A Wrinkle In Time - review

A Wrinkle In Time is a family friendly adventure about a young girl who travels the universe in search of her missing father. Sadly though, instead of wrinkling time, the film seemingly manages to stretch it. Making a story that is an hour and fifty minutes feel like four hours and none of them that entertaining.
Ava DuVernay made such a strong impression with her debut film Selma. The film was incredibly powerful and perfectly captured the era. Wrinkle In Time had the potential to have power and emotion from the tale of a daughter who feels lost in the world and is desperate to reconnect with her missing father. Unfortunately, that potential is lost the moment the film transfers from the real world to a series of CGI-generated planets filled with giant Oprah Winfreys.
Similar to the three Mrs's who guide Meg (Storm Reid) on her quest, DuVernay has assembled some considerable star power and Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine do their best with the material but they are faced with a number of unintentionally laughable moments such as Pine having to earnestly deliver the line "Love is the frequency!" and it is impossible to have characters shout "Shut up Meg" and not think of Family Guy!
Recent years have seen genuine child talent emerge such as Daphne Keen (Logan) and Millie Bobbie Brown (Stranger Things) but it is unlikely that 2018 will bring a more annoying screen child than Meg's younger brother and child prodigy Charles Wallace. By the time audiences have heard someone shout "Charles Wallace! Charles Wallace!" for the hundredth time, they will want him to disappear into a black hole!
The final disappointment was finding out that after several references to the universal evil called "The IT", there was no crossover with the Stephen King novel and Pennywise the Clown was not the ultimate bad guy. Which could have saved the film and given it a whole new context. Instead, it is as deflating as IT's final form in the TV movie and is strangely voiced by David Oleyowo which means the ultimate evil is voiced by Martin Luther King!
A Wrinkle In Time? More like a colossal waste of time!

1 star

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - review

Not content with playing a new version of Captain Kirk, Chris Pine steps into the shoes previously worn by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck in this full system reboot of the Jack Ryan franchise... even if this is the first one to feature his name in the title.

Would the casual cinemagoer actually be able to tell you that The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum Of All Fears were all linked by the same character?

Quick as a flash we speed through John Patrick Ryan's, Jack to his friends, backstory:

A shot of him at London School of Economics tells us he is smart.

Seeing him watch 9/11 on TV and a guy saying "hey, you're American. Sorry man" tells us he's American.

We then cut to a military helicopter in Afghanistan to tell us he is a soldier.

The copter is then attacked and we see him on a stretcher. He is hurt but a hero.

Character building on the most economical of scales.

He recovers in hospital where a date with Keira Knightley is used as an incentive to heal. Some might prefer to stay in a wheelchair! Bazinga!

He is also recruited by Kevin Costner to the CIA to work on Wall Street to follow the money and find potential terrorist groups.

Before you can say "America. F*ck Yeah!", Cut to ten years later and Ryan uncovers a plot by some stereotypical 80s bad guy Russians led by heavily accented Kenneth Branagh (pulling double duty as director too) to launch a terrorist attack on the US and then sell huge reserves of dollars to crush the economy.

Follow that? That's the simplified version that Costner asks Ryan to explain the plot to him (and the audience) in layman terms.

So in the words of Team America: World Police:

"From what I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.N.C.E has gathered, it would be 9/11 times 100.
9/11 times a hundred? Jesus, that's...
Yes, 91,100."

Cue Jack Ryan becoming a fully operational agent which involves him:

having the bathroom fight scene from Casino Royale

several scenes of his girlfriend thinking he is having an affair because he is off doing spy shit before breaking the oath he took when joining the CIA to tell her the truth, which obviously then gets her into immediate danger

the needing to download files from the bad guy's office while his girlfriend distracts him over dinner scene from a Mission Impossible movie

ending with the race against time to find and diffuse a bomb from "EVERY action movie ever made"

Can't say I'm looking forward to the sequel where he must rescue Keira and their newborn child in Jack Ryan's Daughter.

2 stars