Four years in the making, the documentary Winged Migration is beautiful to watch yet empty. For all the time, money, and effort spent filming migrating birds, would it have been too much to ask to bring an editor on-board to turn the result into something a bit more compelling?
I was expecting something special out of the IMAX presentation of The Lion King, but it was merely bigger than I’d ever seen it. This was not the transcendent experience I expected and (to a degree) hoped for.
Some movies are difficult to criticize. Yes, they’re bad, but they’re well-intentioned and made with a certain amount of skill and ambition. The filmmakers have given the audience credit for being intelligent and open, and viewers ought to re-pay the favor. So it is with May, the low-budget solo debut from writer/director Lucky McKee. The movie is an attempt at a character-driven horror movie, and for that alone it deserves to be seen and praised.
After watching David Cronenberg’s Spider, I was acutely underwhelmed and disappointed. It could be that the movie’s impact on my first viewing – akin to dropping a light object onto a feather pillow – was a function of overblown expectations. Or it could be that the movie was designed to end with more of a whimper than a bang.
