A remake of the Disney animated feature Pete’s Dragon switches to the mix of live action and CGI which worked so well in their earlier attempt from this year, The Jungle Book. Kicking off in 1977 (a nod to the year of the release of the original movie) Pete is on a road trip with his parents when a car accident leaves him orphaned and at the mercy of wolves but at the last moment he is rescued by a huge hairy (not scaly) dragon who he names Elliot after a character in his favourite book. They are shown happily living in a vast area of forest which has not been encroached upon but modernisation is catching up on them and some local logging is beginning to reach the areas of their habitat.

When a young girl Natalie (Oona Laurence) is accompanying her father Jack (Wes Bentley), owner of the lumber mill, to the work site she spots Pete (Oakes Fegley) and follows him into the forest. When her father and mother Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), a park ranger, come looking for Natalie they find Pete and take him back to town. At this stage Elliott has realised that he cannot find his friend, while searching for him he is spotted by Gavin (Karl Urban) a hunter who is also Jack’s brother and works for him, and he rounds up a posse to catch the legendary Millhaven dragon.

As they find out more about Pete they begin to realise that Graces father (Robert Redford) who’s stories about the time he spotted the dragon when he was younger look like they may not have been as fabricated as everybody thought so they set off into the forest with Pete to find his friend but it becomes a race against time as Gavin is also on the look out for the dragon with a very different agenda.

While watching this movie I began to notice that that there was something different in this movie when compared to recent Disney efforts and for a while I couldn’t work it out. The CGI was good but still a far cry from the aforementioned Jungle Book, the acting was decent with Howard doing a good job as the sympathetic mother like figure and it was great to see Redford still light up the screen when he appeared, showing that you cannot replace pure charisma and even at almost eighty years of age it still shines through. Urban and Bentley were wasted however as their characters never had any real chance to develop and the kids, Laurence and Fegley ware okay given what they had to do. Then I finally realised that what I was watching was a Disney movie of my younger years. The movie didn’t fill the time with exposition and a few moments of Redford narrative told us all we needed to know. There was no attempt to use comedy in the script to get some cheap laughs. The villains of the piece are not evil, they are just guys who don’t understand the situation and go about their ways with an almost comic ineptitude and the star of the film was, as it should be, the dragon.

So as much as this could have been a tale about a young boy who is rescued from a life in the forest and finds a family or of a town who are shown the error of their ways after their initial response to capture the ‘monster’ but instead it was a tale of a dragon who has become separated from it’s family, who befriends a child in the same situation and who learns that while humans may still be a danger, not all people are and is shown how important family is by his friend. Thrown in was a little nod to the consequences of deforestation and the down side to the instinct of the caveman hunter which is still embedded in our DNA. Most of all what this movie had, which has been lacking in a lot of recent kids film is heart and that is what the Disney films of my youth always had. On the downside I will say that a little more of the relationship between Pete and Elliot in the forest and less on the dragon hunt side would have been nice but I walked out having enjoyed it more than most of the other movies I have seen this summer. Unfortunately this film seems to have been swept aside in the melee of the recent bid budget filmaand that is a shame because there is a feel good factor to this story which is missing from a lot of this years releases.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 Out Of 10

Blake Lively is Nancy Adams, who is on holiday in Mexico, taking a sabbatical from her studies in medical school after her mother has passed away following a battle with cancer, in order to track down a secluded beach which was her mothers favourite spot. When her friend bails on a day on the water with her she decides to continue with her plan regardless and heads out for a day enjoying the waves.

All starts well as she meets up with some locals who give her a few tips about the dangers under the water such as coral and rocks but what none of them realise is that a far greater danger is nearby in a huge great white shark which has claimed the area as a feeding zone. When she is chasing one last wave before calling it a day she comes across a whale which has been attacked and realises that the waters may not be safe. As she is making her way back to the shore she is attacked by the shark and barely manages to haul herself onto a rock which has appeared as the water approaches low tide. Badly injured and seemingly without any means of escape she must use all of her survival instincts in order to win the battle of man (or in this case woman) versus nature.

The first thirty minutes or so of this film felt like it dragged a little, although it was needed to give some background and exposition via phone conversations with her sister Chloe (Sedona Legge) and father (Brett Cullen), photographs of her mother and a section of surfing which threw me back to the original Point Break movie, I wanted to see a shark and I was waiting to see a fin or some ominous underwater presence. I will say that once the shark does appear however it is worth the wait as it looks spectacular. The movie then kicks into it’s main event and for an hour or so we are treated to a good, tense and dramatic film. Lively does a good job of making the situation and most of her actions believable however there are a few moments which go a little too deep into asking me to suspend my belief, for instance there is a part where Lively does a bit of self surgery with what I termed her Swiss Army necklace which, while graphic and with the desire impact to make your toes curl, and while doing a good job of showing just how tenacious Lively is, felt a bit over the top to be realistic and there were a few moments of co-incidencal events that just felt included to move the story along.

All in all for a movie which is for the most part, in essence, about a woman trying to escape from a rock, with next to no interaction with any other actors and only the shark and Stephen Seagull for company (you’ll see what I mean) it done a very good job of keeping you watching and engrossed. There are a few heart in your mouth moments so the sense of the danger and peril was always there and Lively held the screen very well with her performance.

While it is obviously going to be compared with Jaws and there are a lot of nods to that movie, it was going to be a tall order to live up to the standard of one of the greatest films of all time so take it on it’s own merits, enjoy a survival tale where director Jaume Collet-Serra has done a does a good job of keeping you on the edge of your seat despite the very basic premise. The movie does have a few nice surprises as you expect one event but it doesn’t quite occur like that as the shark does something different which was a nice twist.

Forget this being sold as a horror movie and take it for a good action film which, as most good action movies do, expects a certain element of leaving your analysis on hold and just going along for the ride. If you can do that then there’s a good film in store for you although I recommend you catch this one on the big screen as I feel that some of the drama may be  lost in the transfer to the smaller screen.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 out Of 10

Miracles From Heaven is based on a real event and is the tale of the Beams, a religious Texan family whose ten year old daughter Anna (Kylie Rogers) develops pseudo obstruction motility disorder, an incurable condition which eliminates her ability to use her digestive system correctly, thus she cannot process food for nutritional purposes and is faced with a very short future given the nature of the affliction.

But Christy Beam (Jennifer Garner), is a tenacious woman and is not going to watch her daughter die without a fight so she decides to stop putting her faith in God and heads to Boston Children’s hospital to engage the services of Dr.Nurko (Eugenio Derbez) a world renowned paediatric gastroenterologist who confirms her worst fears. Even then Christy must battle set back after set back along the way in order to try and find a way to not simply give up on her daughter, all the while struggling against the judgement of the rest of her family and friends all of whom believe that God is responsible for the situation and it is a test of Christy’s faith which will be resolved if she stays strong and believes that it is all part of His plan.

So while she initially struggles alone as husband Kevin (Martin Henderson) is also trying to keep his veterinary practice running in order to fund the mounting medical bills while their other daughters Abbie (Brighton Sharbino) and Adelynn (Courtney Fansler) are struggling with the lack of parental attention and supervision they are receiving, they all begin to realise that without their support Anna is struggling and they will need to pull together as a family unit in order to get through regardless of the outcome.

There is nothing wrong with the movie it just felt like a big budget made for TV film and aside from the excellent performances by Garner, Rogers and the Patch Adams like support from Derbez it was nothing worth shouting about. I’m sure there are many out there who will enjoy watching a mother fight for her daughter every step along the way and I’ve no doubt that tears will be shed by some. There are some scenes during Anna’s treatment which will hit hard and even the young girl has her moments of self-doubt all of which are excellently handled by Rogers and the scene where she is speaking about death with a girl battling cancer in the bed next to her is handled with a maturity beyond her years. But despite this the movie done nothing for me to elevate it into something above the Hallmark genre.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

Starting with the words ‘I remember everything’ Jason Bourne starts with a hook and for the first third of the movie it doesn’t stop. We see Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) on the Albanian border living underground and off the grid but still haunted by his past. Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) is in Iceland hacking into the CIA database to extract information for Christian Dassault (Vinzenz Kiefer) who is an internet whistle blower she crusades with so when this unearths information regarding Jason Bourne and his father she decides that he needs to be advised. Her hacking has placed her in the line of fire of Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) a CIA technical specialist who puts a tail on her to investigate who she is working with and when the CIA realise that Bourne is the person Parsons is contacting, CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) orders an unnamed asset (Vincent Cassel) to take him out, but Athens is in the middle of a riot and the CIA lose their man, the man hunt is back on and Bourne must try and uncover what was his fathers involvement was in a government program named Iron Hand which seems to be linked back to the Treadstone project as well as figuring out where a new software operating system called Deep Dream comes into play.

With Paul Greengrass back at the helm we are back to the quick cut, shaky camcorder style and it leaves us in no doubt that we are at the heart of the Bourne series. This style works brilliantly during a chase scene based around a riot in Athens is outstanding, which is possibly the best action sequence of the whole series. In fact when the action kicks in the movie is great but the problem seems to be, because Bourne remembers everything the purpose he had in the previous movies is no longer valid, so the film needs to find a different purpose to motivate him which does not have the same emotional impact on the audience. While, for a movie called Jason Bourne he probably gives the least Bourne like performance since kicking ass to extract information has generally been replaced with hacking and bugging but these are the progressive times we live in. That being said the introduction of Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), the Deep Dream operating systems, the ethical links to user privacy and security, while being relevant to current society, just seemed tacked on as a plot thread to add some padding and when these sections of the movie were being played out the movie seemed to drag a little, maybe this was on purpose to heighten our anticipation of the action kicking in again but it didn’t wok for me.

So while I can’t fault the acting as all involved were spot on with Jones on top form as the battle hardened CIA director who is struggling to get his head around the new technology based terrorist threatand Vikander, who is the best of the bunch, as his go to expert, both being outstanding and with two superb action scenes in Athens and Las Vegas mixed in with a generally good espionage movie it’s hard to put my finger on why I was a little disappointed walking out, the best suggestion I can make is because I had such high expectation that I’m being overly picky.

So, if you were a fan of the originals then you’ll enjoy this fourth episode in the franchise (I’m omitting the Bourne Legacy as it’s a stand alone film) and while it’s not quite Bourne at his best, the bar is set very high so it’s still a very good movie.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 Out Of 10

Sophie is a young girl living in an orphanage in London who suffers from insomnia so often is awake at 3AM or what she calls the real witching hour. One of those nights while on her balcony she sees a giant but he notices her and kidnaps her from her bed taking her away to giant country where she believes she is going to be eaten and tries numerous times to escape but he eventually explains that he only took her because he had to as she would have told the world about him which would have highlighted the secret fact of his existence. So Sophie is stranded in his home with no means to get back to London but there are a number of giants living in giant country and the rest are not as friendly as Sophie’s captor so they constantly have to hide her away from the other giants who begin to suspect that there is food in the vicinity.

As Sophie spends more time with the giant a friendship of sorts develops and as he open up to her he explains that he is called the Big Friendly Giant which Sophie shortens to The BFG and he brings her along with him as he carry out his work which is capturing peoples dreams but when they return they realise that the other giants are aware of Sophie’s presence and are constantly trying to locate her so Sophie and The BFG must devise a way to rid themselves of the other giants.

I read the book many, many years ago so I was walking into this one with knowledge of the tale and with high expectations given that Stephen Spielberg was at the helm. Did it work for me as a movie? Not really, as I was pulling too many small continuity errors as the movie progressed, the constant use of the mixed up grasp of the English language used by the BGF started to get on my nerves after a while as did the bossiness of Sophie, bah humbug, I know. What I will say, putting that previous statement aside is that as a family film the BFG most certainly does work. The motion capture work for the gain by Mark Rylance is great and Ruby Barnhill matches him every step of the way as Sophie, their interaction and emotional acting works to a tee even if although some of the green screen moments are a bit plain to see.

It’s easy to say it’s a movie about a girl befriending a giant and going on an adventure together but behind the story there is so much more. The giant becomes a lost father figure, looking after Sophie, keeping her safe from danger above all else which also acts as a confessional of sorts as part of his convalescence for previous deeds. Sophie becomes a mother, guiding the giant, teaching him about the human world, correcting his mispronunciation and teaching him to stand up to bullies. It’s a very clever way of bringing two characters who feel alone in their world together in friendship.

It’s a no frills tale which is reasonably well presented but is nowhere near the Spielberg classics list however during my time in the cinema, from the laughing and giggling I heard, all the kids watching the movie were enjoying themselves so it will the kids and I’m sure some adults alike entertained.

DJ Speaks Rating: 5 Out Of 10

Let me just start by saying that while it is not critical that you have seen either of the first two movies before watching this film the relationships of the characters and their motivations will be much clearer with the knowledge of those two films so I would suggest that you watch them first (they are well worth a watch anyway) before seeing this movie.

The USS Enterprise is three years into it’s five year mission to explore the unknown frontiers of space and Kirk (Chris Pine) is beginning to have self doubts as he is approaching the same age that his father died at so he questions his ability to perform his duties as the ships captain to the levels they require at the same time Spock (Zachary Quinto) has received some news which is making him question his choices to leave his planet and people behind to take the role within StarFleet and this has caused friction within his relationship with Uhura (Zoe Saldana).

When the Enterprise docks at the newly build StarBase of Yorktown, a massive population hub for the United Federation Of Planets, all the crew are looking forward to a bit of well earner R&R however an escape pod arrives with it’s sole occupant Kalara (Lydia Wilson) requesting help after her ship was attacked in an uncharted nebula where her crew members have been imprisoned, the only ship equipped with the technology to investigate is the Enterprise so our heroes are sent to investigate and rescue the crew. Once they arrive they find out that they are not as equipped as they may have thought and after an attack on the Enterprise by an alien known as Krall (Idris Elba) and his troops who are looking to retrieve an artifact which is stored in the discovery archives of the ship, the crew is either captured or stranded on an alien planet so Kirk and they few remaining free crew members must save their friends and thwart the plans of Krall and his followers.

I will start by saying this movie is visually spectacular, I thought the CGI and effects were superb and the heavy action scenes had me completely engrossed. The ships and their battles are, arguably, the best I’ve seen on a screen as yet but given the involvement of J.J.Abhrams and with Justin Lin in the directors chair I would have been disappointed with anything less however where this movie surprises is how it opens up further the inter crew relationships, camaraderie and almost family like bond. Simon Pegg (who also gives his usual, excellent comic relief performance as Scotty) and Doug Jung have put together a script full of emotion without being melodramatic, which gives more cast members a chance to shine in the spotlight than in the previous movies, which is funny at the right moments and introduces a brand new character who more than holds her own on screen in Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) who was previously captured by Krall but managed to escape, has been hiding undetected on the planet and reluctantly agrees to assist in taking him down. We see just how the Kirk-Spock development is constantly growing as they have both now come to realise that their weaknesses are covered by the strengths of the other. Karl Urban once again is superb as McCoy, I thought in the first two movies that he, more than anyone encapsulated the mannerisms of the original character and in this movie he nails it again, for me stealing the show and Elba is, as always, super as the villain who has more to him that is initially believed.

I will mention that the fuss over the sexual orientation of Hikaru Sulu (John Cho) which has been in the news in recent weeks is all a bit much, it doesn’t play any part in how the movie plot progresses and only adds diversity and a sense of realism to the character, so I really have to question if it matters? Okay, the original character wasn’t gay and wasn’t written that way but times have changed drastically since then and are we really still so archaic in our thinking that this is still a big deal as I’m sure you could take any of the characters and find something in their actions which they weren’t originally written to do?

I had reservations when I seen Kirk on a motorbike in the trailers and while it still seemed out of place it did work in the context of the plot and any movie which uses ‘Satotage’ by the Beastie Boys as a key part of the story (you’ll see what I mean) gets bonus points even if it is a bit silly, but overall this movie had the feel of a real summer blockbuster and despite the final third lagging a bit I walked out very entertained so break out the popcorn, sit back and enjoy. Is it the best in the series? For me, no. While in was best in some aspects, Into Darkness was a better overall movie but its close.

On a last note I will say a final goodbye to Anton Yelchin who had a lot of screen time in this movie as Pavel Chekov and it looked like they were building him into becoming a bigger character in the franchise, he was taken far too soon and was a sad loss to both the Star Trek universe and the movie world in general.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 Out Of 10