Return to rumble in the jungle
JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL
★★★★★ (Cert 15, 101 minutes) Director: Lauren Greenfield
CITIZEN K
★★★✩✩ (Cert 12A, 123 minutes)
Director: Jake Kasdan
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Jack Black, Danny Devito, Danny Glover
THE KINGMAKER
★★★★✩ (Cert 15, 126 minutes) Director: Alex Gibney
DISNEY will take over the cinemas again on Thursday with Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, the latest episode in its revamped space opera.with such a tiny window to display their wares, rival studios have left the coast clear for The Kingmaker and Citizen K, two documentaries that feature modern-day Darthvaders.
But one plucky rebel has decided to stand against the Empire – family body-swap adventure Jumanji: The
Next Level.
Sony has history on its side for this movie showdown.when its predecessor Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle swung into cinemas this time two years ago, it managed to take a fair few seats from the previous Star Wars movie.
As nobody expected much from a belated follow-up to Robin Williams’s middling family adventure, that seemed quite a feat.
Returning writers Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner and director Jake Kasdan mostly stick to the winning formula.
The same bunch of misfit students (played by Alex Wolff, Morgan Turner, Ser’darius Blain and Madison Iseman) are beamed into another video game where they assume the bodies of Hollywood stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan.
This time the adventure game has an Arabian Nights flavour rather than a jungle theme.there are two new avatars, a thief played by rapper Awkwafina and a black horse, and two new human players.
When the magical game console sucks in grumpy grandad Danny Devito and his friend Danny Glover, Hart and Johnson are tasked with raising laughs from disrespecting their elders.
The new adventure feels a little disjointed but tubby Jack Black trilling like an excited teenage girl is just as funny the second time around.
There are no laughs in The
Kingmaker, Lauren Greenfield’s excellent documentary about the Philippines’ shoe-loving dictator’s moll Imelda Marcos. But there are a few surprises. Greenfield interviews Marcos at her Manila apartment, where she is surrounded by gaudy ornaments and assorted tat.
As Marcos recounts her early years and her shotgun wedding to President Ferdinand, it feels like we’re going to hear another tale of a young innocent seduced by a powerful man.
She seems contrite when she talks of her shock at the terrible poverty she saw on her return from exile and her desire to restore pride and prosperity to the nation.
When she starts gushing about her friendships with Gaddafi and Saddam, we realise what trick Greenfield is playing, feeding her rope to hang herself.
“Perception is real and the truth is not,” she smiles when asked about her astonishing political comeback.
When the Marcoses were ousted in 1986 after 21 miserable years, they left with an estimated $10billion pilfered from the country’s coffers.
Greenfield finds Imelda in good spirits.
It’s 2014 and the then 85-year-old has used her stolen billions to establish a dynasty. She is now a member of the country’s Congress and her son
Bongbong (a disarmingly sonorous name for a wannabe despot) is running for vice-president.
As we follow her on the campaign trail, Greenfield introduces us to some of the teachers and journalists who were tortured and raped during what Marcos says was the happiest period of her life.
Aided by an online campaign of disinformation, history has been rewritten and the dictator’s reputation wiped clean.terrifyingly, it’s working.the image of the 3,000 pairs of shoes she left in the presidential palace has been reclaimed. Marcos laughs as she shows us the gaudy, shoe-shaped trinket sent to her by a supporter. “The poor like a star in the dark of night,” says this expert in sinister one-liners.
Greenfield is sitting alongside her when her limo stops in a shanty town and she opens the window to dole out money to the adoring children she and her husband sentenced to lives of misery.
DESPOTISM is also the theme of Citizen K, Alex Gibney’s absorbing documentary about Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The billionaire, interviewed in his London home, made his fortune in the gangster capitalism era of the 1990s when quick fortunes were made by scamming Russians out of their share certificates.
But after helping Putin into power, he fell foul of the despot by exposing one of his dodgy deals on TV. The oligarch is definitely no saint but he is a fascinating subject.after spending 10 years in a Russian prison, he emerged with selfinsight and an iron determination to bring democracy to his homeland.