Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Directed by Joachim Ronning
★★★★★

DISNEY, making the most of their magical film-making skills, deliver an unmissable return to the magical world of the hit 2014 fantasy adventure.

This fabulous fairy tale, notably directed by Joachim Ronning, picks up the story several years after Maleficent, with Angelina Jolie giving a landmark performance in the title role and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is wickedly plotting to shipwreck the marriage of her son Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson) to Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning).

Putting spectacle into the spectacular, there’s a cavalcade of special effects — the bridge of roots that grows while you watch just in front of the humans using it to cross a river is particularly striking —  vividly create a credible and unique fairyland filled with amazing fantasy creatures, Gothic cities and, best of all, a wonderful magical adventure.

The story is peopled too by human characters, some attractive, some not, and with a consistently inventive script from Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, along with imaginative direction, this is a film treat, dominated by Jolie and Pfeiffer’s performances.

A Disney delight.

Alan Frank

Non-Fiction (15)
Directed by Olivier Assayas
★★★★

SET in the Parisian publishing world, Oliver Assayas’s new film is a wryly comic tale of sex, lies and literature.

Starring Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet, it centres on publishing editor Alain (Canet) who is embracing digital technology, his actress wife Selena (Binoche) and controversial author Leonard Spiegel (Vincent Macaigne), whose work is based on his love affairs and who is a staunch believer in the power of literature.

The film tackles with great wit the issue of hard-copy books versus Kindle as hilarious heated discussions erupt between Alain and his high class intellectual friends about the merits of blogs and tweets and texts as the new literary form over old-fashioned books which are dying a death.

Yet nobody bats a moral eyelid at these people sleeping around — with each other, in one case —  not even their partners, as it is deemed a fait accompli.

Sharply written and beautifully acted, only French cinema can get away with dealing with adultery and literature in the same breath with such effortless style and humour.

Maria Duarte

Zombieland: Double Tap (15)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
★★★★

THE LIVING dead return grislier than ever in a merry sequel a mere 10 years after the original hit comedy-shocker made a fortune.

Slaughterer zombies, including Homers (dumb ones), Hawkings (clever ones), Ninjas (silent and lethal) and unkillable T-800s are everywhere in Zombieland, where “life is more than survival” according to returning “hero” Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson).

Having survived seven years, he’s hiding out with his family Wichita (Emma Stone), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) in the abandoned White House before, joined by survivor Madison (Zoey Deutch), he goes south seeking zombie-free safety. In what follows, unsurprisingly, he has a tough time.

Director Ruben Fleischer’s daffy horror-comedy, perfectly delivered by his cast, has hordes of murderous living dead and even manages to prove that “it takes a real man to drive a pink Cadillac.”

Bloody good fun, if that’s what you fancy.

AF

Ladyworld (15)
Directed by Amanda Kramer
★★★

EIGHT teenage girls find themselves trapped in a never-ending birthday party in a house following a major earthquake in this powerful female version of Lord of the Flies.

As they begin to run out of food and water, so they start losing their minds and their grip on reality and the terrifying nightmare of a group of teens holed up together unfolds.

Instead of working together to find a way out the alpha (Annalise Basso) takes charge with her posse torturing and bullying her rival (Ariela Barer) and her supporters (Ryan Simpkins and Odessa Adlon). Chaos ensues.

Directed and co-written by Amanda Kramer, the film explores female hysteria, paranoia and psychosis and, along with the teen psyche, it also examines the underlying fear of rape and how that impacts on the collective.

Kramer delivers a claustrophobically tense and disturbing drama punctuated by a loud and unsettling soundtrack of screams and shrill vocal sounds.

Like the girls, you can’t wait for the ordeal to end.

MD

Mystify: Michael Hutchence (15)
Directed by Richard Lowenstein
★★★★

RICHARD LOWENSTEIN’S biopic of his friend and collaborator Michael Hutchence is gripping and moving.

He vividly weaves home movies and those of his subject’s lovers, friends and family, along with apt archive footage into a rich documentary tapestry.

It charts Hutchence’s international fame, his struggle to cope with pop stardom, the accident that damaged his brain and altered his personality and, notably, his notorious romance with Kylie Minogue that set the slavering tabloid media at his throat.

Fascinating, even for a Hutchence virgin like me.

AF

A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (U)
Directed by Will Becher and Richard Phelan
★★★★

THIS sequel to the 2015 smash hit Shaun The Sheep Movie from Aardman Studios takes our cute and lovable friend boldly where no sheep has gone before – on an epic sci-fi adventure.

It proves just as funny, charming and endearing as the original, again without a word of dialogue being spoken throughout.

So when Nu-La, an alien with superpowers, crash-lands near Mossy Bottom Farm it upends Shaun the Sheep’s blissful existence. He makes it his mission to get the ET home while protecting her from capture by a sinister secret alien-hunting government agency.

Packed with great visual gags, some more subtle than others, co-directors Will Becher and Richard Phelan take our woolly hero to new stellar heights without sacrificing the heart and soul of the franchise.

Hilariously funny and smartly entertaining, it’s a joy to watch whatever your age — even though sheep mouths moving sideways is a little disturbing to see.

MD

The Peanut Butter Falcon (12A)
Directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz
★★★★

SCREENWRITERS Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz score a delightful double as co-directors of this charming comedy adventure, which sees Down syndrome sufferer Zak, memorably played by Zack Gottsagen, escape from the residential nursing home where he lives to go and fulfil his dream of becoming a wrestler.

Fortuitously teaming up with Tyler (a bearded Shia LaBeouf), who’s on the run for stealing fish, the unlikely duo head south through North Carolina to allow Zak, accompanied by his former nurse, to achieve his lifelong dream and attend the wrestling school of his hero The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Hayden Church).

Well-used location shooting in Georgia adds credibility to an attractive modern-day fable which is played for all the sweet story is worth and no more by all concerned, including a memorable cameo by Bruce Dern as Zak’s all-too-tolerant nursing-home room mate.

AF