Wise Children, BBC online review – beautifully bizarre

★★★ WISE CHILDREN, BBC Emma Rice’s version of Angela Carter’s last novel is a celebration of alternative families

Emma Rice’s version of Angela Carter’s last novel is a celebration of alternative families

Reviewing theatre now means reviewing film. Knowing that Emma Rice’s Old Vic 2018 production of Wise Children, her typically rambunctious version of Angela Carter’s last novel, published in 1991, has been recorded by The Space immediately raises expectations of high quality. After all, this company specializes in digitally bringing good art to wider audiences.

The Iron Mask review - preposterous multi-national fantasy

★★ THE IRON MASK Preposterous multi-national fantasy

Oleg Stepchenko's film is a weird mix of Chinese folklore, bogus history and atrocious dubbing

Director Oleg Stepchenko’s follow-up to his 2014 yarn Forbidden Kingdom swaps the latter’s Transylvania for a fantastical computer-generated frolic round 18th century Russia and China, as pioneering cartographer Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) sets out to map the extremities of the known world.

Rumpelstiltskin, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - spins an engaging yarn for young audiences

★★★ RUMPELSTILTSKIN, SADLERS WELLS An engaging yarn for young audiences

balletLORENT provides a sunnier take on the the Brothers Grimm

The latest in Sadler’s Wells’ Digital Stage programme – an impressively assembled online offering to keep audiences entertained during the shutdown – is balletLORENT’s family-friendly dance-theatre production Rumpelstiltskin. It was streamed as a "matinee" on Friday afternoon, and is available to watch for free on 

Four Kids and It review – a family friendly yarn that needs more magic

★★★ FOUR KIDS AND IT Jacqueline Wilson’s contemporary update is a so-so Blytonesque adventure

Jacqueline Wilson’s contemporary update is a so-so Blytonesque adventure

With over one hundred books to her name and several hugely popular TV spin-offs, including the Tracy Beaker adventures, Jacqueline Wilson takes a no-nonsense approach to children’s fiction that reflects the realities of jigsaw families, mental and divorce. In 2012, in something of a detour from the rest of her work, she wrote a sequel of sorts to E. Nesbit’s beloved magical children’s classic, Five Children and It.  

Onward review - do you believe in magic?

★★★ ONWARD Pixar excels at brotherly love in familiar, charm-filled family quest

Pixar excels at brotherly love in a familiar but charm-filled family quest

Welcome to New Mushroomton: a fantasy land that’s forgotten itself. This is how we’re introduced to Pixar’s Onward, which is set in a Dungeons & Dragons daydream of suburbia. Director Dan Scanlon’s film is a tribute to his late father, but it begins with a separate elegy.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, National Theatre review - terrifying, magical coming of age story

★★★★ THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE, NATIONAL THEATRE Terrifying, magical coming of age story

A stunning tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind

This scary, electrically beautiful adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book about living on the faultline between imagination and reality is a fantastically alternative offering for the festive season. While the parameters of the story are dark, it’s an edgy, stunningly thought through tribute to the wild and wonderful life of the mind, and its ability to help us engage with the horrors that life flings at us.  

Frozen II review - the allure cools off

★★★ FROZEN II The allure cools off

Disney returns to one of its biggest successes, with middling results

Frozen is possibly the most beloved Disney movie since the studio rediscovered its mojo in the 1990s. While picking up a couple of Oscars and laying waste to box office records, it had young girls immersing themselves in favourite characters and performing the songs on a dime.

His Dark Materials, BBC One review - generic TV fantasy with ready-made twists

★★★ HIS DARK MATERIALS, BBC ONE Generic TV fantasy with ready-made twists

High production values and the imagination of Philip Pullman carry a thin first episode

The good news is that television's serial slow burn will allow for a lot more original Pullman to make its way to screen than was possible in the one and only instalment of the intended film trilogy, The Golden Compass. Its virtues were many, despite drastic late alterations, and in terms of casting and cinematography, this version doesn't look set to outstrip it.