It’s thirteen years since James Cameron introduced the world of Avatar. Time has passed since Jake (Sam Worthington) went native, swapping his consciousness fully into his Avatar. He and his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have a family and a peaceful life. However that changes when the sky people return with a new mission, to make the planet their home and quell any dissention from the natives. The team is led by the Avatar of Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who knows to do this must gain revenge on Jake and Neytiri and will destroy anything in his path to achieve it. Jake realises to keep his family and the tree people safe he must run. So they head off to the islands of the water people and seek the protection of Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet). But ultimately this brings to war to the water people and leaves Jake with no option but to fight.

The first Avatar was far from perfect, but was technically impressive and wowed audiences. Whether that warrants a sequel let alone a series of films is questionable and The Way Of Water does little to dispel the idea that Cameron’s creation lacks the story ideas to carry a series of films.

Like the first the second film is far from perfect but isn’t unenjoyable. It looks impressive with some engaging world building and great action set pieces fantastically realised.

But it also has the same issues. The main one is the paper thin story, it’s a 40 minute story stretched over 3 hours. The knock on effect is lots of padding especially in the middle third where the kids seem to be endlessly bonding with nature and each other. While it doesn’t overly drag, by the final act you are certainly starting to wonder “are we there yet”.

But for those criticisms there is still plenty of enjoyable parts.

The Way Of Water is overly long and lacks the story to sustain it and feels more interested in technology than narrative. But it is a grand scale cinematic experience and at times an enjoyable one. It probably is worth seeing for the experience, but how good it is will feed debate for some time.

Three years after Knives Out, Rian Johnson brings Benoit Blanc back to the screen. It is lockdown and it’s driving Blanc (Daniel Craig) crazy and he is desperate for a case to distract him. It comes when he receives an invite from billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) to join him and his friends on his private island for a murder mystery weekend. His friends are an eclectic mix of “influencers” Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) a former model come fashion designer, Duke (Dave Bautista) a man’s rights activist, politician Claire (Kathryn Hahn) and scientist Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.). Alongside these is Bron’s former business partner Andi (Janelle Monae). When they arrive at the island it becomes clear to Blanc that the relationships are not what they seem and the murder mystery is no game.

2019’s Knives Out was one of the best films of the year. So a second mystery featuring Craig’s smart detective was not risk free. Luckily Johnson does not let anyone down with this fun “whodunnit” romp.

While it doesn’t quite have the impact of the first, partly because of raised expectation and possibly, for most, this is Netflix only experience. That said this is a more than passible follow up.

It has a twisting turning mystery, a sharp script that zips along and a satisfyingly layered story. Most importantly it has a cast which feels like they are having a great time inhabiting their characters. Janelle Monae is excellent as the mysteries protagonist. Kate Hudson is clearly having a great time as the vacuous Birdie and Norton gets the balance right as the “at all costs” billionaire.

Of course the star is Craig’s Blanc. Poirot in a cotton suite and a southern US drawl, a role he pulls off with style and a perfect comedic light touch.

Glass Onion is a fitting Knives Out mystery. Its smart story keeps you guessing and the cast is having a great time carrying you along for the ride. Fans of the first and those new to Knives Out won’t be disappointed and will be looking forward to the third film as soon as it finishes. Just a pity it’s not in the cinema.

Available on Apple TV+.

Sean Anders writes and directs this latest loose reworking of A Christmas Carol. The ghosts of Present (Will Ferrell), Past (Sunita Mani) and To-come (Loren G Woods and Tracy Morgan) are planning next year’s haunting. However, this one is a challenge an “Unredeemable” Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), someone beyond redemption, is the target and this is something that has only been tried once before. Briggs turns out to be as much of a challenge as the Ghosts and their boss Jacob Marley (Patrick Page) had feared. As the ghosts try to redeem him, he turns the tables on them, especially the ghost of Present. There are other complications for Present too as he meets Briggs head of media strategy Kimberly (Octavia Spencer) who makes him think of the life he never had. Will the ghosts manage to sing and dance their way to another successful redemption?

Ryan Reynolds, Will Ferrell and a musical reworking of A Christmas Carol, sounds fun in theory. Luckily in practice, it was as much fun as you’d expect and I mean that in a good way.

It’s more Scrooged than Scrooge and is a good successor to Bill Murray’s classic Christmas favourite. Ferrell and Reynolds, who so easily could have “dialled it in” fully embrace the silliness of the story and throw themselves wholeheartedly into the many song and dance routines, most of them work well and there’s a lot of fun to be had with the “good afternoon” song, which includes a wonderful if very brief cameo.

The two leads are well supported by the always reliable Octavia Spencer who also turns in some enjoyable musical performances of her own. The script zips along most of the time, although it does feel a bit baggy towards the end.

Spirited is as fun a romp as it sounds Reynolds and Ferrell energetically embrace the catchy song and dance numbers and deliver an entertaining play on the Christmas Carol story. A film that was as enjoyable as you’d hope and destined for plenty of future Christmas replays.

Guillermo Del Toro’s long awaited Pinocchio is now on Netflix. Del Toro and Mark Gustafson deliver a stop-motion animated adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s classic story. It’s an adaptation of the book, not Disney’s 1940 animated classic. Much of the story you’ll recognise, Gepetto (David Bradley) is devastated at the loss of his 10 year old son, Carlo. One night, years later full of anger filled by pain he creates his wooden boy. Enchanted by a wood sprite (Tilda Swinton) Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) is born. The sprite also entrusts a cricket, Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), with guiding and teaching him to be good. We follow Pinocchio as he learns about life, what life is and what being human means.

Set in Mussolini’s pre-war fascist Italy provides some interesting places you would not expect the story of Pinocchio to go such as the dangers of nationalism. It is also full of other more general questions, father and son relationships and the devastation of tragic loss. How society treats those who are different whether it’s castigation or exploitation. Helped by a smattering of dark characters especially in Podesta and Count Volpe. For its seriousness there is also welcome humour, normally revolving around McGregor’s Cricket and some enjoyable musical numbers.

At the heart of the film is the exploration of life and importantly the part death plays in it and this is essential to Pinocchio’s ideas of being a real boy and what real means.

There is a strong voice cast with Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz and Ron Perlman as particular standouts. Being a Del Toro film it of course looks fantastic and the use of stop motion adds a tactile feel to the animation.

For all its positives, I didn’t quite connect with Pinocchio, whether it was the pacing or its seriousness it didn’t quite appeal to me as much as it could have.

Pinocchio looks great and covers some dark and grown up topics and does so with some humour. It’s a thoughtful exploration of what it means to be alive. But it is also a little serious and slow at times. A film I admired more than I loved.

On Sky Cinema in the UK.

Written by Alastair Galbraith and directed by Chris Foggin is this feel good festive film. Adam (Alfred Enoch) is a marketing executive working in London. One day on his daily rail commute his life changes when a fellow passenger, Dean (Jack Donoghue), forgets his rail pass. Dean claims the inspector must know him as he is on the train everyday, the other passengers including Ray (Timothy Spall), Linda (Joanna Scanlan), Judith (Sarah Niles) and Emma (Kaya Scodelario), all come to his aid and back him up. This gives Adam an idea and he decides to invite everyone to a Christmas party and take the opportunity to get to know his other commuters. Adam is not the only one who takes time to get to know others, others also do and learn about each others lives, loves and sadnesses.

The film is wholly predictable and is scattered with some weirdly terrible accents. But what a surprising treat it is. It’s built on a really great premise, what would happen if we just took a little time to know each other and maybe ourselves better? It deals with tough subjects such as loneliness and loss, but does it with real heart and charm.

While, as with all Christmas films, there is a central love story between Adam and Emma. That’s not where the interesting stuff is, it’s the stories about the other characters. There are some lovely performances, Timothy Spall, terrible accent aside, is wonderful as Ray, a former footballer who had been a someone, then had it taken from him and struggled to cope. Joanna Scanlan’s Linda, who is quiet and reserved, but is hiding a deep hurt. It shows beautifully the difference that just taking a moment to take an interest in a stranger can make to their lives.

This is Christmas is a real treat. It’s touching and thoughtful and built on a charming premise that works really well. The performances, accents aside, are well judged and never over sentimental. A real heartfelt, charming and joyous Christmas film.

Tommy Wirkola directs a rather different festive film penned by Pat Casey and Josh Miller. David Harbour is Santa, who we find in a bar in Bristol questioning his relevance in the modern world and whether Christmas has a future. In Connecticut the mega rich Lightstone family are getting together at matriarch Gertrude’s (Beverly D’Angelo) palatial home. Jason (Alex Hassell), his estranged wife Linda (Alexis Louder) and their daughter Trudy (Leah Brady) are joined by sister Alva (Edi Patterson), her partner Morgan (Cam Gigandent) and her son Bert (Alexander Elliott). Family relationships are strained but become even more strained when a gang led by Scrooge (John Leguizamo) raid the family home and take them hostages. However when Santa, while indulging in the milk and cookies left for him, stumbles over the raid he brings more than coal from the gang who are very much on his naughty list.

Violent Night feels like what happens when you put together a bunch of movie execs and ask them to come up the most nuts Christmas film you can think of.

It is fun. But perhaps not as much fun as it could have been. It makes plenty of reference to festive favourites with not so much nods too as blatant theft of scenes from Die Hard and Home Alone and a little bizarrely it feels like The Northman as well! We have a disgruntled Santa, the spoilt rich and of course the child who believes in the magic of Santa a belief that will save the day.

The raw ingredients are there, but it also suffers from an odd pacing problem for a film of this type. While there are some fun and satisfying set pieces they do take a while to get there. There is a nice balance between action film quips and some rather nice Christmas pathos as Trudy reminds Santa of the magic of Christmas. But those moments are a bit sparse.

Violent Night is the most nuts Christmas film you’ll see this year and in David Harbour you have an enjoyable world weary Santa. But it does move much slower than it should and falls a little short of the sum of its parts. More Ho Ho Hum than Ho Ho Ho.

Maria Schrader directs this adaptation of Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book about their New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein. Twohey (Carey Mulligan) fresh from working on a story about sexual misconduct by soon to be President Donald Trump, teams up with Kantor (Zoe Kazan) as she starts to piece together stories of systemic sexual abuse in Hollywood and the system of enablers who covered it up. This leads to Weinstein and an investigation that uncovers wide scale abuse. The story deals with the industry cover up, the levels of abuse, the women it impacted and the intimidation they faced to keep quiet.

There are two things to consider with She Said, the film and the real story it tells.

Let’s deal with the story first. It is powerful and shocking in its scale and the scale of the efforts to cover it up. It covers the incredible work by Twohey and Kantor and their team. The endless pursuit of the story, the intimidation they faced and the unwavering commitment to keep going. The story is shocking, it’s shocking that it is so current and shocking in knowing it’s not just Weinstein and the film industry where powerful men are using their position to abuse and victimise women and those without the power or voice to fight back. It’s a hugely important story and critical it is played to a wide audience and that She Said does powerfully.

The film, itself is almost less important. It is a pretty perfunctory investigative journalism film. It hits all the beats you’d expect one on one interviews, chasing down hard to find witnesses and meetings over dinner, coffee and in the office. Performances are fine Mulligan and Kazan are well supported by Patricia Clarkson and Andre Braugher. But also importantly key names in the real story including Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow.

She Said is a solid but unremarkable drama. However, the story of the horrific abuse it tells is incredible. The purpose this film serves is bringing that story to the big screen and a wide audience and for that reason it deserves to be seen.

Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, Directed by Mark Mylod is this dark comedy set in the world of exclusive fine dining. Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) are heading off to an dinner at the exclusive island based restaurant of renowned Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) Hawthorne. An exclusive and expensive eating “experience” which attracts food critics, foodies, the wealthy with money to burn and celebrities. But to this special evening the guests are by invite, except Margot, who Tyler has employed as his date for the evening. An invite she soon regrets when Chef Slowick’s menu turns into an eating experience nobody expects.

The Menu is quite the culinary ride full of dark turns as the evening becomes ever more vengeful. It’s a dark satirical comedy a mix of MasterChef meets The Purge. It takes aim at overly pretentious food, food criticism, experience junkies and style over substance. All of these irritations fall in the vengeful sights of a chef disheartened with his craft and the life it has given him.

The film is built on the performances of the always flawless Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes channeling his best Hannibal Lecter. Both bring a darkness that never falls into caricature.

The social commentary can be biting, the premise entertaining and the comedy deliciously dark. But the film doesn’t fully work for me. While we have a fine ensemble cast which includes Hoult, John Leguizamo and Hong Chau. None of their characters have any depth, other than their obvious unpleasantness, which ultimately means I didn’t really care about them as the film moved towards its conclusion and this lessened its impact.

The Menu is a deliciously dark poking fun at obvious unpleasant targets. But it doesn’t fully hit the mark as beyond Fiennes and Taylor-Joy’s characters, the rest are paper thin and you fail to care for them and their ultimate end lessening its impact. That said still lots of fun to be had.

Directed by Sebastián Lelio, with a screenplay by Alice Birch and Emma Donoghue based on her novel. Florence Pugh is Elizabeth Wright an English nurse invited over to 19th century Ireland to evaluate the “miraculous” story of Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy) a young girl who has not eaten for four months, claiming to be sustained by no more than her faith. Wright, alongside local Nun (Josie Walker), has been invited by the villages committee to come and observe and understand as to whether it is a miracle or a hoax. As Elizabeth gets to know Anna and her family however, she learns the truth of what is happening. Becoming more desperate as she sees Anna’s story move towards it inevitable conclusion.

The Wonder is a story about stories and sets its stall out early as to exactly what we are watching. It looks at how stories become beliefs and how beliefs are used. Used by those wanting to exert control, by abusers, the abused and those masking the darkness of their own reality or memories.

The Wonder is a dark and compelling watch, especially as the horrific nature of Anna’s “miracle” becomes clear as does who is empowering it and what they are hiding. It is a slow burn of a film and for some maybe too slow. But for me, the intrigue of the story paired with the always magnetic presence of Pugh kept me thoroughly engaged.

However, it is the power of the ending that brings the story together. Not just the dark reveal of Anna’s reality, but also the reveal of the films algorical nature which puts a whole new slant on it.

Performances are strong, Pugh is of course excellent and is well supported by the ensemble cast, Tom Burke, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones and Elaine Cassidy amongst others.

It looks great and beautifully portrays Wright’s isolation as both the watcher and an outsider, with a suitably dark and horror inflected score.

While its pacing and darkness of its story won’t be for everyone, I found The Wonder dark and intriguing. It is an intelligent look at how stories are used for good and bad and it’s allegorical nature leaves you with plenty to think about.

Ryan Coogler writes and directs the sequel to his very successful Black Panther. Wakanda is still in mourning over the death of King T’Challa and this is not all the nation has to deal with, as we find Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) at the United Nations challenging those targeting Wakanda’s outreach locations looking to secure stocks of vibranium. However, when a seam is found in the ocean those looking to find it are met by a mysterious people who rise from the sea under the command of their leader, Namor (Tenoch Huerta). This brings new problems for Wakanda and it falls on the young shoulders of Shuri (Letitia Wright), who while trying to deal with the loss of her brother now has to forge a path for the future of Wakanda.

This is not a traditional Marvel film. In fact it’s the traditional Marvel bits that are where it is at its weakest. Rather it’s a grown up story that explores loss and grief and in doing so delivers a touching tribute to the sad loss of its former leading man.

From its touching opening (including the opening credits) the film does an excellent job of balancing how loss impacts people. We have Shuri’s hurt, anguish and anger. Ramonda who tries to hide her hurt, but it surfaces time and again all handled thoughtfully. It also explores other grown up themes such as the greed of powerful nations and their eagerness to pillage others for their resources and the pointless nature of superpowers doing battle.

The film is full of strong performances Luptia Nyong’o, Danai Gurira and Winston Duke all shine next to Wright and Bassett who are the stories heart.

It’s not perfect, it’s too long (although doesn’t drag) and there are misses in its more traditional Marvel elements with some plot points and characters feeling forced and unnecessary.

Wakanda forever is not your traditional Marvel film. Rather it’s a thoughtful and heartfelt look at loss. For those wanting traditional superhero fare, this isn’t it. Instead Marvel have chosen to tell a grown up story and it felt better for it.