Going from one survival thriller inspired by video games (Pins & Needles) to another of its ilk, Flow is a much more literal and condensed example to identify with younger audiences. The results are slight and sometimes not very attractive, eventually weighed down by its own style and visual storytelling, but Flow is clean and entertaining family fare. A curious kitty roams a forest, and finds refuge in an abandoned house where her presumed former…
While a filmmaker who commits to their premise is usually worth commending, The Front Room repels the viewer towards condemning it.
Invoking comparisons to Mass and Our Friend, His Three Daughters may not be as good as those character-driven dramas, but it’s still a fantastic chamber piece that should spark award buzz around its stripped-down cast.
John Krasinski may still be in an early chapter as a filmmaker, but he’s already carving out a nice reputation for having a fantastic knack for fantasy. With A Quiet Place, he was able to create a sensory-deprived moviegoing experience as a distraction to explore the bounds of his fantastical horror. In his latest film IF, a much more family-friendly vehicle, Krasinski has fun with the boundless limits of the imagination.
Netflix’s animated Orion and the Dark may not be the streamer’s most memorable family film, and it isn’t one of the strongest adaptations of a children’s book, but its imagination can’t be ignored.
The only real positive takeaway from Netflix’s dreadful yuletide family comedy Family Switch, other than the odd mild chuckle, is that it acts as a canary in the coal mine for body swap flicks.
Finding a nice balance between fun and learning, Butterfly Tale chronicles the animated adventure of a flutter of monarch butterflies as they migrate to Mexico.
In Seagrass, writer/director Meredith Hama-Brown uses a tired-and-true formula of the “family getaway” to uncover new wrinkles in an, otherwise, ordinary unit.
