Comparisons — to Disney’s first live-action princess movie remake (2015’s Cinderella) and to the 1991 animated tale of a Beauty who wants “much more than this provincial life” (and the Beast who must win her heart if he is to recover his humanity) — may not be unavoidable, but they …
Comparisons — to Disney’s first live-action princess movie remake (2015’s Cinderella) and to the 1991 animated tale of a Beauty who wants “much more than this provincial life” (and the Beast who must win her heart if he is to recover his humanity) — may not be unavoidable, but they …
In 2008, a group of bored SoCal teens — some well-off, others less so — started getting their kicks by breaking (actually, walking) into various minor celebrities' homes and stealing their clothes, their shoes, their jewelry, and even their accessories. This is a filmed re-enactment of that. Director Sofia Coppola …
The trailer for The Circle jerked audiences in the direction of a paranoid thriller of universal proportion, but all director James Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) could make good on was a wormhole of narcissism down which he could make his latest film spiral. Mae (Emma Watson) won the lottery …
Or for short, Harry Chamber Pot. In the second screen adaptation of a J.K. Rowling children's book, our now pubescent hero fumbles his way to a giant, squirming, slithering basilisk (syn., cockatrice) via a concealed orifice in the girls' lavatory, the haunt of a ghost called Moaning Myrtle: "Harry, if …
The epic chronicle ends, after eight films that filled a decade. The over $7 billion in movie lucre it will finally receive is far less important than the many millions of fans who have loved the storytelling abundance, the beautiful splurges of craft, the three growing heroes (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma …
The fourth installment in J.K. Rowling's series of children's books yields a two-and-a-half-hour movie which, for all its furious activity, gets virtually nowhere. It gets, more specifically, through the "legendary" Triwizard Tournament, only to arrive at the dampening admonition, "Dark and difficult times lie ahead." Potterites, under the freedom-of-religion pact, …
Part VI — Pot VI — comes close to a complete cheat. The once child actors, children no more, are developing faster than the story, and indeed the foretold war with the Dark Lord tends here to be crowded out by assorted amorous hankerings among Hogwarts classmates. (Those broomsticks for …
Pot V, if you're counting. War with the Dark Lord, as you might recall from the end of Pot IV, approaches; and after another two-and-a-quarter hours of stretching and padding, it still approaches. At the rate Daniel Radcliffe is aging, Harry looks on course to be the World's Oldest Grad …
Or for short, Pot III. It has a new director — Alfonso Cuarón, of A Little Princess and, less pertinently, Y Tu Mamá También — and a new Dumbledore — Michael Gambon, in place of the late Richard Harris — in addition to new roles for the likes of Gary …
The children's book by J.K. Rowling, now a movie by Chris Columbus — maker of, among others, Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months, Stepmom, and Bicentennial Man, chief rival of Steven Spielberg for his in-touchness with the Inner Child. No longer applicable, quite plainly, will be the …
Director Greta Gerwig reteams with her Ladybird star Saoirse Ronan for a cast-heavy but still nimble adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s story of sisters making a home and making a life in spite of of limited options and opportunties. (Neither Meryl Streep as stern Aunt March nor Emma Watson as …
Author Stephen Chbosky adapted and directed this version of his bestselling young adult novel about Charlie (Logan Lerman), an emotionally damaged high school freshman who is lucky enough to fall in with a couple of senior step-siblings: the fabulously gay Patrick (a barely restrained Ezra Miller) and the adorable Sam …
Alejandro Amenábar (The Others) writes, co-produces, and directs a fun cast (Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson, David Thewlis) in a thriller that combines psychology (regression therapy) and religion (ritual Satanic abuse). Hoo!
Charmingly sincere fairy tale of forgiveness, revolving around a kingdom known for its soup, the dark days that befall it, and its truthful, fearless, chivalrous deliverer, an undersized mouse with oversized ears and ego. A magnificent cast if you could see them, if, that is, they weren’t hidden behind stiff …