Abominable movie review: a bit of a snow job
Lovely animation and gentle, kid-pitched life lessons can’t quite overcome the familiar feel of this E.T. retread, nor the forced sense of wonder that is more convenient crutch than anything organic.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie review: animation gets reanimated
Has a verve rare in big-budget movies at the moment. Fun and fresh and legitimately engages with its source material on the levels of story, visuals, and mythology all at once. It feels like discovering storytelling anew.
Solo: A Star Wars Story movie review: where has our scoundrel gone?
A Star Wars–flavored juice drink* of a movie (*contains 10% real juice) that tells us nothing of significance we didn’t already know about Han Solo, in an incarnation that lacks his essential charisma and precarious danger.
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.
The Lego Movie trailer 2: definitely maybe
I may potentially be feeling slightly more optimistic about this movie now than I did after the first trailer. Or at least I feel slightly less despair.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 trailer: Jurassic pork
I laughed at a trailer. I actually laughed at a trailer. I mean, in a way that they wanted me to laugh.
21 Jump Street movie review: the silly blue line
Fueled almost entirely by an appreciation of its own ridiculousness, balancing absurdity with smart truths and walking a fine tonal line to make us care about characters barely more than cartoons.
21 Jump Street (redband trailer)
Oh. My. God. Please kill me now. What have they done to my show?
totally quotable! 2009
Here are the most quotable movie lines of the year 2009. No ranking — newer quotes are posted at the top. [Warning: May contain spoilers.] “I’m craving a burger. Is that strange?” –Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), as he puts on his bomb suit, The Hurt Locker “If he wasn’t an insurgent, he sure the … more…
question of the day: Is this the greatest year ever for animated films?
Peter Hartlaub at SFGate’s The Poop — a baby blog, not a movie blog — recently asked raised an intriguing possibility: [T]his may be the greatest year for animated feature films of all time. One could make make a strong argument for 1937 with the seminal “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” 1940 with “Pinocchio” … more…
