Guest Essay: Dana Shaffer on how Brave fails at feminism.

Friend and colleague  Dana Shaffer wrote this terrific piece back when Brave first arrived in theaters.  Since I had already had my say on ...

Why the box office failure of Fun Size is actually good news.

Call it reason 3,214 why movies aren't dead.  As you all know, the Nickelodeon comedy Fun Size debuted in theaters last weekend with nar...

Celebrating Batman: The Animated Series 20 years later: As a parent, my least-favorite episodes became more valuable..

This week will be the 20th anniversary of the premiere of  Batman: The Animated Series . In its weird way, the show actually had three '...

Review: Brave (2012) is Pixar's most impersonal and least consequential film and a more troubling failure than Cars 2.

Brave 2012 93 minutes rated PG by Scott Mendelson Beset by production troubles and changing schedules, Brave enters theaters as a fable with...

Review: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) is a dull, drab, and aggressively passive chore.

Snow White and the Huntsman 2012 127 minutes rated PG-13 by Scott Mendelson Strange is a movie that immediately establishes its dramatic sta...

Without comment or emphasis: Why The Avengers may end up this summer's most progressively-feminist blockbuster.

I wasn't going to write about The Avengers again for awhile (other than box office) both because I didn't have much more to offer a...

As Gary Ross leaves The Hunger Games franchise, nine female directors who could/should replace him on Catching Fire and/or Mockingjay.

The Playlist doesn't break news all that often, merely seeing fit to be a one-stop shop for the movie news that everyone else breaks dur...

Review: Mirror Mirror (2012) is lifeless and drab, a poor-man's Ella Enchanted.

Mirror Mirror 2012 106 minutes rated PG by Scott Mendelson The good news is that Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror is nowhere near as obnoxi...

Question of the day: Why *isn't* Twilight's Bella Swan a feminist creation?

In a classical sense, FEMINISM is defined as believing that women should have the same rights, freedoms, choices, privileges, and benefits a...

A safely sanitized celebration of state-sponsored child murder. The disturbingly crowd-pleasing immorality of The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games: an IMAX Experience 2012 142 minutes rated PG-13 by Scott Mendelson Note - this is not a conventional review and there will...

"Girl Power" animated films used to be 'no-big deal'. Why Pixar's Brave, and its feminist narrative, is not a step forward, but merely a course-correction.

I don't generally watch clips, let alone post them, for upcoming films.  I somewhat dislike the practice of releasing full-blown scenes ...

So, why isn't The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo a hit yet? Oh right...

This was posted as a comment elsewhere, but it touches on something I wanted to talk about, so I'm sharing it here too... So as of last ...