Cinema viewing 2025

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 fell 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 bit 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 for me and Cathy, 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. 

Alien: Romulus - kicking a franchise in a new direction

This was my second trip to the cinema this month. I went with Ian, who informed me this film is what's known as an 'interquel' as it's set between other movies in the Alien franchise. As we chatted before the film we worked out that this could well be the first film we had been to together since Alien: Covenant back in 2017.

I reviewed Alien: Covenant in my round up of films I saw in 2017. I hated it. I felt an intense anger at how much it insulted my intelligence and the intelligence of everyone in the theatre around me. Even now, seven years later, I can feel the rage at the sheer stupidity of the script bubbling as I type this. Movies shouldn't do that to people!

Anyway, very briefly, before I get into the review, here is a non-spoilery summary. This follows the now traditional formula for an Alien movie. There are a group of people. A xenomorph gets loose. Then it's just a case of trying to guess who dies next. There are jump scares and some gore - how else can you have a juvenile alien burst out of someone's chest? 

I think a person could watch this if they hadn't watched any other films in the franchise, although I don't really know why they would want to. However. it will be easier to follow if they have at least seen Alien, Aliens and Prometheus - although there isn't very much related to the latter movie. There are a lot of callbacks to the first two movies - to the point where they feel overdone. And there is one recurring character who I will discuss below the spoiler barrier of the film poster. But you wouldn't need to know they were a recurring character, and maybe it would be better not to know. 

There are two other aspects of the film that I don't think are spoilers. One is the grimness of the colony world at the start of the film. This is where our doomed gang hail from. Theoretically the colonists can work their way off the planet and book passage to another world. But the rules keep changing to keep people there. Then an opportunity arises to leave. The escape plan means going into a space station where bad things happened. And those bad things are waiting for them. 

The franchise's vision of the future is one where people are expendable on worlds run by corporations. This is true if humans are toiling down mines or encountering xenomorphs. The people don't matter. It does feel like a realistic possible future - not a pleasant idea, but a believable one. 

And if humans are expendable, 'artificial humans' are even more so. This is the second interesting aspect of the film, the relationship between Rain, played by Cailee Spaeny, and her 'brother', an android called Andy played by David Jonsson. I'm very interested in films that look at how humans interact socially with machine intelligence and this is explored in the film cleverly and sympathetically. 

Spoilers follow below the film poster! (You have been warned.)

Let's talk about those callbacks, and the big one - the very unexpected appearance of a CGI version of Ian Holm as an artificial person Science Officer. This one is known as Rook, not Ash, but to all intents and purposes, it is Ash. The CGI is a bit awkward at first, but when the action switches to Rook appearing only on TV screens it looked much more believable. 

But it gave me the ick. Ian Holm is dead. Unless they secured his permission to do this, then using his likeness in a film just feels wrong. I've felt the same way about the way Christopher Lee was regenerated for Star Wars: Rogue One. This feels like a violation because it's using a person's voice and likeness without their consent. 

The acting was OK, not that most of the xenomorph fodder had much to do except scream and die. But David Jonsson stood out among the rest of the cast. His initial damaged goods persona was full of pathos and his switch to an upgraded AI operating under a different prime directive was eerie and scary. 

But I did catch one interesting thing, when Rook identifies Andy's android model, Rook refers to that model as key to the early colonising efforts but now obsolete. I'm not sure if it was meant that way, but it felt a bit awkward that the colonising efforts used a large number of black synthetic humans effectively as slaves, while the white synthetic humans had roles as Science Officers (for example). Maybe the film-makers were trying to make a comment about race or maybe I'm just being sensitive. Either way, I felt uncomfortable. 

There are some plot holes. We see one xenomorph gestate and emerge, and then suddenly there are loads of them infesting the space station. Rook explains that one original xenomorph - picked up from the wreckage of the Nostromo destroyed in Alien no less - ran rampant through the ship but that didn't explain where the room full of cryogenically stored face-huggers came from. 

But there are some great sequences as well. The lift off from the colony world and Rain seeing sunlight for the very first time. The space station's collision with the icy rings around the planet. The idea of using zero-g to fight the xenomorphs so that their spilled acidic blood didn't melt through the hull, and the ensuing balletic float around the clouds of acid droplets to escape. 

I'm not sure we really needed the final scenes and their jeopardy once Rain and Andy made it back onto the ship. Although, that is traditional for Alien films too - Ripley in the escape pod in Alien, the queen xenomorph appearing on the USS Sulaco. But I think they could have left it with one extra survivor in a pod bound for a new planet, carrying something awful. 

I did like the touch of Rain leaving a message before getting into cryo-stasis. Her target world is nine years away and so she is going to sleep. Very much like Ripley at the end of the first two movies. Cailee Spaeny could easily go on to become the face of the franchise for further films so I hope she gets to wake up in a future movie. Even though, there will be fresh horrors waiting for her.  

Film review: Harold and the Purple Crayon

SPOILER ALERT!

Harold and the Purple Crayon is a very popular illustrated children's book in America. Despite not being very familiar with the story, I thought the trailer for this looked interesting. And with Zachary Levi in the title role, it felt worth a look. 

The story starts with Harold and his friends, in their illustrated form, having various adventures with the magic purple crayon. Anything drawn using the crayon takes form, whether that's a dragon, a moose, a porcupine, a boat, or whatever. 

Harold and his friends are used to listening to the "narrator" and when the narrator stops answering their questions, Harold draws a way into the "real world" to try and find him. Mayhem ensues as Harold uses the creative power of his purple crayon to help people, although his good intentions cause chaos. 

I won't relate the entire story, but basically there are people who realise the power of the crayon and use it for their own ends, but it all works out in the long run. Zooey Deschanel plays the other lead role opposite Levi and there is able support from Lil Rey Howery (who I last saw as Buddy in Free Guy) as Moose, Tanya Reynolds as Porcupine, Benjamin Bottani as Harold's first friend in the real world, and Jermaine Clement (from Flight of the Conchords) who plays a great hammy villain. The script is quite tight - I laughed several times - and the runtime of 90 minutes is just the right length.

Apparently the reviews haven't been kind to the film, but what do film critics know, really? I went in with fairly low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. And there was one element of the film that went a bit deeper than I expected. 

Harold has entered the real world looking for the 'old man', the narrator. This is a mix of father figure and creator, who has suddenly gone silent. As he becomes aware of who the 'narrator' was - the author of the book, the late Crockett Johnson - he realises that from now on he won't have a narrator for his adventures. This places him in existential crisis - asking the big questions of what does he do with his life now?

In one sense this is a way of looking at parental bereavement. The gap left by a now absent parent. But, for me, it felt there was a wider parallel of any occasion where we are feel that things we were certain about are no longer certain and the need to find a way through - that suddenly we are the narrators of our own stories, the creators of our own worlds and we can't rely on there being a voice from the sky telling us what to do next. 

Harold's response when he gets a final message from the author, telling him to take his destiny into his own hands is to be grateful for the opportunity and to see it as an adventure. It is refreshing to watch a movie with such an uplifting and life-affirming conclusion. 

Star Wars Day 2024 - 25 years since The Phantom Menace

It's slightly unreal that it's a quarter century since The Phantom Menace was released in cinemas. I remember the excitement about a new Star Wars film. I had been reading loads of spin off novels and comics and had been buying packs of a collectible card game for most of the 90s, but a new film was next level. 

Cathy and I went to see it in a cinema that no longer exists in Barry, and again in the brand new UCI cinema in Cardiff Bay (which is now about to be pulled down to make way for a new arena). We really enjoyed it. OK, yeah, there were a few things that weren't so great, but overall it 'felt' like Star Wars.

Subsequently it has become kind of cool among some people to sneer at The Phantom Menace and call it rubbish. I noted that back in 2012, and listed some of the problems with the film:

The Phantom Menace is almost universally derided among true fans, and yet I think it is still the best one of the three. True, it has no main protagonist. He should have toned down Jar Jar Binks a lot. Darth Maul was pre-hyped as a massive villainous character then had about three minutes of screen-time. The plotline is essentially feeble. But it’s a ‘set up’ movie – what would you expect?

There were two disasters, though. One was the ‘explanation’ of Anakin’s potentiality in the Force as being due to microscopic force-producing organisms in his blood called ‘midichlorians’ and the corresponding random decision to accord him a ‘virgin birth’ (seriously). The other was the repeated fudging of the monarchy issue. ‘Queen Amidala’ is a teenager, who has somehow been democratically elected queen. Yes, that’s right, the constitutional monarchist system of Naboo elects teenagers to positions of unquestionable power.

(That was taken from a post about how George Lucas needed to be kept away from Star Wars films. I got my wish, but have to admit now that I don't think George was the problem. Rogue One, The Book of Boba Fett, and The Rise of Skywalker have convinced me of that!)

But, honestly, I don't remember there being much immediate criticism when The Phantom Menace was released. The common opinion that the film was a dud wasn't voiced until later. I remember some criticism of JarJar as a character - but Lucas has always included some slapstick and physical comedy in Star Wars. (He kept the scene where a stormtrooper smacks his helmeted head on a door because he thought it was funny.) 

What really stood out about the film was the CGI, which was ground-breaking at the time. It expanded the vision of the galaxy far, far away in ways that we would have been unimaginable when the original trilogy was filmed. 

Some of the other problems I mentioned back in 2012 have been rectified. Darth Maul was too good a character to kill off after just one movie. The Sith warrior was brought back in The Clone Wars cartoon, fitted with mechanical legs but on a separate path to his former master, Darth Sidious. In canon, Maul went on to run Crimson Dawn, the galaxy-spanning crime syndicate. He made a surprise appearance at the end of Solo, in this role. If you want to see a final conclusion to his story, you'll find it in the Rebels cartoon series. 

I'd also say that now, The Phantom Menace doesn't compare badly against some of the more recent glut of Star Wars product. There have been a few less-than-impressive films and TV shows. Compared to more recent grittier material, it's a brightly lit romp has retained a certain joyful innocence.. The Boonta Eve pod race remains one of the best sequences in any Star Wars film.

So, 25 years on, I'd suggest giving The Phantom Menace another watch and remember when Star Wars was meant to be enjoyable and not taken to seriously. 

Why I was disappointed with Toy Story 4

Spoilers follow for all the Toy Story films

[2023 edit: This post was originally written when TS4 was released in cinemas but for some reason I never posted it. However, I re-read it recently and I still feel this way about the film. And now, with rumours of Toy Story 5 rumbling, I thought I may as well post it with a few minor edits.]

There's a law of diminishing returns on sequels. I still rate Toy Story 2. I thought Toy Story 3 was OK, but never felt the need to watch it a second time. 24 years after the first Toy Story movie, Woody and co returned for a 4th cinema outing.

There are some real pro points to the film. Rabbit and Ducky are great new characters and they gave me the best laughs. Duke Kaboom, voiced by Keanu Reeves, is another brilliant new character with probably the single best line in the script. The animation is high class. Bo Peep's sheep steal the show with their antics. The Pixar geek in me loved seeing a nicely animated Tin-Toy in a cameo appearance.

But overall, something just didn't sit right.

This is Woody's film. The film quickly establishes that his new owner, Bonnie, doesn't give a crap about him. She strips him of his sheriff's badge and then throws him back into the cupboard, rejected. Worse still, when he finally escapes the cupboard, her klutzy dad literally stamps on Woody's face twice. It would appear carelessness is genetic.

Weirdly, Woody is still obsessed with caring for Bonnie. He stows away with her to kindergarten to make sure her first day goes alright. Then he fixates on protecting the toy she makes on her first day, 'Forky'.

Even if you haven't seen the film, you'll have seen Forky. He's on all the posters. He's a spork with a crudely applied mouth and googly eyes. He is also easily the most annoying Pixar character ever. Unfortunately for the film, after Forky's appearance all the other established characters, who we have come to know and love as we shared their adventures, are brutally relegated to background characters. Rex, Jessie, Mr Potato Head, Hamm, the aliens, Bullseye, Jessie and even Buzz are now just wallpaper to the Forky story.

Woody believes that Forky is Bonnie's most important toy right now and blah, blah, blah, oh who cares, Woody? More importantly, why do you care? Bonnie doesn't want to play with you! Why don't you just let her be and if she's so stupid as to lose her stupid spork toy, that's on her. Tough love, Woody! Give her some tough love! Maybe then she will take more care of her toys.

Anyway, there's some stuff about how Woody never got over Andy, then he sees Bo Peep's lamp in an antique store and goes in looking for her. At this point the film goes creepy and weird.

We have already had a flashback scene where Bo Peep is sold 9 years previously, presumably on Craigslist or something. She asks Woody to come with her and he says no because Andy needs him. Clearly he is haunted by this, so goes into the creepy, weird antique store. There he meets an old doll who blames her failure to be played with on a defective voicebox, which could be replaced by Woody's voicebox. Her henchmen - a bunch of ventriloquist's dummies - try to rip it out of him until Bo Peep turns up and rescues him.

I quite liked the recasting of Bo Peep from toddler's nightlight to independent woman living her own life by her own rules as a "lost toy" who has actually found herself. She is a feisty, clever, strong-minded role model of a lamp now. I warmed to her.

Various shenanigans ensue. Keep an eye out for the third Combat Carl figure waiting for his high fives. Woody needs to rescue Forky for Bonnie. That means going back into the creepy antique store. There's some stuff with Buzz. Woody ends up sacrificing his voicebox in return for Forky, and then the doll in question ends up rejected by the little girl she desperately wanted to have play with her anyway. (Another kid comes along before the end of the movie so the voicebox thief does get her play companion in the end. Not sure what the message is there. Kidnappers and extortionists get a happy ending too? It feels like anything is possible in America these days.)

So we get to the end of the film and Woody has given everything. His badge is gone. He's had his face crushed. He's been rejected and abused every which way possible. He has been overlooked, abandoned, lost and no one has even noticed he is missing. He has even given away his voicebox - his essential self, as it were, and still Bonnie only really cares about a crummy spork.

And then he has a choice. Stay with Bo Peep - who he has already seen leave his life once before - or stick with the ingrate brat who now owns him. Well it's a no brainer, right? He's got to finally put his own worth over his sense of duty and stick with Bo. Except for some reason the way it played felt so wrong.

I've really examined my feelings on this, and I think this is the reason it felt wrong: Actually, Woody was selfish all along. He always said that Andy was the most important thing. He let Bo leave with just her sheep for company on that dark and stormy night, because Andy was the most important thing. Because, in turn, he was important to Andy. He got played with. He was the leader of the room. He was in a position of respect and authority.

All that stuff about Forky being important to Bonnie was actually about Woody being important to Bonnie, even though she didn't know about it. His self-identity as the important toy was being lived vicariously through Forky. He was there when Forky was made. He was the one who introduced Forky to the gang. He was the one who sat up all night trying to stop Forky jumping into the trash. He was the one who cared, who knew that Forky was oh-so-important to Bonnie, even though there was so little evidence to show that none of the other toys picked up on it.

And that selfishness came to the fore as the other toys were relegated to background characters. Yes, Woody stayed with Bo Peep, but he left Bullseye! He left Buzz! He left Slink! He left all those other loyal to the hilt friends - the ones who braved death on the roads and the elevator to save him from Al the Chicken, the ones who had turned down the safe life of being adored behind glass for him, the ones who had held his hands as they seemed to face imminent immolation in the incinerator at the dump.

There was barely a goodbye.

I know we are meant to see this as Woody's triumph. He finally sheds the sense of duty that consumed him even to the point of robbing him of his voice. He steps out and puts himself first - and we are meant to think this is him actually doing this for the first time. He tastes freedom for the first time.

But when he does it, really he's just revealing his own dark side of selfishness.

And that's why I think I left the cinema feeling more than a tad depressed. A beloved character turns out to be less of the heroic toy cowboy and more like a flawed human.

I didn't need this sequel.

(If you watch it, keep it playing right until the very end for the final Pixar logo.)

Recap of the month - February 2023

This monthly round up is a bit late because the end of February and the beginning of March proved to be very busy with a work trip to North Wales, followed by adventuring to the eastern side of England - but there will be more about that when I review March!

I didn't blog much in February because it was a very busy footballing month, including a new milestone on the first Saturday when I travelled with one of my footballing friends called Paul to the Kassam Stadium in Oxford. This was my first visit to that football ground and it became the 100th ground I've watched football at since I started keeping a record of football matches in 1992. 

The Friday night immediately before hitting my century of grounds on the Saturday I went to Abergavenny Town's rather dilapidated old ground, which was my 99th ground where I've seen a game. On both the Friday and the Saturday I was supporting the away team - Barry Town and Shrewsbury Town - and both times the team I supported won 1-0.

In total I went to 8 games, which was a new record monthly total for February. In addition to Oxford and Abergavenny, I saw two games at different grounds in Port Talbot. The Viking ship on the Port Talbot Town logo caught my eye.

I went to two Barry home games, and saw Barry play a game in Taff's Well too. I dragged my buddy Connor along to one of the games at Jenner Park. It was the first time he'd seen them since before the pandemic.

I even had a trip to Caldicot where I saw my friend Ben play for Caldicot Town against Tredegar Town. 

Due to an injury crisis at the club, Ben was playing in an unfamiliar role at right back. Despite that his team won. 

It wasn't all football though. In the middle of the month, we had a lovely Saturday with my sister, Sarah, and her three kids. We met them in Bristol and visited The Wild Place, which is a well-planned zoo park with a variety of animals kept in nice environments. The highlight was the walkways through woods populated with lynx, wolves, wolverines and bears. The bears were hibernating but we were able to watch them snooze on the den-cam. (Even if they had been awake, you're not allowed to play with them anyway.)

I went back to Oxford for a second time later in the month, this time with Cathy. We stopped to have lunch with a friend on our way to Haddenham, which isn't too far away.  Our friend, Colin, had passed away and we were on our way to his funeral. 

We got to know Colin because we became good friends with his daughter, Viv, when we started attending the same church as her back at the start of the century. He was a kind, gentle man with a good sense of humour. He was also a skilled potter and he gifted us several ceramic items that will remind us of him. 

Colin's funeral was in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Haddenham. We had visited the church before, when Viv and Ian got married there just over 15 years ago. 

Outside the church is the village duck pond. This is an important cinematic landmark because it was the film location for the scene in The Great Muppet Caper when Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo land in the UK after being thrown out of the cargo hold of an aeroplane. I feel Colin would have appreciated that we stopped to take a selfie with it (see the picture at the top of the blog post).

Movie review - DC League of Superpets

I went with some nieces and a nephew to watch another comic book movie at the weekend. This time it was animated and focused on the DC Superpets, a spin-off in the DC comics franchise. Mild spoilers follow the picture of the film poster. 

The film centres on Krypto, Superman's super-powered dog, and various other animals from a local rescue shelter who receive superpowers from a fragment of orange kryptonite. They have to work together to thwart the evil scheme of a maniacal guinea pig who had been experimented on by Lex Luthor. It has a strong voice cast, including Dwayne Johnson as Krypto and Kevin Hart as Ace, a dog from the shelter who will end up being Batdog. 

Despite the promising premise, the film suffered from the same problems as pretty much all the other DC movies that have been released. The plotting was sedate. There were scenes and battles that did not add anything to the overall plot and just slowed things down. The final resolution was the same as every other DC film I've seen - a big punch up. (In fairness, this is a problem for almost every comic book movie.)

There were some funny jokes like the dogs playing with squeaky toys of superheroes. There were humorous references to other superhero franchises, like Superman ironing a shirt with his laser vision and toying with the idea of calling himself Iron Man.  I laughed at the recording of Krypto's father that always started the same way and Krypto saying he needed a skip intro button. And I was very amused by the character of a kitten given superpowers who became a living weapon as a result.

However, some scripting choices were a bit off. Merton the sweary tortoise got bleeped on a couple of occasions instead of cutting away or substituting other words as happens in most animated movies. Maybe the studio thought it was in keeping with DC's attempt to be the 'edgy' comic book franchise. I don't think any of the kids watching with us picked up on it, but it felt clunky. 

Another misstep was the production team's assumption that the audience would know who everyone was, especially when human superheroes turned up. I got some of the references and inside jokes, and I imagine DC super-nerds would get more. However, I don't think the jokes are so good it is worth investing the time and effort to become a DC super-nerd just to get the references. 

There were also scenes that play on Batman's origin story and take the mickey out of the darkness in the Dark Knight. But that road has already been well trodden in The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie (reviewed here). The jokes at Batman's expense in Superpets felt hackneyed as a result, so even this self-deprecation by the franchise felt stale.

Overall, I enjoyed the film and don't regret going to see it. But my main impression is that even in an animated film which is supposed to be aimed at children and therefore a bit silly, the DC franchise can't escape from its own drawbacks. 

Film review - Pixar go meta with Lightyear

I had goosebumps when I saw the first trailer for Lightyear, last year. It's the bit where David Bowie singing Starman kicks in that just gets me. Now, having seen the film, I have had some thoughts. 

This post contains a few spoilers below the video for the trailer, so maybe watch the trailer and then go off and do something else if you don't want to read any spoilers before seeing the film yourself. 

So, the headline meta stuff about this film is that it is meant to be the movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear action figure who is one of the main stars of the original Toy Story film. In Toy Story, a little boy called Andy is given a Buzz Lightyear figure as a birthday present. In the Pixar universe, this is the film Andy saw in the cinema that made him so excited to get his own Buzz Lightyear.

As a way of extending a successful franchise without continuing an established storyline, this struck me as genius. It's as creative as anything in the movie and starts things off on a clever footing. It's also not really a kids' film - but it is the film for the people who were kids when Toy Story came out 25 years ago! 

The opening few scenes include Buzz exploring an alien planet and saying lines of dialogue that will be immediately recognisable to anyone who has watched the Toy Story several times. That cracked me up. The dialogue worked in the film even if you weren't aware that it was lifted practically verbatim from the first movie. But knowing how those phrases will be repeated in Andy's bedroom by action figure Buzz after Andy's birthday party just filled me with joy.

So, on to the story. Buzz causes an exploration spaceship to crash, marooning 1,200 people on a planet, without any hyperfuel to get home. He wants to make amends and starts repeatedly testing potential hyperfuel compounds, trying to find the one that would enable the ship to leave the planet. Unfortunately, when he tests the fuel by slingshotting around the nearest sun, he experiences time dilation, skipping forwards years compared to the people he leaves behind. Each time he returns a few hours older from a mission, everyone else has aged a few years. 

There's a thoughtful core to that idea, of someone so depserate to make amends for their mistake, they actually end up missing out on life. While his friends and colleagues find love and start families, and live happy, fulfilled lives, Buzz singlemindedly perseveres on his quest to redeem himself - a quest that nobody asks him to undertake. 

Driven by failure and guilt, Buzz doesn't share in his friends' big moments, as they celebrate births and graduations and anniversaries. And in a heartbreaking scene he misses saying goodbye to his best friend and supporter as he returns from a mission after she passes away from old age. I found the scene where he played her recorded goodbye message in her room that now lay empty very emotionally moving. 

That idea gave core meaning to the film, with the question of what really makes a person a hero. There is a grace in accepting the situation and making the best of it - in this case raising a family to be proud of while founding a functioning society on a new planet. 

Then, of course, Buzz lands after one final trip to find the colony city under siege from robots that all say the word "Zurg" and the adventure part of the story kicks in. Buzz and some new friends have to save the day in a way he never expected. 

So, in summary, this felt like Pixar have rediscovered a bit of their soul after a real mix of duds and delights lately. I realise I am one of the few people who really did not like Toy Story 4 and am on record as saying I never needed another Toy Story film. But this isn't a Toy Story film. It had something different to say and said it well, which leaves me feeling like I would be interested in seeing another Lightyear movie.

A day at Dartmoor Zoo

On our recent holiday we had a slightly chilly day at Dartmoor Zoo in Sparkwell not far from Plymouth. It's the zoo that the film We Bought a Zoo is based on, although in the film the zoo is in California, not Devon.

On the way in we saw the tapirs eating their breakfast.

Tapirs are some of my favourite animals. Unfortunately the chilly wind deterred them from staying outside and once they had polished off their meal they went and hid in their little house.

The tapir's neighbours, the capybara family were also a bit chilly but were happier to stay outside.

Although it's quite a small zoo (which makes it really manageable and good for young children or older people), Dartmoor Zoo has an impressive array of big cats. It feels like visitors can get quite close to them and the design of the enclosures makes it easy to take photos. 

Of couse, it also means the cats can have a look at you!

I learned the difference between big cats and lesser cats from the talk by the cheetah enclosure. Big cats roar, and lesser cats purr, but no cats do both. Cheetahs are some of the largest of the lesser cats and we heard them purring in anticipation when the zookeepers brought out their food. Because they are lesser cats, they have kittens not cubs. 

Just across from the cheetahs they have lions and tigers. The tiger was putting on a show, doing adorable tigerish things like grooming.

But at one point he yawned revealing a set of fangs that could rip a human's throat out and it was a reminder that these creatures are deceptively fluffy.

The reptile house was small but well laid out and the lizards were visible. The geckos were fun. I told the volunteer staff member working in there about how my family used to have geckos living in the house when we lived in the Gambia. (They were very useful, eating flies and bugs. Even my grandma liked having them around and she wasn't keen on critters.)

There were a few smaller animals as well. Some were hard to photograph, like the potoroos. They are small marsupials that look like a cross between a big rat and a small wallaby. There were also some meerkats, which seem to be mandatory at zoos now. I found them amusing, particularly as it looked like one of the keepers had left a welly behind and the meerkat was colonising it in the name of meerkat-kind.

The following evening we watched the film of We Bought a Zoo. There was one bit which was a dead giveaway that the story was based on a tourist attraction in the UK - just before the zoo is about to open the weather turns into nonstop rain potentially preventing anyone from attending on opening day. That felt much more likely to have happened in Devon than in California!

February 2022 - end of month review

This is a bit late as we are already into mid-March, but we had a week away last week so I am playing catch up now. Being almost 2 weeks into March means that I feel like I've forgotten what happened in the shortest month. 

Another reason why the monthly review is hard to write is because events in the wider world took a rather grim turn as Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting the first war in Europe since the early 1990s when Yugoslavia fell apart. I have several thoughts about why this war feels different even to the post 9/11 invasion of Iraq, the long war in Afghanistan or the Syrian civil war. 

There has been a democratisation of war reporting now, with anyone on the ground with a mobile phone supplying footage and commentary. Twitter is full of shaky handheld footage from people in or near the combat zone. This is probably the first war to be livestreamed. It's all very sad and stupid and depressing. 

However it has lifted the lid again on the utter corruption of the UK Government and how easy it has been for Vladimir Putin to purchase the souls of Conservative politicians. It's the ultimate Thatcherite mindset - to put a monetary value on everything. Although Margaret Thatcher would have been horrified to see the way her successors have shilled themselves and her party to malign despots. 

There was a show of solidarity across football crowds with the people of Ukraine. Barry Town fans have long used blue and yellow Ukraine flags as decoration, so it was suddenly sadly relevant to see them being held up by fans at the game against Caernarfon Town at the last game in February.

There were a couple of other notable things about the game. Firstly, the Caernarfon manager had decided to copy the hipster's choice of football manager, Marcelo Bielsa. by sitting on a tub at the edge of his technical area. He got a chant of "Discount Bielsa, you're just a discount Bielsa" aimed at him.

The other was Barry's supporter's rep on the board, Ian, turning up in a suitable costume to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight.

The free bananas that he was handing out were especially welcome as it was a 12.45 kick off and I hadn't had my lunch yet. (I bought chips from the chip van.)

That game was the final one of six matches I attended in February. Barry had two Friday night games so on the free Saturdays I went to Pontardawe Town near Swansea and to Cambrian & Clydach in Clydach Vale near Tonypandy in the Rhondda. They hadn't updated their match board, but the game was on. 

In the middle of the month, Cathy and I celebrated Valentine's Day by watching the film Singin' in the Rain. I thought I had watched it as a kid, but remembered nothing about it at all apart from the iconic bit where Gene Kelly is dancing along singing in the rain, which I reckon I must have seen as a standalone clip. The film has aged quite well, I felt, with the theme of celebrities faking relationships to keep the gossip industry happy being weirdly up-to-date. 

Then towards the end of the month we had a sudden announcement that something we were planning to attend in Cambridge wasn't happening, so we suddenly had no reason to go and stay over there at the beginning of March. In typical fashion, we had just booked accomodation in Cambridgeshire the day before we were told that we didn't have to go. 

Fortunately, we were able to swap our accomodation for a week in Calstock next to the Tamar River on the border of Devon and Cornwall. I will tell you more about that in my next blog post!

The joy of existing captured in Free Guy

This post contains mild spoilers

In Free Guy (newly released on Disney Plus), comedy genius heartthrob Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, resident of ‘Free City’, whose happy life is interrupted repeatedly by people punching him in the face, robbing the bank where he works, flying attack helicopters through the streets and so on. Guy just thinks this is normal and cheerily carries on with his life – saying hello to his goldfish when he wakes up every day, ordering his regular coffee with cream and two sugars, meeting his best friend who works as the security guard at the bank, and just shrugging off the mayhem around him.

Eventually Guy works out that he is actually a ‘NPC’ (non-playable character) in a video game. His life, which feels real to him, is entirely generated within the servers of a computer game company. This becomes more awkward when he falls in love with a player’s character who knows he is a NPC but also seems to be falling in love back with him. Guy has been programmed to love the character or has he? Falling in “love”, it transpires, breaks his programmed algorithms and sets him off on new courses of exploration and discovery.

That in itself is a lovely concept and one that could provide a useful metaphor for platform speakers the world over.

On the face of it Free Guy is a bit of a mash up of a few other film concepts. Cathy kept saying how much it reminded her of The Truman Show. The idea that computer game characters might have their own lives within the game was also explored in Wreck It Ralph. As someone with a lay interest in artificial intelligence, the concept of an AI algorithm reaching self-aware consciousness is fascinating to me.

But the bit that really moved me was about two thirds the way through the movie, when Guy is talking to his buddy, the security guard literally called Buddy, played incredibly well by Lil Rel Howery.  Through wearing game player spectacles, Guy has the capacity to see the world as gamers see it – picking up medpacks, ammo, and so on. Buddy doesn’t want to see the world as Guy sees it and refuses to put the spectacles on, but they remain friends.

When Guy is told that the world is about to end – because the villainous software developer who created ‘Free City’ wants to capitalise on its success by replacing it with ‘Free City 2’ – he asks Buddy why Buddy doesn’t want to know the truth about their world. Buddy’s reply perfectly encapsulated the power of living in the moment. He says something like ‘Maybe all this is just a game. But right now, I’m sitting here with my best friend who needs me. And is there anything more real than that?’

That really jolted me as a moment of truth in an otherwise fairly silly film. We have those moments when, yes, everything seems crazy and our worlds are rocked. But we still can connect. We can still hold those moments as real – the feelings we feel right then are actually the important things.

I really loved that brief scene. It elevated Free Guy from a decent way to pass the time to actually a movie with something to say.

We have the moment and in that moment, that can be enough. Because it is real.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 - big theological questions in a comic book movie (Spoiler warning)

Back in 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy was an unexpected hit after being widely tipped to be the first Marvel movie to bomb. Cathy and I both loved it (it was my film of the year) and we have subsequently got into GotG in a big way. Toys, books, comics, and playing the Awesome Mix soundtrack album quite a bit. I've blogged about how I found one storyline from the comics particularly inspiring. There was also a possible religious-themed social commentary in the first film - it's no accident the villain is a religious fanatic.

A few weeks ago Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 came out. I was a bit worried whether it would be anywhere near as good as the first one. But I also had high hopes. I wasn't disappointed. The film was brilliant. But what I got was something much deeper than I expected. It is probably the movie that has asked the most interesting theological questions for a long time. Spoilers follow, so don't read on if you don't want any.

I love this promo image

The first film ends on a slight cliff-hanger. Peter Quill (Star-Lord) is told he is half human, and half something else. Yondu tells a subordinate that he's glad he didn't deliver Quill to his father. This film is about Star-Lord and his dad.

His dad turns out to be Ego, the embodiment of the consciousness of a living planet housing the physical form of a Celestial, an incredibly powerful ancient life-form. The incarnated version looks just like Kurt Russell. Ego turns up to usefully save the Guardians from an attacking fleet of spacecraft and then proceeds to invite some of the team to come and visit his planet. When he explains who or what he is, he is asked if he is a god, and Ego says 'Yes, but with a small g.'

Star-Lord is told he is most likely immortal, what with being the son of a god with a small g. And then Ego reveals his intentions. His billions of years of consciousness have convinced him that other life forms are mundane and disappointing and he intends to wipe them out, transforming the matter of the universe into his own self. Presumably to become a God with a BIG G.

However to do this, Ego needed more power - the power of two Celestials - and had therefore roamed the galaxy as his Kurt Russell incarnated self romancing all kinds of alien races to try and procreate another being with Celestial power. One of the beings he procreated with was Meredith Quill, Star-Lord's mother, and Star-Lord is the only one of Ego's children to contain the necessary Celestial essence. (The rest of his offspring are now a mound of skeletons in a cave.)

Ego offers Star-Lord the opportunity to join him in transforming the universe into God but first Star-Lord has a question about his mother. Did Ego really love her? Yes, Ego replied, but his mission to change the universe was more important. Then Ego drops a bombshell, saying he gave Meredith Quill the brain tumour that killed her. Star-Lord doesn't ask any more questions, he just draws his guns and begins blasting away at the Kurt Russell-shaped embodiment of Ego. Star-Lord and the Guardians then fight Ego, first to escape, and then to kill him.

As I said this is the most theologically interesting movie plot I've seen in a while. You could almost say it's an anti-theistic plot, in that it shows attacking a god (with a small g) as an heroic act. The Guardians get to save the galaxy for a second time. It's rare that a movie depicts deicide - the act of killing a god. Of course this isn't the 'god' of any established religion, this is a 'god' in a fictional setting, but it still opens up those questions.

Like many people who have been involved in a church a long time, I have prayed for people to be healed, who then haven't been healed. Just over 10 years ago a brilliant Christian man I knew died of cancer at the age of 32, a few months after diagnosis. This was despite regular prayer meetings, including at the Christian charity I worked at, asking for him to be healed. My experience is not unique. Prayers for healing often go unanswered.

I don't think it's an accidental music choice that when the Guardians arrive on Ego's planet, the song playing is George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord' with it's refrain "I really want to see you, Lord." This is something prayed in earnest by many believers when praying for God to intervene in a situation.

If God doesn't intervene, Christians console themselves with reassuring statements that God's ways are higher, or there must be a plan behind it all, or, the line I hate most, that God takes the best ones first. (What does it say about those who don't die young?) Sometimes it's said that by dying, people are "really healed" as in made perfect in the afterlife. But that wasn't what was prayed for. When I have prayed for people I wanted them restored to full health in this life. And then sometimes people say that God will have all the answers when we see him after we die. That feels a bit 'too little too late' to me.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 actually gives its main hero the opportunity to ask those questions without having to die first. If Ego is so powerful why couldn't he save Star-Lord's mother? The answer is so callous and cruel - not only did Ego not prevent it, he actively caused it - that Star-Lord forgets all about the promise of his own immortality and proceeds to attack the being who fathered him.

If we did get answers to our questions and we didn't like them what would our reaction be? Would we suddenly turn on God like Star-Lord? That's a big question. All the assumptions are that when we get answers we will be satisfied by them, but what if we are not?

I discussed this with Paul Hammond, presenter of the morning show on UCB Radio last week and Paul asked whether comic book movies are the right place for these kind of theological topics to be explored. It was a question that surprised me a bit, but as I thought about it I realised that they are possibly the only movies left where they can be asked. There is a layer of cynicism running through most 'realistic' cinema these days so perhaps to discuss questions of belief you first have to get the audience to suspend disbelief. If you've accepted spaceships and pink slimy monsters and genetic experiments that look like talking raccoons, it's not a stretch to consider interacting with a divine being - even if it only a god with a small g.

The Lego Batman Movie - a semi-critical review (with some spoilers) from someone who loves Lego

The term AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) is becoming more prominent, and certainly there seem to be more of us around now. Gone are the days when I would wonder round the Lego Shop in town looking sheepishly at all the lovely Lego sets and hoping no one thought I was a weirdo for not having kids in tow. Lego is now a semi-respectable hobby for grown ups too.

A lot of this is down to The Lego Movie that came out a couple of years ago and catapulted Lego back into the wider public eye. I thought The Lego Movie was a great film, and it would probably make it into my top ten animated films that even people who don't like cartoons would like. But it did that off a funny script, an interesting storyline, and the right number of in-jokes - not too many to make non-Lego fans feel like outsiders, but enough to make me smile to myself. Benny's broken helmet strap, the blink and you'll miss it references to Fabuland, that sort of thing.

Batman was one of the surprise supporting characters from The Lego Movie. He was a funny version of the well-known comic book and movie character. His comment about only building using black or very dark grey and his love of his self-penned thrash metal squeezed the pips of humour out of the Batman mythos, but all in the service of The Lego Movie's story.

As a result, I was looking forward to The Lego Batman Movie. But this is a case of where a supporting character can't really carry a whole movie. Cathy has told me of a conversation she had with our friend Tom about this, where they talked about the lower quality of the film Minions in comparison to Despicable Me where they first appeared. The Minions are funny little sideshow characters in Despicable Me. They struggled when carrying a whole film. And in this case Batman suffers the same fate.

The film is funny. There are moments that really amused me. The way they trawled the DC Comics archive for all the stupidest villains for a villain ensemble was funny. Calendar Man, anyone? Kite Man? The Eraser, who looks like a pencil? These are all real and really hilarious. There was a flashback sequence with tableaux from almost all the Batman films in franchise history, which was very cool. Alfred dons an Adam West era outfit and says he misses the sixties. At one point Batman warns Robin they are going to hit the bad guys so hard that words will appear in the air, and sure enough TV Batman style 'KA-POW' explodes into life when he punches a baddie. There's a can of shark repellent. All good gags. All made me laugh.

But there was still a hollowness to it. At the end of the day this was just a mickey-take of Batman - something that has been done before many, many times. We know the story of Batman. Bruce Wayne. Dick Grayson. Barbara Gordon. These are all people we know. When Batman appeared in The Lego Movie, he was a new kind of Batman, He was Lego Batman. And we didn't know him. He was WildStyle's unreliable boyfriend and a bit of a douche. But he was a new character to learn about and relate to.

Batman in The Lego Batman Movie isn't new. He isn't even the Batman we knew from The Lego Movie. He's an amalgam of all the Batmen we have known before. Gotham City isn't new. It's just Gotham City made out of computer generated Lego. The Joker isn't new. We've seen him before and he was more interesting when he was played by Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger or Jared Leto.

There is a break with tradition in that the Joker enlists some other villains trapped in the "Phantom Zone"; all of them villains with a Warner Bros licence. It is amusing watching Sauron as the lidless eye rampaging through Gotham, or the great white shark from Amity Beach recruited to the cause of evil.(But is 'Jaws' evil? That's a conundrum worth discussing. It's just a shark doing what sharks are reputed to do.) But we have seen unlikely team-ups before, in The Lego Movie, for example, with cameos from Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian, and Gandalf and Dumbledore sitting next to each other.

Overall, what made The Lego Movie work was it was about Lego, but also about a whole lot more. The Lego Batman Movie isn't really about Lego. It's just using Lego as a medium to poke affectionate fun at a franchise that has been pastiched to death in recent years, and whose own 'serious' films are bordering on self-parody now. No amount of clever in-jokes, smartly done animation or witty lines delivered in perfect comic timing by Will Arnett could raise this film to the level of The Lego Movie.

It certainly doesn't suck, but The Lego Batman Movie needed more Lego and less Batman.

Rogue One: I now get what it feels like to not like Star Wars

So this is my review of Rogue One, the most hyped movie of the Christmas season, eagerly anticipated, and, it seems, raved about by fanboys far and wide across the internet and twitterverse.

But it left me cold. In fact, talking about it this morning for a radio interview, I realised that the way I felt about it is probably how a lot of people feel about Star Wars when they watch it having been always told they should watch it, and then are left wondering what all the fuss was about.

[[[SPOILERS follow below the poster]]]

The basic premise of the film is that Jyn Erso, a rebellious young woman who is not actually part of the Rebellion at the start of the film, may be the key person in getting hold of the Death Star plans. Her father is the guy who designed the battle station. But he's had a twinge of conscience. He has sabotaged the design with a 'flaw' that can be exploited. That flaw is the exhaust port in the Death Star trench that for years has been mocked as a ludicrous design fail. Now it turns out that it was meant to be there all along, hidden in plain sight.

So this entire film seems to exist to gainsay people who take the mickey out of the simplicity with which the Death Star can be destroyed. Haha! Mockers! It was all part of the plan! (Although, it has been pointed out by others that this means the destruction of the Death Star was an inside job. Conspiracy wingnuts rejoice!)

There is probably mileage in making a film to explain every plot hole and scripting fail in Star Wars. Expect a feature film about the mysterious cave on Dagobah, or why Leia had memories of her mother who died minutes after giving birth to her, or why Lando appears to be wearing Han Solo's clothes at the end of Empire Strikes Back. And people will go to see it in droves, because, Star Wars.

Some smart people have dissected the trailer and noted there are at least 12 key scenes that don't appear anywhere in the finished film.

Jyn v TIE Fighter: not in the film

We know it was a troubled production with numerous reshoots and script rewrites. That really shows. Taken objectively, if this wasn't a Star Wars film people would be asking serious questions of it. Saw Gerrera is a key character that just doesn't need to be in it at all during the first half of the film. Seriously, if you cut him out and just had Jyn and Cassian Andor going to Jedha to find a pilot who has defected it would make no difference to the story.

I found myself watching this and hearing the voice of the guy who does the voice-over for Cinema Sins on YouTube. There is so much wrong with this. The pilot is exposed to a questioning technique that will send him mad, but is brought back to lucidity by Cassian telling him that he's the pilot who defected. The Death Star's weapon is tested on a city with a large Imperial Garrison, killing more of its own soldiers than the local terrorists could ever have hoped for. Jyn Erso, newly recruited and of questionable loyalty, is allowed to hold court in the main Rebel Alliance briefing chamber in front of all the representatives of the systems who are trying to work together against the Empire. Cassian is given top secret instructions and later the briefing officer repeats them out loud to the entire room full of technicians and communications people, for nobody's benefit but the absent-minded audience. The film ends with the Empire using the Death Star on its own central archive. Not even the Empire would do something that self-destructive. They could have just turned the Death Star on the Rebel frigates, like they did over Endor, and finished the engagement very quickly.

It's bollocks like this that just had me shaking my head and internally narrating Cinema Sins style.

There has been a lot of talk about the ending. The film ends on a bit of a downer. It's a doomed mission and the characters you have just got to know head into overwhelming odds. But there is also a slight twist in that the action shifts to frantic scenes aboard a Rebel spaceship as they try to get the Death Star plans away. This is the bit that people are going on about, not the deaths of the characters whose stories have actually been told in the film. Which kind of indicates the lack of depth to the storytelling - we don't care about these people or their sacrifice. And we should.

So, all in all, this film was a mess. A different sort of mess to the other prequels, but a mess nonetheless. It has some high points. Seeing Darth Vader's summer retreat was kind of fun. And it looks like it runs on geothermal energy so some environmentally sound kudos to the Dark Lord of the Sith for that. I wasn't that fussed on the CGI version of Peter Cushing as it looked a bit video game to me but it was a brave decision to go that route. And Tarkin is a key character in the Rebels cartoon series so it made sense to have him in this film. The unexpected ending when it switches away from the doomed heroes we all couldn't care less about was a genuine surprise and I quite liked the idea behind it. But still, there was something lacking.

I think I know what it was. The Force was conspicuously absent from this movie. Literally. It is barely mentioned. There are no Jedi. And although we see Vader using the Force in his Dark Side ways, he doesn't talk about it or even use the term. There is a pseudo Jedi, Chirrut Imwe, who repeats a mantra of being one with the Force, and who says he meditates on it, but he is not a Force user.

The absence of the Force removes the sense of cosmic battle between good and evil. This is a film about grey areas. The rebel soldiers have done terrible things as well. The Alliance is fragmentary with groups of hardliners willing to commit atrocities in the name of Rebellion. In that sense, this reflects the geopolitics of the 21st century rather than the late 1970s, or certainly the popular understanding of geopolitics. We've all grown up a bit and it's no longer good guys v bad guys.

It perhaps also reflects a change in the way we do 'spiritual'. Chirrut Imwe is not an official, trained Jedi. He has his own understanding of the Force, reflecting perhaps, pick and mix self-trained spirituality. He is helped in his mysticism by being backed up by a guy with a very, very big gun. Maybe there is a deeper level of meaning in that.

On a personal level, my feelings towards this film have been overshadowed slightly by the sad news of the death of Carrie Fisher. While she was ill in hospital many people tweeted or posted pleas for the Force to be with her and to protect her. I imagine most of those will have been out of sad respect rather than genuine belief. I've said before that Return of the Jedi was the first film I saw when my family returned to this country from Africa and I think that is why it had such a profound effect on me. With Rogue One the effect has worn off and that makes me feel a bit sad.

Animation review: Kung Fu Panda 3 and Zootropolis

In the last few days I've seen Kung Fu Panda 3 and Zootropolis. Both were pretty solid animated films with some surprisingly mature themes. This post includes minor spoilers.

Don't upset the Dragon Warrior

Kung Fu Panda 3 pretty much continues where the second one left off, with Po meeting his real panda father who was a post-credits reveal at the end of Kung Fu Panda 2. The plot is split between Po discovering his panda heritage while also having to fight a new baddy – General Kai, who has returned from the Spirit Realm to steal the chi life force of the living.

For fans of the first film, Ugwe, the turtle who chose Po as the Dragon Warrior is back. I always liked Ugwe. The animation is top drawer, especially a sequence with an elemental dragon towards the end. There are also lots of very cute baby pandas.

If I was a bit critical I’d say the members of the panda tribe were a bit overdone in being goofily clumsy and fat. It was funny at first, but there is only so many time you can see someone bouncing off a massive panda tummy in slow motion and still laugh at it.

The more mature storyline is the conflict between Po’s panda dad and his adoptive goose dad, who has raised Po ever since he discovered him in a box of radishes. I think it covered the difficulty faced by foster fathers and birth fathers quite sympathetically, even if it resolves it more neatly and quickly than things like this get resolved outside animated films. What is telling is that both panda and goose want to see Po happy, and that enables them to get over their differences. Po ends up with two dads, instead of replacing one. That’s a very positive message.

Zootropolis (called Zootopia everywhere else besides the UK) is the latest Disney film. I really enjoyed it. The plot is a nod to police movies and unlikely buddy movies – a rabbit, Judy Hopps, becomes the first bunny to become a police officer in the city of Zootropolis but struggles to be accepted because of her status as a prey species. She teams up with a streetwise fox, Nick Wilde, in an ‘unnatural’ partnership between a predator and prey species to solve a missing persons case that turns out to be much bigger than she first realised.

Wait, this isn't the Number 8 bus...

There were some good jokes along the way. The scene in the DMV run by sloths was no less funnier for being one of the extended trailers for the film, and Flash the sloth pops up again later in the movie in a moment that really made me laugh out loud. There is also an very nice homage to the Godfather as well. The animation is really outstanding, particularly when Judy sits in the observation car of the train taking her to Zootropolis and we see the city, with its different climate zones revealed one after the other. That whole sequence knocks most science fiction movies out of the park for the level of detail and wonder.

The big plot theme here is the relationship between predator and prey species in a clever parallel to racial tensions in the human world. With predators seemingly falling victim to their ‘biology’ and going savage, the prey species are being urged to take action. It’s no accident that one of the more prominent prey politicians has a hairpiece reminiscent of Donald Trump. The assertion that ‘we outnumber them ten to one’ and therefore need to crush them to protect ourselves from them is a bit like the anti-Muslim rhetoric you sometimes hear. Removing a predator cheetah (who is only really a danger to doughnuts) from the front desk of the police station because the powers that be feel as a predator he doesn’t project the right image, really rams the point home about stereotyping.  (Even if the love of doughnuts is in its own way also a stereotype.)

So, Zootropolis has a very deep theme and an important message. It also boasts a fine meta joke - Alan Tudyk voices the thief Duke Weaselton, who is a weasel. In Frozen he voices the Duke of Weaselton. When he is welcomed at Arendel castle as the Duke of Weaselton, he issues a correction and says it's Wesselton. In Zootropolis his name is mispronounced and he corrects it to Weaselton. I doubt any kids will even get the link, but that’s the sort of thing I quite enjoy.

Ratings:

Kung Fu Panda: 7.5/10

Zootropolis: 9/10