Nick Schager

AFRICAN CATS Anthropomorphizing its animal stars to a borderline-dubious degree, Disneynature’s nonfiction African Cats situates itself in Kenya’s river-divided Masai Mara National Reserve, where two four-legged mothers — an aging lioness with one daughter, and a single-mom cheetah with five newborn cubs — valiantly struggle to provide for and protect......

FOOTPRINTS Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is the epicenter of Old Hollywood glamour as well as an irresistible magnet for those who desperately dream in wide screen in Footprints, a fairy tale written and directed by Steven Peros (The Cat’s Meow playwright/screenwriter) about a woman (Sybil Temtchine) who awakens, without her memory,......

RIO Parrot sex is the narrative impetus of Rio, and yet there’s little spark to this animated tale of a domesticated Minnesota macaw named Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) who is reluctantly taken to Brazil by his clingy owner, Linda (Leslie Mann), in order to mate with the last of......

BORN TO BE WILD 3-D Gigantic form, diminutive content: Born to Be Wild 3-D, presented in expansive IMAX, offers a visually arresting, kid-friendly but cursory portrait of the altruistic efforts of two women to not only rescue orphaned baby animals but then raise and ultimately release them back into their......

CON ARTIST Mark Kostabi was a talented artist and a smug, antagonistic douchebag, both of which made him an art-world celebrity. Con Artist recounts Kostabi’s ascendancy during the New York scene’s ’80s heyday, a rise fueled by a willingness to insult contemporaries, slander modern art as a sham and indulge......

HOP The Easter Bunny gets an Alvin & the Chipmunks makeover in Hop, director Tim Hill’s second consecutive tale of a furry anthropomorphic critter with astounding musical talent and an exasperated human companion. Expected by his father to assume the family’s candy-delivery throne, flannel-shirted bunny E.B. (voiced by Russell Brand)......

LIMITLESS A gleeful celebration of nonstop doping, Limitless offers up a dim "Better Living Through Chemistry" fantasy that refuses to rain on its own pill-popping parade. Struggling novelist Eddie (Bradley Cooper) acquires fame and fortune after he takes a magic tablet dubbed NZT that unlocks his brain's full potential. He......

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES The shaky-cam is coming, the shaky-cam is coming! Jonathan Liebesman directs his alien-invasion saga Battle: Los Angeles as if he were having a violent seizure, wedding whiplash faux-war-documentary aesthetics to a Michael Bay cocktail of ooh-rah military romanticism, quick-stroke melodrama and seesawing CG mayhem. Called into duty......

MARS NEEDS MOMS Who said animation should look real? Robert Zemeckis, for one, though as evidenced by Disney's recent closing of his ImageMovers Digital studio, he increasingly appears to be alone in that sentiment. Mars Needs Moms stands as the potentially final Zemeckis-produced motion-capture effort, and, like The Polar Express,......

RANGO A rollicking, surreal and existential kids' Western that worships at the altars of Sergio Leone, Hunter S. Thompson and Chinatown, Rango drowns under the weight of discordant objectives and influences. With his crooked neck, bug eyes and Hawaiian shirt, reptilian Rango (boisterously voiced by Johnny Depp) is a Ralph......