Brave

A young Scottish Princess called Merida (Kelly Macdonald) spends her days fighting against the rules set by her mother Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) and wishes to be more of a free spirit, able to ride her horse, eat and wear what she wants and most importantly practise her archery skills. A trip to a Witch adds a further twist to the mother daughter relationship and puts both their lives at risk.

Despite being a huge Pixar fan I went into Brave with a small sense of dread. I expected, and as it turned out I was right, that this would be Pixar’s most Disney-like feature to date and that’s something that disappoints me. We already have Disney to bring us fairytales of Princesses and suitors but there are very few studios who are brave enough or mad enough to come up with the likes of Toy Story, Wall-E or Up. For me there was little to distinguish Brave from a modern Disney film along the same lines as Tangled. Despite this, Brave is still a fun film with a lot to like.

Men in Black 3

"Just 'cos you see a black man in a nice car, don't mean it's stolen. I mean this one is..."

Ten years after the disappointing Men in Black 2 and fifteen (really!) years since Men in Black, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are donning the black suits and Ray-bans once again. Agent J (Smith) and Agent K (Jones) learn that the alien murdering Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement) has escaped his maximum security LunarMax prison cell on the Moon, 43 years after K arrested him in Florida. Boris gets hold of a time machine and goes back to 1969 where he murders K. J has trouble understanding what has happened and goes back to 1969 himself where he meets a younger K (Josh Brolin) and the two of them attempt to apprehend Boris before he kills K and sends an army to attack and destroy the Earth.

I’m a big fan of the first Men in Black film and will watch pretty much anything Will Smith is in so I was excited at the prospect of a third instalment of the franchise. Unfortunately I left disappointed. Quality wise this is much closer to Men in Black 2 than Men in Black. My two main problems were that it wasn’t funny enough and that it was really boring. Will Smith is a naturally funny man and has bags of charisma but here his jokes fall flat and he doesn’t seem cool enough. Jermaine Clement, who I travelled over 400 miles round trip to see perform as part of Flight of the Concords was also a little bit disappointing although his accent was very good he was neither funny or scary enough. I only laughed twice and these were both at jokes regarding the differing racial attitudes of the 60s and now. As for the story, yes there are alien bad guys and the threat of the Earth’s destruction and the time travelling stuff was good but I wasn’t gripped.