Category: Family

Lots of Cracks What a blundering blob of… stuff Nutcracker and the Four Realms is. It’s frantic for attention, slathering the screen in masses of computer generated fantasy, color, …

Bumpy Slappy, the demonic ventriloquist dummy and antagonist of this series, promises kids he’ll do their homework, household chores, and defeat the local bullies. The kids love him. Goosebumps …

Patty Duke Returns to the Gripping Story of Helen Keller Patty Duke returned to the property that made her a household name (and the youngest Oscar winner in history) …

Shopping for Aliens Cactus Flats, Arizona looks awfully plain. Everyone drives the same car. Houses look identical. Each storefront uses the same signage. There’s no identity to this town, …

Mini-Jurassic From Jurassic Park’s hype spawned two direct-to-video dino flicks of note: Roger Corman spit out the hoary, R-rated Carnosaur. Charles Band took the opposite approach; he gave kids …

Hopping Mad Beatrix Potter may or may not have liked this pop entertainment adaptation of her book Peter Rabbit. The world will never know, but certainly, Peter Rabbit has …

Double the Marmalade, Please Paddington 2’s story concerns a fuzzy, ever polite bear desperately trying to buy a birthday present for his aunt. That’s sweet. The whole movie is …

Hoo Hoo Hoo If there’s a template to Grease’s long term success, it’s the universality of high school. Even with years of progressive measures, nerds still get bullied and …

Childhood Matured In this era of anti-bullying crusades, Wonder has its place. It’s a fine story of a boy with a facial disfigurement pulled away from the safety of …

Family Game Night The Jumanji board game, with unexplained mystical powers to call the jungle into reality when played, acts as a conduit. Jumanji is never about the game …

Mant-inee As Matinee begins to stir, President Kennedy’s address regarding Cuba cuts into a comedy show. It’s a sign that while, yes, Matinee adores the idealist in Donna Reed …

Romy Schneider’s Final Turn as Sissi Austrian filmmaker Ernst Marischka caps off his Sissi trilogy of films with Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress. The winning combination of …