**CONTEST CLOSED. THANKS TO WINNER KRYSTAL TUBBS!** I’ll admit that I didn’t know the backstory of Walt Disney Pictures feature film, SECRETARIAT. Spoiler alert if you’re as clueless as I was: The horse kicks some serious tail. On January 25th, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment releases SECRETARIAT on Blu-ray, DVD, & movie download. I felt […]

*** STAR REVIEW | Fantasy From their outset in 2005, the big- screen versions of C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” novels have had a particularly winning champion in the character of Lucy Pevensie. Vividly portrayed by Georgie Henley, Lucy has embodied the franchise’s best qualities: its openheartedness, its loving grasp of the sibling bond, […]

A pall hangs over the anxious world that pits Harry Potter and his allies against their cold, familiar foes in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” the latest film about author J. K. Rowling’s celebrated boy wizard. The seventh film in the series, based on Rowling’s seventh and final book, is the bleakest […]

My children and I recently attended an advanced screening of Tangled, Walt Disney Pictures’ latest movie about Rapunzel and her 70 feet of magical, golden hair. This feisty, tower-bound teen (voice or Mandy Moore) was kidnapped as a baby and has been locked away for years. The day before her 18th birthday, she partners up […]

Talk about your unreliable narrators. At the start of the impossibly slick, sweetly wise, animated romp, “Megamind,” the titular villain recounts how he’s come to the end of the line. He is tumbling to his demise. A ray gun floats in the air nearby. It doesn’t look good. It all began in a galaxy far, […]

I’d like to say that I’ve taken my kids on outings and that we’ve experienced new and wonderful adventures this month. Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could share of our many hikes in the wonderful Colorado mountains, or perhaps tell of a day spent at the Denver Zoo where we took a picnic and […]

If you are feeling a bit “once bitten, twice shy” about seeing the third installment of Stephenie Meyer’s blockbuster vampire tale come to the big screen, you can let that go. “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is a finer outing than 2009’s “New Moon.” Managing to be both sulky and cheesy, that second film was a […]

Consider the oft-amusing, terribly clever G-rated sequel “Toy Story 3” as the brightest student in the class delivering a very fine B paper. Any other year, the fact that animation powerhouse Pixar’s grand summer offering is a sequel — and a 3D one at that — wouldn’t rankle quite so much. But summer 2010 is […]

The final chapter in a constantly charming franchise, “Shrek Forever After,” proves what has been increasingly clear in the decade since the titular ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) leapt so famously onscreen from William Steig’s 1990 children’s book: The animated journey of Shrek, his beloved, Fiona, and Far Far Away buddies Donkey and Puss in […]

The three wounded women in writer-director Rodrigo Garcia’s memorable drama, “Mother and Child,” are connected, and separated, by adoption. The trio of Naomi Watts, Annette Bening and Kerry Washington touchingly convey just what varied forms emotional defense can take. Better: As their characters’ interwoven tales gain force, they show how profoundly those defenses can crumble. […]