Fantastic Mr. Fox movie review: trip the dark fantastic

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach looked at a sweet-and-sour children’s story through a peculiarly skewed eye and said, This can be so much more. And they turned it into something touching and funny, and magically absurd and at the same time pointedly real. They turned it into something genius.

U.K. box office: ‘This Is It’ not so huge

Up is down after Michael Jackson’s arrival at multiplexes: 1. Michael Jackson’s This Is It: £4.9 million (NEW) 2. Up: £3.4 million (4th week; drops 10%) 3. Fantastic Mr. Fox: £1.5 million (2nd week; up 2%) 4. Saw VI: £.94 million (2nd week; drops 46%) 5. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant: £.54 million (2nd … more…

U.K. box office: ‘Up’ still up

It’s all those balloons holding it aloft: 1. Up: £3.8 million (3rd week; drops 26%) 2. Saw VI: £1.7 million (NEW) 3. Fantastic Mr. Fox: £1.5 million (NEW) 4. Couples Retreat: £.93 million (2nd week; drops 49%) 5. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant: £.798 million (NEW) (actual numbers, not estimates) Up had edged close … more…

my week at the movies: ‘Gentlemen Broncos,’ ‘Michael Jackson’s This Is It,’ ‘Creation,’ ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox,’ ‘The Fourth Kind,’ ‘Pirate Radio’ (aka ‘The Boat That Rocked’), ‘Collapse’

Busy, busy week. And awards season hasn’t quite hit yet (though screeners are starting to come). It’s gonna be a crazy couple months… Most hilarious title ever? Gentlemen Broncos (opens in the U.S. on October 30; no U.K. release date has been announced) looks to be a hoot… and I do really like Jared Hess’s … more…

trailer break: ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’

Take a break from work: watch a trailer… Man, I love this trailer! If the movie is half as much fun… well, I’ll love it half as much. But the movie had better be this much fun. It’s Wes Anderson, after all, doing up Roald Dahl. It’s gotta be, well, fantastic, right? “If what I … more…

best writing and direction of 2004: cut and print…

BEST DIRECTOR Lars von Trier, Dogville Ever a risktaker, Lars von Trier took one of the biggest risks onscreen in 2004 with a determinedly uncinematic film that was also unabashedly political — a breathtaking and refreshingly daring combination in an era of play-it-safe “entertainment.” Setting his cast and his scene on a bare, black-box stage, … more…