Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

IF

Director – John Krasinski – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 104m

****

A 12-year-old staying with her grandma in New York meets many imaginary friends forgotten by the adults who befriended them as children – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th

This follows the time-worn children’s story template of a child whose father in hospital and is worried that they might not ever come home. In this instance, the child’s fear is grounded in her previous experience of this happening to her mother, who went into hospital and never came out.

Thus, 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) is sent to stay with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in New York while her single-parent dad (John Krasinski) goes to the hospital for what he assures Bea will be a routine operation. Dad is an inveterate practical joker of a gentle sort, performing impromptu song and dance routines with his treatment drip on a stand or staging a tableau of his escape out of the window via a rope made of knotted bedsheets. As you can probably tell, director Krasinski is clearly having a lot of fun playing this role, and fortunately for us that fun translates onto the screen. As a bonus, likeable child actor Alan Kim (Minari, Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) plays the patient in a nearby ward.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Indiana Jones
And The
Dial Of Destiny

Director – James Mangold – 2022 – US / UK – Cert. 12a – 154m

*****

In the late 1960s, the newly-retired archaeologist is dragged by his goddaughter into a globetrotting adventure involving Nazis and ancient artefacts – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, June 28th

In 1945 in Europe, at the close of the Second World War, whilst fighting Nazis led by archaeologist Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) both in a castle and on a train, archaeologists Henry Jones (Harrison Ford) and Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) gain possession of an ancient artefact, the Archimedes Dial aka the Antekythera mechanism.

Over two decades later in 1969 in New York, on the day of his retirement from academia, Jones is approached by his late colleague’s daughter – his goddaughter – Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who, following her research into her father’s obsession with the artefact, believes she knows the location of one half of the dial, broken into two separate pieces by its maker Archimedes to prevent it falling into unsuitable hands.

She’s wrong though: Jones has it, although possibly not for long as a cabal of Dr. Voller plus Nazis including the trigger-happy Klaber (Boyd Holbrook), the 7’2 Hauke (Olivier Richters) and a CIA agent Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson) turn up to regain its possession.… Read the rest