review film

  Paul Thomas Anderson’s golden, shimmering vision of the 1970s San Fernando Valley in “Licorice Pizza” is so dreamy, so full of possibility, it’s as if it couldn’t actually have existed. With its lengthy, magic-hour walk-and-talks and its sense of adventure around every corner and down every block, it’s a place where anything could happen as day turns to night. And yet within that joyful, playful reverie lurks an unmistakable undercurrent of danger. It’s in the score from Anderson’s frequent collaborator, the brilliant Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, putting you ever so slightly on edge. It’s in the searchlights outside the grand opening of a Ventura Boulevard pinball parlor, incessantly beckoning to the sky. And it’s in big, brash moments through showy supporting performances from Bradley Cooper and Sean Penn, both going for broke. Anything could happen as day turns to night—but are you ready for that? This is a place Anderson knows well from his own chil...

  Parents looking for an electronic babysitter over this holiday season will likely pitch “Back to the Outback,” an Australian animated effort dropping today on Netflix, as a variation on “ Madagascar .”  Remember the cute movies you loved with the wise-cracking penguins and the hypochondriac giraffe, Billy?! This is basically that again . And it really is basically that again. Once more, a group of animals at a sanctuary escape their captors in an effort to go back to the wild, forming an unexpected family along the way. In this case, the sanctuary is in Sydney and the destination is the Outback. Sprinkle in a bit of a “ Finding Nemo ”-esque journey and the timeless family film message about not judging a book by its cover, and you have a film that feels a bit too much like it was made by a machine instead of actual people. There’s just too little fresh creative passion here in a project that’s sometimes sweet but also remarkably programmatic. Everyone accuses Netflix of...

  “A Boy Called Christmas” is a resplendent Santa Claus origin story with a star-filled cast, sumptuous visuals, and some melancholy details to keep it from being too sugary.   Dame Maggie Smith plays the vinegary Aunt Ruth, a last-minute babysitter for three children who are still in mourning for their mother. It is Christmas Eve, but their father Matt (Joel Fry), sad and distracted, has decided they will skip the holiday this year. There will be no decorations or presents. After he leaves for a work emergency, Aunt Ruth begins to tell the children a story about a boy named Nikolas (Henry Lawfull), who lived a long time ago in a remote mountain cabin in Finland with his father, a woodcutter named Joel (Michiel Huisman). Nikolas, too, is in mourning for his late mother, who was killed by a bear, and each night he asks his father to tell him the story she used to tell, about a little girl who got lost in the woods one winter and happened upon a community of elves...

  Marie Amiguet  and  Vincent Munier ’s “The Velvet Queen,” opening today in New York and Los Angeles, is a calming, meditative experience. You can feel the chill in the air when you’re watching it, and it often achieves a hypnotic tone, thanks in no small part to a gorgeous score from the two geniuses  Nick Cave  and  Warren Ellis , who find the perfect compositions for a project that reaches for something greater than a typical nature documentary. “The Velvet Queen” is at its strongest when it allows for silence on this gorgeous landscape, using only its mesmerizing score to elevate the imagery into something poetic about the beauty of mother nature. But while the visuals and music are stunning, the two subjects of the film (and its co-director) have a habit of over-explaining what they’re doing not just in practical terms but remarkably self-serious philosophical ones as well. Other than a comment here or there about the hunt that these two men...