Category: Movie Reviews

International Film and Animation Art Expert

Into the Woods Movie Review: The Ultimate in Wish Fulfillment

‘This dark delicious operetta is a perfect palate cleanse from a dysfunctional holiday.’ Be careful what you wish for. That’s the tagline for the new musical movie adaptation of Into the Woods. If you are yearning for a new musical that is dark, complicated, and funny, as well as beautifully constructed, and at times more …

Selma Movie Review: 5 out of 5 stars

Why Selma is Cinema Siren’s #1 film of 2014 What makes Selma, the new release by producer/director Ava DuVernay, truly spectacular as a film, is the balance it finds between expansive traditional biography and a more intimate independent-minded personal film. In some ways that’s what Martin Luther King, the subject of this movie, grappled with; …

Penguins of Madagascar: These Dreamworks Birds Try But Can’t Fly

  Penguins of Madagascar has giggles and chuckles enough to satisfy those looking for a mild diversion. Sadly, It leaves animation fans who love the penguins from previous movies feeling disappointed by frenetic plotting and decidedly inconsistent character development. The whole adventure plays like it started out targeted to adults only to be audience-tested to death …

The Hunger Games Mockingjay: Part 1 Movie Review

Propaganda 101: The Mental Hunger Games Those dedicated fans who read all the books in The Hunger Games series need no further impetus to see Mockingjay Part 1 in theaters.  The only question relating to them is whether they will see it this weekend and help break all former records this box office powerhouse has …

The Theory of Everything: Leads Deserve to be Lauded

The biopic is a very unforgiving genre in the world of movies. Pitfalls inherent to them are the predictably seen timeline from youth to success or nearly insurmountable challenge in the usual chronological order, the whitewashing of edgier aspects of the subject as if the film was created with permission, and an ending that celebrates …