But in the pursuit of setting up a new world, as well as planting the seeds for future sequels, the filmmakers fail to construct a self-contained story worthy of an audience’s attentions let alone their emotional investment. It’s a robotic descent into Hollywood financed, corporate-driven stupidity, diluting a once powerful franchise to a place it had yet to travel to until now: irrelevance.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is one of the greatest animated films ever made. Period.

Stiller and especially Watts continue to amaze, the latter so much so I’m starting to think she’s worthy of award consideration come the end of the year (it won’t happen but I’m not going to let that stop me from dreaming that it potentially could all the same). I like [While We’re Young], flaws and all, and in many ways this might just be the most accessible motion picture Baumbach has ever directed.

The Cat Returns might not be Studio Ghibli at its absolute best but that still makes it one of the better animated efforts young, old and everyone in-between alike are likely ever to see. Disney’s presentation is stellar, and as such fans are urged to snatch this Blu-ray up the very second it goes on sale.

[Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers] has plenty of lo-fi charm, and while its central exploitive elements aren’t anywhere near as questionable as the first film’s it still has enough blatantly in-your-face material to satisfy even the most demanding of genre fans for the majority (but not all) of its brief 80 minute running time.

Here’s what’s happening in Episode #13 (download .mp3): It’s lucky number 13, as Erik Samdahl of FilmJabber.com joins forces with Squabblers Brian, Sara Michelle and Adam, to dissect the intricacies of Inside Out, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Dope and Ted 2. Also on tap in this episode, a discussion about some of […]

“With kids, what’s the first language they speak? Well, that’s emotion…Even if they don’t understand the specifics of what is being talked about, if they see a character is upset or fearful or happy, they respond to that.”

The film falls off a gigantic cliff during its final act, melodramatically and clumsily throwing down an obnoxious and unnecessary flashback that undercuts all of the beautiful work Winslet, Schoenaerts and Rickman had delivered up to that point.

The Australian import The Little Death is a suburban sex comedy that’s too tame to make much of an impact yet also just icky enough at times to border on repugnance…[It’s] prone to introducing a clever gag only to beat it into the ground until it’s no longer of value, oftentimes forgetting less is more especially as it pertains to eliciting laughter from the audience.