Leap Year
Rental and Snacks
Let’s face it. When the poster of a the movie gives away the ending, you know that romantic comedies have utterly given up even pretending that there is any suspense as to whether our heroes will find love together. Most aficionados of the genre of course could care less, since [...]

Cinerina’s Best 50 Of The Decade: The 2000’s
Last turn of the decade I had only been writing for three years, so I didn’t think I could really support a Decade list.  Heavens to betsy how the years do add up!  I will definitely forget your favorite film, or some ridiculously obvious classic that I didn’t [...]

Cinerina’s 2009 Extremes
Some truly terrible movies came out in 2009, so terrible that I refused to see them. This may be the first year in recent memory where I have not rated a film “Avoid At All Costs.” This could mean that I just was less willing to plunk down my hard-earned money for [...]

James Cameron has always been an innovator. Whether it’s defining the gold standard for a female action lead or designing cameras and processes to make the exact film he is envisioning, Cameron is a technical wizard. Match his attention to detail and his creativity with the peerless effects and design team at Weta, [...]

The Road doesn’t answer many questions, not what happened, not who these people are, or where they are. It’s enough to know that Before is irretrievably gone forever, there is only Now. Now is after a cataclysmic event (my companion posited an extinction event comet strike) that has wiped out most of humanity, [...]

Oh Disney! You invented feature-length animation, revolutionized the children’s film industry, and infected little girls the world over with princess worship. Then Pixar swooped in and taught you how to make stories fancy looking (you skipped the class where they reminded you to also have stories in CG movies), and then you got [...]

Fantastic Mr. Fox, The
Rental with Snacks
Roald Dahl writes books of fantasy grounded in realism, and the Fantastic Mr. Fox is no exception. Wes Anderson is a director with a deadpan sense of absurdism and dysfunction. From them come this stop-motion animated film, a story of civilized wild animals trying to get their piece [...]

I am beholden to various entities to keep my review content PG. But in the interests of journalistic integrity, I feel I should report hat in my cramped notes I dropped, for my own train of thought record keeping, the F-bomb three times. Holy, Amazing, and just plain F-bomb. The usual tenor [...]

Michael Jackson’s death this year elicited a lot of strong responses in the world, from deep mourning to disdainful pedophile jokes. When this film was announced, the cynics of the world eyed it as a last ditch to profit off the talented, troubled man who now lies in Forest Lawn Cemetery. I was [...]

After Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I was very concerned that this very talky, complex book would be ruined like the last film.  Shining beacon of hope:  Screenwriter Steve Kloves is back! And it makes all the difference in the world.  Kloves really gets JK Rowling’s books and distills the important bits [...]