Movie Monday: Exodus Gods and Kings
Well, Exodus: Gods and Kings didn’t exactly part the waters. But during a slow December weekend, Ridley Scott’s biblical epic still showed enough Old Testament oomph to reach the top of the box office mountain, chiseling out a less-than-commanding $24.5 million (estimated, of course). How does Exodus stack up with other would-be biblical blockbusters? Well, it […]
Movie Monday: Mockingjay Repeats … Again
If you’ve seen The Hunger Games movies, you know that the mockingjay is known for its ability to imitate: Whistle a few bars and the mockingjays will sing it back to you, note for note. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that the mockingjay’s namesake movie has shown a talent for repetition, too. The Hunger Games: […]
Wishful TV Thinking
Primetime television has never been a hoppin’ forum for realism. Trust me on this: I grew up watching Fantasy Island. And while our television sets have since eschewed tropical-based dream fulfilment via a white-suited Ricardo Montalban, we still like to get away from it all via the tube. Our culture’s most popular, buzzy shows are […]
Movie Monday: Mockingjay Flies Higher than Penguins
In this battle of the birds, the penguins never really had a chance. They’re flightless, for one thing. And while the titular stars of the Penguins of Madagascar may scheme a bit better than your common flightless foul (emus hardly ever hatch such outlandish plots), that’s hardly enough to bring down the graceful and imitative […]
The Little Mermaid Turns 25 (Which Is a Few Years Younger Than the Garden of Eden)
The Little Mermaid opened nationally in theaters 25 years ago Monday (Nov. 17). It proved to be a pretty significant day in the annals of animated filmdom, marking not just the beginning of Disney’s fabled renaissance (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King followed hot on the Mermaid’s scaly heels) but also an […]
Bill Cosby: Actions and Accusations
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to watch The Cosby Show in the same way again. I loved that show. Was a fan of it ever since I was a little kid. For a lot of us growing up in the 1980s, Bill Cosby, who played the funny, wise, patriarch of the Huxtable family, […]
Movie Monday: Dumb and Dumber To
Sometimes, we go to a movie expecting one thing and getting something entirely different. Not necessary bad, mind you … just different. We buy tickets for what we think is a sci-fi actioner and get instead deep ruminations on life and destiny. We ease into our theater chairs prepared for a sweet, Pixar-like movie featuring […]
Sesame Street is 43, 44, 45 Years Old! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
Sesame Street, PBS’ seminal children’s educational show, turned 45 yesterday—a ripe old age for a show whose primary fans are often too young to tie their shoes. And I was one of those fans from almost the very beginning. Granted, I don’t think I watched the first episode on Nov. 10, 1969. I was just […]
Movie Monday: Big Hero 6
When it comes to movies, don’t mess with Marvel. Just don’t. It doesn’t matter how unknown the property is or obscure the cast is or if the director is a sentient bunny. It doesn’t matter if the only superpowers in play are seasonal allergies. If someone sees fit to bring a Marvel property to the […]
Whatever Else Interstellar May Be, It’s Totally Gorgeous
Christopher Nolan’s new film Interstellar has been knocking around in my brain over the last couple of days. It is, as I say in the review, a very ambitious movie—one with lots of big themes that need some time to unpack—and I’m kind of excited about exploring some of them in an upcoming Movie Night. But […]
