Holiday Classics: “Babes in Toyland” (1934)

The ownership and copyright history of the 1934 adaptation of Babes in Toyland is almost unfathomably complicated to reiterate here. Producer Hal Roach sold the film to the Victor Herbert estate (Hebert composed the 1903 operetta upon which the film was based) in 1944. The movie’s copyright was reassigned, and a color remake planned that […]

Review: “Lilo & Stitch” (2025)

I remember going to see Lilo & Stitch when it was first released in theaters— quite vividly, in fact. I was 11 years old, it was summer break, June 2002, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and likely hot as hades. My mom, my brother, and I joined up with one of my friends, her younger […]

Review: “Snow White” (2025)

I’ve done this song and dance before. I could be lazy and simply refer you to my review of Disney’s 2023 live-action update of their 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid in lieu of writing an entirely new piece on the studio’s remake of their original princess picture, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as […]

Review: “Paddington in Peru”

I do wonder how I might have received Paddington in Peru had I not had such an immediately ardent reaction to the two preceding films in the series. I’m not exaggerating when I say that 2014’s Paddington and 2017’s Paddington 2 are masterpieces of family entertainment that I’ve rewatched ad nauseam in the years since […]

Review: “Haunted Mansion” (2023)

The time: October 2013. The place: Anaheim, California. The people: my roommates and friends who were, like me at the time, Disneyland cast members, whose appointed backstage tour of one of the theme park’s most storied attractions, the Haunted Mansion, was delayed due to a necessitated clean-up of a loved one’s ashes a family thought […]

Review: “Elemental”

Elemental is that classic tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy makes grand heroic gesture to win girl back. I’d say that with their 27th feature film, Pixar Animation Studios put their own spin on the old romance trope, but they sort of don’t—except that the boy, in this case, is a being […]

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: “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: “Lightyear”

“Lightyear” is the first movie from Pixar Animation Studios to receive a theatrical release since the March 2020 run of “Onward” was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It isn’t that Pixar hasn’t been churning out hits; films like “Soul,” “Luca,” and “Turning Red” have all been released straight to streaming on Disney Plus, […]

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, […]