The Movie:

After seeing the first Frozen gross north of a billion dollars in worldwide box office, Disney's second bite at the apple was an inevitable one. And a lot of us afind ourselves in different positions than we did in 2013; the people from the first one have gone on to do other things, I've become a Dad, so now I have a little closer ear to the ground. But the film came out a few months back and made another pot of money and since then, the magical coronavirus has put everyone close to home, so now Disney has decided to push the film to its streaming service now, a couple of weeks after hitting video, so people can find things to do. It was a little hard for me to watch it with my kid, because of work things and other things, but we finally made it, so I guess a cure for the virus can't be far behind!

Jennifer Lee re...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

It took Disney nearly seven years to release a sequel to Frozen, the 2013 Disney Animation juggernaut that had little girls across the country dressing up as Princess Elsa for Halloween. That film is certainly one of the studio's better non-Pixar efforts, and become a worldwide phenomenon. Frozen won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, as well as Best Original Song, for Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez's "Let It Go," which also entered the international lexicon. The film was unusually successful at blending drama, comedy, music, song and female empowerment into one entertaining package, so it was inevitable that a sequel would eventually come. As is often the case, this delayed follow-up is a disappointment, despite a talented new and returning cast and strong animation.

...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

If you read my recent review of Aladdin, you know I hold the 1992 Disney animated movie in high regard. I was not particularly excited for this 2019 remake, which follows on the heels of The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Dumbo and others in Disney's push to revitalize older properties. Early trailers for Aladdin met with backlash over Will Smith's appearance as the digitally enhanced Genie, though I suspect this was more about a...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Disney's Aladdin was my favorite animated film growing up, and it remains near the top of my list. I was enthralled when I saw the film in theaters back in 1992, screened my family's VHS copy hundreds of times, bought the soundtrack to blast on my stereo, and played the 1993 videogame for hours on my Sega Genesis console. This is the animated film of my generation; a perfect mix of music, drama, action and comedy, with one gigantically memorable performance from the late Robin Williams. It has been a few years since I watched Aladdin, so I was happy to receive Disney's new 4K Ultra HD release of the film, timed with the home-video release of the recent live-action remake, and give it a spin. The movie definitely holds up, and it is refreshingly rough-and-tumble for a children's movie. While there are...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

The first decade of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, all 23 of them, is an impressive cinematic achievement. With far more highs (Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Infinity War, etc.) than lows (Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 2), there have been few extended franchises in ...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

If nothing else, Captain Marvel made me nostalgic for the ‘90s of my childhood. From its pop soundtrack to its of-the-era locations, like now-defunct Blockbuster Video, to its lead character's grunge dress, Captain Marvel is clearly a ‘90s baby. With the Marvel Cinematic Universal moving away from the last decade's heavy hitters like Iron-Man, Captain America and Thor, new heroes have been introduced, including Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), aka Captain Marvel, who also starred in this summer's Avengers: Endgame. This is the origin story for the popular female superhero, and, although it has been criticized by some as unnecessary, convoluted and unoriginal, I found Captain Marvel to be entertaining and Larson to be a compelling lead.

Starforce member Vers (Larson...Read the entire review

To begin with, I'm not especially enamored of Walt Disney's original Mary Poppins (1964). What's good about that film are the sum of its parts: Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, the delightful songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, the extended animated sequence, etc. But the film, adapted from the P.L. Travers book series, offered paper-thin characters and the thinnest of stories. The various components, taken as a whole, make it entertaining but, as a movie, it's not all that wonderful.

The now Walt-less Disney's long-in-gestation Mary Poppins Returns (2018) has some of the same plusses and minuses, with some good aspects lacking in the original film while exhibiting other problems all its own. My eleven-year-old daughter loved it, but I found it wanting much like the original film. Lavishly produced on a budget of, reportedly, $130 million, the movie looks great but under Rob Marshall's d...Read the entire review