Family Films
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Toy Story 4 (G)
About midway through, Toy Story 4 tosses out a 2001 joke, which is only mildly surprising — what is Pixar known for, after all, if not their magically synchronous grasp on both rich maturity and wonder-instilling innocence? Their artistry has always extended past the typical fifty-fifty split between fart jokes to keep the kids drooling […]
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Pokémon Detective Pikachu (PG)
In my review for 2019’s criminally underrated The Kid Who Would Be King (still not a fan of that title), I lamented the dearth of classic family adventures like the ones Joe Johnston was so good at directing during the 1990s. What I’d neglected to remember was that we’d actually gotten a fairly good and fairly […]
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Dumbo (PG)
In a sense, viewing this iteration of Dumbo seated next to my mother was to come full circle: I watched the original film every single day for a month when I was a toddler – or so she tells me. Of course the Nietzschean themes of eternal recurrence and childlike wonder are so archetypal that the original film, a masterpiece written in the key of kitsch, uses them without so much as a wink or a nod to belie its philosophical quandary or artistic intent. This latest film had high standards to live up to.
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The Kid Who Would be King (PG)
The inexplicably long-titled The Kid Who Would be King (was there no easier alternative?) opened at the end of January this year without any fanfare from 20th Century Fox. It’s no surprise that the film sunk like a stone at the box office. The marketing campaign just wasn’t appealing, there’ve been countless films about Arthurian legend, and, worst […]
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The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (PG)
The LEGO Movie is the best American animated feature film of the last decade. The LEGO Movie 2 is not. It’s not even the second best – that crown probably goes to Toy Story 3 – but I would put it in my top five. Stylistically, the sequel is just as strong as any of the other LEGO releases, which is […]
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Leave No Trace and the Gift of Fellowship (PG)
“It was a rough year.” This sentiment always begins its annual excursion as December comes to a close; in that tiresome week’s span during which Christmas is behind us and the short-lived joys of new year’s resolutions are ahead, there’s little to consider but the disappointments and shortcomings yielded from the last twelve months. And now, […]
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Mary Poppins Returns (PG)
Although it’s somewhat of a cornball statement, and it’s certainly not applicable to this modern era of the House of Mouse, there really is some kind of Disney Magic. You’d have to go back several decades at this point to see that magic in action, but there was a time when Walt Disney Pictures knew […]
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It’s a Wonderful Life (PG)
Scrooge’s nephew calls Christmas “a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the […]
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Bumblebee (PG-13)
To watch Bumblebee is to be caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between two different movies. One is a forgettable blockbuster and wannabe franchise reboot about toys from the 1980s, and the other is an efficient if not novel throwback to children’s adventure films of that decade like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the end, […]
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PG)
In the evangelical circles of my childhood, Harry Potter was anathema; when I was allowed to read the books in high school, they still carried the sense of something forbidden about them, though by the time I reached college, J.K. Rowling was suddenly accorded the reverence due a long-lost member of the Inklings. Suffice it […]
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God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (PG)
When a movie studio produces the third installment in any series and that longed-for beast — that monetary white stag — the franchise, promises to emerge, they face a watershed question: numerals or subtitles? Historically, the dilemma has proven a little more complex than two roads diverging in a yellow wood. While some (recently, the […]
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Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (PG-13)
Mr. Fred Rogers, the star of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, not only challenges the concept of love, but what it is to express it. Mr. Rogers believed that everyone had God-given intrinsic value that made them lovable and capable of loving one another, whereas most people feel or are told that in order to be loved they […]
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Incredibles 2 (PG)
In the last 40 years, American theaters have received around 70 superhero movies with lead characters recognized and known by audiences who’ve never even picked up a comic book. Their rate of release has gone from 4 openings a decade in the 1980s to 5 or more a year since 2016. The question for many […]
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Bambi (G)
Bambi needs no explanation, no grand thesis or deep thematic explication. It can be understood immediately, not only at the cognitive and emotional levels, but at the most basic: from within the unconscious. It is a story about growing up and coming of age that can be understood by anyone immediately. It is a basic […]
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi – An Explication (PG-13)
Although I have waited till now to publish any written thoughts on the film, it is fairly common knowledge in various circles of the internet that I do not much care for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The number of fishes above might also indicate this, though I have found it difficult to settle on a rating for the film, because my thoughts and feelings on it are mixed – conflicted, one might say.
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Brother Bear (G)
I’ll begin with the bold claim that Brother Bear is one of the finest animated films Disney has produced in the past quarter century. At least, it is one of their most underrated and unappreciated. Granted, I tend to favor a handful of Disney’s supposed flops over a number of their “canonical” hits. I tend to root for underdogs, and perhaps I’m too loyal to films that left a deep impression on me in my childhood.
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TRON: Legacy (PG)
TRON: Legacy can hardly be called a great film, but it made quite the impression on me when I first saw it on opening night back in December of 2010, and I have been making excuses for it ever since. Emerging from the theater, I might even, in my adolescent fervor, have described it as […]
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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 […]