The first cast, Johnny Depp included, reunites to bring peace and stability back to Wonderland and to help the Hatter find his lost family despite the tricks and ploys of the wicked Queen of Hearts. 
Only Alice, the outsider with faith, teachability, and insight can muster the time-space travel, beg Mr. Time for help, and fix the past that threatens to ruin the future.
Story-wise, it works. Visually, it’s an artistic masterpiece. The actors who play Lewis Carroll’s magical literary characters personify whimsy. 
Bringing cartoon graphics to life, this film honors the imagination of the original author while inventing new lovable characters and rescuing old favorites. Alice admits to being older on this visit. They almost expect it as time is the incessant motif. 
The film moves like a clock, an almost obnoxious pace and overload of visual imagery unless viewers enter aware of and expecting it. 
The Narnian quest becomes more like a hero’s journey in that she works to save the wonder world she loves, and in the process she discovers her own value and freedom from grief.
These SNL favs and friends know how to get a laugh. They are made to entertain. They laugh at themselves first, and it works. These funny women of New York have taken Hollywood by storm and come back to town with bigger names and top billing. They’ve earned it. Chris Hemsworth also runs havoc as the team’s dimwitted receptionist and top poltergeist target.
Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons partner up to prove mathematical equations in a style reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind, but in this film, the major conflict is cultural discord. The director says that the film is actually about nurturing relationships. Layers of relational potential and missed opportunities plague this true story. Here is a beautiful 
Mowgli is just a little boy who must learn, as all others do, how to survive in his world: jumping over giant tree limbs, swinging from vines like an orangutan, singing with bears and monkeys, running from Shere Kahn, howling as the adopted son of the wolf pack.
The screen goes dark after the final, gorgeous, framable shot of this art film closes with the unique credit sequence. The lights come up in the theater and the audience exits reluctantly, as sad to leave the jungle as Mowgli was when he realized he had to rejoin the man village. Director Jon Favreau, who also brought us Elf and Iron Man, made a masterpiece with this live action re-make of the 1967 Disney favorite. It stays true to the characters, the music, the art of the original. 
The classic Jungle Book comes to life in glorious widescreen with the unmistakable voices and cadence of favorite actors like Bill Murray and Christopher Walken. May the wonders of this kind of movie making never cease. It’s amazing to think that it was all made on a sound stage in Hollywood. 
Everyone old enough to appreciate the original MUST watch this film. It’s rare that I say I loved everything about a film, but I wish I had the ability to stop blinking and never miss a single frame of this perfect picture. See it, and live the beauty of the original film. Sit up close. Baloo, Bagheera, Mowgli, and every jungle friend will be your friend for life.
Hail, Caesar! is a delight. Set in the fifties at the height of musical movie madness, it was a time when Gene Kelly and favorite dance partner Fred Astaire tapped and swooned to golden tunes, when every woman wanted sharp-witted Clark Gable or leather-tanned Cary Grant to sweep them up, when the ladies of the hour were few but interchangeable unless they could stand out as dancers or swimmers. The silver screen was a small world full of dazzling stars with clean slates.
Here in Hail, an ensemble of A+ stars play one-dimensional dolts and hardline honeys clamping Clooney in with communists, sharing Fiennes’s finesse as a classic actor, making Tatum tap on tables, and showing Scarlett Jo flap her fins. It’s elegantly laced with narration following the work day of Josh Brolin, one heartfelt Hollywood Studio manager bent on doing what is right.
Three layers pervade the dialogue throughout the film: the existing value, despite obvious divisions, within religious beliefs, political biases, and movie making.
We follow the film producer who questions the merits of the industry and his work in it. Walking the ridgepole of his decision, he scoops in as handyman at the helm holding all things at the studio in harmony, fending off poparazzi wolves, endearingly all played by Tilda Swinton. 
We attend a premiere with a fresh faced all-western cowhand. He croons sincerely while the audience roars over slapstick sloshings. Division. Value?
Clooney’s character is held hostage by men claiming to be communist writers who feel they must buck the system and capsize the studio called the Capitol.
The film Hail, Caesar! is the film within the film showing a Roman guard gaining perspective for life and truth at the feet of the crucified Christ. An honest dialogue between four faiths ensues, speaking the blatant confusing disparities without preaching tolerance and without honoring one above another. The audience sits in, laughs, enjoys.
So, religion & politics, long-time taboo topics, are fair game for the Coens who even take stabs at their own art: filmmaking. Could it be that the Coen brothers, perhaps better known for writing and directing darker films like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, have made a picture for the picture’s sake? For fun? Poking fun at film has rarely been this delightful. Shakespeare did the same thing, sneering at all people groups, allowing for pure comedy to shine through, for people to laugh at each other, at themselves, at life. 
Hail the conquering Coens as they cart us along by chariot in this perfectly lovely philosophical journey dipped in sweet, aesthetic, syrupy comedy.
Paul Rudd delights audiences with comedic ease, promising character depth, and physical agility. He knows himself well by now and despite his crass comic tendencies, the director of Ant Man holds him back and allows the penchant for quick wit to help audiences settle in for a ride that’s basically a Honey I Shrunk revival for the Marvel generation.
Change can be difficult and jarring. Ever wonder why? Pixar let’s you eat popcorn as you tour the brain on a fascinating and emotional journey of self-discovery.
I couldn’t believe the depth and youthful innocence that a young Robert Duvall gave his almost voiceless role of Boo Radley. Brilliant. And, I fell in love with Gregory Peck, who called Atticus his greatest role of all.
The opening sequence seems to show quintessential childhood – collections in a box, removed and replaced. Scenes from Amelie (2001) and The Fall (2006) echo as token tribute to this film’s classic opening. 
A child narrator can speak unfettered by adult inclinations toward between-the-lines political double-talk or gaged intentions. Scout tells it like it is. Innocence is allowed a voice that reminds the world to see people as only a child can and to care for all others unconditionally.
Despite kid show channels’ certain and obvious attempts at making grown-ups, especially parents, look ridiculous, this story gives the child’s perspective but makes the father the hero. This badge he wears with honesty, care, some sense of failure, and deep love.
In a parallel portrayal, the real mad dogs of the town come to commit acts of citizen justice before the courts have a chance to free a black man accused of raping a white woman. Atticus stands alone in moral courage against the growling crowd.
Even as his Oscar fame faded to a distant echo, Peck remained a father figure to the little actress who played Scout. They always called each other by their character names, and kept in touch. Rare indeed.
Even more rare were the events shaping American history at that time. Martin Luther King Jr. wore the heavy burden of speaking to the world on the same matters of civil importance as found in Lee’s book. King spoke of Atticus. King’s message was the same as that of Lee’s novel: living breathing human beings should all be given the same right to live and breathe. Timeless truth.
Splatter: on FILM 