Review: The Lego Movie 2

Everything is average, everything is lame when it feels unnecessary. Following from the closing moments of the first film, the constructed heroes do battle against the cutesy forces from the Sis-star System, and only grisly determination can overcome the cuteness. Warning: this review contains overblown praise for the first Lego Movie. This film is a…

Review: Bumblebee

Dialling everything back to basics, Bumblebee is simple yet charming, a straightforward action adventure with none of the previous films’ dementia. Before Sam Witwicky has his fateful encounter with Autobot Bumblebee, the robotic warrior had another friend. Together, the two had to battle the odds and prevent the evil Decepticons from locating Earth. As an…

Review: Coco

An absolutely stunning piece of animation. A bright, vibrant and heartfelt experience. It is Dia De Los Muetros, the Mexican Day of the Dead, when families celebrate lost loved ones and honour their memory. Miguel is torn; his love of music is not shared by his family, who after his great-grandmother’s fury after her husband…

Review: The Emoji Movie

This movie is synonymous with mental self-harm. A child has a malfunctioning phone that randomly starts up apps in the middle of his high school classes and sends weird emojis to people he likes, yet he decides not to repair it. The End. Language has had centuries of evolution. The written word is the oldest…

Review: Cars 3

While the ending is punchy, the forgettable setup for this racer story is slow and predictable. Lightning McQueen finds himself outclassed by new and faster racers and threatened with retirement, he vows to be the one who decides when he’s done racing. The Cars franchise is probably the most brittle of the Pixar series and…

Remake Rumble Review: Beauty and the Beast

I do like Disney films, but when I say “before this review that I’d only seen Beauty and the Beast once before”, I know it will shock many readers! This movie is the darling of a lot of people I know. However, even though I’d only seen it once, I did remember the moment! I…

Review: Moana

Disney’s latest is lavishly designed, beautifully animated and a lot of fun. Set in ancient Polynesia, when a darkness begins to sicken the islands, it is up to a chieftain’s daughter named Moana to travel far over the ocean and find the demigod Maui, who was responsible for the calamity. Whenever I go to see…

Review: The Road to El Dorado

The bizarre combo of Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh as our leads gives a quirky heart to a forgotten Dreamworks Animation Studio style… Two thieves acquire a map leading them to the hidden city of gold, El Dorado. But when they find it their morals shift when they meet El Dorado’s natives and their friendship…

Review: Kubo and the Two Strings

Ahhh. That nice feeling of watching something original. Kubo is a young son of a warrior who is maimed as a baby by The Moon King and is raised by his mother as a storyteller. Now older he lives in isolation, with his injured mother, hiding from the Moon King’s servants who wish to take…

Review: Finding Dory (2D)

Finding Dory is like a metaphor for our lead character. Insane, dotty and full of slapstick comedy with just a dusting of heart string-pulling. After helping her friend Marlin rescue his son Nemo, the fish with short-term memory loss Dory begins to remember her past. Can she find her parents… somewhere out in the ocean?…