FROZEN - BLU-RAY REVIEW

FROZEN - HOME RELEASE (BLU-RAY)

Release Date: Out Now (Monday 31 March 2014)

Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee

Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, Jonathan Groff, Santino Fontana, Alan Tudyk (voices)

Reviewed by Kyle Pedley

THE FILM:

Disney are riding high on the (admittedly deserved) success of Frozen, having last month added two Academy Awards (Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song) to it’s now sizable mantle of gongs and plaudits, a Broadway musical adaptation confirmed as being in the works and just today having been announced as officially the most successful animated film of all time, surpassing previous record holder Toy Story 3. Arriving on DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital HD this week is no doubt only going to add to the cultural behemoth that the film has become.

FROZEN - FILM REVIEW

FROZEN

Release Date: 6 December 2013
Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Running Time: 108 Minutes
Starring: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana, Alan Tudyk (voices)
Screening Reviewed: London Press Screening

Reviewed by Kyle Pedley

Make no qualms about it, Disney’s animation department are undoubtedly bathing in the deserved success and glow of a second renaissance period following on from the recent critical, box office and artistic successes of Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and now the beautiful and vintage Frozen. Picking up the reigns from their creative partners at Pixar, whose output has been a touch more inconsistent recently with the disappointing and muddled Cars 2 and Brave, the house of Mouse has masterfully managed to strike the zeitgeist with  their latest release, harmonising elements of classical Disney Princess convention with some of Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph’s vim and sass and proudly crafting the tale as a big, Broadway-beating musical to boot, as old Uncle Walt himself would have wanted it.

HIT AND RUN: MOVIE REVIEW

HIT AND RUN
Release Date: Friday 12 October (UK)
Director: Dax Shepard, David Palmer
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Starring: Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, Kristen Chenoweth, Tom Arnold, Bradley Cooper
Screening Reviewed: London Press Screening

Reviewed by Kyle Pedley

There’s a running gag throughout Hit and Run that is in many ways a fitting metaphor for the experience you’ll likely have with the film. Tom Arnold’s character Randy repeatedly finds himself and his car flung into a series of mishaps and misfortunes - rear-ending a police truck, almost mowing down two children as they play on their lawn, and generally suffering the kind of vehicular damage reserved for the denizens of over-zealous Vin Diesel flicks. As an audience we too are repeatedly flung into these highly unlikely and generally unmotivated set pieces and sequences of events with such randomness and convenience that suspension of disbelief becomes a thing of vague memory and any genuine investment in plot, character or humour is replaced with something more akin to Stockholm syndrome.