Andrew Adamson follows up his rather cloying film version of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe with this fighting-by-numbers sequel. What the first film did manage to pull off was the magic of Narnia, a snowy, wondrous place where a faun is played
by James McAvoy, and Tilda Swinton looks icy cool as the White Witch. What it suffered from was that age old problem of transferring kids' books to the screen: bad child actors.
Thankfully, the famous wardrobe-bound four, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, have got the first film under their belt and are slightly more natural and less annoying this time around.
Plus, we get Prince Caspian, played by Ben Barnes, who is a bit of a wholesome dish for the tweenies.
We're in 1940s wartime England, at least until the kids head back to Narnia, or rather forward 1300 years. It's all a bit Back To The Future, but with crossbows and woodland creatures. Narnia has been taken over by human invaders, and poor Caspian, who wants to peacefully co-exist with the Narnians, is going to be executed. Cue the mother of all battles and a good Christian outcome. A satisfying, if slightly empty episode in the franchise.
KUNG FU PANDA
**** (PG) £15.99Director: Mark Osborne and John Stevenson
Running time: 92 minutes
Sometimes, it's the silly ideas that work. An anthropomorphic mouse with gloves and a falsetto voice, a big green ogre with a Scottish accent, and a panda that can do kung fu. This isn't necessarily from the stable of animated flicks – usually made by Pixar – that are for big and little people alike, but that's not a criticism. Kung Fu Panda is solidly for children, which means gentle comedy and characters that are as cute as buttons. Jack Black voices the bear with the moves, a slovenly creature who dreams of martial arts while waiting tables at his dad's restaurant. His dad is a bird, by the way.
Meanwhile, up in the mountains, all sorts of hip and happening creatures are fighting it out: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Crane (David Cross), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu) and their master, Shifu, voiced by Dustin Hoffman. It's quite a cast. But it's the overweight panda who ends up taking on their arch enemy, the snow leopard.
Fighting talk it may be, but remember we're dealing with paws, not fists.
SHINE A LIGHT
*** (12A) £15.99Director: Martin Scorsese
Running time: 122 minutes
It's all very Scorsese. Set in New York, focusing on the hard and craggy details of hard and craggy guys, in this case Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie.
This is a documentary about a 2006 concert the Stones did at New York's Beacon Theatre for an exclusive crowd. And putting together one of the greatest directors of our time with one of the greatest bands of our time makes for potent viewing. There is a pure, classic pleasure in watching Scorsese's style of filmmaking to a Stones soundtrack. But it is documentary after all, so what do we learn? Not much. This is homage, and what we get are wrinkly old rockers still going at it with their guitars, which to many will be enough.
