fantasy
Sarah Collins
TW: This article discusses suicide, suicidal ideation, antidepressants and self-harm We first meet Nora Seed, “nineteen years before she decides to die”, as she plays chess in the school library with Mrs Elm, the matter-of-fact school librarian. Nora, who is treated ‘like a mistake in need of correction by her mother”, seeks comfort and kindness from Ms Elm, after finding out her father has died. Nineteen years later, after a series of painful events, including the loss of her job and the death of her cat, Nora feels that the world would simply be better off without her. She ruminates on Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
Seth Rogen offers up double the laughs by taking on both lead roles in a time-hopping, Rip-Van-Winkle screwball comedy, but with an oddly mixed conservative message about the merits of family and religion.The screenplay is based on a four-part New Yorker short story called Sell-Out by Simon Rich. That piece of writing along with other short stories earned him a reputation as a modern-day PG Wodehouse, not to mention being SNL’s youngest ever writer and polishing scripts for Pixar. Rich’s writing is sharp, often high-concept, and very, very funny. But the story has lost some of its Read more ...
Owen Richards
Scooby fans have waited over 50 years for a proper big screen adaptation of everyone’s favourite cowardly dog (sorry Cartoon Network’s Courage). The 2003 live-action version starring Matthew Lillard and Sarah Michelle Gellar failed to capture the paranormal-busting mystery of the TV series, and although the follow-up Monsters Unleashed recreated the classic villains, it was still a slog. But with a new CGI adventure from the studio behind The Lego Movie and the underrated Smallfoot, could Scoob! finally be the film Mystery Inc. deserve?Well, the plot certainly tries to squeeze in as many Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
It’s hard to take The Old Guard seriously — it’s an action film about thousand-year-old immortal warriors. Pulpy flashbacks and fake blood abounds. But The Old Guard doesn’t need to be serious or even memorable: it’s a fun, feel-good film, a rare commodity these days.Andy (Charlize Theron) leads a band of renegades who use their immortality to thwart crime. Their secret power makes them outcasts, so their existence is increasingly threatened by surveillance and modern technology. A new immortal, Nile (KiKi Layne), joins their ranks at the exact moment that their freedom is most threatened. Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s taken over 18 years for Artemis Fowl to reach the big screen, with Miramax originally buying the rights in 2001. Finally, Disney have brought the world’s youngest criminal mastermind to life, but was it worth the wait? Well, the fact it’s appearing on streaming service Disney+ rather than waiting for a cinematic release probably answers that question.Loosely based on Eoin Colfer’s popular novels and helmed by Kenneth Branagh, 12-year-old Artemis Fowl II (Ferdia Shaw) must save his kidnapped father by infiltrating the secret society of fairies, dwarves and goblins. Alongside his bodyguard Read more ...
Owen Richards
Have you ever visited a destination you saw on film, only to realise it’s not quite how you imagined? Filled with tourists, the scars of mass visitation, and caught between its own culture and staying commercially attractive. The Thai city of Krabi is one such location, made famous by such films as The Beach and The Man with a Golden Gun. New release Krabi, 2562, from festival favourite directors Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers, tackles these issues. But just like a visitation, it may cause you to think “this is not what I expected”.Presented as a docufiction, the film features a Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Reviewing theatre now means reviewing film. Knowing that Emma Rice’s Old Vic 2018 production of Wise Children, her typically rambunctious version of Angela Carter’s last novel, published in 1991, has been recorded by The Space immediately raises expectations of high quality. After all, this company specializes in digitally bringing good art to wider audiences. As you’d expect for a show that is now streaming on BBC iplayer, and will be broadcast on BBC Four in due course, the filming is well directed and edited. But what about the play?The plot tells the story of Brixton-born twins Dora and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Director Oleg Stepchenko’s follow-up to his 2014 yarn Forbidden Kingdom swaps the latter’s Transylvania for a fantastical computer-generated frolic round 18th century Russia and China, as pioneering cartographer Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) sets out to map the extremities of the known world. However, the plot grows increasingly incomprehensible as layers of lunatic action scenes and fairy-tale fantasy are piled on top of it.At its core is a Chinese fable about a magic dragon chained up by a wicked princess and the Black Wizards. In a process perhaps only students of Chinese folklore would Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The latest in Sadler’s Wells’ Digital Stage programme – an impressively assembled online offering to keep audiences entertained during the shutdown – is balletLORENT’s family-friendly dance-theatre production Rumpelstiltskin. It was streamed as a "matinee" on Friday afternoon, and is available to watch for free on Sadler’s Wells’ Facebook and YouTube for a week.The 90-minute work, first seen in 2018 and filmed for broadcast at Northern Stage, was the third successful collaboration between director Liv Lorent and then poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy – once again Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
With over one hundred books to her name and several hugely popular TV spin-offs, including the Tracy Beaker adventures, Jacqueline Wilson takes a no-nonsense approach to children’s fiction that reflects the realities of jigsaw families, mental and divorce. In 2012, in something of a detour from the rest of her work, she wrote a sequel of sorts to E. Nesbit’s beloved magical children’s classic, Five Children and It. Nesbit’s book has been adapted a myriad of times, including the charming 1990s BBC version and the less successful 2004 take with Eddie Izzard. It’s a familiar Read more ...
Jill Chuah Masters
Welcome to New Mushroomton: a fantasy land that’s forgotten itself. This is how we’re introduced to Pixar’s Onward, which is set in a Dungeons & Dragons daydream of suburbia. Director Dan Scanlon’s film is a tribute to his late father, but it begins with a separate elegy. “Long ago,” we’re told, “the world was full of wonder.” Until the day that convenience killed magic — electricity was invented, spells cast aside. Today’s mythical creatures have become ordinary: trolls run tollbooths, gnomes are garden-variety.Such is life for Onward’s heroes, the elven Lightfoot family. There’s meek Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book about living on the faultline between imagination and reality is a fantastically alternative offering for the festive season. While the parameters of the story are dark, it’s an edgy, stunningly thought through tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind, and its ability to help us engage with the horrors that life flings at us. Though there is no shortage of Gothic special effects, the success of the production is due in no small part to Samuel Blenkin’s superb, comically gawky turn as the “Boy” at the Read more ...