A certain Seussian purist I know refused to see this movie with me (or at all) on the grounds that’s all wrong and is doing with Jim Carrey what Aladdin did with Robin Williams. Statistically speaking, that is the most likely scenario from the people who brought you Ice Age, but… She also […]

Going into Enchanted, I was surrounded by the free screening unwashed at their most crass; my companion still had simmering road rage from her 12 mile, 1 hour commute to the theatre, and two people were on cell phones in the stalls in the bathroom. We came out glowing, humming the movie’s signature tune, […]

Zach Helm (writer of the delightful Stranger Than Fiction) writes and directs this film, one that is, by discussions I have had, either going to be a massive classic or vanish into obscurity. From these two works of Helms, it is clear that he loves the notion of inanimate objects being more in tune […]

Longtime Cinerina readers well know that I am no Shrek fan. Oh sure, the first movie was full of sly digs at Walt Disney animation studios and various corporate America icons - but funny? A little. Not better than Pixar’s Monsters Inc., which it inexplicably beat for the first ever Animated Feature […]

As my companion dourly noted, “I just paid $30.00 to see Star Wars.” (And yes, that’s matinee pricing and all I had was a water.) As you have probably heard by now, the book on which the movie was based was written by Christopher Paolini when he was 15 years old. Now, […]

My companion summed up this odd little movie best, though I would change the recipe slightly: “Part March of the Penguins, part Grease, and part Apocalypse Now…[one section] was like, all Apocalypse Now.”  I would substitute Newsies for Grease, but that’s being particular.  Newsies is more about a group united in effort, with dancing, and […]

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 […]

Now, this is a kids’ movie, first and foremost, so my high rating is based on the film’s core demographic and not geared to snobby, Milk-Dud encrusted cinephiles who scoff at a little Mark Isham -engineered heart tugging. Remember how good Disney used to be at making live-action animal movies? Well, I do, […]

It is difficult to write a fairy tale that can exist in modern times but retain its folksy, timeless quality. How many deep woods have you let your 5 year old child traverse to bring her grandmother bread at her incredibly isolated cottage? Nanny McPhee is based on the decades-old Nurse Matilda books […]

C.S. Lewis wrote this book first of the seven volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia, and many of my generation received the boxed set that had renumbered them so that this book was the first. My kindergarten teacher, Miss Connors, read us the first 2 or 3 books at nap time. Rereading them […]