By almost all accounts, Disney’s shiny new adaptation of Cinderella is a successful movie. Director Kenneth Branagh brings a sense of old-world classicism and genuine optimism to a fairy tale genre that has largely skewed towards dark and subversive adaptations in recent years. Financially, those gritty remakes have been a mixed bag: Snow White and…
The floodgates have now officially opened. The success of Divergent, a Hunger Games knock-off that grossed $54 million in its opening weekend, ensures that we’ll see many more of its kind in the coming years. In fact, we won’t have to wait that long. Later in 2014, The Maze Runner and The Giver will follow…
When The Hunger Games was released into theaters in 2012, critics spent as much time debating its politics as they did reviewing the film. Almost everyone felt that the film had a partisan message, but few agreed as to which side it was actually on. Writers from Forbes and Fox News saw the film, with…
I’m not breaking any news when I say that there are a lot of folks who don’t like The Newsroom. Their criticism, however, comes from many places. Some are frustrated that the show seems to be just a vehicle for Sorkin to voice his liberal politics. Others have have pointed to its inaccuracies (“Embedded reporters…
It’s time that I accept that The Newsroom is never going to be what I want it to be, i.e. The West Wing. I want to see these characters do their job well, struggle with ethical issues, and lean on each other for support. I don’t want to see them quibble over issues in their…
Instead of a traditional fall movie preview, I have identified four movies that will appeal to Republicans and five that will appeal to Democrats. Here are those five movies: Branded (September 7) With echoes of “The Matrix,” “Branded” paints a portrait of a dystopian society (we’ve seen a lot of those this year) in which…
There is a certain kind of comedian – the best kind, really – who is more truth-teller than entertainer. We laugh with them because they so perfectly capture with words what the constraints of polite society keep us from saying and sometimes even thinking. A short, incomplete list of these comedians would include Will Rogers,…
If someone in the future wanted to know what political and cultural issues Americans were grappling with in 2012, they would only need to go to the movies. Films as diverse as “The Hunger Games,” “Cabin in the Woods,” and “The Dark Knight Rises” have all been set in one specific social, cultural, and political…
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