The Academy Award-nominated animated feature My Life as a Zucchini (France, 2016) uses stop-motion animation to tell the bitter-sweet story of an imaginative, vulnerable boy nicknamed Zucchini who is orphaned after the death of his abusive, alcoholic mother and sent to a foster home. But while it is set in France (the view from Zucchini’s […]
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) is the second reboot of the first superstar of the 21st century superhero boom since Sam Raimi’s hit trilogy and this time Sony (who still owns the movie rights) has handed the creative reins over to Marvel Studios and allowed them to integrate the webslinger into the Marvel Comics Movie Universe. Tom […]
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) – In the age of CGI and Pixar’s animation domination, the Oregon-based Laika is keeping the art of stop-motion animation alive in inventive, engaging, and engrossing features filled with textures and details you won’t find in even the greatest Pixar accomplishments. “If you must blink, do it now,” recommends […]
The buzz—for better and for worse—for the week in streaming debuts is over Iron Fist, the fourth original series in the Netflix Marvel superhero universe and the first to face disappointing reviews. Finn Jones stars as Danny Rand, the an American-born scion of a corporate billionaire who returns home after surviving a plane crash in […]
Gerry Anderson’s 1960s Supermarionation series action series about a private rescue organization with really cool vehicles was an inspired mix of Japanese monster movie mayhem and British stiff upper lip cool. It brought new meaning to the term “wooden performance”; its stars were literally puppets, a rather bland and interchangeable marionette family of clean living […]
Sesame Street has changed its address to HBO to launch its 46th season. The first two episodes debuted last week and new episodes (which now run about 26 minutes) arrive every Saturday morning. And, as part of the deal, seasons 41-45 are available in their entirety on HBO Now, Go, and On Demand, as well […]
Netflix Home (2014) is a busy, colorful, rapid-paced animated comedy about a misfit alien helping a human girl searching for her mother after an interstellar invasion. It’s a good one to distract the younger kids during the holidays but may be a little too annoying for adults, depending on your tolerance for Jim Parson’s voice […]
Netflix has Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection: a dozen mostly recent cartoons, including the inventive Get a Horse! with Mickey and Minnie traveling from the early Disney days into the 21st century, a pair of Oscar-winning shorts (Paperman and Feast), and the brand new Frozen Fever featuring the characters from Frozen, for all […]
Everyone is familiar with the landmark horror classics. This is one in a series of suggestions for Halloween viewing that may not be so familiar, including titles that teens and tweens (and in some cases adolescents) can watch without breaking the R-rating. In the midst of making their classic Christmas specials (like Rudolph the Red […]
