Search for Family

For more than three decades, How the Grinch Stole Christmas has been a holiday season television staple. The 22-minute cartoon, based on the book by Dr. Seuss and narrated by Boris Karloff, has enchanted multiple generations of children (not to me...

New Line honcho Bob Shaye has been in the news a lot recently, primarily because of an increasingly acrimonious feud with Peter Jackson over profits from The Lord of the Rings. With The Last Mimzy, Shaye steps back into the director's chair for th...

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 live-action family film, once a cinema staple, has been made all-but-extinct by a surge in the availability of animated fare. Max is a throwback of sorts - a movie about the relationship between a boy and his dog. Lassie springs to mind as the ge...

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Every year around the Christmas season, it seems impossible to turn on the television without seeing either George Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street or Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. Like Handel's "Me...

There's something a little annoying about a movie that tries this shamelessly to be endearing and family friendly. Typically, these kinds of films feature Santa Claus in a significant role. Here, there is no Santa but there is a 243-year old guy ...

My Family, the portrait of a Mexican-American family living in East Los Angeles, boasts a series of distinguished thematic antecedents, including Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and Zhang Yimou's To Live. Here, as in the 1972 gangster saga, t...

Nanny McPhee is an excellent movie… if you're a seven-year old girl. That's less a negative evaluation than it is a statement of fact. This isn't a "family film;" it's a "children's film." What's more, it's for girls who are old enough to unde...

Whenever a movie addresses the subject of a girl living alone on a desert island, the soft porn warning lights go on. So it may come as a bit of a surprise that Nim's Island is a family film in which no one considers skinny-dipping. What's more, i...

This is one sequel it’s a pleasure to review. Although not as fresh and lively as the first Paddington, the second feature based on the popular children’s book series by Michael Bond offers some of the best family entertainment outside an ...