It’s a shame that Michel Ocelot’s charming, visually stunning Azur & Asmar has had such little exposure to date. The film first screened in France in 2006, and yet is credited with only some festival appearances and a limited release this past fall – its weeklong run this month at the Gene Siskel Film Center [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Family'
Azur & Asmar
January 8th, 2009 · No Comments
Tags: Animation · Capsule · Drama · Family · Foreign Language · Romance
Charlotte’s Web (2006)
May 12th, 2007 · No Comments
Of course by now everyone knows about the most exciting and heroic web-slinger ever. What? No, not Spider-Man. I’m talking about Charlotte, the spider with a vocabulary as strong as her spinners, brought to life in 1952 by author E.B. White. Although Charlotte’s Web was one of my favorite books as a child, the live-action [...]
Tags: Capsule · Family · Popcorn
An Inconvenient Truth
April 30th, 2007 · No Comments
I have little to add to the dialogue about An Inconvenient Truth. As Oscar-winners go, it fully fits the “will win” category — as opposed to “should win.” And that’s not a comment about the superiority of its competitors, only one of which I’ve seen, but simply an observation that there isn’t anything remarkable about [...]
Tags: Biographical · Documentary · Family
My Neighbor Totoro
October 8th, 2006 · No Comments
Animated family films are generally not high on my list of entertainment priorities. I do, however, have a fond regard for the Disney classics of my youth. (The best of which is 101 Dalmatians, by the way.) With a few notable exceptions, though, I find that recent animated features from U.S. studios are lazy in [...]
Zathura: A Space Adventure
May 29th, 2006 · No Comments
Kids find game. Kids play game. Game makes crazy, realistic, life-threatening things happen. Lessons are learned. Game ends. If this sounds familiar, that’s because Zathura: A Space Adventure, like 1995’s Jumanji, is one of three films created from the work of artist and children’s author Chris Van Allsburg. (The second, The Polar Express, shows [...]
Tags: Family · Popcorn · Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
May 17th, 2006 · 1 Comment
For reasons I can’t quite explain, I really didn’t care to see this film. So much so, that when the traditional Friday-after-Thanksgiving trip to the cineplex divided my extended family into two camps, I chose to abandon the high-minded adults in line for Pride and Prejudice and accompany my nieces and nephews to experience Chicken [...]
Howl’s Moving Castle
April 13th, 2006 · 1 Comment
One cannot deny the power and artistry of Hayao Miyazaki, whose significant body of traditionally-drawn animated feature films are second to none because the level of his craft, his witty attention to detail, and his unique style of storytelling. Based in part on the accolades, including an Oscar win, garnered by Spirited Away, a broader [...]
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
