Tags: Motherhood
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up
Here is a film that will break your heart, fill it with hope and challenge you to say Yes to God and to your neighbor, all at once.
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Brave in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review — plus clips from the film!
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A- |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
Among Hollywood animated films, it may be the most positive affirmation of family since
The Incredibles and the best fairy tale since
Beauty and the Beast.
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The Kid with a Bike in 60 seconds: My “Reel Faith” video review.
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B+ |
*** |
+2-1|
Kids & Up
We really do accept as normal whatever we’re raised with, don’t we? Like, say you’ve lived all your life alone in a lonely tower in a hidden valley, and your golden hair is 70 feet long, and the only mother you’ve ever known — the only person you ever see — comes and goes using your hair as a rope ladder, and she’s never let you so much as set one foot outside, and your hair does this magic trick when you sing that — well, not to give it away, but that would just be life to you, wouldn’t it?
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A |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
Everyone should see
Babies. Even people who have cats instead of children should see
Babies. There are a number of cats in this movie, and some feline moments that must be seen to be believed, especially for cat lovers.
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B |
*** |
+2-2|
Kids & Up*
There’s a villain with magical powers — but instead of Disneyfied magic, like Aladdin’s friendly genie, the film’s New Orleans voodoo is an occult world of terrifying powers and principalities in which the villain himself is at much at risk as anyone. It’s almost Disney’s most overtly Christian depiction of magic and evil at least since
Sleeping Beauty, if not ever — though the waters are muddied by a benevolent, swamp-dwelling hoodoo mama in a sort of fairy-godmother role.
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B+ |
*** |
+1|
Kids & Up
Although
Ponyo seems as disjointed and free-floating as
Howl’s Moving Castle, somehow the younger milieu here makes it more acceptable. Or maybe it’s just that there’s more here to latch onto emotionally.
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A |
**** |
+2-1|
Teens & Up*
French director Olivier Assayas’s
Summer Hours opens with a glimpse into a world that has already passed away, though not all the characters realize it yet.
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A- |
***½ |
+3-2|
Teens & Up*
Yet it’s right around this point that
Juno, which has been clever and insightful, unexpectedly reveals hidden layers of complexity and depth.
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B+ |
*** |
+2-1|
Adults
Though not always faithful in small things,
Things We Lost is faithful in much. The individual moments are sometimes off, but the large emotional resonances are right.
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C+ |
**½ |
-1|
Kids & Up*
Somebody has to say it: Made at the height of Disney’s early brilliance alongside
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
Fantasia,
Pinocchio, and
Bambi,
Dumbo is the odd weak link in the chain.
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A+ |
**** |
+2|
Kids & Up*
The Incredibles is exhilarating
entertainment with unexpected depths. It’s a bold, bright, funny
and furious superhero cartoon that dares to take sly jabs at the
culture of entitlement, from the shallow doctrine of self-esteem
that affirms everybody, encouraging mediocrity and penalizing
excellence, to the litigation culture that demands recompense for
everyone if anything ever happens, to the detriment of the
genuinely needy.
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A |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up
Thus, while
Little Women is far from hostile to its
male characters, it has a positive feminine character and defines
its protagonists not by relationships with men but by moral
choices, experiences, and relationships with one another, their
mother, and their community. Part comedy of manners, part
morality tale, it’s more interested in its heroines "conquering
themselves" than in a man conquering their hearts.
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B- |
**** |
-2|
Teens & Up*
A.I. is a science-fiction fairy tale: a terrible, revisionistic revisiting of "Pinocchio," the story of the little manmade boy who wants to be real — as told by a nihilist who condemns Gepetto for creating Pinocchio, the world for laughing at him, and the Blue Fairy for leading him on when he’s better off being made of wood, which will after all be around long after Gepetto is pushing up daisies.
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