Tags: Year in Reviews
A masterpiece on the importance of fatherhood, from filmmakers honored by the Vatican, is among the year’s best films.
Read more >
2011 was a good year for film, and particularly for depictions of faith in film — but not in the Hollywood mainstream on either count.
Read more >
Was 2010 “The Worst Movie Year Ever,” as Joe Queenan argued at WSJ.com a while back? Or at least, bracketing art-house and world cinema fare, was it
Hollywood’s worst year ever? For most of the year, it sure looked plausible.
Read more >
It was a year of quirky, darkly mature childhood fantasy adaptations. Neil Gaiman’s juvenile horror-thriller
Coraline, Maurice Sendak’s picture book
Where the Wild Things Are and Roald Dahl’s young reader
Fantastic Mr. Fox were each made into unique, challenging films in radically different styles by directors Henry Selick, Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson, respectively.
Read more >
Jeffrey Overstreet called the
movie year 2006 “the year of the nightmare.” I’m starting to think we haven’t woken up yet.
Read more >
There were ultrasounds. Disturbing images of post-abortion fetuses. Mention of fetal heartbeat and ability to feel pain. One way or another, over half a dozen 2007 films found themselves reckoning with the reality of life in the womb. It’s fair to call 2007 the cinematic year of the unborn child.
Read more >
It was a grim year at the movies — literally. War, death, dystopia, and other dark and downbeat subjects filled theater screens in 2006. Jeffrey Overstreet (Looking Closer) called it “the year of the nightmare.”
Read more >
Like a lot of moviegoers, I spent a fair bit of time this year wringing my hands over the quality of the movies. Looking back, though, it seems to me that the family-film pattern mirrors the overall year: a dearth of A-level films, perhaps, but a bumper crop of B-pluses.
Read more >
Did anything worth caring about come to cineplex screens? Anything anyone will be talking about or revisiting five or ten years from now?
Read more >
It was a rough year at the movies for the
Catholic Church.
Read more >
But there were positive trends too. For instance, it was a
better year for families at the movies than in quite some time.
Despite some disappointments and failures (Spy Kids 2, Big Fat Liar, Hey
Arnold!, Scooby-Doo),
there were solid successes (The Rookie, Stuart Little 2,
Lilo &
Stitch) and a sizable number of decent efforts (Jonah: A VeggieTales
Movie, Powerpuff Girls,
Return to Never
Land, Tuck
Everlasting, Treasure Planet,
Wild
Thornberrys).
Read more >
That said, 2001 was still a pretty lackluster year for film.
All spring and all summer, only a tiny handful of worthwhile
flicks stood out in a vast wasteland of dreck. The summer’s big
special-effects extravaganza, Tim Burton’s Planet of the
Apes, was big on effects and short on absolutely
everything else, including excitement, humor, charm,
characterization, and narrative logic. The annual Disney animated
release, Atlantis: The Lost
Empire, continued the studio’s dismal slide into modest
entertainment values and increasingly glaring New-Age rot. Then
the end of the year came with such an onslaught of new releases
that it hardly seemed possible to do them all justice. And,
unfortunately, Hollywood continued to reap the rewards of its bad
behavior with ever-higher box-office returns.
Read more >
Movies this year were so bad that theater attendance was at an
almost ten-year low; yet, paradoxically, box office revenues hit
record highs — thanks largely to increased ticket prices. Never
before have so few paid so much to see so little.
Read more >