Monthly Archives: March 2019

Don’t wait for the phone to ring, “make your own work,” actors are told. Stage a play with a part for you in it, write yourself a star vehicle and find the financing to get it filmed. Veteran character actress … Continue reading →

A beloved Australian tale about a boy, his pelican and preserving and respecting nature earns a sympathetic new telling in “Storm Boy,” which could be called a remake, a reboot and a sequel all at once. Colin Thiele’s novel was … Continue reading →

Gloom and doom hang over Tim Burton’s live-action (ish) remake of “Dumbo,” a classic in the Disney cartoon canon. You knew from the source material and the trailers to this remake that he was going for a sweet, sentimental fable, … Continue reading →

There’s almost certainly market research backing up Nickelodeon/Universal’s decision to put “Dora the Explorer” in high school, strip the “boots” off “Boots” — her digital monkey pal, and generally “Tomb Raider” the daylights out of this adorable pre-tween character, her … Continue reading →

Yeah, looking forward to this one. Tim Burton’s hit or miss recent track record be darned.

I say, not very sporting, wot wot? Calling your movie “Pet Graveyard” when it has nothing to do with pets, and barely visits the graveyard, or as the neighborhood kids misspelled it to Stephen King, “Sematary?” That’s not cricket. But … Continue reading →

This Indian melodrama and dance fantasia opens April 19. The trailer doesn’t give much away, save for the dance, the setting and the fact that “His Father’s Voice” is in English.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8I_uFk4ck

They still eat spaghetti in Italia. And they still make Westerns, though not like in the old “spaghetti Western” days — not with horses, six guns and Sergio Leone theme songs. “Dogman” is a grim to the point of bleak … Continue reading →

She gets the life-threatening menace across, just with a glare. As the actress making this threat, in the guise of abused-woman turned avenger, is that skinny slip of a thing Olivia Wilde, that glare had better be lethal. And in … Continue reading →

The pitch has a hint of “madcap” about it. A teenage spitfire and future rebellious movie starlet goes to New York at 16, accompanied by an older and over-matched chaperone. But even though “The Chaperone” is coming to theaters, it’s … Continue reading →