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The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear overalls.

While working underground to fix a water main, Brooklyn plumbers—and brothers—Mario and Luigi are transported down a mysterious pipe and wander into a magical new world. But when the brothers are separated, Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi.

Winning I shudder with the knowledge that in a few days, this grossed higher than any Pixar movie. Imagineer that. This about as charmless as it gets without the floor falling off, so I can only attribute the success to love of the character. As...
Published September 11, 2023
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The Bird People in China (1998)
The children of the sky.
Filmmaker(s): Takashi Miike

Wada, a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza, who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing.

Purity, Song, Jade Miike has a pretty solid pattern. He makes films for a distinctly Japanese audience, teasing out some issue or two that seems culturally rooted. This is his context. He shifts it into a magical, cinematic world and imagines scenes as episodes within...
Published September 11, 2023
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Bingo (1991)
More hip than humanly possible.
Filmmaker(s): Matthew Robbins

Bingo, the runaway circus dog, is off the leash and saving Chuckie's life! Bingo and the boy become the best of friends in this canine comedy featuring doggy disguises and skateboarding, pinball and prison. Chuckie and his parents are moving house, a thousand miles away, but Bingo won't be allowed to join them.

The American Spirit One of the strongest influences in how a society imagines itself is film, and of films the strongest are where the characters are most abstract. Abstraction can be through cartoons or cartoonizing, stereotyping or extreme dramatizing. But the most elegant to my...
Published August 28, 2023
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The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2022)
A journey, in search of home.

The unlikely friendship of a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse traveling together in the boy’s search for home.

Ensnared The affirmative platitudes that anchor this are inescapable, and since they are relatively true, you may as well embrace them. My tween boys did, and I’m glad for it. But why I am recommending this is the art and animation. I have to admit...
Published August 6, 2023
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Before Midnight (1933)
Lurking FINGERS of DEATH reached out of the dim and ghostly past!
Filmmaker(s): Lambert Hillyer

A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.

The Written Mystery The early thirties was a time of great experimentation with the detective narrative, leading eventually to noir. This is one of those experiments, and a rather fine one. It has a framing device where an old cop is telling a young one...
Published June 30, 2023
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Prometheus (2012)
The search for our beginning could lead to our end.
Filmmaker(s): Ridley Scott

A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Snowcrash It seems all the writing about this film is about the story, how it doesn’t hold your hand and what religious metaphors are exploited. Well, that matters a bit because it elevates the thing out of the ordinary package. But a much more interesting...
Published June 29, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
It's how you wear the mask that matters.

After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse’s very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most.

Chapter and Verse Lest I sound overly critical below, let me say up front that this is an important film if only because it extends the vocabulary. I’m excited by it and what we may expect. However, I recently commented on ‘Fast X’ and noted...
Published June 29, 2023
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Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
No experience necessary.

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.

Little Men The story is frippery. The tone light, but not as light as advertised. Action and effects are as expected and no more. What was remarkable to this viewer were a few of the character backstories. Our hero’s story was ordinary. A petty theft...
Published June 13, 2023
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F9 (2021)
Not all blood is family.
Filmmaker(s): Justin Lin

Dominic Toretto and his crew battle the most skilled assassin and high-performance driver they've ever encountered: his forsaken brother.

Blended Family, Family Secrets I can say that I witnessed an appreciative audience as my ten and eleven year old whooped and hollered at the stunts, oblivious to the surrounding machinery. For them, and I suppose many viewers, the movie other than the action sequences...
Published May 29, 2023
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Aladdin (1992)
Imagine if you had three wishes, three hopes, three dreams and they all could come true.
Filmmaker(s): Ron Clements, John Musker

Princess Jasmine grows tired of being forced to remain in the palace, so she sneaks out into the marketplace, in disguise, where she meets street urchin Aladdin. The couple falls in love, although Jasmine may only marry a prince. After being thrown in jail, Aladdin becomes embroiled in a plot to find a mysterious lamp, with which the evil Jafar hopes to rule the land.

Sweet Arabian Skins This, to my mind, is a terrific concoction. It has no story to speak of. Oh, there’s some motion and noise but they are only there to give us something to look at while the three main notions unfurl, all of which...
Published May 21, 2023
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