CHRISTOPHER ROBIN Review

There is a moment within the opening credits of Disney's latest attempt to turn one of their classic animated properties into a live action ATM that hints at the devastating nature of our lives. It is fleeting and it, if only for a moment, says all it needs to say about what this movie aspires to be. As it passes though and as it becomes more and more apparent the film doesn't really know how to accomplish what its initial ambitions intended the film instead becomes all the more broad and all the more safe. This moment is one in which a young Christopher Robin (Orton O'Brien) comes to the Hundred Acre Wood for the last time. He is going off to boarding school, you see, and won't be able to visit his friends as often anymore. His friends being his stuffed toys, which include that silly ol' bear named Pooh (voice of Jim Cummings), the perpetually petrified Piglet (voice of Nick Mohammed), the ever-exuberant Tigger (also Cummings), the steadily gloomy Eeyore (voice of Brad Garrett), as well as Rabbit (Peter Capaldi), Kanga (Sophie Okonedo), her little Roo (Sara Sheen), and of course Owl (Toby Jones). Robin's toys know change is afoot and are throwing Christopher a farewell party of sorts in which treats-ranging from pots of honey to carrots, of course-are served and where even Eeyore is moved to make a speech. It is in light of the depressed donkey's surprisingly apathetic speech that Rabbit reacts to accordingly that we hear Cummings as Winnie the Pooh whisper a soft, "I would've liked for it to go on a bit longer." And just as fleeting as the moment itself is it simultaneously felt as if I'd been knocked over by a half ton barrage of scattered thoughts and emotions that reminded me just how fleeting time itself is. It's the one thing we can't get more of no matter how much wealth we possess or the circumstance of our lives; we all have a finite amount of time and Christopher Robin, in its first five minutes, exists to remind you that your children will grow and change just as you did and even though you feel you're different, that you're special, and that despite knowing it was a fact of life all along you were never really meant to grow old and become like your parents before you. Time truly waits for no man. This affected me to the point I wondered why I was sitting in a theater watching a movie when I should have been at home snuggling my three year-old daughter. In short, that would have been the more entertaining option of the two and certainly the more fulfilling one as it is only in this aforementioned moment that Christopher Robin was able to pull any genuine feeling out of me. And might I remind you, this is a movie wholly designed to pull on the heart and nostalgia strings. One moment.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS Review

From the opening cityscape shot of New York City accompanied by Steve Jablonsky's pulsing score new director Dave Green (Earth to Echo) establishes a fresh, but familiar tone with this sequel to 2014's "surprisingly" successful reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle live action series. With Michael Bay producing, a hired hand director, and a string of production issues it is something of a wonder that first film came off as well as it did. In more or less accomplishing what it intended to be for the audience it intended to target Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles qualified as a success. And if that opinion is to be shared it is also highly likely one would agree with the fact this sequel, subtitled Out of the Shadows, is even more successful in its end goals as the story is more coherent, the characters more in tune with their distinctive personalities, and the whole affair in general being a lot more fun. That isn't to say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is a great film as it certainly has no aspirations to be groundbreaking and seems to only hope to fall in line with the rules rather than to be an exception, but in doing little more than fully embracing its source material in the most cartoony and goofy of ways it gets so many things right it parlays itself into a pleasantly entertaining time at the movies. It would be easy to pick apart a film such as this for the gaps in logic, the idea that Megan Fox's April O'Neil could so easily break into as high profile a lab as Dr. Baxter Stockman's (Tyler Perry), or that Hollywood should be ashamed of itself for wasting the talent of actors like Laura Linney in this type of disposable entertainment, but what would be the point? TMNT has been around long enough at this point that there is some respect due to the series for being as endearing as it has continued to be. The fact that it centers around four genetically mutated reptiles who listen to a giant rat and have a sexy news reporter and a guy with a hockey mask on their team is easy ammo if one cares to criticize such openly ridiculous material, but that Green and screenwriters Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec choose to embrace such absurdities rather than attempt to play them down (ahem...Fantastic Four) makes it easier for the audience to do the same.