‘Jingle Jangle’ Film Review: An Overstuffed Christmas Musical That Stays Inventive

Also Read: 'Showbiz Kids' Movie Review: Child Stars Tell Troubled Tales in Sobering DocumentaryWhile many members of Zappa’s family and his band are on hand to reminisce about the famously driven, often cantankerous and always demanding musician and composer, much of the story is told through materials from the Zappa’s personal archives, to which Winter had access.

It's been seven years since DreamWorks spliced the DNA of the Ice Age franchise with The Flintstones and gave us The Croods, an amiable adventure whose vibrant 3D visuals and zippy slapstick action helped disguise the lack of smart humor in its storytelling. You might be forgiven for wondering who asked for a sequel to a film that didn't fossilize much of an impression in the animated landscape.

The sixth time around the paddock is decidedly not the charm for the latest live-action feature incarnation of Black Beauty, based on the enduring Anna Sewell-penned equine adventure.

admirers of 2013’s “The Croods” quite possibly never thought about it again until the announcement of “The Croods: A New Age,” opening in theaters for Thanksgiving and coming soon to streaming platforms.

Shawn Mendes, the 22-year-old Canadian folk-pop singer with the velour trill, is a bard of puppy love. Throughout his prolific oeuvre — three studio albums since 2015 — the male ingénue guilelessly croons about budding romance and sweeping passion and blossoming youth like a modern-day Romeo hopping from muse to muse.

An intellectual inquiry with burning present-day resonance, The Meaning of Hitler is also a road trip through some of the darkest chapters of European history. In one of the artfully constructed film's visual motifs, we watch the road itself through a windshield, a not-to-be-ignored Mercedes-Benz hood ornament positioned prominently in the frame.

For those of us old enough to remember, in 1995 the majority of teenagers in the developed world were almost as ignorant and bigoted as their parents about gender and sexual identity — or at least decidedly not the enlightened folk most Gen-Z kids seem to be these days.

Viola Davis burns a hole in the screen projecting the indomitable pride and hard-won self-worth of the legendary early 20th century blues singer named in the title of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, one of 10 plays that comprise August Wilson's epic cycle depicting 100 years of African American experience. But it's Chadwick Boseman as a cocky trumpeter brutally demeaned by the white recording industry who delivers the most explosive thunder and searing pain.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorComposer John Debney has worked on the scores for “Elf” and “The Greatest Showman” and is no stranger to setting a warm holiday mood. When it came to working on Netflix’s “Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey,” he sought a timeless and classic approach, hinting at classic holiday melodies.Debney worked with director David E.

Watch Video: 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' Trailer: Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman Sing the BluesMa’s band, who arrives at the studio well before she does, has its own internal struggles: veterans Toledo (Turman) and bandleader Cutler (Domingo) are there to follow Ma’s lead and to give her what she wants, no questions asked, while brash and talented horn player Levee (Boseman) tries to sprinkle jazz riffs into existing songs while arranging new versions of other ones over Ma’s objections.

Not to take anything away from filmmaker Dana Nachman, but her new documentary certainly benefits from the timing of its release. The film focuses on the 107-year-old Operation Santa program run by the U.S.

When it comes to baseball sayings that apply to real life, the term "swinging for the fences" couldn’t be more suitable for the three major-league hopefuls at the heart of Sami Khan and Michael Gassert’s gripping new sports documentary, The Last Out.

There's one question you're likely to ask yourself while watching Nick Sarkisov's drama about the contentious relationship between an egomaniacal MMA fighter and his sensitive, 18-year-old son: Who the hell is Stephen Dorff's trainer and how much does he charge? That's because it's otherwise hard to sustain interest over the course of Embattled, in which Dorff plays the lead role of the monstrously self-absorbed Cash.

In one of the more amusingly uncharitable moments of a character whose brittle undercarriage keeps peeking through the fastidiously composed veneer of the warm, welcoming homemaker, Mary Steenburgen says as her daughter's guest for the holidays stomps angrily out of the room, "She is very heavy-footed." Fortunately, the opposite applies to co-writer and director Clea DuVall; her light touch with both comedy and drama is essential to what makes Happiest Season so captivating.

“Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas” a decade ago — and bemoaned the lack of LGBT stories being told in the seasonal sub-genre — I never could have predicted the bumper crop of 2020, which is offering queer-centric (or at least gay-inclusive) new movies from Lifetime, Hallmark, Paramount Network, and Netflix, as well as the arrival of “Happiest Season,” an all-star Christmas comedy with a major studio behind it.

Turkish origins to the Icelandic legend of the Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn, who goes by “Jola” for short here) to the Star of Bethlehem itself.Watch Video: Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn Say Christmas Is 'Doomed' Forever in 'The Christmas Chronicles 2' TrailerAlso part of the holiday’s history is Belsnickel, one of Santa’s gift-giving antecedents, but in “Christmas Chronicles 2,” Belsnickel (Julian Dennison, “Deadpool 2”) is Santa’s former right-hand elf, so embittered by the big man’s devotion to

Spike Lee’s next project is guaranteed to get a rise out of people.

to Deadline, Lee waxed poetic about the upcoming musical project.“First And Foremost, I Thank Ms. Jacquelyn Shelton Lee.

article in Esquire by David Kushner from 2018, “All Rise: The Untold Story of the Guys Who Launched Viagra.”Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald, who previously wrote the musical “Passing Strange” that Lee directed a filmed version of, will write original songs and music for the Viagra project.Also Read: Spike Lee Collaborator Thomas Jefferson Byrd Murdered in Atlanta, Director SaysMatt Jackson’s Jackson Pictures will produce with Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks.