost entirely sure that no one who has not read The Deathly Hallows will be able to grasp what’s going on. The film is damn nigh impenetrable without the background of the novel, and all the previous novels in the series. It was almost impenetrable to me, who has read all the books, at least on an emotional level.

Megamind (review)

I like superhero stories that play with the tropes… and if such a story can take us to new places within a genre that seems like it must be totally played out by now, even better still. It turns out that Megamind is, in fact, just that kind of movie.

Alpha and Omega (review)

The bizarre non sequiturs that pass for jokes — such as the golf-playing goose who really, really hates cupcakes — make the poop jokes sound like wit.

Flipped (review)

Everything that is wrong with The Movies today in America is beautifully encapsulated in how this lovely little movie cannot find an audience in the current movie environment.