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If you have not visited before, let me tell you something about myself that repeat visitors have already heard, I am a sentimentalist. I tear up at dog stories, mt throat constricts when I see the American Flag waving in the background of a patriotic scene, and a well placed song can send me on a nostalgia voyage that I might take days to return from. With all of that front loaded, "Dumbo" should have been catnip to me and just the kind of soft sweet film to enjoy on a family night out. That is what makes it so depressing to report that the film is a rather joyless and empty exercise in spite of all the emotional manipulation that it attempts. Tim Burton has lost something here, and it is not his unique visual style . The film looks great. I was so in during the opening moments of Casey Jr. chugging down the tracks toward the home of the Medici Brothers Circus. The hint of the original theme, and the near face on the front of the locomotive, made me think of riding in the tin...

Back in 1998, M.Night Shyamalan was dubbed the second coming of either Hitchcock or Spielberg.  With his well crafted thriller "The Sixth Sense" he restored our faith in what a good horror movie could be and he provided a twist ending that still impresses twenty years and a million spoilers later. He made two more solid films before he tripped with "The Village" and then fell flat on his face with "Lady in the Water". But it took "The Happening" for audiences to laugh him off the screen and write him off for the next decade. Director Jordan Peele was favorably compared to Shyamalan after his clever and very successful " Get Out " showed up two years ago. It also restored our faith in grown up horror stories and had similar kinds of plot twist moments. Peele however has skipped the next phase of the Shyamalan career, a couple of less successful but still credible films, and he has instead taken a dump that makes "The Happening"...

Back at the start of the year, the Lambcast devoted an episode to making Box Office predictions for the year and we currently have a draft going. The truth is there is no point in voting for the draft because the winner is determined by the outcome of actual box office returns. Why you might ask, is this the subject at the start of a review of today's animated film? It's simple, "Wonder Park" was one of the films I chose for my draft. Here is my dilemma however, three of my films are opening within a week of each other, and two of them on the same day. "Captain Marvel" will earn me plenty of dollars in the Box Office derby, but my two films this week are likely to be a bust. "Marvel" is going to dominate again this weekend, and after seeing both of the other films I despair. Not because they are bad films, they are simply not going to draw a crowd. "Captive State" is too slow and intellectual to pull in many folks, and I think "Wond...

With a smattering of special effects and some old school style storytelling, "Captive State" manages to be a smart, compelling Science Fiction allegory that will make you remember the films of the 1970s without being old-fashioned. This film is more cerebral than is healthy for the box office, but if you are willing to think and fill in the story elements, you will come away impressed by the things that were accomplished here with solid acting, a cryptic script and an idea that has been around for a long time. "captive State" barely touches on the manner in which our planet became an occupied state. That process is over by the time the credits have finished. This movie takes place well into the occupation and it uses some long standing ideas as the crux of the story. Aliens have come for our resources, but they need our cooperation to get them. Their solution has been to take over the political processes of the Earth and replace them with their own form of governing...

Yesterday was a Chris Pratt film Festival for me. In the afternoon I saw the LEGO 2 Movie and in the evening I took in this slow paced western. I have to admit it is easier to like the animated film. It was light, with a lot of laughs and rapid paced action. This in turn moseys along at a very deliberate rate. It was not boring but it feels like it was much more methodical in telling the story than was necessary. That may be because the film is directed by a second time feature film director, actor Vincent D'Onofrio. The film is competently put together but it does have some flaws. The script by Andrew Lanham is attempting to provide a backstory for the notorious Billy the Kid while also showing the last days of the Kid. Basically, a fourteen year old boy is trapped in a nightmare family scenario and it is strongly hinted at that he may be traveling the same path as William Bonney (Henry McCarty). It is a morality tale that tries to warn us off of the path of violence at the same t...

Five years ago, "The LEGO Movie" came out of left field and surprised the hell out of me. I was not expecting much and I'd largely been ignorant of the toys so it was a complete shock to be pulled in and transfixed as I was. Of course the bigger shock later that year was the film not only did not win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, it was not even nominated. It was a top five film on my list that year, and the "Batman LEGO Movie " from two years ago also made my top ten. These movies are really something. The novelty may have worn off a little with this second part, but the story telling is as strong as the first film. Like the original movie, there is a theme to the events shown during the story. Unlike the first film however, there is not the same kind of surprise. We know that the LEGO Universe exists in the real world and the plotlines here are not very hard to dig at to get to the moral. The screenwriters don't cover it up, hell you know it...

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is shifting gears to the next phase, and that means new heroes and another universe. I know nothing about the comic books of the new Marvel character who carries the brand as her moniker, but I can say the movie has been worked pretty effectively into the current MCU sequences and it looks like things will run smoothly after our Avengers are decimated with the departures of some of the long time characters and actors. It does however take a while for the new central figure to grip our interest. The opening half hour of this movie is a collection of flashback, flash forwards and partially revealed narrative that is confusing at times. The screenwriters are deliberately creating a sucker punch that is not that difficult to see coming, given the rest of the history of Marvel. The science fiction elements will draw heavily on the same kinds of imagery and story lines we got in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films, but without the initial charm of a cl...