Family Films
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A Gritty Goodness: The River Thief (Not Rated)
The typical hero of a faith-based film measures their own satisfaction with the ending by the metric ton. If you stuck a teaspoon in the ending of the average Christian film, you’d pull it out dripping with enough sweet goo to give everyone in the world a mouthful of cavities. We don’t merely like redemption. […]
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Left Behind: A Good Premise for a Lousy Movie (Not Rated)
Blessed be Netflix, that magical website which allows one to watch terrible movies without feeling guilty about paying for it. After all, you already dished out $8 for the month. The only problem is that sometimes the movies aren’t just bad. They are horrid. Left Behind is a perfect illustration. One will, no doubt, walk […]
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Beyond the Mask: Parable or Fluff Film? (PG)
Some stories shun a theme or philosophy or moral—they are meant purely for enjoyment. No one gets much moral edification from The Three Musketeers, but it remains a classic because we enjoy reading it. Die Hard has remained popular not because of any deep and lasting truths, but because it’s macho eye candy. These movies […]
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Charlotte’s Web (1973) (G)
In the world of trigger warnings, where one needs to wear kid gloves just to touch the kid gloves, the old 1973 animated adaptation of Charlotte’s Web is a relief. I see recent children’s movies from time to time, and I know that beloved characters still die, but nothing in kid’s movies of late rivals the […]
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Cinderella: Unenlightened And Loving It (PG)
In the last ten years, the Disney Corporation has broken the heads off more than a few statues they carved back in the 50s and 60s. Given that the company made their billions entertaining children, and given that Americans in no wise view children as they did when your grandparents were kids, such image smashing […]
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Song of the Sea (PG)
The first words of the Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea are a quotation from Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child”: Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand. For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. In the poem, a group of fairies […]
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Tomorrowland (PG)
In the opening minutes of Tomorrowland, a young boy shows us his homemade jetpack. It is meant to be fun and inspiring, but has one problem: it doesn’t work. It’s always nice when a movie hands you a metaphor for itself. It’s not nice when that movie breaks your heart in the process. There may […]
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Song of the Sea (PG)
Come away, O human child To the waters and the wild With a fairy, hand in hand For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. This quote from Yeats fittingly opens Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea, which seeks to understand a world full of weeping through the eyes of a human […]
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Where the Wild Things Are: Put Off All Your Beast (PG)
“Inside all of us is a Wild Thing,” goes the tagline to Spike Jonze’s 2009 film Where the Wild Things Are, based on the popular children’s book by Maurice Sendak and Max is the wildest of the wild, son and younger brother in a broken family. Jonze with co-adapter Dave Eggers craft a touching film […]
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Grimm Tales: Into the Woods (PG)
The woods of classic fairytale lore are the locus of secrets, danger, and freedom. The wolf knows he is safe to stalk Little Red Riding Hood behind the trees; the witch trusts that no one will find Rapunzel’s tower in its depths. Fast forward several hundred years, and Disney cartoons have scraped much of the […]
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Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas (PG)
Having spent the last several days reading reviews of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, and now sitting down to write my own take, I am reminded of the 2000 presidential election in which both Bush and Gore hired teams of lawyers to sue one another over the results before the votes were even cast. Saving Christmas […]
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The Giver (PG-13)
A brilliant sunset. A wedding dance. The color red. Each person who reads these words will see a unique image. Humanity may share experiences, but because of our memories—and our emotions—we approach these commonalities in vastly different ways. Variety and choice aren’t just the spice of life. They make us human. In The Giver, a […]
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Boyhood (R)
Boyhood is heartbreaking for this reason; in a scant 164 minutes this mortal life is seen in full Solomonic brevity, breathlike and fleeting. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is six when the film begins and he ages, along with his co-stars Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Lorelei Linklater, at such a breakneck pace that there’s an inescapable desperation over youth, its opportunities and misfortunes.
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How to Train Your Dragon 2 (PG)
Pet dragons, taken as a whole, are worth any trouble they might cause. At least that’s what the Vikings of Berk have learned five years after the chief’s son, Hiccup, trained his first dragon. How to Train Your Dragon 2 endeavors to fly above its predecessor but, like many sequels, fails to capitalize on the […]
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Falling Down (R)
I used to live about three miles from where I worked, which is close enough, although twelve stoplights separated the front door of my house from the front door of my place of business. On the wrong afternoon drive home, the fact that Cain’s first great project after slaying his brother was to build a […]
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Maleficent (PG)
The Walt Disney Company, 20th century curator of childhood-born romantic prejudices and sundry other idiocies, has a bone to pick. With itself. In the latest adjustment of the Grimm’s work, Disney takes itself to task for all the delicious animated lovey-dovey nonsense they packed into kid’s heads back in the 50s and 60s. That prince’s […]
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How to Train Your Dragon (PG)
According to ancient British legends, King Alfred wasn’t a big fan of the Vikings. He spent several years of his reign ousting the Danish warriors, who burned monasteries and killed unarmed monks. Good thing the real Vikings didn’t train dragons. The warriors of How to Train Your Dragon, a 2010 animated hit, bear practically no […]
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Million Dollar Arm (PG)
Whenever a movie is sold as a “feel good” movie (inevitably the “feel good movie of the year”) I feel my heart grow cold despite the assured “heartwarming” results. It’s even worse when it’s based on a true story. Often this sort of fare is as savory as the organic pellets soaked overnight to be […]
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What If… (PG)
In Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want, Mel Gibson played a male chauvinist who was miraculously granted the ability to hear the thoughts of women as though those thoughts were being expressed verbally. Gibson was Nick Marshall, ad exec and lady killer, who never gave a second thought to what women wanted, but took what he […]
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Mr. Peabody and Sherman (PG)
Walking into the multiplex, I looked forward to Rob Minkoff’s Mr. Peabody and Sherman with an anticipation I usually do not feel for animated cartoons. Mr. Peabody’s Improbable History, the source material for this new release, stands high among the best animated series of all time and has been unjustly neglected by those who profess […]