Several years ago, I attended a job interview where I thought the person interviewing me was asking sarcastic questions. I promptly delivered what I felt were suitably witty, sarcastic answers until I suddenly realised, mid-interview, that my interviewer was in deadly earnest. I had something of a similar experience during the first ten minutes of the new live action Cinderella. The Timotei commercial visuals immediately gave me a sugar headache, and the opening lines felt so saccharine that I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a layer of irony that I was somehow missing, especially given recent deliberately unconventional fairy tales such as Maleficent, Frozen, or Enchanted.

Shortly afterwards, I realised that irony, sarcasm and cynicism would not feature in any way during Kenneth Branagh’s deliberately by-the-book take on Cinderella. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it did take me a while to adjust before finally being bludgeoned into suspension of disbelief somewhere in the middle of the movie. As a fairy tale, Cinderella is all but bullet proof, but it has been done before, definitively, in Disney’s 1950 animated movie and more recent revisionist versions including the massively underrated Ever After: A Cinderella Story. Sadly Branagh’s film is not sufficiently distinctive to be regarded as anything other than passable. Those looking for the darker elements of the original text (including foot mutilations) definitely need not apply.

That said, Branagh’s direction is good, and so are the leads. Lily James looks the part, and Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother is great casting. There are also interesting bit parts for the likes of Derek Jacobi and Stellan Skarsgard, but what lets the whole thing down for me is Chris Weitz’s screenplay – not because it is overly earnest, but because frankly this Cinderella is just too good to be true. The key to making a role like this work is to add a touch of self-mockery, akin to adding that pinch of salt to a cake recipe. For example, Errol Flynn remains the definitive screen Robin Hood because he sends himself up a little, knowing that without that humour he would just be too heroic to be believable. Here Cinderella is just too angelic, even though Cinderella is meant to be angelic. I hope that makes sense.

Thankfully, Branagh does just enough to make the film work by including humorous moments such as the royal artist who paints the Prince, Alex McQueen’s amusingly pompous town crier, and Helena Bonham Carter’s agreeably eccentric fairy godmother. Richard Madden is a bit of a non-entity as the Prince, but like his co-star he looks the part, and he does get one, genuinely affecting moment with Derek Jacobi. So kudos to Chris Weitz for that scene at least.

On a moral/spiritual level, this embraces the usual family friendly themes. Emphasising courage and kindness is certainly admirable, but I couldn’t help thinking Cinderella might have struggled a tiny bit more to eventually forgive her stepmother, even if the forgiveness message is well intended.

I know some will read this review and think I’m too cynical and not the target audience, but nothing could be further from the truth. I love many of the Disney fairy tales, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and more recently Tangled, which after repeated viewings I now consider as good as the afore-mentioned stone cold classics. I also enjoy the afore-mentioned versions of Cinderella, so I really wanted to like this film.

In the end, what we have is an adequate take on a classic story that will certainly find an audience, but one that for me could have done with just a hint of edginess to distinguish it. After all, a spoonful of salt helps the sugar go down.

The latest, and possibly one of the last films to come out of Studio Ghibli is the Oscar nominated The Tale of the Princess Kaguya; an unhurried, spare, astonishingly beautiful piece of work.

Based on a Japanese fairy tale, the plot concerns a bamboo cutter, who finds a mysterious being that resembles a tiny human princess inside a magical bamboo stalk. The girl takes human form, and once adopted by grows at an accelerated rate, discovering a special connection with her earthy, rural surroundings, befriending local children and becoming the pride and joy of her adoptive parents. But when the bamboo cutter subsequently discovers gold and fine clothing in other magical bamboo stalks, he becomes convinced that heaven wants the girl to become a princess, so against his wife’s advice he takes her to the capital and uses the money to transform her into royalty. She becomes Princess Kaguya, but reluctantly, only doing so to please her adoptive father. Gradually the separation from her countryside childhood home takes its toll on her happiness.

This is a lovely film, stunningly animated by director Isao Takahata, and hauntingly scored by Joe Hisaishi. It also looks like nothing Studio Ghibli have released before. Superb use of watercolour, charcoal and deliberately impressionistic, unfinished backgrounds make for highly imaginative viewing, adding to the ethereal, fairy tale quality. Perhaps it is the use of these techniques that enable the outlandish, surreal finale to somehow work – although I do acknowledge that for some it may be a stretch.

Ultimately as with all fairy tales, one can apply many interpretations. It can be viewed as a melancholy coming of age story, a feminist critique of Japanese culture, a warning about parental burdens of expectation on children, a Buddhist fable, an environmentalist statement, or a combination of the above.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya will prove too long and slow for some tastes, but it has many hugely memorable scenes, from the early simple moment where the baby princess imitates a frog, to the afore-mentioned left-field finale. If you are fan of Studio Ghibli, you will almost certainly love it, as I did.

Simon Dillon, March 2015.

Insurgent, the second segment in the Divergent trilogy (based on the novels by Veronica Roth), is actually not bad. It’s certainly no worse than the first film, which was passably entertaining, assuming you could get past the ridiculous premise, ie a future shock world where people are divided into social groups – Abnegation, Amity, Candour, Dauntless and Erudite – based on massively reductive character traits.

Those who fall through the cracks of this system, the “Factionless” and “Divergents”, can’t be neatly sorted into the above categories. They are considered a threat for reasons that really don’t hold up under scrutiny (something vague about humanity being dangerous and destructive if they aren’t sorted in this oddly OCD fashion). Anyway, the story picks up where the first left off, with our heroes Tris (Shailene Woodley), her boyfriend Four (Theo James), along with various others from the Dauntless faction, on the run from the forces of the villainous Jeanine (Kate Winslet). What follows is a lot of running, jumping and shooting. And some virtual reality. Oh, and some running, jumping and shooting within virtual reality.

In spite of obvious echoes of frankly better stories like The Hunger Games, Insurgent does have some very well staged action sequences, courtesy of director Robert Schwentke, who proves particularly adept at vertiginous set pieces. The leads are also appealing, particularly Woodley, and also Miles Teller (recently seen in Whiplash), who has a memorable supporting role.

There are even a few nods towards Roth’s Christian worldview, such as Candour’s refrain of “May the truth set you free”. I haven’t read the novels, so can’t judge whether the films are a good approximation of the source material, but on a moral/spiritual level at least, there are themes of sacrifice and certainly quite a lot of death and resurrection metaphors.

Ultimately though, the best thing about Insurgent is the running, jumping and shooting both in virtual and actual reality, despite the silliness of the premise.

I expected to find Still Alice, the Alzheimer’s drama Julianne Moore recently won an Oscar for, thoroughly depressing. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover it only rated around a 5 on the Alzheimer’s drama scale of 1 to Amour (the nuclear weapon of Alzheimer’s drama, in terms of how thoroughly depressing it is). Instead, I found the film oddly compelling and touching rather than out and out miserable. Yes, it’s undoubtedly Oscar bait and prone to a certain disease-of-the-week-TV-movie-ishness in terms of the subject matter. But even this is offset by directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s subtle cinematic touch.

For example, we experience the story (based on Lisa Genova’s novel) entirely from the point of view of the eponymous Alice (Moore), a University linguistics professor. As she battles early onset Alzheimer’s, the action around her goes out of focus – a very effective, if obvious, way to depict her confusion. The screenplay also cuts from scene to scene, sometimes with a rhythm that says to the audience “the following morning”, when in fact it is a month later and Alice has forgotten everything in between.

Of course, Alice’s condition takes its toll on her family. Because she has had a happy marriage, great career and loves her children, the sheer cruelty of losing these memories is depicted with heart-rending brilliance by the award winning Julianne Moore. I expected Moore to be excellent (she always is). I also expected fine support from Alec Baldwin as her husband. What I didn’t expect was Kristen Stewart to be good too, as Alice’s sort-of estranged daughter Lydia. Her part brings her total of performances that I actually like up to two (the other being Adventureland).

For me, the relationship between Stewart and her mother is the best thing in the film. Their relationship provides a redemptive and very touching element, and is certainly destined to bring a tear to many eyes. Ultimately, the film does not duck the issue of just how awful Alzheimer’s is, but it also celebrates a life well lived in a very moving way.

In short, Still Alice is still depressing, but not nearly as depressing as I expected.

Fans of John Carpenter are in for a treat with this interesting homage to his work. It Follows echoes his best movies visually, aurally and thematically.

Plot wise this is scary campfire story horror, with teenager Jay (Maika Monroe) stalked by a demonic presence after she loses her virginity – a presence she is told will kill her unless she has sex with someone else and “passes on” the curse.

This demonic presence can appear as anyone but can only be seen by the person under the curse, as a figure walking slowly and inextricably towards them. They can flee this presence, but of course then they rest, and the demon catches up. Also if the demon catches them and kills them, it then goes back to stalk the previous person who was cursed.

Director David Robert Mitchell helms the piece well, makes good use of locations, and milks maximum menace from simple shots of people walking slowly in the corners of the frame. Performances are pretty good too, as is the use of sound (always an essential factor in a horror movie). The Carpenter-esque electronic score provides the icing on a pretty effective piece of work.

I know Christians often object to horror movies, sometimes on grounds of sex, nudity, violence and bad language – of which there is a fair bit here. But if you can see past the blood and boobs there’s a long tradiition in the genre of sex equals death. Here that idea is given an interesting spin as the demon that follows can be seen as a metaphor for sexually transmitted disease, especially in the way the entity works backwards through the sexual chain like a domino effect. Additionally, on a spiritual level, this could be taken as a metaphor for what Christians call “soul-ties”, in which one remains spiritually tied to one’s sexual partner, whoever else they have slept with, and so on. In that respect, It Follows amounts to an abstinence endorsement of sorts, something Christians ought to applaud.

On the other hand, I seriously doubt that was the conscious intent behind the film. In spite of such spiritual ponderings, this really amounts to little more than a blast of disreputable genre fun for those with an inclination towards this sort of thing. It Follows is hardly a groundbreaking masterpiece, but it works fairly well in a Ringu meets John Carpenter’s Halloween sort of way.