Categories
Movies Animation Features

Tad and the Magic Lamp
(Tadeo Jones
y la Lámpara Maravillosa)

Tad and the Magic Lamp
(Tadeo Jones y la Lámpara Maravillosa)

Director – Enrique Gato – 2026 – Spain – Cert. U – 94m

***1/2

In search of Aladdin’s lamp with a powerful villain in hot pursuit, Tad and his companions are transported back in time to (the) Mummy’s ancient, South American civilization – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 23rd

Gato’s fourth instalment of the Tad the Lost Explorer franchise starts off in London with Tad pursuing a baby through the clockwork mechanisms of Big Ben, a sequence which recalls the climactic sequence of Disney’s Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Dave Michener, Juhn Musker, 1986). It turns out that the baby is his and partner Sara’s, and that Tad is engaged in parenting chores while she is out and about with the Egyptian princess researching the magic lamp reputed to belong to Aladdin and rumoured to be in a room in Buckingham Palace unbeknownst to its royal occupants and accessible via a secret passage.

Entry to the secret passage is though a secret door in a pub, which can only be opened with a special dart which Sara tracks down in a Notting Hill antique shop.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas

Director – Wim Wenders – 1984 – US – Cert. 15 – 145m

*****

A constantly inventive movie in which a man returns after four years’ absence to bond with his seven-year-old son and seek out his disappeared wife – back out in cinemas on Friday, July 29th

Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) stumbles out of the desert in Southern Texas having disappeared to Mexico for four years following the collapse of his marriage. During this time, the estranged couple’s seven-year-old son Hunter (Hunter Carson) has been living with Travis’ brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) and wife Anne (Aurore Clement) who he understandably thinks of as his parents. Walt coaxes Travis into re-establishing his paternal relationship with the boy. When Travis decides to track down disappeared wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who has been sending Walt and Anne money for the child from a bank in Houston, the child talks him into letting him tag along.

Although it starts with Travis walking, and much of the early part of the film takes place in and around Walt and Anne’s home, it’s very much a road movie with a great deal of the narrative taking place in cars and pickup trucks.

The film caused a sensation when it came out in the UK over 35 years ago.… Read the rest