Movie Review: A Little Chaos (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


Kate Winslet adds another to her already long list of costume dramas with A Little Chaos, the second film directed by actor Alan Rickman. Winslet plays Madame Sabine de Barra, an anachronistically liberated gardener hired by Monsieur André le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts), landscaper to King Louis IV (Rickman). De Barra is to work on an outdoor ballroom at the King's gardens in Versailles. Her independence first perturbs Le Nôtre and his male contractors. But eventually his bewilderment gives way to curiosity and then romantic fascination with the confident gardener. Her sureness in herself eventually impresses even the king himself.

Movie Reviews: Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014) and The Lego Movie (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

With one unorthodox animated feature (discussed at the end of this post) capitalizing on parental nostalgia at the box office, it's expected that another more conventional one would try and do the same. And Mr. Peabody and Sherman is that... conventional. Admittedly, it is funny, with many of its jokes sailing over younger heads and right towards the hearts of their gen-x parents. But they aren't anywhere near as dryly hilarious as the one-liners which seemed to fly out a mile-a-minute in the "Peabody's Improbable History" segments of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (1959-1964).

Movie Review: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

The filmmakers behind any potential sequels to Joe Johnston's Captain America: The First Avenger would be crazy to abandon its wonderful World War II period setting. Sure, the Sentinel of Liberty's required appearance in the upcoming Avengers movie demands that the character be contemporized. But there's good reason not to do the same in his own episodic franchise.