Philip K. Dick wrote the novel on which this film was based in 1977, in the middle of his personal and extraordinary journey with drugs. His books can loosely all be described as trippy (as are the films made from them, such as Blade Runner and Minority Report), but this book’s paranoia, identity confusion […]

Pixar is the safest entertainment bet in town. That said, when I see what was really an uninteresting-looking preview with some anthropomorphized cars being concerned about winning the big race, I ran out to see it. If it had been by Dreamworks or Warner Brothers, I think I would have skipped it. […]

I walked into the movie with kind of low expectations (too many big names, not enough of an apparent premise, untested animation company), and walked out with a gigantic smile on my face and a desire to see it again. Paramount used the Dreanworks Animation team’s expertise and somehow got a team of […]

How can Robots be so good and both Ice Age movies be so lame? Sure, both Ice Age movies have good attention to detail insofar as biology and various species-specific jokes, but when the best part of both movies is the non-verbal interstitial episodes of Scrat trying to get his walnut, maybe you should […]

Disney divorced itself from Pixar, apparently believing they could take their legacy of quality hand-drawn animation and the knowledgebase of partnering with Pixar and make some magic. In their first solo outing, however, Disney’s Chicken Little falls flat. Despite stellar vocal performances from all the leads (Zach Braff, Garry Marshall, Joan Cusack, Steve […]

I never dreamed I would ever give any Wallace and Gromit outing a rating of less than Full Price Feature, so I doubt my own reticence. Perhaps it’s just that I wasn’t able to watch it three times over obsessively and pick up the billion minutiae that I used to gleaning from the shorts, […]

I was dreading a snooze such as the kind that was always brought on by A Nightmare Before Christmas. During that film I fell asleep in the theatre, and on every subsequent attempt to watch it at home, before 30 minutes could pass. Beautiful, but deadly dull. Corpse Bride was well on […]

After Dreamworks’ last three moneymaking lame-fests in their forays into computer animation, I admit fully that I was armed with very low expectations when I went into Madagascar. For you animation-wary grownups out there, this is definitely a kids film. It does have some characterizations and little one-shot jokes that adults will enjoy, […]

We all knew Robots was going to look amazing, but the terror you may understandably feel after being betrayed again and again by the non-Pixar companies is a legitimate terror. The ads push the vocal talent over the story and there’s the very real risk of a Robin-Williams-run-amok factor. In other words, we […]

Bizarre is the word my companion exclaimed at least four times while watching this film, and there’s really no better descriptor for the Weinstein Brothers’ freshman animation feature. It is entertaining, it may or may not really be suitable for children, but it certainly is odd. This is a good thing, escaping from […]