★★
Let’s not beat around the bush here – something Morten Tyldum could do with taking note of – Passengers is a real let down. One-part Jennifer Lawrence, four-parts bland, clichéd, pedestrian disappointment. It’s genuinely gutting.
Category Archives: Reviews
Rogue One | Review
★★★★
Choosing to go backwards feels an unusual step for a franchise with a patchy history of doing so but that’s Star Wars for you. A phenomenon with its own rulebook. How many other series could get away with two comebacks, a strangely dated font (even director Gareth Edwards agrees on that one) and each time expanding and complicating its narrative whilst somehow skewing mainstream? Set as ever ‘a long time ago’, longer than last year’s most recent addition and longer than the originals but not quite as long a time ago as the the prequels (perhaps a ‘somewhat long time ago’?) Rogue One is the second film to come from the Disney reboots in what’s looking like an annual treat for the foreseeable future. If this one’s anything to go by at least, an annual treat it will be.
Moana | Review
★★★★
Way back, in the wake of directing 2009’s Princess and the Frog, Ron Clements and John Musker were lining up an adaptation of Terry Prachett’s Mort as their next enterprise. Prachett feels an unusual inspiration to add to the Magic Kingdom but an interesting one all the same. Whilst, alas, that grubby business of rights got in the way of poor Mort, the film the pair have produced instead puts Disney on much safer ground.
The Film Blog 