Matt Singer
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‘Lincoln’ Review
If its portrait of him is accurate, then Abraham Lincoln would have loved Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln.' The film is exactly like the man at its center: thoughtful and talkative, equally adept at spinning tales and navigating the murky waters of backroom politics. It suggests that well before Ronald Reagan, our 16th President was truly our nation's Great Communicator.
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‘Wreck-It Ralph’ Review
Movies allow us to experience life through another person's eyes. Video games allow us to experience life through another person's eyes -- and to control their decisions. We spend hours upon hours with these video game characters, until we feel like we know them; Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man, their adventures are so memorable, and their personalities so vivid that they almost seem alive. But of course their adventures and their personalities are all predetermined by programming, and they remain forever trapped by their unbreakable directives. If these characters weren't just a series of electronic impulses and computer code, it would be a tragic existence.
That, essentially, is the premise of 'Wreck-It Ralph,' a manic children's film about the souls of video game avatars. Made by Disney, it greatly resembles the premise of Disney's (and Pixar's) modern classic 'Toy Story,' in which toys are revealed to have lives and thoughts of their own when no one's around to play with them. Here we learn that when a suburban arcade shuts down for the night, the characters inside all the games cross over into each other's universes to socialize.