Young CriticWildwood
Laika's latest is its most ambitious and best yet. Travis Knight's stop-motion epic follows a Portland girl into an enchanted forest of talking animals and warring kingdoms, and pays off its enormous gamble with breathta
Reviews tagged: fantasy
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Young CriticWicker
This new fable is winning in its look at healthy relationships. Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård lead a funny, tactile and surprisingly wise tale about love as sharing rather than possessing, with a scene-stealing P
Young CriticThe End of Oak Street
David Robert Mitchell returns with a vapid creature feature. An original concept and a strong cast can't rescue The End of Oak Street from lazy writing and a finale that undercuts everything before it.
Young CriticThe Odyssey
A nearly great adaptation, missing its final gear. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is convincing, absorbing, and beautifully crafted, though it falls just short of standing alongside his very best work.
Young CriticWicked: For Good
A return to Oz that exposes fascism with clarity but stumbles in storytelling The phenomenon of Wicked (2024) seemed to work on multiple fronts, launching Jon M. Chu’s musical career as it deserved (after the box office
Young CriticPredator: Badlands
Dan Trachtenberg's latest Predator entry is another solidly entertaining character piece It’s a curious yet unsurprising trend, when a franchise has burnt out, studios are willing to give the material to filmmakers with
Young CriticSuperman
DC’s reboot buckles under bloated world-building and thin storytelling The DC comic book adaptations have been a mixed bag at best for Warner Bros. studios. They began with a significant advantage over Marvel, kickstarti
Young CriticHow to Train Your Dragon
A dazzling but overly faithful remake that mirrors the original more than it reimagines it Remakes present tough choices for filmmakers: do you remain faithful to the original to please fans, or dare to deviate and put y
Young CriticA Minecraft Movie
A Blocky, Soulless Cash Grab Fails to Build Anything Worthwhile It seemed that the “video game” curse that had plagued movie adaptations was broken a few years ago with the halfway-decent Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Unch
Young CriticSnow White
Mirror Mirror, Why Remake This at All? Many blockbusters spend half a decade or more in development before their release, which often causes them to miss prevailing trends or audience cravings. Disney smelled big money i
Young CriticDeath of a Unicorn
A24’s Latest Misfire Tramples Its Own Potential A24 cultivated a distinct brand of quirky and bold fare from the mid-2010s to the early 2020s. This curation arguably peaked with the Best Picture Oscar win for Everything
Young CriticThe Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
The animated return to Middle-Earth is rushed and shallow The Lord of the Rings has inspired an entire generation of fantasy novels, shows, and films. Yet the property itself is not as exploited as similar mammoth proper
Young CriticMoana 2
The Disney sequel plays it too safe Under returning CEO Bob Iger, Disney has turned to producing less content and linking to proven properties. As such we are getting less obscure Marvel characters, a pause on Star Wars
Young CriticWicked: Part 1
The musical adaptation is winning, if overstuffed Broadway musicals don’t always translate seamlessly to the big screen. While there have been hits like Chicago (2002), there have also been duds such as Cats (2019) a
Young CriticBeetlejuice Beetlejuice
The sequel brings back familiar faces, but struggles to justify their reunion Tim Burton was lost in the studio system in the last decade, delivering duds such as the Dumbo (2019) remake, Dark Shadows (2012) and his Alic
Young CriticIF
John Krasinski's family-friendly fare plays it too safe John Krasinski was allowed to direct pretty much whatever he wanted after delivering two surprise hits with A Quiet Place (2018) and A Quiet Place: Part Two (2020).
Young CriticKingdom of the Planet of the Apes
The latest in this solid franchise is another worthy, transporting entry The recent Planet of the Apes films have been among the more contemplative blockbuster franchises in recent memory. What began as pure popcorn en
Young CriticGodzilla x Kong: A New Empire
The latest in the "Monsterverse" continues its creative decline One need only read the following title to realize the creative doldrums that Hollywood has beached at: Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire (2024). Godzilla x Ko
Young CriticGhostbusters: Frozen Empire
The latest in the franchise is a forced and bland sequel The problem with Hollywood’s current sequel system is that if a good film makes enough money, there is an immediate pressure to produce another entry, even if ther
Young CriticDune: Part II
Dennis Villeneuve's retains cinematic scale and expands the thematic layering Creating a cinematic spectacle on the scale of Ben-Hur (1959) or The Lord of the Rings in today’s film landscape is becoming increasingly
Young CriticThe Boy and the Heron
Miyazaki's latest, and possibly last, is another original and transporting instant-classic Hayao Miyazaki is not only one of the greatest animated filmmakers of all time, he’s one of the greatest filmmakers period. The J
Young CriticRebel Moon: Part 1 - Child of Fire
Zack Snyder's space epic is a barrage of exposition and slow-motion Zack Snyder’s jump from Warner Bros. to Netflix seems to have allowed him to deliver on the ambitious stories he’d been restrained from telling. We firs
Young CriticThe Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The Hunger Games prequel is constrained by its format The Hunger Games films were a massive success for Lionsgate released concurrently with the Twilight and Divergent franchises. However, as the former ended and the la
Young CriticThe Little Mermaid (2023)
The newest Disney live-action remake is a safe, but charming adaptation The recent Disney live-action remakes have been coy ways to sell the same product to viewers twice. The trend started with the winningly improved Th