• March 26, 2010
• Action, Adventure, At Home, Family

I went into How to Train Your Dragon with absolutely no expectations. Zero. Nada. But by the time the closing credits were winding up, I found myself loitering in...

• December 28, 2009
• Animation, At Home, Drama, War

It’s a shame that this film is only well-known in its native country of Japan and by discerning international fans of anime. In the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), it...

• December 28, 2009
• Adventure, Animation, At Home, Family

An inarguable masterpiece of gentle, sweet storytelling combined with gorgeous hand-drawn animation, My Neighbor Totoro is an indisputable classic of anime from famed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki and his...

• November 28, 2009
• Animation, At Home, Comedy, Drama

Raise your hand if you loved The Polar Express! Is your hand up? Stay here. Is your arm pressed closely to your side while you make a cringey face?...

• November 27, 2009
• Animation, At Home, Family

Of all the Disney classics, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has to be one of the hardest to dissect from a critical perspective. As Disney’s first feature length...

• July 11, 2009
• Action, Adventure, Animation, At Home

The best thing about Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the introduction, which served as a trailer for the film, and plays like a fabulous short film. Scrat...

• May 29, 2009
• Adventure, Animation, At Home, Comedy

Filled with spectacular art direction and ever-clever writing, Up tells the story of elderly balloon vendor Walter Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), who decides to fulfill a life-long promise...

• December 28, 2008
• Animation, At Home, Family

Unlike some of the more recently wonderous and often dark films by Hayao Miyazaki (like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke), Ponyo is squarely for the My Neighbor Totoro set…...

• October 23, 2008
• Action, Adventure, At Home, Comedy

One of my favorite things about classic Rankin Bass specials is that they’re as quirky as they are endearing. They don’t just give you traditional holiday tales, they throw...

• August 29, 2008
• Adventure, Animation, At Home, Family

Three-dimensional films, as a gimmick, still seem to be in the relative stages of infancy after all these years of the medium being touted as “the next big thing”....

• February 23, 2008
• Animation, At Home, Family

I like the Peanuts gang as much as the next person, but they have given me moments of pause in my life. Like when I was six and they...

• February 13, 2008
• Adventure, Animation, At Home, Comedy

A pretty white kitty named Duchess (seductively voiced by Eva Gabor) lives with her kittens in the mansion of her elderly Madame. I mean, I guess Madame is elderly,...