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The Kid Who Would Be King PG
Joe Cornish – once of TV’s The Adam And Joe Show – has spent the past decade putting together an ever more impressive film career. With The Kid Who Would
Be King, a modern take on the story of King Arthur, he both write and directs.
And great fun it is too, helped by strong visual effects, some very funny moments and cracking performances by – Patrick Stewart and Rebecca Ferguson notwithstanding – its mainly youthful cast.
The impressive Louis Ashbourne Serkis (pictured, yes, son of Andy) plays Alex, the brave but bullied schoolboy whose life is magically transformed when he pulls an unlikely looking sword out of a reinforced concrete pile.
Suddenly he’s got a slightly camp Merlin as his spiritual guide and everyone’s off to Tintagel.
It starts off looking like telly but gets better in likeable leaps and bounds.
Instant Family
12A You can’t argue with the message – the world needs more generous-hearted people to foster and adopt children – but you can certainly question the execution. This is a film with the story, sentimentality and humour turned up to 11.
Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne are nice enough as the childless couple who decide to foster three siblings, including a precociously mature 15-year-old (Isabela Moner). But for every modestly funny moment there is something overshrill or lacking in taste.
Happy Death Day 2U
15A Not only does this sequel arrive barely 16 months after the original, it’s actually better. That, you may recall, was about Tree (Jessica Rothe), a student trapped in a Groundhog Day-style time loop that saw her waking up day after day knowing only that she would be murdered (again).
This only really gets going when the geek-gang tinkers with the spacetime continuum again and suddenly poor Tree is back in the time-loop of the original. It’s funnier, cleverer and, for a while, even quite moving.
Piercing
This is the unsettling story of a new father who leaves his wife and baby for a business trip. But his real aim is to engage in sado-masochistic sex with a prostitute and then to murder her.
But then Mia Wasikowska turns up and it seems the power games have only just begun. Nasty but stylishly executed.