So what was Spielberg and his team to do? Arguably, there are two routes: engage with Wade’s freaky behaviour and lay his flaws bare, or trim out the objectionable stuff and make a piece of entertainment. Spielberg and screenwriter Zak Penn, perhaps unsurprisingly, go with the latter. So was this the right move, or a missed opportunity to drag Cline’s problematic ideas into the light?
Read MoreVisually, A Wrinkle in Time can be pretty exciting – just like how Disney managed to inject a kaleidoscope of colours and eye candy for Alice in Wonderland… but does it work here? I’m not sure it does; the colourful overtones don’t match L’Engle’s weirdly dark book.
Read MoreThe first act of the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie features a sequence where a team of horses, hooked up to a one-ton vault, end up towing an entire building through the streets of an island township. In the midst of this chaos is Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), waving his arms like a mad octopus, in the throes of the shtick that Depp has offered on movie screens for 14 years. None of it is remotely plausible, and it goes on much longer than it has any right to.
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