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

Planes 2: Fire & Rescue - review

This review starts with a small disclaimer. I have not seen any of the previous Cars or Planes films and I must admit that I could not fully invest in the story of a champion racer who suffers an injury and trains to become a firefighter because I could not fathom the logic of this world.

I know that might be harsh to the Pixar/Disney franchise, especially when I have no problem with a world of talking bugs or toys that come to life when the kids aren't in the room but the idea of a world populated by nothing but talking cars and planes? Too much.

Perhaps the genesis of this world was explained in one of the previous films but for this reviewer, there are just too many questions created by this scenario.

For example who makes the cars and planes?

Do the vehicles get together and procreate, spawning Minis?

Do they assemble each other? If so, how? They do not possess the opposable thumbs required for the manual labour involved in building a complex piece of machinery.

If they are assembling each other, it then leads to the question, why?

There is a world populated by vehicles designed to transport humans but there are none. Is this some weird dystopian future where humans have died out, leaving behind artificially intelligent vehicles?

If it is, then what killed them? How did they die out? Can't have been from a lack of fossil fuels as there still seems to be enough petrol, diesel, etc to power and entire planet full of planes and cars. And who exactly is mining and refining these fuels?

These are just a few of the questions that came to mind and found infinitely more interesting that the film going on in front of me.

No need to call 999 because it sure isn't plane sailing for this turgid animation as there isn't even a spark to start a fire here.

1 star

Maleficent - review

"Don't believe the fairy tale" cries the poster for Maleficent and it is a case of something Wicked this way comes as Disney attempts to repackage one of their most iconic villains as a sympathetic anti-hero.

But where Wicked succeeded in weaving an alternate view of a character into the backdrop of a pre-existing story, there are many moments in Maleficent that openly contradict the events in Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty.

Angelina Jolie is very good in the role but I wish she had been able to really cut loose of the shackles of the overly-CGI's Alice In Wonderland landscape and embrace the dark side and relish the chance to be bad.

Instead she becomes a surrogate "fairy godmother" character to Aurora as she watches over her following the curse and begins to regret her decision, which is written off as her having her heart broken by a man.

As well as continuing the run of alternate fairy tales such as Oz The Great & Powerful and Snow White And The Hunstman, it also reinforces the new direction that Disney is going in.

Despite the motivation of Maleficent being the actions of a man, there has been a noticeable shift in the past year to changing the age-old perception that a girl's idea of love and relationships come from Disney films.

In the past, girls have been raised on the idea that they need a handsome prince to save them and love them epitomised by the song Someday my Prince will come", which is ironic considering Sleeping Beauty's curse is activated by a tiny prick, and this film continues the groundwork laid by Frozen where "true love's kiss" comes from a sister or maternal figure and not the prince... not difficult in this particular film when the love interest is unfortunately called Prince Philip!

Terrible Scottish accents, an over-use of narration, a CGI battle that felt like it was out of The Phantom Menace and bland performances from the supporting cast meant that if it wasn't for Jolie this is one fairy tale that would have sent me into an eternal sleep.

2 stars

The Lion King 3D - review

Normally I try to avoid going to the cinema when it is full of a) annoying teenagers and b) screaming kids, (hence why I like going to The Belmont!) but it was always going to be a near impossibility when going to watch a Disney film on a Saturday afternoon at the local multiplex!

Luckily when the film you are watching is as good as The Lion King, you can (nearly) put young children singing or kicking the back of your seat to the back of your mind for 90 minutes and enjoy an animated classic on the big screen.
Bamlet TM (Bambi meets Hamlet) was one of the last great classic animated films before the dawn of the Pixar age and Disney resorted to churning out straight to video sequels.
It has everything that makes Disney films such perfect family entertainment.  Compelling story, colourful and memorable characters, a few jokes for the adults and some classic songs.  Lion King would arguably have the best soundtrack of any Disney film and while the kids were singing along all the time, I could see a few adults (myself included) trying to stop themselves joining in to Circle Of Life or Hakuna Matata.  Personally though, my favourite song in the film is Be Prepared.  I love a good villain and Jeremy Irons does a snarlingly good job as Scar.
However since everyone is pretty much aware of how great the film is, the purpose of yesterdays visit was to evaluate the 3D conversion.  And the verdict?  If the opening Circle Of Life sequence is anything to go by, I wouldn't bang the final nail into the 3D coffin just yet.  It showed how 3D can be used effectively to create depth and gravitas without having to resort to cheap tricks and didn't cause the usual headaches that 3D can sometimes bring when done poorly.
Back to the age-old argument though.  Did having 3D improve the film?  No... but it certainly didn't spoil it either and that is a vast improvement on some of the conversions I have seen in the last couple of years.
I am interested in reading Charles Gant's weekly UK box office round-up on Tuesday to see how well the re-release does this weekend - it topped the US box office a couple of weeks ago.
It could lead to studios claiming that 3D isn't dead and rushing to convert their entire back catalogue into 3D.  Disney are already in the process of doing this in fact.
But I feel that it's success lies in a much simpler answer.  People just want to watch good films.  With Hollywood seemingly content on churning out an endless series of sequels, remakes, reboots, comic book movies, etc, is it any wonder that people are embracing the chance to see a really good film on the big screen, even if that film was made 15-20 years ago?
Last year Universal re-released new digital prints of Psycho and Back To The Future.  This year we get Jurassic Park, The Lion King, Ghostbusters and Amelie back on the big screen, and in 2012 Titanic is re-released in 3D.
Similar to the "golden age" thinking that the main character in Midnight In Paris suffers from (see my review), perhaps modern audiences are so disheartened with the current state of Hollywood that they are nostalgic for the past when cinema was great.
It is something to think about... but that doesn't mean that studios should look to re-release EVERYTHING they have ever made, that might be a spot of overkill!

4 stars