Recently, I took my son to see The Haunted Mansion, which was one of the worst things (I hesitate even to call it a movie) that I have ever seen. He thought it was better than Finding Nemo and we had a fruitless argument which I'm sure made him acutely aware of the disadvantages of having a film critic for a dad.

A. O. Scott

Categorized in : Son Dad Film Critics

We have reached a strange new place in marketing when tweets become full-page print ads.

A. O. Scott

strange pages marketing

The camera has an uncanny ability to capture the world as it is, to seize events as they happen, and also to conjure visions of the future. But by the time the image reaches the eyes of the viewer, it belongs to the past, taking on the status of something retrieved.

A. O. Scott

visions-of-the-future eye past

Every art form changes, often at rates and in ways that cause discomfort to its devotees. But the arts also have a remarkable ability to withstand and absorb those changes, and to prove wrong the prophecies of their demise.

A. O. Scott

demise causes art

The silliness-much of which is clearly intentional-is blended with some genuine grandeur. The Pixar touch is evident in the precision of the visual detail and in the wit and energy of Michael Giacchino's score, but the quality control that has been exercised over this project also has a curiously undermining effect. The movie eagerly sells itself as semitrashy, almost-campy fun, but it is so lavish and fussy that you can't help thinking that it wants to be taken seriously, and therefore you laugh at, rather than with, its mock sublimity.

A. O. Scott

taken fun thinking

STARTLING & INVENTIVE...This is not a movie that lets go of you easily.

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letting-go

The musical performances do more than enrich the movie; they complete it.

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musical-performance performances musical

Not just a timely movie, a great one...Timbuktu feels at once timely and permanent, immediate and essential.

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timbuktu essentials feels

I can't decide if this movie is so spectacularly, breathtakingly dumb as to induce stupidity in anyone who watches, or so brutally brilliant that it disarms all reason. What's the difference?

A. O. Scott

stupidity differences dumb

AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FILM. Exacting, enraging and revelatory. A clear, temperate and devastating account of high level arrogance and incompetence.

A. O. Scott

film arrogance levels

STORIES WE TELL is one of the boldest and most exciting films I’ve seen in the last six months, and the kind of experience that has the power to alter your perception of the world.

A. O. Scott

six perception stories

My fellow critics and I may occasionally fault a movie for departing, in detail or in spirit, from its literary source, but the grousing of a few adult pedants is nothing compared to the wrath of several million bookish 10-year-olds. Their presumed demands, and the hovering spirit of Harry's creator, J. K. Rowling, inhibit this movie as it did the first Potter film.

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adults wrath years

War of the Worlds is rated PG-13. Much of the earth's population is wiped out, leaving very little time for sex or bad language.

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leaving war sex

Those reliable axioms about the taste and expectations of the mass movie audience are not so much laws of nature as artifacts of corporate strategy. And the lessons derived from them conveniently serve to strengthen a status quo that increasingly marginalizes risk, originality and intelligence.

A. O. Scott

risk expectations law

Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs.

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eagles pigs bird

ADMIRABLY BOLD. There's something grand about the film's sincerity and the intensity of its emotions and something fresh and bold about the way director Gray uses the conventions of romantic melodrama.

A. O. Scott

use directors way

Subtle, funny and touching, with a striking downbeat authenticity. Director Craig Zobel is the real thing.

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touching real directors

The movie, like the book before it, is an expertly built machine for the mass production of tears. Directed by Josh Boone 'Stuck in Love', with scrupulous respect for John Green's best-selling young-adult novel, the film sets out to make you weep - not just sniffle or choke up a little, but sob until your nose runs and your face turns blotchy. It succeeds.

A. O. Scott

tears running book

Pearl Harbor is strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes at the cost of accuracy.

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pearls cost history

A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.

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honesty loyalty drama

Campaign may invite a certain skepticism about democracy, but it will surely restore your faith in cinema verite.

A. O. Scott

cinema campaigns democracy