I finally saw Frozen last night and I found it to be entertaining with magnificent art direction, a stunning production design and beautiful animation. As they always do, even when the story isn’t great, the artists at Disney produced work that is really second to none. While this film has a good story, however, I …
Category: Reviews
Today’s Question: Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?
This has been going around in my circle the past couple of years, and I’ve been hearing it even more this year. There is a cantankerous debate going around about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. On the surface it seems like a ridiculous debate to have, but it does stir up questions about …
The legend continues…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elczv0ghqw0
Top 5 Baseball Movies
There are a couple of sports, namely baseball and boxing, that seem to lend themselves very well to the arts of storytelling and film making. Certainly there have been plenty of films about football (The Longest Yard, Remember the Titans), hockey (Miracle, Youngblood), basketball (Hoosiers, White Men Can’t Jump), and soccer (Victory), and there have …
“The Croods” – An Excellent Family Film
Full disclosure: I work for DreamWorks Animation, although I didn’t do very much work on The Croods. That being said, this is a wonderful film for family audiences for a number of reasons. Like all DreamWorks Animation films, the artistic vision in this film is incredible. An entire world was created that is at once …
Lincoln: A Case Study on Amazing Dialogue
If Tony Kushner takes home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Lincoln, he will do it largely on strength of the superior dialogue that he wrote for that script. From the plain-spoken dialect he gave to Abraham Lincoln to the sophisticated euphemisms he gave to William Seward to finally the absolute …
Django Unchained: My Favorite Film of the Year, But…
With the Academy Award nominations out today (and I admit that I still need to see some of the films), I wanted to spend some time talking about the film that is my favorite of the year so far, and that is Django Unchained. However, rather than sing its praises and extol the virtues of …
Underrated Holiday Movie: “The Family Man”
It’s not a terrific movie, and it is certainly not without flaws, but I watched The Family Man this holiday season for the first time since seeing it in the theater when it came out just a little over a decade ago. However, from a screenwriting and storytelling perspective, there are a lot of good …
“Rise of the Guardians” is THE Holiday Film To See This Year
If you didn’t see Rise of the Guardians over the weekend, and judging by the box office numbers you didn’t, then you should do whatever it takes to see it at some point this Holiday season. If you have a family and children, you should see it for the obvious reasons. If you’re interested in …
All Time Favorite Thanksgiving Movie: “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”
Not only is this one of the top comedies of the 80’s with some classic comedic lines (Neal – “Where’s you’re other hand?” Dell – “Between two pillows.” Neal – “Those aren’t pillows!”), but it also tells a compelling story, has great storytelling components, likable characters, and strong thematic elements. This is one of those …