Review: “The Little Mermaid” (2023)

It all started around 2010. In the aftermath of the studio’s return to animated princess stories with The Princess and the Frog and on the heels of the release of their next one, Tangled, then-Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer John Lasseter stated that the storied animation house—the bulk of whose legacy rests on […]

Review: “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”

There’s a scene during the climax of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in which Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and his 18-year-old daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), who now has a similar suit to his that allows her to change size, have both grown to a gigantic size to fight off the bad guys in […]

Review: “Strange World”

It stings when a movie with nothing but pure intentions stumbles and falls on its face. But positive messaging does not automatically a good movie make, and it’s difficult to recall the last time a film from Disney Animation arrived with so little fanfare as “Strange World.” Perhaps the studio’s 61st feature never really stood […]

Review: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”

The most striking images in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” can be found in its opening scene. Wakandans, ethereal in their white costumes (courtesy of designer Ruth E. Carter, who won an Academy Award for her stunning work on 2018’s “Black Panther”), gather to lay T’Challa, the Black Panther who passed away off-screen due to an […]

Review: “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe might not exist at all if it wasn’t for Sam Raimi. That’s a lot of credit to give to one individual who up to now has never been explicitly involved in the MCU at all, but it’s Raimi’s “Spider-man” trilogy—which debuted in 2002 and spawned two sequels, the last of which […]

Review: “Turning Red”

I don’t think I expected to find “Turning Red” as funny and relatable as I did, something that made all the more sense when I realized the story was set in 2002, and that I was the same age as its 12 to 13-year-old characters in 2002. But even though Pixar Animation’s latest feature film, […]

Review: “Spider-Man: No Way Home”

I wasn’t sure, especially in light of a pandemic that it seems we’ll never pull out of, if I’d ever have another theatrical experience quite on the level of “Avengers: Endgame.” I’m not a particular fan of that movie, or even the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, but there’s no denying that the conversion […]

Review: “Encanto”

“Encanto” doesn’t see its heroine leave home on some grand quest. It doesn’t have a villain, or an action-packed climax. The 60th feature film from Walt Disney Animation is one of its most intimate, rarely leaving the area surrounding the sprawling, magical Colombian home of the Madrigal family, and barely interacting with any characters outside […]

Review: “Eternals”

“Eternals” opens in a manner that isn’t typical of any previous film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead of jumping straight into the action, an opening scroll details the mythos behind the story we are about to watch unfold. In 5000 B.C., ten super-powered beings known as the Eternals were sent to Earth by the […]

Review: “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” begins with what may be my favorite opening sequence of any Marvel movie to date: a thousand years ago, the warrior Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) finds and takes control of the ten rings, a weapon that grants their user great power and immortality. As the centuries pass, […]