SPECIAL FEATURES In an interesting new twist to the Disney’s oft-rereleased video packaging, this latest version of The Little Mermaid (the 30th Anniversary Signature Collection Edition) indeed offers all the previous extras and more… but digitally. With consumers moving away from physical media, it is a savvy move to sell a sleeker version of …
There is not really any reason why Snow White and the Huntsman needed a sequel. It did well at the box office, but wasn’t a HUGE hit, and it is mostly remembered for the off-camera hanky panky between married director Rupert Sanders and star Kristen Stewart. Oops. But now there is a sequel, where we …
One of the nicest things about the Cinderella reboot is that it offers more back-story around every aspect of the plot. We meet Cinderella (actually named Ella, and played by Downton Abbey‘s Lily James) as the cherished only child of two loving parents. Her early life is gentle and idyllic, with the greatest hardship being …
After a pretty spectacular start, with a three-master pirate schooner literally sailing through the air in the midst of a WWII London blitz (cool!), I was giving this movie the benefit of the doubt. Orphan Peter has been snatched from the orphanage by pirates and brought to Neverland, which strangely looks like the mines of Mad …
Wild Flowers is based on seven stories, but the first one is over within five minutes of the beginning. A woman dies in a thunderstorm and is buried. Her small children, with their prayers at her grave, summon her spirit from beneath the soil in the form of beautiful wild flowers. The purpose of opening …
Based on the 1987 Tony-nominated Broadway musical of the same name, Into the Woods shows what could happen if you threw a bunch of fairy tale characters together in the same story and watched as their worlds collided and intertwined. The film focuses on a Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) as they …
Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is a sweet farmboy (farm-teen?) who yearns for adventure. He grew up listening to tales of giants coming down from their kingdom “between heaven and earth” to battle humans, but they were just stories, right? Real life proves to be much more boring. That is until he accidentally comes across some magical …
Perhaps director Sam Raimi’s biggest obstacle in this epic prequel to The Wizard of Oz is his choice of leading man. As Oscar “Oz” Diggs, a magician-slash-con man working in a traveling circus, James Franco is, well, uninteresting and kind of flat. Once transported – via whirling magical tornado – to the land of Oz, …
The film, which blends live action and heaps of CGI, finds a 19-year-old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returning to Wonderland – a place she’d grown to believe was just a dream – and reconnecting with its wacky and weird inhabitants. Among them are the colossally craniumed Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the dreamy and squeamish White …
Watching the 1966 BBC production of Alice In Wonderland is not so much an exercise in entertainment as it is an adventure in literary and film history. Ostensibly, it’s not clear why we’d want to revisit this harsh black and white production scored by Ravi Shankar and featuring the likes of Michael Redgrave, Peter Cook, …