Month: February 2017

The Founder (2016, dir. John Lee Hancock)

A middle-aged salesman has a burger-bar epiphany. Sly biopic of McDonald’s eminence grise Ray Kroc, which tricks you into thinking it’s all apple pie and big smiles, when the movie’s really somewhere between Raging Bull and Elmer Gantry. Recommended.

The Great Wall (2016, dir. Zhang Yimou)

Two European brigands help China defend its empire from monsters. Intermittently undeniably spectacular, with some keen use of 3D, this is nevertheless a very straightforward fantasy siege movie which feels oddly bland, secondhand, and compromised.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (2016, dir. David Yates)

An expert in magical wildlife causes inadvertent chaos in 20s New York. Gorgeous to look at and impeccably cast, this is nevertheless minor-league expanded Potter franchise stuff, more concerned with setting up series plot arcs than telling its own tale.

The Goob (2014, dir. Guy Myhill)

A Norfolk teen clashes with his mother’s violent partner. A great little movie of a Fenland redneck summer – stock car race meets, roadside cafes, and gangmasters – with unshowy performances and a palpable sense of threat and place. Big sky and pylons.