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Mufasa, a prequel to both 1994’s original and 2019’s remake of The Lion King, is an example of commercialism at its most obvious. Although there are praiseworthy elements to Barry Jenkins’ venture into the series and children will almost cert...

My concept of a "family film" is a movie that can be enjoyed by viewers of all ages: undiscriminating young children, teenagers with short attention spans, and adults with somewhat more refined standards. Unfortunately, too often Hollywood eq...

If compared to the recent batch of high-profile live action remakes of animated classics, Mulan is a unique case. When it comes to baggage, it has the lightest load. Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King all made more than $200M during...

Since The Muppets first arrived in our homes during the mid-1970s with their iconic TV series, they've never gone away for more than a few years at a time. There have been some lean periods - the '00s come to mind - but, despite deaths in the fami...

The Muppets is a rare family film likely to appeal more to parents than to their offspring. Although it's true that most kids today know a thing or two about Jim Henson's creations (the movie's premise - that they have vanished into obscurity since...

The most inventive moment in My Favorite Martian comes during the opening sequence. A robot Mars probe is shown slowly picking its way across the barren surface of the Red Planet. When its power supply finally gives out and it grinds to a halt, t...

What is it about Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro that makes it such a pleasant, immersive experience? Unlike just about any other animated film (including the other titles in Miyazaki’s impressive oeuvre), My Neighbor Totoro contents i...

I'm as willing as any movie-lover to accept a certain amount of ridiculousness in a movie if it serves the greater purpose of entertainment. And, when it comes to action movies, I like to think that my level of tolerance is pretty high. Hey, I en...

How to review a movie that's essentially a copy of its predecessor? The temptation is to simply copy what I wrote about the first National Treasure into this space with a few minor edits to account for name and location changes. Everything from t...

Okay, no one anticipated that Need for Speed, the motion picture interpretation of the popular (and addictive) series of video games, would resemble Shakespeare. There was, however, a reasonable expectation that some of the adrenaline would transfe...