Quick Takes from Summer 2015

Yeah, it hasn't been an especially compelling summer movie season from where I'm standing, so I can count on two hands the total number of 2015 releases I've seen as of this posting.

As usual, I'll inevitably catch up with various titles later on, and when I do I'll often add some brief thoughts in this space. For now I'll start with my impressions of Trainwreck and Ricki and the Flash (female-centred movies are not common enough and they need your admission dollars!) with more to come...

Review - Into the Woods

Often I wish more than anything... more than life... that Hollywood would provide us with more movie musicals than it currently does. We musical theatre lovers are lucky if we can get one live-action song-and-dance film a year. Luckier yet if its a good one.

It puts me in a situation as sticky as pitch when it comes to evaluating the big screen adaptation of a stage musical that I don't love nearly as much as the genre it represents. The show in question is Sondheim & Lapine's Into the Woods, translated into cinematic form by director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine) and positioned as Disney's big holiday season draw.

The original production which debuted on Broadway in 1988 could best be described as a revisionist fairytale: The paths of various familiar Grimm characters intersect en route to their storybook endings as they venture through the woods. Among them are Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Jack of eventual beanstalk infamy (Daniel Huttlestone), Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), a baker and his wife (James Corden and Emily Blunt), a pair of vain if charming princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen), and a scheming witch (Meryl Streep).