Mary And The Witch's Flower (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Red-haired scamp Mary (Ruby Barnhill) has moved in with her great-aunt Charlotte (Lynda Baron) and, with a week left to go before school starts, she has found herself struggling to find ways to occupy her time. However, that all changes when a chance encounter in the nearby forest leads her to the Ender College, a prestigious school for witches and warlocks, with headmaster Madame Mumblechook (Kate Winslet) remarking that Mary could be a truly incredible witch. To make things even more surreal, it seems that this college isn’t all that it seems, and it’s up to Mary to get to the bottom of the college’s less-than-virtuous ambitions.

The BFG (2016) - Movie Review

Steven Spielberg is one of those filmmakers that downright demands attention, although not for reasons you may think. Sure, he’s the guy largely responsible for the modern-day blockbuster and has helped shape American cinema into what it is today, but in the last few years, it seems like the guy has kicked into a higher gear. Along with working with alarming regularity for a filmmaker of his stature, releasing five films in as many years, he has also taken to collaborating with some pretty high-profile names during that time. Between working with Peter Jackson along with some of the biggest names in British screenwriting on The Adventures Of Tintin, putting a script written by legendary playwright Tony Kushner to the screen with Lincoln or bringing in the Coen brothers to help polish up last year’s excellent Bridge Of Spies, he seems to be a magnet for big-name talent behind the scenes right now. And keeping up with that pattern, he has brought a bunch of his regular teammates to make a big-budget version of a story by Roald Dahl, responsible for Matilda, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and The Witches, among many other classics. So, with all this hype behind it, how does it hold up?