Noah is the filmic mashup between a Narnia-esque fantasy, a Shakespearean family drama, and a gritty biblical morality tale, all rolled into an epic cinematic experience. This is not your Sunday-school Noah, with happy flannel-graph animals gathered on a boat beneath a rainbow. Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky Read More …
“Ideals are peaceful. History is violent,” explains one soldier in Fury, which shows the intense collaboration required among soldiers during combat, as well as the physical and psychological toll war takes on those who fight it. Principles give way to rationalizations amid repeated kill-or-be-killed engagements, Read More …
In Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, adapted from a Daphne du Maurier short story, an English couple (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) grieves over the accidental drowning death of their daughter. At their new home in Venice, a series of uncanny and portentous circumstances unfolds as Read More …
It is conventional wisdom in art criticism that the best comedy and the best musicals are laced with sadness. We speak of art as escape, yet we are typically bored or unmoved by pure farce or purse spectacle. That’s part of what makes The Young Read More …
The first thing to understand about The Muppet Christmas Carol is that it is—as Ethan Warren brilliantly argues in a classic thinkpiece at Bright Wall/Dark Room—the best adaptation of Dickens’ classic short story. The second thing to understand is that the film is a product of a serendipitous Read More …
Go ahead: Say your worst about The Sound of Music. Call it sentimental, schmaltzy, mawkish, treacly. Roll your eyes with Christopher Plummer, who famously derided the material as “The Sound of Mucus.” Nod in agreement with the hostile reviews of leading critics of 1965, like Pauline Read More …
An appreciation of Singin’ in the Rain is almost redundant; the joy of watching this greatest of all classic Hollywood musicals is as self-explanatory as the joy of performance animating the film is self-evident. The onscreen joy is, of course, an illusion: The shoot was famously stressful Read More …
It all begins with the taking of the hand. Take my hand and come with me. Come with me to the park where the music will play. We’ll celebrate together there. We’ll celebrate our community, our music, our heritage, our lives. The film Summer of Soul, Read More …
If you only watch one interfaith, underdog-sports musical in your life, let it be Lagaan. An Academy Award nominee for Best International Feature Film in 2002, Lagaan provides a gratifying viewing experience for seasoned fans of Bollywood musicals as well as those new to the genre. One cannot Read More …
The “Disney Renaissance” of the late 1980s and early 1990s pushed the boundaries of animation by taking the formulas of Broadway musicals, applying them to fairy tales, and selling the results to grown-ups who might never have considered going to a Disney cartoon. So when Read More …