Login
Home
92 Lists
1531 Reviews
Collections
“I love musicals, ABBA, Meryl Streep, and a lot of the character actors appearing in supporting roles, but Mamma Mia! is, without a doubt, dreadful. Much of the blame goes not on the vague sketch of a plot, plenty of musicals have stories that merely exists as a threadbare setup between songs, but on” read more
“Call me a big sentimentalist, but I largely enjoy Fiddler on the Roof. Granted, it does go on far too long and drags in numerous spots, but there’s Topol’s alchemical work where he disappears into the character he’s playing, the memorable songs, and a general elegiac sense of a past being eras” read more
“Essentially a redress of Top Hat with ballet plugged into the plot contrivance and George and Ira Gershwin in place of Irving Berlin, Shall We Dance comes so close to recreating the delicate perfection of prior pairings that it’s frustrating when it falls just short. The major problem is that a bi” read more
“The best of the Fred and Ginger movies take place in an imaginary Art Deco world where the Great Depression takes place in an alternate reality, the champagne flows freely, and the ideal rich are charmingly bumbling their way through love and posh continental locations. The formula of their films ha” read more
“Jesus Christ, did the makers of this know at the time that they were inadvertently underscoring and signing off on a truly contemptible character study? Actually, a character study would imply that the main character experiences anything resembling coherent growth or reason for acting out in the way” read more
“What a strange film this is for a provocateur like Pedro Almodóvar. The Flower of My Secret is so tranquil and subdued that it nearly tips into the middlebrow provincialism that he so proudly flaunted before. There’s still a series of great female roles, populated by some of his favorite actresse” read more
“In a career abundant in provocations and skewering of provincial middlebrow aesthetics, Matador still announces itself as something punk rock and aggressive in Pedro Almodóvar’s oeuvre. Here is a film that opens with one of its main characters jerking off to Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace as” read more
Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas
“The inevitable sequel to a successful direct-to-video product, but they can’t announce it as such, so it’s instead marketed as an excuse to watch the beloved Disney icons being animated in CG for the first time. It looks terrible. The characters look strangely lifeless or off model, occasionally” read more
Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas
“Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas is a trio of generic, if heartwarming, yuletide fables that should provide enough babysitting capabilities for the tots in your life. Strung together through the rhyming narration of Kelsey Grammar, whatever annoyance I may have with him his voice is perfectly suited” read more
“Normally, I’m a big fan of Disney’s forays into the Hundred Acre Wood, but The Search for Christopher Robin feels like a great short film that’s been stretched too far. Grand Adventure? Hardly. It just keeps going and going, and while it is initially adorable that Pooh and the gang discover th” read more
Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers
“Not a takeoff of the source material so much a vague sequel, The Three Musketeers is a little over an hour but generally free from joy, memorable music, or anything with “oomph” that makes visiting Mickey and the gang so much fun. Sure, the fourth-wall jokes are cute, but they begin to pileup as” read more
“Proof positive that Kronk is best used as a garnish and not the main course. Yes, the entirety of the main cast, including all of the voice actors, reappear in this entry, but many of them are underutilized. Would it have killed Disney to focus instead on Yzma and her scheming? She’s at least ente” read more
“Leroy & Stitch is clearly the “wrap-up” episode of the franchise with all the experiments reunited, the major characters continuing plot points from Stitch! The Movie to their conclusion, and an Endgame-like “gang’s all here” montage of them fighting the bad guy(s). It’s …just kind” read more
Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch
“68 minutes to basically give a “love conquers all, even death” message to charming characters in endearing ramshackle narrative that does nothing but dilute the brand. Welcome to more of these direct-to-video Disney exercises in making profit above all else. Don’t get me wrong, the film indust” read more
“Less of a sequel movie and more clearly a pilot for the eventual series where we’d meet all 625 prior experiments to Stitch, Stitch! The Movie is… fine, I guess? As these direct-to-video franchise chum exercises go this one isn’t particularly egregious or noteworthy. The chaotic heart of Lilo ” read more
24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault (Deluxe)
“No, it’s not quite a compilation album of songs Stevie Nicks has sat on over the years, but it’s also not really an album of new material, either. It’s somewhere between these two points. These were various demos that Nicks had worked on throughout the years before finally deciding to finish a” read more
“In February 2002, Alanis Morissette released Under Rug Swept, the album that contained one of her last hits, “Hands Clean,” repeated here in an acoustic format. She quickly embarked on her Toward Our Union Mended tour but couldn’t let this particular set of songs go. So just in time for the ho” read more
“The thread that ties together the eight vignettes in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is his cinematic surrogate, often wearing his trademark hat. Like any anthology film, Dreams is only as good as any individual segment. While others sparked my engagement more, the ending results is still like that of Kur” read more