The enormous set makes it feel old fashioned in a good way – we’re not being inundated by greenscreened backgrounds. The costumes and production design are pretty also, leaning ever so slightly towards steampunk.
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Hoopla Factor: Continue reading City of Ember
I still don’t quite understand how one spends a 180 million dollar budget, but it’s easily the best looking animation in a long time. The Earth scenes and the robots have an ultra-realistic appearance, whilst the filmmakers haven’t been silly enough to try and replicate real humans.
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Hoopla Factor:
The aggressive theme of humanity’s evil aside, there is enough here to satisfy most viewers, although it is hard to reconcile the stellar first sequences with the run-of-the-mill second half. Pixar continues to make solid if unspectacular children’s films that are an easy sell, but this certainly isn’t a world-beater.
Rating: 
Hoopla Factor: Continue reading WALL-E
The story is archetypal, but never pretends to be otherwise, and in many ways this works for the film instead of being a weakness. Watching Kung Fu Panda is a comfortable experience that allows the audience to just sit back and enjoy its indefinable alchemy of animation, voice and plot.
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Hoopla Factor:
Much of Kung Fu Panda is lacking in substance. It may have a lazy kind of instant appeal, but doesn’t really have a story worth telling. Po’s underdog antics are amusing, but the story doesn’t really have a point other than the typical ‘you can achieve whatever you set your mind to/American dream’ type shtick.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading Kung Fu Panda
It is, however, kind of long. Waaay too long. They don’t even have an excuse – this isn’t one of the score of films being made based on fantasy epics. It simply does not need to be two hours and fifteen minutes.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: 
Continue reading Speed Racer
The overwhelming sense when watching Prince Caspian is of sheer boredom. Epic battles that are hard to invest in coupled with dull exposition, action set pieces that have already been seen in other films and characters that are difficult to get behind all add up to one of the more dreary screen events in recent years.
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Without getting into the broader picture here, there’s something wrong with a character that can only teach through guilt. The amount of time this lion spends making characters feel guilty throughout both films is almost sickening. There are other ways to edify, though C. S. Lewis didn’t seem to touch upon them in these books.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Randall does an excellent job of casting Esther as outsider – schoolyard scenes are choreographed to enhance the suggestion of otherness that eventually engulfs her. Militaristic overtones in these scenes maximise the sense that conformity is more important than individuality.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger
The Spiderwick Chronicles almost moves too fast for its own good. It seems that few fantasy films have taken a leaf out of Peter Jackson’s book, and realised that it takes time to establish a fantasy world, and have instead rushed through special effect after special effect, ignoring subtleties like character.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading The Spiderwick Chronicles
The beastie looks great insofar as it interacts perfectly with the physical environment. The use of lighting, shadows and reflections are all fantastic, and most importantly it looks real when the actors touch it.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading The Water Horse
In its haste to get to the big action scenes and battle sequences, it forgets that the audience needs to care about those fighting (and dying). The exposition in the opening half overwhelms the character information to the point that each is given rare moments to define themselves.
Rating: Hoopla Factor:
Every time the characters refer to the alethiometer, they quickly follow it up with ‘golden compass’ (though tellingly off-camera), and this goes to show just how ‘careful’ people are when 180 million dollars are on the line.
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading The Golden Compass
Thank goodness he still has a chance, the film tells us, as it’s all his fault so he’d better take steps to put things right – but did anyone ever actively decide they wanted Jerry Seinfeld to be their child’s tutor in environmental fundamentalism?
Rating: Hoopla Factor: Continue reading Bee Movie