In Depth:  Alex Duke

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1917 begins and ends at a tree. In the middle is war and death and hell; in the middle is also heroism and sacrifice and courage. Which wins? The latter one, the victorious one, the one that speaks of hope and a future.

But as one character says near the end: ‘Hope is a dangerous thing.’

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In recent years, one of the most well-known passages of Scripture has come from Micah the minor prophet.

I’ve seen the verse emblazoned on coffee mugs and painted on walls; I memorised it in youth group. All these years later, I can still type it from memory:

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The Rise of Skywalker begins like every other Star Wars film – with a thundering John Williams score and a socio-political information dump.

These openings do the yeoman’s work of reminding us where our principal characters are, and what they’ve been up to since the end of the previous film.

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So, naturally, it’s time for a sequel. Frozen 2 continues the story of Anna and Elsa, the royal orphans of Arendelle. The Frozen film reckoned with Elsa’s powers, particularly how they provoked fear in both Elsa and everyone around her. The sequel explains why and how she came into this world with magical ice powers in the first place. Pulled along by a melodic siren song, Elsa begins a journey into her parents’ unknown past so that she is able to understand her present and secure her future.

It’s been six years since the Frozen phenomenon began – six years since the choruses to Do You Want to Build a Snowman? and Let It Go riveted themselves into the minds of children from Britain to Bangladesh.

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BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Director Gurinder Chadha
Cert. 12A 118 mins

The opening shot of Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light reminded me of Nathanael’s incredulous question to Philip in the first chapter of John’s Gospel: ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’

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YESTERDAY
Director Danny Boyle
Cert. 12A 116 mins

Have you heard of The Beatles? Of course you have. Well, the premise of this film is that no one has heard of The Beatles – no one except Jack (Himesh Patel), a down-on-his-luck singer-songwriter who says he’s strummed his final chord. He tells his manager: ‘If it hasn’t happened now, it’ll take a miracle.’

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A movie about a fish with short-term memory loss can also be about the anxiety of parenting (Finding Nemo); a movie full of one-beat emotions and an imaginary friend named Bing Bong can also be about learning from the sadness of life and all its unmet expectations (Inside Out).

For nearly a quarter of a century, Pixar films have cornered the market on ‘kids movies that are also for adults’.

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ALADDIN
Director Guy Ritchie
Cert PG 128 mins

After seeing Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin I asked myself a simple question: Why does this film exist?

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TOLKIEN
Director Dome Karukoski
Cert 12A 112 mins

So great is the bounty with which [the Christian artist] has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know. JRR Tolkien

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SHAZAM!
Director David F. Sandberg
Cert 12A 132 mins

We live in the era of the superhero movie. Since at least the release of Iron Man in 2008, comic book intellectual property has functioned as the tentpoles of Hollywood, raking in billions upon billions and pleasing thousands upon thousands.