FILM VIEW: Tropical tale will warm hearts

FILM OF THE WEEK

MOANA (PG, 113 mins) Animation/Musical/Drama/Comedy. Featuring the voices of Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger, Alan Tudyk. Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker.

Released: December 2 (UK & Ireland)

The female empowerment of Frozen gets a colourful Polynesian makeover in the joyful rites-of-passage animation Moana, peppered with infectious songs composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'i and Mark Mancina.

Directors Ron Clements and John Musker, who previously fashioned The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, rediscover their golden touch on land and at sea, with breathtaking visuals including dazzling water effects.

They also wedge tongues firmly in cheek by poking fun at the lead character's stern assertion that she isn't an archetypal Disney heroine.

"If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you're a princess," quips a demi-god, who joins her on this memorable odyssey into the magical unknown.

The key message of Frozen - that girls don't need a handsome prince to achieve their happily ever after - is reaffirmed and the script incorporates the now obligatory smattering of pop culture references, like when the same demi-god scrawls a message with a rooster and deadpans, "When you write with a bird, it's called tweeting!"

The songbook might lack a karaoke earworm akin to Let It Go - parents, you can breathe easy - but the film still boasts some terrific compositions, particularly the solo offerings of Miranda, who won numerous Tony awards for the musical Hamilton.

Moana Waialiki (voiced by Auli'i Cravalho) is the daughter of Chief Tui (Temuera Morrison) and has been groomed since birth to lead her people on the island of Motunui.

However, she feels a strong calling to the sea which angers her father, who believes the tropical paradise can sustain their tribe.

Moana's wise grandmother Tala (Rachel House) fills the girl's head with wild stories about the demi-god Maui, who stole the heart of the island goddess Te Fiti and lost this precious green stone during a battle with ferocious lava demon Te Ka.

The old woman encourages Moana to seek out Maui and restore Te Fiti's missing heart in order to bring prosperity to the island.

With the wind in her sail and a witless rooster called Heihei (Alan Tudyk) by her side, Moana ventures over the reef for the first time in search of Maui (Dwayne Johnson).

Moana is another solid gold hit from Disney's animation studio, marrying self-realisation and broad comedy to dizzying effect.

A trippy interlude with a singing coconut crab (Jemaine Clement) in the underwater Realm of the Monsters is a highlight, including one groovy lyric that rhymes demi-god with decapod.

Johnson embraces his role with comic gusto, including a fine rendition of the self-congratulatory anthem You're Welcome, and Cravalho imbues her gung-ho seafarer with tenderness and determination.

Moana is preceded by Leo Matsuda's exquisite animated short Inner Workings, which journeys inside the body of one hapless office worker to explore the literal battle between head and heart for supremacy.

SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8/10

RELEASED

SULLY: MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON (12A, 94 mins) Thriller/Action/Romance. Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O'Malley, Anna Gunn, Jamey Sheridan, Patch Darragh, Vince Lombardi. Director: Clint Eastwood.

Released: December 2 (UK & Ireland)

On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia airport in New York bound for North Carolina with 155 passengers and crew on board.

Three minutes into take-off, a flock of Canadian geese impacted the aircraft, causing multiple strikes to both engines that necessitated an emergency landing.

Captain Chesley Sullenberger, known affectionately as Sully, drew on years of experience to glide the stricken Airbus A320 onto the Hudson River in freezing conditions rather than head back to LaGuardia or another runway.

Aided by First Officer Jeff Skiles, Sully safely landed on water and oversaw the evacuation of everyone on board into ferry boats that raced to the scene, aided by scuba divers from the NYPD's Aviation Unit and Harbor Unit.

The captain was hailed a hero by a city still bearing the scars of the September 11 attacks.

"It's been a while since New York had news this good - especially with an airplane in it," observes one of the characters in Sully: Miracle On The Hudson, which centres on the subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) into Sully's actions that fateful day.

Clint Eastwood's exemplary thriller is a masterclass in sustained tension, replaying events aboard US Airways Flight 1549 and from the ground, from multiple perspectives, including air traffic controller Patrick Harten (Patch Darragh) and ferry boat captain (Vince Lombardi, playing himself).

Screenwriter Todd Komarnicki punctuates this deeply human story with different iterations of the crash landing, including chilling scenes of the Airbus ploughing into skyscrapers when Sully (Tom Hanks) imagines a fruitless attempt to reach LaGuardia.

The NTSB investigation led by Charles Porter (Mike O'Malley), Elizabeth Davis (Anna Gunn) and Ben Edwards (Jamey Sheridan), forms the crux and the script nimbly condenses the actual 15-month timeframe to explore the emotional strain on Sully and First Officer Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) as they defend their actions.

"I've had 40 years in the air, but in the end, I'm going to be judged by 208 seconds," laments Sully as technical data from the craft suggests one of the engines was operational, contradicting his version of events.

A media storm envelops the crew and Sully seeks refuge in regular telephone calls to his concerned wife, Lorraine (Laura Linney).

Shot largely on IMAX cameras, Sully: Miracle On The Hudson is a rousing tribute to a man who repeatedly deflects praise and quietly observes, "I don't feel like a hero. I was just a man doing a job".

Hanks delivers a deeply affecting, yet understated, lead performance, eliciting pathos as he contends with post-traumatic stress disorder in the eye of a media storm.

Eastwood withholds the crash landing in full until the middle of his taut and lean picture, by which time we have fully buckled our seatbelts and are braced for greatness.

SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8/10

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (15, 104 mins) Comedy/Drama/Romance. Hailee Steinfeld, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, Kyra Sedgwick, Woody Harrelson, Hayden Szeto, Alexander Calvert, Eric Keenleyside. Director: Amma Asante.

Released: November 30 (UK & Ireland)

Every generation has a coming-of-age film that perfectly encapsulates the trials and romantic vacillations of those hormone-fuelled years on the precipice of adulthood.

In the 1950s, James Dean was the iconic Rebel Without A Cause and two decades later, The Last Picture Show, American Graffiti and Quadrophenia struck a chord before John Hughes monopolised depictions of youth culture with The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty In Pink.

More recently, Clueless, Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, This Is England and Juno have beautifully reflected the awkwardness of adolescence and the apocalyptic sense of doom that pervades every setback at that impressionable age.

Now, Kelly Fremon Craig writes and directs a bittersweet new addition to the pantheon with this deftly sketched portrait of a 17-year-old girl, who feels unloved at home and misunderstood by classmates.

Peppered with acidic one-liners and some lovely moments of raw, unvarnished emotion that leave a lump in the throat, The Edge Of Seventeen traverses familiar territory with aplomb.

A running commentary from the film's sarcastic heroine ensures plenty of laughs, before characters face the consequences of their reckless actions.

Nadine Byrd (Hailee Steinfeld) has always been jealous of her good-looking and popular older brother, Darian (Blake Jenner).

Their mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick) treats Darian like a golden child and Nadine's chief protector, her father Tom (Eric Keenleyside), dies from a heart attack during a drive with his daughter.

Her only friend is Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), a fellow outcast who shares her disdain for conformity.

Out of the blue, Nadine discovers that Krista is dating her brother Darian and this betrayal of the sisterly bond drives a wedge between the girls.

"It's me or him. Pick!" screams Nadine in a school corridor.

Cast adrift from her gal pal, Nadine turns to sardonic teacher Mr Bruner (Woody Harrelson) for advice.

Her mother also shares a mantra that helps her get through each day: "Everyone in the world is as empty and miserable as I am. They're just better at pretending."

The emotional vortex intensifies as Nadine politely tolerates romantic overtures from a nerdy classmate (Hayden Szeto) and pines from afar for a handsome older boy (Alexander Calvert), who works at the local Petland store.

The Edge Of Seventeen is a delight, anchored by Steinfeld's touching embodiment of a young woman who feels like she is a crudely fashioned square peg in a world of perfectly round holes.

On-screen rapport with Harrelson's droll educator is sparkling, and proves crucial when Fremon Craig's script force-feeds the central character painful home truths.

The writer-director achieves a pleasing balance between light and shade, and supporting cast aren't short-changed either, even Jenner's hunky sibling, who could have been reduced to a window dressing.

Everybody hurts, even those who look like they have their lives in pristine order.

SWEARING :: SEX :: NO VIOLENCE :: RATING: 7.5/10

BLEED FOR THIS (15, 117 mins) Drama/Action/Romance. Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart, Ciaran Hinds, Katey Sagal, Ted Levine, Christina Evangelista, Amanda Clayton, Edwin Rodriguez. Director: Ben Younger.

Released: December 2 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Sporting truth is less exciting than the crowd-pleasing fiction peddled by Sylvester Stallone's 1976 Oscar-winning heavyweight Rocky in writer-director Ben Younger's bruising tale of triumph against adversity.

Bleed For This dramatises the remarkable rise, fall and phoenix-like rebirth of Italian-American boxer Vinny Pazienza, aka the Pazmanian Devil, who found his footing in the ring with a new trainer shortly before a terrible car accident fractured his neck.

Doctors told Pazienza that he might never walk again, let alone brawl, because of damage to his spine.

One jolt or knock could result in permanent paralysis.

Ignoring stark medical advice, Pazienza secretly trained his body using a makeshift gym in his basement while wearing a halo metal brace that encircled his head, with a view to returning to the ring to reclaim his status as a champion.

"This is a Hail Mary at best," a terrified trainer warns Pazienza in one sobering scene.

Bleed For This is a classic underdog tale and the film's fight card is crammed with training montages, tough talking and heart-breaking setbacks, which have becomes rousing cliches for the genre.

Miles Teller, who sweated blood and tears in Whiplash, delivers a knockout lead performance as the working class slugger with a stubborn streak and a thirst to win.

He inflicts powerful blows with his unflinching portrayal, while other aspects of Younger's script fail to connect at all.

The film opens in the late 1980s at a Las Vegas press conference, where Paz (Teller) arrives late for a weigh-in and subsequently loses the bout in front of his father Angelo (Ciaran Hinds) and girlfriend Ashley (Christina Evangelista).

Back home, his deeply religious mother Louise (Katey Sagal) prays her boy will emerge safely for the ring.

The setback convinces Paz to join forces with a no-nonsense new trainer, Kevin Rooney (Aaron Eckhart), who encourages the fighter to move up a weight class against the advice of boxing promoter Lou Duva (Ted Levine).

It's a shrewd decision, but the euphoria of defeating champion Roberto Duran (Edwin Rodriguez) is cut short when Paz is involved in a head-on collision with a car driving on the wrong side of the road.

Everyone tells the boxer to give up, but Rooney eventually agrees to help Paz take a calculated risk in the ring.

"Show me how you fight!" barks Rooney. "Show me who you are!"

Bleed For This would be a lightweight contender without Teller's muscular theatrics and well-drilled support from Eckhart.

Boxing sequences are well choreographed and the period is nicely evoked with archive news footage.

Real-life home video, shown during the end credits, is more moving and inspirational than anything Younger conjures on the screen and dramatic tension dissipates at the very moment we should be on the edge of our seats.

SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 6/10

Also released...

MOLLY MOON AND THE INCREDIBLE BOOK OF HYPNOTISM (U, 96 mins)

Released: December 2 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Based on the novel by Georgia Byng, Molly Moon And The Incredible Book Of Hypnotism is a fantastical adventure directed by Christopher N Rowley, about a young girl who exploits her new-found powers of persuasion. Molly Moon (Raffey Cassidy) grows up in an orphanage run by the formidable Miss Adderstone (Lesley Manville), who doesn't care about her young charges and forces the children to eat disgusting fish soup. Thankfully, Molly has a loyal best friend, Rocky (Jadon Carnelly-Morris), and she can escape from the horrors of real life by immersing herself in a book from the local library. One of these tomes, Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained, allows Molly to unlock the ability to manipulate people around her. Unfortunately, she is powerless to prevent Rocky from being adopted shortly before Christmas, so Molly leaves the orphanage with her pet pug Petula and heads into the city to reunite with her best friend. En route, she uses hypnotism to usurp stage star brat Davina (Tallulah Evans) in a musical and outwit a wily thief called Nockman (Dominic Monaghan).

MR RIGHT (15, 93 mins)

Released: December 2 (UK, selected cinemas)

Finding the perfect man can be a deadly business in director Paco Cabezas' action-packed romantic comedy. Oddball Martha (Anna Kendrick) discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her, so she gives him the elbow and returns to her depressing single life and the flat she shares with her roommate Sophie (Katie Nehra). Her search for a man who will treat her with respect, leads to a local convenience store where Martha meets a handsome stranger called Francis (Sam Rockwell). He is attracted to her quirks and foibles, and they share a magical first date together, during which Francis tells her that he is a hit man. Martha is convinced that Francis is joking, unaware that he is indeed an assassin, who has recently escaped an attempt on his life by sharp-shooting rival Hooper (Tim Roth). On subsequent dates with Martha, Francis is forced to dodge bullets and further assassination attempts while fanning the flames of romance. In the process, Martha is inadvertently drawn into his cutthroat world of death and destruction.

OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY (15, 105 mins)

Released: December 7 (UK & Ireland)

Hard-nosed CEO Carol Vanstone (Jennifer Aniston) is unimpressed with the branch of IT company Zenotek run by her party-loving brother Clay (T.J. Miller) so she makes the decision to close down the office and lay off staff. She also vetoes plans for the annual Christmas party since it would be a waste of precious money. Clay and chief technical officer Josh (Jason Bateman) plead with Carol to show some compassion and she tells them that she will agree to keep the office open if they manage to close a 14 million US dollar deal with Walter Davis (Courtney B Vance) and his company. Goofball Clay believes that they should invite Walter to the most extravagant Christmas party in the company's history - which will go ahead behind Carol's back - in order to secure his signature on a contract. As news spreads that Zenotek is serving free drinks at a raucous party, everyone in the city descends on the office and news eventually reaches Carol that her brother has defied her orders. She angrily heads back to the office in a vain attempt to stop Clay from destroying the building and salvage the company's reputation.

TIM BURTON'S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (PG, 73 mins)

Released: December 7 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Bad Santa 2 may have been a crushing disappointment, but the festive season is saved by a welcome rerelease of Tim Burton's spooky 1993 stop animation fantasy, which screens at selected cinemas in eye-popping 3D. The fable revolves around scheming Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon), the cause celebre of Hallowe'en Town, who gatecrashes Christmas Town and hatches a dastardly scheme to replace Santa Claus (Ed Ivory) as the figurehead of Christmas by kidnapping the portly man in the red suit. Meanwhile, Jack's rag doll sweetheart Sally (Catherine O'Hara) tries to escape from her mad scientist father Dr Finkelstein (William Hickey), who has imprisoned her in his mansion. This battle of wits propels Sally into the clutches of Hallowe'en Town's infamous bogeyman, Oogie Boogie (Ken Page), who gambles on everything - including the fate of other's people's lives. Brilliantly imaginative character design is almost as dazzling as Danny Elfman's score, which includes the songs Making Christmas, Sally's Song and What's This?

ROYAL BALLET LIVE: THE NUTCRACKER (Certificate TBC, 130 mins)

Released: December 8 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

A live broadcast of Peter Wright's classic festive production set to Tchaikovsky's iconic score, performed at the Royal Opera House in London under the baton of conductor Boris Gruzin. Clara (Francesca Hayward) attends a lavish Christmas party thrown by her parents where her godfather, the toymaker Herr Drosselmeyer (Gary Avis), presents the little girl with a beautiful Nutcracker (Alexander Campbell). Later that night, Clara sneaks back down to the tree and falls asleep with her present in her arms. In her dream state, she is whisked away to the Land of Sweets on a golden sleigh to meet the Sugar Plum Fairy (Lauren Cuthbertson) and toy soldiers come to life to battle the villainous Mouse King.

COMING NEXT WEEK...

Festive frolics spiral out of control for Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman in the seasonal comedy OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY... Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a whistleblower, whose actions threaten to bring down the US government, in Oliver Stone's biographical drama SNOWDEN... and Nate Parker writes, directs and stars in the impassioned civil rights epic BIRTH OF A NATION.

FILM CHART

1. Fantastic Beast And Where To Find Them

2. Allied

3. Trolls

4. Arrival

5. Bad Santa 2

6. A United Kingdom

7. Doctor Strange

8. Andre Rieu: Christmas with Andre 2016

9. Dear Zindagi

10. The Accountant

(Chart courtesy of Cineworld)