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The narrative behind “The Princess and the Frog” is that Walt Disney Animation has rediscovered its traditional hand-drawn animation, which has been supplanted by computer-generated cartoons. But this misses the point about what allowed Pixar — which Disney now owns — DreamWorks and other CG-animation companies to upstage the one-time king of the animation world. [...]
Maybe it’s the underlying material of David Peace’s novels, but the “Red Riding Trilogy,” while strong in performances and atmosphere, is a daunting tangle of characters, time periods, crimes and cover-ups that is more “who’s where” than whodunit. Awash in fine craftsmanship and bestowing nice surprises, the films, which premiered at Telluride, are always engaging. [...]
NEW YORK — “What is God?” is the question that drives “Oh My God?”, a glib, simplistic documentary from first-time director Peter Rodger. To his credit, Rodger displays no qualms about tackling a subject that has perplexed the world’s greatest thinkers. Regrettably, his film adds nothing but glitz and noise to our understanding of religion. [...]
Featuring a protagonist who outdoes even Philip Roth’s Portnoy in terms of his fascination with pleasuring himself, “Turning Green” is an odd little comedy drama set in Ireland that boasts more onscreen talent than it deserves. It’s hard to imagine who the audience is for this 1979-set tale of a teenager who resorts to selling [...]
Bottom Line: Grab-bag of disaster movie cliches will thrill less demanding audiences. If you rolled every disaster movie into one spectacular package, you would wind up with something close to “2012,” Roland Emmerich’s latest apocalyptic fantasy. This time Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser use the Mayan calendar and other end-of-days prophecies for their doomsday scenario, [...]
Bottom Line: Definitive doc about an obsessive movie director running amuck. Anyone who believes that directorial self-indulgence is a new phenomenon will find Serge Bromberg’s documentary, “Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno,” to be a revelation. The film has been shown at several festivals, most recently at the New York Film Festival, where it hypnotized audiences. Boxoffice prospects [...]
Bottom Line: A fanciful and melancholy portrait of exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. This Russian film is about as different as you can get from standard-issue Hollywood biopics. Audrey Khrzhanovsky, a veteran animator in both Soviet and post-Soviet era Russia, makes a smooth feature debut with “A Room and a Half,” a free-form look at [...]
