I wasn't keen on the overuse of slo-mo (I believe there was more slo-mo here than in Man of Steel and BvS combined), the musical score was a derivative snooze (Zimmer acolytes can write good scores, but this is not one of them), the villains weren't interesting (a malady of many of today's superhero...

It's always a little tricky when a film's story calls for a character to be outstandingly "beautiful." Kristin Stewart in Snow White and the Huntsman is one of the worst offenders. I guess I would understand if the Evil Queen had been played by, say, me in drag, but Charlize Theron? Stewart had no c...

The movie was…OK, I guess, though I feel like I don't need to see it again. I was fine with most of the plot additions. The Beast was a bit of a bummer of a character in this rendition, moping around petulantly in the earlier scenes. In the original, the Beast was legitimately menacing in the beginn...

Ben wrote:I think Moana is a dead cert for a song nom, though, and hopefully a win, either for How Far or Welcome.

I think La La Land might nab the ultimate win, especially given how strong the critical response is. For the record, I enjoyed La La Land the film, but I thought the songs were just…all right.

So did I, but… let's just say that I hardly made any leisure purchases for a long time after I bought it.

But even then it's just the amount of music on offer here...only three discs' worth and most of that already available on the OST releases. Again, it's just not that much for a very steep cost. $40 would have been the perfect price point, but since they had a big composer and a big title I think th...

I saw this up for preorder at SAE a while back. Hmmm...even at 5000 copies I'm just not sure how well loved the Jurassic scores are - save for a couple of iconic main themes and a handful of good cues, it's not a "great" score and, despite the lavish packaging, the discs themselves seem quite barre...

As for the songs, well, they're catchy! How Far I'll Go and You're Welcome are the obvious showstoppers, naturally, but I was also taken by the intro and the voyagers' songs, all of which were real story songs and not diversions just to introduce an idea or a new character. Here, both backstory and...

For those films to feel as "Disney" as they do is down to Woolie, made both at times under Walt when he himself was bemoaning how long an animated feature would take to produce, and then after his passing, when the execs started to complain about how much they cost to make. That's a good point abou...

I would say Woolie Reitherman was better known as a director than animator, even outside animation circles (though not by many, granted!). I do have to admit that, 101 Dalmatians aside, I'm not the biggest fan of Reitherman as a director--at least when compared to other Disney classics. His films h...

I used my weekly blog to remind civilians that the "Directors of Little Mermaid and Aladdin" are, ahem, ALSO the directors of Great Mouse Detective, Hercules, Treasure Planet, and Princess & the Frog, if they need a quick fix after seeing Moana... :) Yes, it's preaching to the choir here, but a goo...

I guess it was more the character of Tamatoa himself who seemed more disconnected from the main story. That doesn't mean that I would have preferred the filmmakers tie the story into a pretzel by making him some Grand Villainous Puppetmaster, though. In fact, I appreciated that there wasn't some sur...

The Kakamora and Tamatoa scenes can't quite shake their episodic nature, only tenuously connected to the spine of the film. But overall, I enjoyed it. I do agree with the part in James's review about some of the lyrics seeming awkward--most painfully so in the opening verse of "You're Welcome." (In ...

Loved the Logan trailer!! Hopefully a great Wolverine movie can keep the franchise going! (Note to self: see The Wolverine! ) :) The Wolverine falls apart in the final battle, and Viper is all kinds of annoying when she should be all kinds of menacing. But the Yukio and Mariko stuff is great.

I was hesitating about whether to get Apocalypse on Blu-ray (having missed it in theaters), but ShyViolet's enthusiasm helped sway me. (I also have the rest of the X-Men movies on home video; I figured if I have The Last Stand, I may as well get Apocalypse as well.) The good news: It's nowhere near ...