Aaron Sorkin testifies for civil rights and counterculture for his second stint in the director’s chair. And the verdict? The Trial of the Chicago 7 is far superior to Molly’s Game – Sorken’s first – and, further still, bests all other courtroom dramas of recent years. A lightning sharp blend of on point acting, pitch perfect choreography and simply superb writing hook from the very first shot and very nearly hold their grip till the last. Indeed, bar only a misjudged epilogue, Sorken’s Trial is a triumph.
A couple of things become eminently clear in the first five minutes of Raya and the Last Dragon. The first is that this may well be the crowing visual achievement of Disney’s in house animation team in the post-hand drawn era. It’s gorgeous stuff. Breathtaking. Second, the whole thing is very ‘on-brand’. The twenty-first century Disney Princess owes a lot to the Frozen mould and that’s both a blessing and a curse. When Dwayne Johnson’s Maui cracked the code in Moana – ‘if you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess’ – that was irony. In Raya, it’s marketable. Take that as you will. Raya doesn’t sing but she doesn’t do much we’ve not seen before either.
No end of spinning has proven a particularly convincing argument that Disney hasn’t lost faith in Artemis Fowl. Indeed, was the writing not on the wall when those high up announced its shift to a digital only release? And this following trailers so dispiriting that fans of the beloved Eoin Colfer book series from which the film originated screeched blasphemy. The result is predictably bland fantasy inaction. What should have been ‘Die Hard with fairies’ hits the ground heavily as National Treasure with tweens.
The Film Blog 