Search for Jonathan

Kung Fu Panda adopts a different, less zany tone than one might expect from a movie with that title, especially considering that Jack Black has been brought on board to provide the lead voice. While it would be unfair to say that the movie doesn't...

The Last Vermeer is something of an old-fashioned courtroom melodrama, complete with impassioned speeches, a sneering prosecutor, an antagonistic judge, and a last-minute gotcha! For those who enjoy this kind of “it only happens in the movie...

The premise of Law Abiding Citizen - angry father seeks revenge on the system when his daughter's murderer gets off with a light sentence - probably sounded great in the pitch meetings but, as with all high concept motion pictures, the devil's in t...

"Hamlet" meets The Jungle Book - that's what The Lion King is - adding, of course, a few special touches all its own. Disney's 32nd animated feature film is its darkest since The Black Cauldron, and, in many ways, a departure from the light-hearte...

It takes a deft hand to fashion a feel-good movie with plenty of laughs and an upbeat ending out of a story that includes drug addiction, a suicide attempt, a death, Nietzsche, and Proust. Despite treading through a minefield of tone shifts, co-di...

When I see a romantic comedy, I’m not expecting Ozu or Bergman or Truffaut or Scorsese. All I want – and I think it’s a perfectly reasonable desire considering the genre – is to fall in love with the characters as they fall in love wit...

The Lost City is probably best viewed as a romantic comedy spiced by adventure elements rather than the other way around. Regardless, it’s passably sweet entertainment but, just as it’s unlikely to stick in the craw, it won’t hold a place in...

I approached Love Hurts with modest expectations. The well-worn concept – that of a retired assassin forced back into action to save the woman he loves – feels like a high-floor/low-ceiling concept: the kind of thing that’s never going t...

As remakes go, The Manchurian Candidate is better than most. It remains faithful to the premise and themes of the original, but, by avoiding a slavish re-interpretation, it offers some surprises to those who are familiar with the 1962 version. Ye...

What do you get if you use Tim Burton, the inspired and irreverent director of Batman and Ed Wood, to combine an invasion force of bug-eyed, big-brained Martians, a star-studded cast featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and a huge spec...