The thinly plotted but generally fun and family friendly fantasy Harold and the Purple Crayon is based on the 1955 children’s book by Crockett Johnson. The slightly meta story has the character Harold (Zachary Levi) living in the two-dimensional book world created by Crockett Johnson. There, Harold can use a magical purple crayon to create any object he needs including
Read moreLike David Lynch in the 1990s and 2000s, Yorgos Lanthimos has brought dark humour and surreal artistry at least a little closer to mainstream cinema. He’s skewered relationships and social conformity in The Lobster, elitist power structures in The Favourite and the suburban family in The Killing Of a Sacred Deer. Now, he turns his darkly comic gaze to sexism
Read moreWish, which has been released as part of Disney studios 100th birthday is a cute, occasionally charming but underwhelming animated musical fantasy that attempts to pay homage to Disney classics. Like many Disney and other animated features of the last few years, it’s about a feisty but uncertain young woman empowering herself through a fight with a nasty authority figure.
Read moreThe aroma of chocolate filled the air as an eager Sunday morning preview audience filed into the Rivoli cinema for a screening of Wonka a mostly fun, good natured but thinly-plotted musical origin story for the mercurial chocolate maestro Willy Wonka. This is not an adaptation of any specific work by author Roald Dahl whose 1964 novel Charlie and the
Read moreThere have been numerous film adaptations of Italian author Carlo Collodi’s 1883 Pinocchio story but the most famous is the 1940 Disney animated film. That movie is apparently a favourite of a number of renowned directors including Steven Spielberg who used its ‘wish upon a star’ theme over the closing credits of Close Encounters and essentially remade it as AI:
Read moreDespite being directed by the revered George Miller, containing some inspired and quite startling moments and starring two of Hollywood’s most respected actors, Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, the oddball romantic fantasy and storytelling tribute, 3,000 Years Of Longing doesn’t entirely work. The title sounds like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel but George Miller and Augusta Gore wrote the film’s
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