Search for State

With the arrival of Rob Marshall’s live-action The Little Mermaid, Disney has now successfully converted all four of their major late ‘80s/early ‘90s animated musicals into updated iterations. Of the quartet (which also includes Beauty and t...

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...

A "family movie" is often loosely defined as a motion picture that, aimed at children, is likely to bore parents to tears. Numerous examples leap to mind, most of them from Walt Disney Studios, a production company that holds the curious dist...

The 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors is a celebration of two beloved motion picture genres: the musical and the cheesy science fiction flick. Before making it to the screen in its final form during the '86 Christmas season, Little Shop of Ho...

Spoilers Ahoy! This review talks in detail about plot points, including the ending, so if you haven’t seen either the play or the movie and want to experience it without knowing beforehand what happens, I suggest avoiding this review.In late...

The biggest thing The Little Things has going for it is that it’s not a run-of-the-mill mystery/thriller. The most significant potential problem, especially with respect to mainstream acceptance, is the ambiguity of the resolution. Some view...

Little Women is a like Hamlet and Pride and Prejudice – the story is so well-known (and well-loved) that any new motion picture adaptation becomes more about screenwriting choices (what’s left in and what’s taken out) and performances. C...

"I think the title [of Little Women] has been so off-putting for men over the generations. They feel this is a terribly 'girly' story. But it's actually a wonderful epic tale about family where men's roles are just as important and deeply involve...

The connection between actor/director/writer Ben Affleck and author Dennis Lehane goes back nearly a decade. In 2007, Affleck made his directorial debut by adapting Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone for the screen. It was a high-water mark in both of the...

After twelve years haunting the shelves of video stores, John McClane (Bruce Willis) has been exhumed. The indefatigable hero of three Die Hard films during the 1980s and 1990s appeared to have reached his "sell by" expiration date with the lacklu...