Lupita Nyong’o

A Quiet Place: Day One

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Eric and Samira in the dark with a torch

Hang on, A Quiet Place: Day One is the origin story, about how Earth is invaded by creatures who track humans using sound alone? Wasn’t that already covered in A Quiet Place Part II? Indeed it was, but if you are generous of spirit and reject the idea that A Quiet Place: Day One is just a reheat of old hash, you’ll be pointing out right now that A Quiet Place Part II did the whole “how the apocalypse arrived” thing in its first ten minutes, then zipped forwards in time about a year and a half to catch up with the Abbott family (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and co) as they came … Read more

The Wild Robot

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Rozz with gosling Brightbill in her hand

A shipwrecked robot adopts an orphaned gosling and learns to be a mother in The Wild Robot, a perky and poignant animation produced by DreamWorks and directed by Chris Sanders of How to Train Your Dragon fame. The bumf says Miyazaki and old Disney informed the look of the finished product, but the DreamWorks hit Ice Age is the dominant vibe – smart, anthropomorphised animals say the darnedest things, which seems to have been enough for most critics to give it the hearty thumbs up. I liked it a lot less, I have to say, though it does get itself together towards the end, when the quips are given a rest and Sanders and … Read more