In 2024, five of the seven films I went to were 'quels of some sort. My cinema trips in 2025 started in the same vein with a Disney sequel to one of my favourite films.
Moana 2 (Odeon, Cardiff Bay)
I'd put Moana in my top 5 Disney films, no question. So this sequel had a lot to live up to. My overall sense was that it was a decent attempt, but some aspects didn't really work.
This time Moana is trying to raise a sunken island, which for some reason is keeping the various peoples scattered across the ocean's island chains separated. She connects with Maui, the demigod again, and they team up to raise the island to the chagrin of a storm god who sunk it.
It's always difficult when sequels feel they need to go more epic and don't quite pull it off. It's also a fine balance between preserving the aspects of the story and characters that made a film work first time around and introducing some new aspects that keep things fresh and interesting.
I felt they didn't quite get the balance right with Moana 2. This time Moana has a motley crew of islanders helping her, but none of them were developed as characters. It was a stereotypical 'crew' with the talented but clumsy one, the grumpy curmudgeon, and so on. More could have been done with those extra characters as opposed to just being extra hassle for Moana to deal with.
So, yeah, a decent attempt that felt slightly short of a very high bar. It was worth seeing and I enjoyed it.
The Penguin Lessons (free preview at Showcase, Nantgarw)
Cathy scored us some free tickets to go and see this film that was based on a true story. Steve Coogan isn't my favourite actor, but he does dramatic non-comedy roles pretty well. He plays a teacher called Tom who is moving around South America and winds up in a school in Argentina just at the start of the crackdown that established the brutal junta dictatorship in the 1970s.
He also acquires a penguin after a drunken holiday over the border in Uruguay. The penguin becomes attached to him and won't leave and the story then follows a fairly familiar story arc as the initially hostile Tom becomes very attached to the penguin in turn, becoming a better person along the way.
While Coogan plays the character well, the penguin is cute, and Jonathan Pryce is excellent as the headmaster of the school, I found the historical setting of the film the most compelling bit. The film managed to capture the slow descent of an unstable country into scary totalitarianism. The scenes where the secret police disappear people off the streets - many of whom are never accounted for - are shocking, and Tom's inaction in the face of such shocking brutality is captured incredibly well. The remorse he feels at his cowardice, as he confesses his shame to his penguin friend, lifts the film out of the 'human saved by an animal' genre.
It poses that question of 'what would you do?' if you were in a situation like that. In the film Tom intervenes on behalf of one character, but apparently that sub-plot was added to the script and wasn't something that happened in real life. There is a poignant note at the end about how many mothers were still waiting for news of their disappeared children.
The unexpected serious side of the film made it a much better watch than I initially expected.
Elio (at Y Galeri, Caernarfon)
Pixar films have been quite hit and miss of late. This had moments that really made me laugh. It fell a little bit into the animated story trope of kid losing their parents and the adult trying to care for them really struggling. Within that trope, the main character, Elio, inadvertently makes contact with an alien having family troubles of their own. They become friends and find a way forward together.
The alien antagonists that threaten Elio are suitably scary, but there is a point to their martial aggressive natures. The subtext that trying to hide your soft centre behind sophisticated battle armour is laid on a bit thick, but the point is valid and Pixar make sure to hit several other moral compass points along the way - dishonesty leads to disaster (for others if not for you), authenticity matters more, expressing love isn't weakness.
I don't think the film did particularly well in the cinemas, which is a shame. There weren't many in the showing we went to - at the little arts cinema in Caernarfon that we try to go to when we are on holiday in the area. But even though it didn't seem to get a lot of press, I'd prefer Pixar to carry on creating original stories instead of just adding more instalments to successful franchises. (Yes, of course I will watch Toy Story 5 when it comes out, but that's not the point...)
Sketch (free preview at Showcase, Nantgarw)
More free tickets, for a decidedly odd film that is best described as 'horror for kids'. It would score highly on the kid's film bingo card. Dead parent, check. Unexplained supernatural situation, check. Conflict with adults who don't believe the kids, check... until they do believe, check.
I don't want to put too many spoilers in this, but the story is basically about two kids who have lost their mum and don't want their dad to sell their house. They find a place with magical powers and inadvertently trigger an invasion of monsters. Which they then need to stop.
The adult roles are played by Tony Hale as the dad, and D'Arcy Carden as the kid's aunt who is helping the dad sell the house. D'Arcy is, frankly, a but wasted in this. She is a supremely funny actress but this felt a bit flat.
There are some good action sequences and comic moments, but the story is a bit weak. It's the kind of film to put on while ironing as you don't need to be paying it full attention. Some of the kids in the screening we went to got quite bored in the slow bits.
Zootropolis 2 (Odeon, Cardiff Bay)
We went to this with a group of friends to celebrate Cathy's birthday. Another Disney sequel to a film I rate highly. The original Zootropolis is a very enjoyable, narratively complex story about politicians generating misinformation to stir up fear between different groups of people for their own benefit. That theme is still very pertinent.
The story in the sequel is along the same lines but this time the villainy is perpetuated by wealthy citizens of Zootropolis. So, it's a little more cliched than the first movie. Unlikely cop duo Judy Hopps (a rabbit) and Nick Wilde (a fox) pursue the case against all odds and against direct orders. Will they succeed in bringing the bad guys to justice? Well, this is a Disney film so you can probably guess the answer.
There are plenty of callbacks to funny moments in the previous film, and multiple nods and homages to other films, both Disney and otherwise. Special highlights were jokes about Ratatouille and The Silence of the Lambs. Overall the film was excellent and I would rate it as probably the best Disney sequel I've seen. I definitely want to watch it again.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (Cineworld, Shrewsbury)
A Christmas Eve treat, watched with my brother and three niblings in tow. I saw the film when it was originally released in the early 1990s, then many times over the years on VHS, DVD and latterly streaming. I was delighted this was the original cut with Belle's song 'The Love is Gone' in it. The song adds such emotional depth to Scrooge's visit to Christmases past.
I would argue this is both the finest adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel and probably the best Muppet film as well. It has lost none of it's vitality and it was great to see it in the cinema again.
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