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MAYA THE BEE: THE GOLDEN ORB (PG)
Based on buzzy characters from the German children’s book by Waldemar Bonsels, Maya The Bee first took flight in computeranimated form as a TV series followed by a 2014 feature film for preschoolers.
Overarching life lessons about courage, tenacity and friendship are enforced in a jaunty third big screen instalment directed by Noel Cleary, which invites cutesy insects to burst into lyrically simplistic songs to convey their emotions.
“This here mountain’s no place for ants/Against us beetles, they got no chance,” croons one warmongering bug (Christian Charisiou), who overcomes his prejudices and appreciates the power of interspecies co-operation by the time the end credits rock and roll.
Screenwriter Fin Edquist harvests sticky sentimentality when the going gets tough but lashings of emotional syrup don’t prevent the solid action sequences from taking flight including a frantic chase on a fallen leaf down eddying water.
MINARI (12A)
Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung plunders memories of his childhood in the shadow of the Ozark Mountains in an autobiographical love letter to family ties and intergenerational conflict.
Glimpsed through the eyes of a Korean American couple, who relocate their brood to 1980s Arkansas, Minari charms and delights without flashiness, relying on naturalistic performances from a powerhouse ensemble cast and the untouched beauty of the Bible Belt to cast a heady spell.
Taking its title from the luscious water cress which flourishes in Korea, Chung’s beautifully calibrated character study balances moments of regret with earthy humour including an impish boy serving an elderly relative a fragrant brew they won’t forget.
Supporting actress Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung is a lipsmacking delight as the pottymouthed grandmother with scant regard for social niceties, who shatters the peace with the cool disregard of a wrecking ball.
In the rubble, Minari unearths moments of life-affirming joy and despair from a gifted filmmaker’s heart.
CHAOS WALKING (12A)
If innermost thoughts and base desires were exposed as gaseous audio chatter around our heads, we’d probably be driven mad by the unfiltered cacophony.
Thinking out loud is commonplace in director Doug Liman’s dystopian sci-fi thriller.
Crudely torn from the pages of the first book of a young adult trilogy penned by Patrick Ness, Chaos Walking harnesses slick digital effects to realise a nightmarish world stripped of privacy.
Ness and co-writer Christopher Ford surgically remove nuances and emotional complexities evident on the page of The Knife Of Never Letting Go and opt for bombastic, action-oriented storytelling that neutralises any possibility of an audience engaging brains.
Characters’ motivations are rendered in broad, simplistic strokes and a futuristic battle for fractured hearts and minds becomes another blushing pretender to The Hunger Games’ cinematic crown.
SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT (12A)
A real-life finishing school in East Sussex, which polished German girls between 1932 and 1939, provides an intriguing setting for director Andy Goddard’s slow-burning espionage thriller.
Based on a script co-written by Goddard and actors Eddie Izzard and Celyn Jones, Six Minutes To Midnight is an entertaining if occasionally far-fetched yarn cast in the mould of The 39 Steps, which goes on the run with a man wrongly accused of murder as the threat of war looms across Europe.
It’s an old-fashioned tale of skulduggery and deception, which engineers dramatic tension by introducing an arbitrary 24-hour countdown to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war on Germany.
That invisible ticking clock, replicated in the score of composer Marc Streitenfeld, creates sufficient narrative thrust to carry the plot through some of its least plausible twists such as one laughable example of covert surveillance in front of an open doorway, where the spy can be easily spotted by his targets.
GODZILLA VS KONG (12A)
Billed as the ultimate showdown between behemoth brawlers from Godzilla: King Of The Monsters and Kong: Skull Island, director Adam Wingard’s overblown monster-mashing smackdown is a ridiculously onesided affair.
Logic, not a quality cherished by screenwriters Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, dictates the outcome when a reptilian contender with atomic breath that cuts through metal like a hot knife through butter rumbles with a chest-beating rival armed with banana breath.
Godzilla Vs Kong shamelessly milks affection for the underdog ape with an opening croon of Bobby Vinton’s “Over The Mountain, Across The Sea” as the hulking primate wakes dreamily on his island idyll, lazily scratches his hirsute haunches and enjoys a bracing shower in a waterfall.
Wingard’s testosterone-fuelled picture is just as one-sided.
Bombastic action sequences, choreographed in luscious slowmotion, bludgeon character development and plausible plotting into a coma without resistance.