Search for Mychael Danna

Since the demise of Friends, Jennifer Aniston has been desperately striving to find her motion picture niche. Despite having started her fifth decade of life (in an industry that is not kind to actresses over 40), she remains a bankable name, even...

Moneyball illustrates what can happen when a non-fiction book that's more about ideas and processes is translated into a feature film. There's a lot of fascinating information in Moneyball (although, to be fair, it's questionable how much interest...

There are two ways in which one can consider The Nativity Story. As a piece of religious instruction or an animated version of a crèche, it accomplishes its aims. As a movie, however, it's slow, plodding, and not terribly interesting. There's a...

No Hard Feelings is an odd movie in that films of this sort have fallen out of vogue in the 21st century and are rarely accorded any sort of theatrical release. (The box office results will determine whether the decision to reject a direct-to-stre...

On the Basis of Sex is a perfectly adequate bio-pic focused on the early life and courtroom baptism of now-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Although less illuminating and more filled with Hollywood claptrap than the recent documentary hagiography ...

Pixar has run out of material for sequels, so it’s back to the drawing board and the creation of original films with the hope that one or more of them will develop a strong enough following to warrant follow-ups down the line. Onward, the fi...

Most Civil War films - and there have been quite a few over the years - have a tendency to skew their perspective towards the Northern viewpoint. It's not hard to understand why - the old South may have been North America's final refuge for a gent...

By now, I'm tired of penguins. After Madagascar, March of the Penguins, and Happy Feet, it's time to move on to some new species of beast or fowl. Yet I must admit that of the four recent penguin-centered movies, Surf's Up is the most entertaining...

The Sweet Hereafter is film maker Atom Egoyan's most compelling movie to date. Amplifying many of the themes explored in his previous outing, Exotica, the Canadian director/writer/producer shows the powerful effects of grief and anger on a com...

Time and time again throughout Terry Gilliam's career, the director has been forced to endure studio interference. According to executives at some of the companies that have distributed the former Monty Python animator's films, his creative vision...