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  Messing around with the natural order of things causes, uh… chaos… again in the first sequel in a long time to bring back Laura Dern , Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil to join Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt —uniting the first films and the more modern ones. The move from Dinosaurs as an attraction to Dinosaurs as a fact of everyone’s life is not —let’s be clear—the same as a global pandemic caused by poor food hygiene standards at a meat market in China. And a plague of locusts isn’t just the stuff of Biblical epics. Somehow between two ideas the film-makers have come up with an enhanced riff on the notion that if you mess around with nature it will come back and bite you. But if you’re in charge of a big biotech company you probably think you’ll get through it but you will end up in deep spit. The evil business continues from the previous film. Lewis Dodgson ( Campbell Scott ) is the white-haired BioSyn CEO who says how great his company is for people, but there’s a scand...

This latest Pixar movie manages to be a film that’ll make you examine your relationships, as well as mining solid fantasy and having the feel of an 80s caper film. It references High School comedies with the misfit character; it references those John Hughes type films with an absent father; it even references Indiana Jones. And it references a few more things… The premise is that a kingdom has been devoid of magic for a long time, and so those magical creatures like Dragons, Centaurs and Unicorns are mere creatures. Within a troll family, Ian Lightfoot ( Tom Holland ) turns 16. He is the dorky kid at school, and his older brother Barley ( Chris Pratt ) is into a fantasy role-play board-game. Barley has vague memories of their father, who died when Ian was very young, and Ian clings on to a view of the man—and aspires to be what his father means to him. He makes a list in a notebook (using the r etractable ballpoint pen with the multiple colours ) and ticks them off or crosses ...