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This is the sequel to Finding Nemo , the Pixar film from 2003 which really launched the animation company into the popular and critical stratosphere. And no, this film isn’t as good as that one—but Finding Nemo was an instant classic. The comedy relief was Dory ( Ellen DeGeneres ), and the best thing about this film is that it has a different theme and stands in its own right. Clearly comparisons with the Toy Story films will reflect badly on Finding Dory, but on the other hand it is a lot better than Monsters University. Actually the best thing about this film is Piper, the incredible short before the main feature. But more on that later… Dory famously suffered from short-term memory loss and this drives the plot of the sequel. Dory lives with Marlin and Nemo, but she wonders about her parents. Memory loss here is treated as a disability but the character has positives and has an existence beyond being “this character with this issue”. So it’s inclusive and that’s good. H...

The trick this film pulls off is that we all know how it ends. That’s how we are getting to see the story played out. Winston Churchill is a symbol of Britishness (for better or worse) because of the turn in the Second World War that resulted in an eventual allied victory. At the point of Dunkirk, however, the situation was awful and the Conservative Party was riven with chaos as Neville Chamberlain lost the support of the House, and a coalition government—and someone to lead it—was urgently sought. Anyone but Churchill, and probably Viscount Halifax—and a negotiated settlement with the Führer. Joe Wright ’s tremendous film takes this story and makes Winston Churchill into a brittle and maybe even flawed hero. Gary Oldman put on a fat-suit and chained expensive cigars in order to seem like the Churchill figure of legend. This Winston knows of his reputation: everything from the failure of Gallipoli to the support of Edward’s relationship with Wallis Simpson. Nobody in the gov...

Luc Besson is a smart director whose lavish style has been connected with a handful of films, some of which are well-loved ( Leon, Nikita ), and one specifically is little-known ( The Big Blue ). In 1997 the posters for The Fifth Element were everywhere, and it was the first film that I saw in the cinema which went on to enjoy ‘cult’ success. It was by no means a successful film at the time, but now it’s been recognised as being a classic. Besson had been working on the story since he was a teenager, and as a teen he was inspired by a French comic book, and finally he has made an adaptation of the comic book. And this is it. And Oh My God! The mad Luc Besson sci-fi world is presented before the bewildered eyes of all those who go to see this! Maybe my love for The Fifth Element changes the way I look at this film, but you’ve got to hope that it will go out of the cinema and into the world and into the hearts of people who love an audacious and mad visual spectacle that happens...

The power of the written word, and the truth according to people and who own’s people’s stories are at the heart of this small sort-of historical story based on a book. The Guernsey wartime setting suggests a war film but this is a family drama uncovered by a stranger. The stranger is author Juliet Ashton (Lily James!) who, fresh from literary success in postwar London is inspired to visit the channel island after receiving a letter from the man who, it turns out, invented the Literary Society as an excuse to tell the Nazis when he and his family were caught outside at night. Tom Courtenay is quietly terrific as the wise patriarchal figure, and Juliet uncovers the story of what happened to the family during the Nazi occupation. It is he who invents the Potato Peel Pie, although the film is not as whimsical as that makes it seem: eating potatoes and nothing else is of course sadness itself, and more in keeping with the tone.  The timelines flip between war and post-wa...

This Netflix film is going for Four Weddings status. What were things like before Four Weddings & A Funeral ? The costume and situations around a big posh wedding, and posh people swearing, a man in a kilt, and revelations from the lives of the people in the wedding… all are present plus a slightly sweary voice-over at the beginning. There’s an introduction scene with Jack ( Sam Claflin ) concluding a fantastic holiday where he has had good times with Dina ( Olivia Munn ), but their farewell is interrupted when Jack is waylaid by an old friend. Several years later Dina is at the wedding of Jack’s sister Hayley ( Eleanor Tomlinson ). The film takes a turn from classy wedding comedy to a Judd Apatow type film or maybe The Hangover films, when there’s an ex-boyfriend of the bride on the scene, and he has to be silenced. The method of doing this is to slip a sleeping drug into a champagne glass, but the table names get swapped around by a gang of out of control kids, and so ...

Thanks to the National Theatre, the Covid-19 Lockdown is being ridden out by many enthusiasts at home, with their Live filming of recent productions going out on YouTube. And Charlotte Brontë’s rich tale of a spirited woman’s journey through Victorian hypocrisy and Gothic romance is such an engaging work that it’s up there with the very best television. Jane (Madeleine Worrel) is seen at birth, and she’s on stage all the time amongst the wooden frames and ladders that comprise the modernist set. She makes the baby crying noises as, elsewhere, her parents love her and yet give her away to her wicked aunt Reed and her awful children. She is bullied and brutalised by all, not least the unpleasantly pious and wicked Mr Brocklehurst (Craig Edwards), a character whose wickedness was so plainly laid out in the novel that someone threatened to sue Brontë at the time of the book’s publication. Brontë had to assume a male name, of course, and all productions and adaptations of t...

Miss World might still go on but it doesn’t go on BBC television and might have been forgotten. And although objectifying people for their looks hasn’t gone away, the idea of selecting women from around the World and parading them in front of judges—like a Meat Market, perhaps, or like Crufts?—seems today like a terrible idea. Even if it was televised in the 80s and was part of growing up in that decade, this film concerns the 1970 contest, which was notable for many reasons, mostly because it was protested by the formative “Women’s Liberation” movement. The film tells the story from their point of view, notably Sally Alexander ( Keira Knightley ). Sally has a daughter from an ex, and at the beginning is being judged by a panel of men because she wants to enrol at a university—and it seems like Oxford or Cambridge. Finally being accepted by the University of London, Sally begins to study history and meets the women who will ultimately form the group with her. However there are ...