Jason Bateman
What happens when two performance artists grow up, get married and have kids? Their kids become part of their art, of course. This is the story of Caleb and Camille and their two children whom they affectionately dubbed “Child A” (Annie) and “Child B” (Baxter).
Quirky family dramas are a dime a dozen, so in addition to handling complex relationships and a mixed tone, they must do something to distinguish themselves from the pack. Some projects respond by amping up the quirk while others go for a big emotional payoff. The best manage to do both, which is precisely what people praised the best-selling book that The Family Fang is based on (same name) for doing.
Zootopia is the cinematic equivalent of a Dr. Seuss novel; though mostly made for kids, it resonates with deeper and socially relevant themes. The political landscape from which this film was born is apparent almost from the start, and though at times less than subtle with its agenda, it still manages to be an incredibly witty, emotional and entertaining movie experience.
A great director can elevate a movie that is nothing short of trash cinema into something masterful. Throughout his career, Orson Welles repeatedly chose projects (most notably Touch of Evil) as a challenge to see whether he could make a good movie out of source material that was far closer to the gutter than the stars. A cursory glance at some of the best directors of all time, from Welles and Alfred Hitchc*ck to David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh more recently, reads like a list of directors who enjoy cinema at its silliest, yet are such technically skilled filmmakers with a clear love for genre filmmaking that their movies are only ever laughable in a knowing way.
It seems to happen far too often: A new, original comedy premieres, to mostly good reviews, and so the studio decides to seize on the original’s success and create a sequel. And the sequel is not nearly as good as the first.