The Lion King (2019) - Movie Review

This has been quite a year for Disney revamping its classic properties. Alongside sequels to their genuine classics like Mary Poppins Returns and Toy Story 4, 2019 has also marked the year where they have given us not one but three remakes/retoolings of some of their older works. We started with the surprisingly strong Dumbo that basically took Disney itself to task for its business practices, and then we had the astoundingly shite Aladdin which can rest easily among Disney’s worst productions ever. And now, we have a remake of the perennial favourite Lion King, with the director of the quite fantastic Jungle Book remake returning for another bit of photorealistic animal shenanigans. The end result, however, is… well, it’s certainly not the worst to come out of this trend, but it is easily the most pointless.

Wonder Park (2019) - Movie Review

This film has no credited director. No, this hasn’t confirmed everyone’s suspicions that computers are now making films all on their own, nor is this a situation where the director disowned the production for one reason or another. In reality, it seems like the production disowned the director, citing "multiple complains of 'inappropriate and unwanted behaviour'" for him being fired in January 2018, after the majority of the film was already completed. While someone with Weinstein tendencies helming a children’s film is dicey to say the least, I will give some credit to Paramount and Nickelodeon for booting his credit from the film, while still releasing it so everyone else’s hard work didn’t go to waste. It also helps that this film is certainly better than I would’ve expected from that kind of production drama.