The Curse of La Llorona (15)
Directed by Michael Chaves
★★★

JAMES WAN, producer of the profitable Saw and Conjuring series, serves up another horror film designed to do the business at the box office without breaking any really new ground.

Michael Chaves directs Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis’s cliched screenplay, which has enough chills and thrills to satisfy completists without adding anything really notable to the genre.

After an effective opening sequence showing the eponymous mother La Llorona (Weeping Woman) drowning her two children in a jealous rage in 17th-century Mexico, the action segues to Los Angeles where she returns, in full supernatural fighting form, to stalk troubled mother Patricia Alvarez — played with every melodrama control shoved up to 11 by Patricia Velasquez — and her two young children.

It’s left to  Linda Cardellini’s social worker Anna and disillusioned priest Rafael (Raymond Cruz) to save them. You get the picture, pun intended.

Director Wan says that La Llorona is “so much more” than a ghost story.  

On this evidence, not so.

Alan Frank

Long Shot (15)
Directed by Jonathan Levine
★★★★

CHARLIZE THERON and Seth Rogen team up in this surprisingly smart and funny rom com with a political edge as it throws shade on the current US political situation.

Theron plays the smart, sophisticated and accomplished Secretary of State Charlotte Field, who’s planning to run for president but is advised to hire a new speechwriter by her publicist (Lisa Kudrow) to make her more accessible to the voting public.

She employs the frank speaking and idealistic journalist Fred Flarsky (Rogen, on great form) who, it transpires, she used to babysit when he was a boy and who had a massive crush on her. The sparks fly as he reminds her of her former youthful idealism.

This is Pretty Woman meets The American President and it takes aim at all manner of political figures from Trump and Hillary Clinton to Murdoch and the Canadian Prime Minister.

Theron and Rogen are phenomenal together and  they get my vote as a  believable and convincing couple.

Maria Duarte

A Dog’s Journey (PG)
Directed by  Gail Mancuso
★★★★

THIS warm-hearted sequel to A Dog’s Purpose showcases its canine hero Bailey finding his destiny when he forms an unbreakable, if a tad improbable, supernatural bond that unites him with the people he loves over and again.

Based on W Bruce Cameron’s bestselling novel — he’s also one of the charming screemplay’s writers —  director Gail Mancuso’s delightful family film features a pack four-legged heroes and heroines as Bailey is “reborn” in new dogs’ bodies in multiple lives in order to look after aspirant-singer-songwriter CJ (Kathryn Prescott), daughter of his first owner Ethan, perfectly played by Dennis Quaid.

Happily Mancuso’s potentially saccharine-sodden story delivers minimal Hollywood-style whimsy —  how many heroes, four- or two-legged, could get away with proudly stating: “I’ve peed on a load of stuff” — yet it still still endears with its blend of humour, charm and sentiment.

AF

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile (15)
Directed by Joe Berlinger
★★★

FRESH from his in-depth Netflix documentary on serial killer Ted Bundy, Joe Berlinger’s drama provides a unique perspective on a murderer, dubbed charismatic by some,  who eventually confessed to killing more than 30 young women.

It’s told from the perspective of his former girlfriend, single mum Liz Kendall (Lily Collins) who, in this fictitious account, Bundy keeps fobbing off with plausible explanations as to how he was being wrongfully pursued by the authorities over the gruesome deaths of numerous women.

Even though you know he was guilty as hell, like Kendall the drama makes you question whether or not he’s guilty and that’s down to a phenomenal performance by Zac Efron who, with an uncanny passing resemblance to Bundy, captures his charm and his savvy intellect.

At times it seems like a sanitised version of the events as depictions of the gory murders are absent in a story unfolding as a “wrongfully convicted” saga.
 
The title of this fascinating biopic may not be the catchiest but it’s how the judge (John Malkovich) in Bundy’s trial described him in his summing up.

MD

Tolkien (12A)
Directed by Dome Karukoski
★★★

THIS  biopic of JRR Tolkien, creator of the Lord of the Rings saga is occasionally compelling but ultimately somewhat bland.

Scripted by David Gleeson and  Stephen Beresford, Dome Karukoski’s film follows Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) through his formative years when he was orphaned as a child in Birmingham, his character-forming “fellowship” with friends at school and undergraduates at Oxford before the hell of WWI trench warfare apparently served as the  catalyst for the classic action fantasy novels that followed.

Karukoski’s  terrifying restaging of WW1 battles is perhaps the most potent aspect of an otherwise rather flavourless life story though, commendably, it’s played for all its worth by Hoult and Lily Collins as  Edith, the love of Tolkein’s life.

AF