The Charlie Brown character will never, ever grow old. Charles Schulz likely had no idea when he initially created the humble, gentle boy and his critical but trustworthy sidekicks, but he was in reality crafting something that generations of people…
As I wrote in my review of “The Wonder Years: Complete Series,” this coming-of-age TV comedy-drama gets it right. Lots of things can shape a person, and just as WWII defined a generation, so did the Sixties—which historians date from John F.…
Ever have the feeling that when your day starts off on the wrong foot, it’s going to be one stumble after the next, until you can go to bed and get a fresh start the following morning? That’s what happens…
Kids who love “Frozen” owe a big thank-you to the Disney staffers who made “101 Dalmatians.” Animation had grown to be such an expensive proposition that it took 600 people to bring the previous film, “Sleeping Beauty,” to the big screen in…
In 2007, a British audiologist named S.J. Watson wrote a psychological thriller about a woman with amnesia who, like the protagonist in “50 First Dates,” could not build short term memories because the initial event that caused the amnesia was…
I fully stand by my review of season one of “Banshee” and season two stays right on course with all the violence and sex that Cinemax can throw at you. It is apparent some lessons were learned from that initial…
It had to happen. With so many gritty, sex-filled dramas on cable TV and with prostitutes taking center stage in such series as “Deadwood,” you knew that eventually there’d be a melodrama set entirely in a brothel. I just didn’t…
I caught “My Winnipeg” (2007) at its debut screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. After the screening, the first question to director Guy Maddin was from a man who introduced himself as a former resident of Winnipeg. He was…
The woman is a joyful eccentric, full of fanciful stories and extravagant behavior. The man is her opposite, a surly homebody with a curmudgeon’s disdain for the outside world. Still grieving the loss of his wife, the man is forced…
Ursula K. Le Guin fans won’t recognize her Earthsea series in this 2006 Studio Ghibli animated adaptation—at least that’s what Le Guin thinks. And Hayao Miyazaki was of the opinion that his son, Goro,was too young to direct the film,…