At one point watching The Jungle Book, I had to remind myself that the animals on screen were not real. If they hadn’t been speaking English, I’m not sure I would have been able to tell the difference, which is evidence enough that Jon Favreau’s remake of the Disney classic is a technological marvel. It makes a better case for “green-screen movies” than anything else in recent memory—you couldn’t really tell this Jungle Book story without animation, but relying exclusively…

Why, if you were writing a screwball comedy in 1937, would you make your leading man a “befuddled paleontologist”? Trying to answer that question would set one on the road to understanding Bringing Up Baby, I think, though it’s not a question I even initially thought to ask. As with Shakespeare’s comedies, there seems to be enough here merely to enjoy that, on first viewing, many of the more intricate double meanings might easily be missed. As Stanley Cavell has…

Lubezki’s wide-angle proximity to the action has (mostly) the desired visceral effect, which may even be further heightened by the reminders that we’re watching Leo et al really freeze their asses off, though the same is partially responsible for distancing the audience from the story’s emotional currency. The one-on-one combat scenes are impressively choreographed and edited: their rhythms remind me of the black & white prologue of Casino Royale, which is good company to keep. Some of the dialogue is nicely…

Impressive for its obsessive focus on character—really, the only thing that it has going on—which manages to avoid devolving into explanation or even adoration, retaining an observational distance that perfectly amplifies its mood of optimistic discord. Most of the vampire lore takes the form of creative allusion, which makes it quite fun—down to the proposition that Shakespeare’s plays were all written by Christopher Marlowe, who is really a vampire.

Hiddleston and Swinton play Adam and Eve with an appropriate pall,…