Currently browsing the "Mckenna Grace" tag.

Review: Spirit Untamed

Spirit Untamed is a conventional family-friendly animated adventure that honors teamwork, friendship and female empowerment. And whoa… there are wild horses. And some catchy tunes. All that makes this second installment of a franchise that began with the 2002 Oscar-nominated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron worth the ride. There’s not much new to gain, but nothing to lose either. So if the spirit moves you, saddle up.

Gifted

Gifted is admittedly schmaltzy and formulaic, but it fits a current void in our cinematic options for chick flick dramas. It plays a bit like a Nicholas Sparks movie – but with a smartass kid, a scene-stealing one-eyed cat, and the hunky Chris Evans (Captain America) as what one character describes as “the quiet damaged hot guy” at the bar. Evans plays Frank Adler, a single man raising his spirited young niece Mary (McKenna Grace) in a quiet coastal town in Florida. He’s been home-schooling the girl, but wants her to socialize more with other kids. So he sends her to public school, where her teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) soon discovers that Mary is a math prodigy. That discovery sets in motion a debate over Mary’s education, and a custody battle between Frank and his domineering mother Evelyn (Scottish actress Lindsay Duncan).