August Rush
Posted on March 11, 2008 at 8:00 am
Those who are willing to open their hearts to this urban fairy tale will find its pleasures, as long as they they don’t think about it too hard.
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
Posted on March 3, 2008 at 5:12 pm
There’s nothing harder to get right in a movie than whimsy. And there are few clumsier crashes when it goes wrong. What could have been a charmingly whimsical children’s book becomes an arch and sugary movie, its failures of tone and timing hitting its lightweight storyline like a blast of cold air on a fragile souffle. This is one flat souffle.
Penelope
Posted on February 29, 2008 at 9:27 am
B| Lowest Recommended Age: | Middle School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for thematic elements, some innuendo and language. |
| Profanity: | Mild language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Tense emotional confrontations, some mild violence |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | February 29, 2008 |
This off-beat and uneven fairy tale has something in common with its heroine — an uncertain incongruity. That heroine is Penelope (Christina Ricci), an educated, wealthy young woman with a loving heart and the nose of a pig. More of a snout, actually. While it is actually kind of cute, Penelope’s prospective suitors are so horrified by it that one after the other they leap out of her mansion through the window, wanting to get away so fast they do not have time to take the stairs and leave by the door.
The pig nose is the result of a generation-spanning curse. Knowing that the curse can be broken if Penelope is loved and accepted by her equal, her parents (Richard E. Grant and Catherine O’Hara) keep her hidden away and parade dozens of suitable suitors in front of Penelope’s two-way mirror. If they can just keep her indoors until the curse is broken, they think she can have a normal life.
But being kept inside like a hothouse flower (the production design includes bell jars and a terrarium) is not normal. And so, as all captive princesses in fairy tales must, she runs away. And as all romantic comedy leading ladies must, she meets a prince with a secret (James McAvoy).
The Water-Horse
Posted on December 24, 2007 at 7:54 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | 4th - 6th Grades |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for some action/peril, mild language and brief smoking. |
| Profanity: | None |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Social drinking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Wartime violence, references to offscreen wounds and sad death, guns, some peril |
| Diversity Issues: | Class issues |
| Date Released to Theaters: | December 25, 2007 |
In the grand tradition of “he followed me home — can I keep him?” movies, we have seen movies about children who are brought to adventure and understanding through dogs, horses, cats, a whale, a dolphin, dragons, geese, and an extra-terrestrial. But this imaginative family fantasy-adventure is the first movie in my memory about a boy and his very own Loch Ness monster.
Angus (Alex Etel) is a young boy in World War II Scotland, the son of the housekeeper of a large estate. He finds what he thinks is a rock but it turns out to be an egg. He calls the creature who hatches “Crusoe.”
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Posted on December 20, 2007 at 6:00 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Adult |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for graphic bloody violence. |
| Profanity: | Brief strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking by adults, child gets drunk |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Extreme, graphic, explicit violence, serial killer, cannibalism, child is beaten, child sentenced to hang |
| Diversity Issues: | Class issues |
| Date Released to Theaters: | December 21, 2007 |
There could be no better match for the gothic saga of the barber who slit men’s throats and the baker who made their bodies into pies than director Tim Burton, the master of the macabre. Here working with Johnny Depp, his favorite leading man, and Helena Bonham-Carter, his off- and on-screen muse, Burton creates a vast world of Victorian gothic menace that ideally sets off Stephen Sondheim’s grimly intricate lyrics.