(Live action remake of animated feature, so filed under animation, among other categories.) Director – Marc Webb – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 119m ***1/2 Disney’s new Snow White redoes the first animated feature, with its eponymous heroine, wicked queen and dwarfs, as live action – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March […]
Director – Travis Knight – 2016 – US – Cert. PG – 101m ***** The following review originally appeared in Funimation UK; republished to coincide with the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) […]
Director – Marcell Jankovics – 1981 – Hungary – Cert. 12 – 86m ***** The Hungarian animated epic Son Of The White Mare (1981) is one of the great, largely unknown treasures of animation, if not of cinema. Its late director Marcell Jankovics (1941-2021) made a number of shorts and commercials before his two features […]
Director – Yonfan – 2019 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12A – 125m ***** The tutor of an 18-year-old girl falls for her mother who hired him against the background of the 1967 protest marches in Hong Kong – plays in the Annecy Animation Festival 2022 which is taking place in a 100% on-site edition […]
Director – Andrew Goff – 1994 – UK – Cert. U – 35m ***** VHS tape review from What’s On In London sometime back in the mid-1990s, republished here to coincide with the sad news of writer / illustrator Eric Carle’s death at 91. The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Stories is based on the […]
Director – Tsui Hark – 1983 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12 – 98m ***** One of the greatest special effects action movies ever made, this groundbreaking epic delivers non-stop, near unbelievable, visually entrancing vistas of Chinese mythology – online in the UK as part of Focus Hong Kong 2021 from Tuesday, February 9th to […]
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (Extended Edition) Director – Peter Jackson – 2002 (2001) – New Zealand – Cert. PG – 229m ***** (NB Extended Edition, in cinemas from Monday, July 24th 2020, 227m in cinemas due to extended frame rate = 218m version released on DVD 2004. Original theatrical […]
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. 13 May – 1 October 2017. ***** On my Must See list for a while: finally managed a visit last week. Thoroughly enjoyed as someone who grew up when everyone but everyone owned a copy of Dark Side Of The Moon and subsequently discovered the whole back catalogue only […]
Director – Michaël Dudok De Wit – 2016 – France / Belgium / Japan – Cert. PG – 82m ***** A man shipwrecked on an island encounters a red turtle. From the get-go, this is not your usual 2D animated film. The Red Turtle is slow-paced, has no dialogue and is certainly not aimed at […]
Director – Tim Burton – 2005 – US – PG – 115 mins ***** UK release date 29/07/2005. Currently screening on Netflix An adaptation of Roald Dahl’s eponymous 1964 children’s book previously filmed under the title Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971), this also marks the second collaboration of Burton with screenwriter […]