For young people who grew up on Pixar’s Toy Story movie franchise and are now in their late teens or early 20s, there was no more personal, resonant movie this summer than Toy Story 3 (Disney), which sandwiches genuinely moving thoughts on childhood’s end into an antic adventure full of sight gags, manic squabbling, and chase scenes. It’s a bouncy, fast-paced adventure, full of the usual pop songs and celebrity voices, but it comes from a deep well of emotion, and touches on topics from divided loyalties to bravery in the face of death. It’s rare to see a movie that’s simultaneously so accessible for kids and so meaningful for adults…
The 10-part miniseries The Pacific (HBO) didn’t have the cultural impact of its World War II companion piece Band Of Brothers, but it was nonetheless a disturbing, powerful look at the Marine Corps’ advances in the Pacific theater. Following three Marines as a narrative through-line, the series covers many of the war’s most contentious fights, including the battles at Guadalcanal, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. A Christmas idea for Dad?…
With obvious connections to contemporary quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, Neil Marshall’s survivalist war odyssey Centurion (Magnolia) concerns a group of Ninth Legion Roman soldiers in A.D. 117 who get penned in by the savage Picts of northern Britain. But Marshall, who also directed the viscerally effective horror movie The Descent, ditches the allegory in favor of a numbing obsession with period brutality…
Google “The Angriest Man In The World,” and up will pop the hilariously profane outtakes of one Mr. Jack Rebney, the ticked-off host of a series of RV industrial videos from 1989. The surprising documentary Winnebago Man (Kino) tracks down the reclusive viral-video star in a remote one-room cabin in Northern California. We wouldn’t dare spoil what happens from there.