Edward Norton's Motherless Brooklyn is an Undercooked Film Noir Homage

You can't help but root for Motherless Brooklyn, that rare modern-day adult-drama movie released by a major American studio. A two-and-a-half-hour long homage to noirs featuring nary an explosion in sight? It's a welcome surprise to see a studio like Warner Bros. financing and releasing this type of title. Unfortunately, noble artistic ambitions can't actually make Motherless Brooklyn a good movie. On the contrary, this is a shockingly disposable feature film with only brief glimmers of actual entertainment or quality to be found. Despite having spent two decades in development, Motherless Brooklyn is still a movie that could have used a whole lot more work.

The Slipshod Boss Baby Only Show Flashes Of Creativity In Some Of Its Visuals

DreamWorks Animation used to have some real ambition as a studio, or, at least, the promise of ambition. If the radically different tones and aesthetics of their first two films (Antz and The Prince Of Egypt) suggested a studio that could create a wide variety of animated motion pictures, well, they've been inconsistent in fulfilling that promise over the course of the next two decades. For every Shrek (only the first two!), How To Train Your Dragon or Kung Fu Panda that showed real imagination and artistic promise, you also had stuff like The Road To El Dorado, Bee Movie and Trolls that had them chasing other popular animated family movies for quick and easy profits. When it comes to creating worthwhile cinema, ya win some, ya lose some in the world of DreamWorks Animation.

We'll Always Have Paris (Can Wait)

We've all been on vacations, but no two vacations are alike, much like snowflakes! Yep, vacations come in all shapes and sizes depending on so many factors, like where you're going, who you're traveling with, all those crucial elements. Some vacations you go on are non-stop thrills and fun, just complete joy from start to finish. Then there are those vacations you endure that are a total snooze for their entire time, there's just no true blue enjoyment to be had. And then there are those vacations that have some fun and even memorable spots in them but end up being just kind of average, which, unfortunately, is the type of vacation the Eleanor Coppola movie Paris Can Wait most resembles.

Beetlejuice Was Early Tim Burton That Went Full-On Strange To Mostly Endearing Results

We all know the tricks of the trade of Tim Burton movies at this point. Until recently, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter were guaranteed to show up in some capacity and the majority of his 21st-century output consists of remakes of already existing movies. And of course, the visual aesthetic that lands somewhere between gothic and quirky that's seen in nearly all of his work is perhaps his most defining trait as a filmmaker. But back in 1988, Burton had only directed one movie (as well as a slew of short films), so I'm sure seeing his morbid sensibilities very much front and center in the film Beetlejuice was very much a shock to many. Burton was coming out of the gate swinging and not putting aside any of his idiosyncrasies, that was for sure.

Still Alice Review

Still Struggling

Family life is very rarely idyllic paradise. There's always some kind of fraught conflict existing between spouses, siblings, parents and their offspring that can range from the mundane to the cataclysmic. Having a mother diagnosed with a familial form of Alzheimer's is obviously the kind of development that can change a families entire outlook on life, and as for the mother, her life will never be the same.