ALSO SHOWING
TOY STORY 4 (U) ★★★★★
HOW do you improve on the perfection of Toy Story 3, which bade a moving farewell to Woody the cowboy, pictured (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the other denizens of Andy’s childhood?
Oscar-winning computer animation studio Disney Pixar comes tantalisingly close with a belated rip-roaring fourth instalment that will have parents dabbing at their eyes with sodden handkerchiefs.
Director Josh Cooley’s hare-brained rescue mission was always going to disappoint after the note perfect resolution to the third film.
The script quietly preaches the beauty of imperfection between breathlessly staged action set-pieces and a barrage of visual gags, which demand a second viewing.
The fractious central relationship between Woody and Buzz, which stretches back almost 25 cinema-going years, reaches a gorgeous, heartrending crescendo that closes this toy box of wonders with a soft and satisfying emotional thud.
BRIGHTBURN (15)
★★★★★
DIRECTOR David Yarovesky’s picture puts a sinister, gore-soaked twist on the Superman origin story, engineering a series of grisly deaths as an adopted alien child (Jackson A Dunn, pictured) learns how “special” he is and deciphers a transmission from his fallen spacecraft: “Take the world.”
A misery-saturated script mines a rich vein of dark, subversive humour but their narrative drilling is hit-and-miss.
Brightburn boasts plenty of splatter including one dislocated jaw and a wince-inducing close-up of a shard of glass in a blinking eye.
The tone is uneven – a tug-of-war between parody and slasher pulls hardest in favour of the latter – and characterisation is painfully thin.
When all else fails, Yarovesky resorts to conventional and not-so-super jump scares.
CHILD’S PLAY (15)
★★★★★
REBOOTING a cult 1980s slasher horror for modern audiences is anything but child’s play for Norwegian director Lars Klevberg.
Widowed mother Karen Barclay
(Aubrey Plaza) relocates to a new city with her deaf 13-year-old son Andy (Gabriel Bateman). The move is hard on the lad, who makes a few friends.
Soon afterwards, Karen purchases Buddi (voiced by Mark Hamill), a cute doll which connects all the Kaslan Corp appliances in the family’s home. Andy christens the new arrival Chucky.
A technical defect transforms the plaything into a knife-wielding harbinger of doom. Andy tries to warn his mother and other adults about the danger but they dismiss his tearful pleadings.
Hamill’s vocal performance as Chucky (pictured) seldom causes goosebumps and his pun-laden parting shots could do with a system upgrade.