Pan (PG)
Directed by Joe Wright
1/5

The superb special effects stuffing this Hollywood turkey are Oscar-worthy.

Ancient galleons soar through the skies, a giant crocodile leaps high, fairies and mermaids come to life.

But as Warner Brothers star Bugs Bunny says, “That’s all, folks!”

Director Joe Wright’s overwrought, over-long failure to create a prequel from JM Barrie’s fabled fairytale about the boy who never grew old ages, shrivels and dies horribly on screen.

Wright’s increasingly desperate use of spectacle to bolster Jason Fuchs’s preposterous screenplay “based on characters introduced by JM Barrie,” doesn’t help.

We first meet orphan Pan, (Levi Miller, far better than the film deserves) trapped in a daftly Dickensian 1940s London orphanage.

Fortunately for him, if not audiences, Hugh Jackman’s hammy pirate Blackbeard swoops down in his flying galleon through skies infested with German bombers and kidnaps Pan from his orphanage hell.

The luckless lad ends up in a new hell digging for fairy dust with wannabe hero Hook (Garret Hedlund).

Then they escape into various close encounters with fairies, mermaids and pirates until, far too late, the end credits set in.

Wright began in showbusiness as a puppeteer. This indigestible onslaught of overacting suggests his true metier is directing provincial pantomimes.

Review by Alan Frank

The Program (15)
Directed by Stephen Frears
4/5

Alex Gibney’s documentary The Armstrong Lie about the downfall of Tour de France hero Lance Armstrong was released in 2013.

Why then did British production company Working Title choose to make this dramatised version of the same story?
The answer is simple.

Director Stephen Frears’s vivid retelling of a legendary sportsman destroyed by drug-driven hubris emerges as gripping, suspenseful and well worth watching even if the story is familiar.

For a start, John Hodge’s screenplay, based on David Walsh’s best-seller Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, is gripping and sharply characterised and, thanks to Frears’s concentrated direction, never loses its still potent impact.

And Ben Foster’s portrait of Armstrong is masterly. I found the character of Armstrong he creates even more credible in his narrowed determination to win at all costs than Armstrong himself in Gibney’s documentary.

Understandably, Foster’s performance tends to overshadow the other actors. That said, Chris O’Dowd as the Sunday Times journalist who brought down the Tour de France legend, with his expose of the drug-taking that pedalled him stardom, gives a strong and valuable support.

Dustin Hoffman scores in a relatively brief role and Guillaume Canet is genuinely creepy as Armstrong’s doctor drug-pusher.

Review by Alan Frank

Crimson Peak (15)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
3/5

With lavishly creepy settings, sinister blood red apparitions and ugly gigantic moths visionary director Guillermo del Toro returns to the genre he helped define with this spectacularly looking old fashioned gothic romance.

Mia Wasikowska plays aspiring writer Edith Cushing (a nod to the late great Peter Cushing perhaps?) who falls in love with and subsequently marries the charismatic and handsome British baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). Does he love her or is he just after her money to finance his mining operation on his estate in Cumbria?

When she arrives at her new home to be confronted with a frighteningly bleak and crumbling Manderley style haunted mansion with a massive hole in the roof whose walls bleed crimson (the red clay its foundations are built on) the writing is clearly on the wall. Plus her deadly looking sister in law Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain) channelling Mrs Danvers who is clearly harbouring dark family secrets which aren’t that hard to deduce.

Her dead mother did warn Edith as a child about Crimson Peak and mother knows best even beyond the grave.

Crimson Peak is more reminiscent of Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and his masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth although it is not in the same league. But he nails the gothic romance in its gorgeous look and tone and its excellent leads. 

Wasikowska is perfect as the heroine whose naivety is tempered by her inner strength. Chastain gives another faultless performance as the villainous Lucille and Hiddleston oozes gothic charm from every pore.

It is a sumptuous and fun romp which begs the question: is this all a product of Edith’s (who loves writing ghost stories) active literary imagination or not? 

Review by Maria Duarte

Hotel Transylvania 2 (3D) (U)
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
3/5

The Drac pack returns for a sequel in which Dracula (Adam Sandler) is determined to bring out his grandson’s inner vamp and again stop his daughter moving out of Hotel Transylvania.

Worried that Dennis (Asher Blinkoff), who looks the spitting image of his dad, is more human than vampire “Vampa” Drac with the help of his monster friends puts Dennis through a special boot camp while his clueless mum Mavis (Selena Gomez) is visiting her in laws.

However, all Drac’s attempts backfire as he discovers all the old ways and haunts have moved with the times and he is outed on social media.

Although not quite as inventive as the first film this is just as fun and filled with great visual gags which will appeal to kids. The nightmare of parenting will hit home with the adults. 

Review by Maria Duarte