Andrew Garfield

The Magic Faraway Tree

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Rebecca Ferguson as Dame Snap

Enid Blyton has been so unfashionable for so long that it must be time for a revival. The Magic Faraway Tree could be the start of it. An old-fashioned imaginative kids adventure, it’s full of the sort of wholesome derring-do that turned Blyton into the most translated children’s author ever. The presence of Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy and Rebecca Ferguson won’t do it any harm either. Though they all play second fiddle to the kids, which is how it so often is with Blyton. In series like The Famous Five, The Secret Seven or the Malory Towers books, it’s the kids who take centre stage, while their parents remain largely offstage doing adult … Read more

Spider-Man: No Way Home

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Spider-Man complete with arachnid arms

Spider-Man spun? Spider-Man: No Way Home is another gargantuan Marvel movie full of action, great power/great responsibility moments and the sort of emotion you’d expect in stories about a highly strung teenage superhero. Jon Watts is back as the director, and the writers are again Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers – all three have been behind the other webslinging adventures with “home” somewhere in the title, (2019’s Far from Home and 2017’s Homecoming, if you’re not up to speed). Fine craftsmen all. But. But. But. The suspicion lingers that this creative team knows what Marvel also obviously does – that these Spidey stories are done and don’t need doing any more, and that … Read more