Pete's Dragon

A heartwarming tale of a boy and his pet, Pete's Dragon remakes an eccentric piece of Disney canon into a fresh and modern live-action family flick. Despite the story being somewhat predictable and relying on classic tropes from similar stories, Pete's Dragon amplifies the connections felt between humans and their pets into the realm of fantasy, while also staying somewhat grounded with a realistic, modern complication.

Young boy Pete (Oakes Fegley) finds himself orphaned and alone in the forest after a tragic motor accident kills his parents, until he finds and befriends a fluffy green dragon, whom he names Elliott. Years later, forest ranger Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) discovers Pete as she looks to protect the forest's animals and their habitats from deforestation. Soon after, Grace and her future daughter-in-law Natalie (Oona Laurence) discover Pete's secret companion, and look to protect him after locals discover his existence and look to hunt him down.

Pete's Dragon starts surprisingly dark, displaying the car accident which kills Pete's mother and father and leaves him stranded and alone deep in the forest. Through this scene setting, audiences instantly grow deeply sympathetic and compassionate for Pete, and his amiable bond with his dragon buddy becomes justified. Though this quickly peters into a somewhat trademark story of the hunting and protection of an actually harmless beast, this ingrained value of a boy's connection with his pet carries the story forwards and tugs at the heartstrings.

The CGI design of Elliott is stunning, with realistic and believable movement and detailed body design. Oakes Fegley's surprisingly solid acting in cohesion with the CGI dragon lets us closely understand the supposed bond between the two and easily forget that it's simply a child actor interacting with what is probably just a guy in a motion capture suit. Bryce Dallas Howard fits the classic lead of a young, beautiful woman with a unique job perfectly, using her inherent skill in showing emotion to identifiably connect with the deeper themes of love apparent between Pete and his dragon.

Overall, Pete's Dragon is a great example of one of those "Come for the CGI, stay for the story" flicks, with a strong amount of family enjoyment to be had. Adults and children alike can understand Pete's bond with his dragon, just as many people connect with their own pets, and this integral love and affection becomes the driving force for the film's complications. Despite the use of perhaps one too many cinematic tropes, Pete's Dragon is sure to pleasantly satisfy audiences of all ages.

Southpaw

After the first photos emerged from Southpaw, all everybody could talk about was Gyllenhaal's physical transformation for the role. But since the metamorphosis of actors seems to be the current zeitgeist of Hollywood, I was more interested in what director Antoine Fuqua could do with his dark cinematic style and a sports drama. The answer is: everything that's been done before, with Eminem slapped over the top.

Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an undefeated light heavyweight boxer with a wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) and daughter Leila (Oona Laurence). Billy lives the high life, with his large mansion and blinged-up posse, but after sustaining an eye-injury during a match, Maureen convinces him that it's time to retire. After another boxer, Miguel Escobar (Miguel Gomez) taunts him, leading to a very public brawl, Maureen is accidentally hurt and dies at the scene. Heartbroken and depressed, Billy also loses his daughter to social services. The only way he can get his daughter back is to get his life back on track, which he starts doing by getting a job at a gym owned by ex-boxer Titus "Tick" Wills (Forest Whitaker). After Tick starts to train Billy, he strives once more to seek the redemption he needs.

This is basically an hour of watching Billy Hope's life fall apart, then an hour of him picking up the pieces, in the most unoriginal of ways. I have no doubt that Gyllenhaal gave this role his all, but his character is constantly reduced to polarising extremes of emotions - either depression or extreme anger - but never anything in-between. The blame very much lies with the plot, which, cliche after cliche, tells the same story of redemption that we've seen in boxing films more times than anybody would like to admit. The first act of Southpaw establishes the obnoxious characters, entrenched in a shallow, tedious world. The early development is so shockingly bad that I honestly couldn't care less about Hope's wife dying. From the banal script-writing to the emotion-milking dialogue, the film opens a wreck.

It's not until the second act, when Whitaker's character comes into the mix that Southpaw manages to conjure up some dignity. Whitaker similarly pours everything into Tick, and at times the potential of the character shines through, but he's eventually reduced to the typical enigmatic black motivational trainer movie trope. If it wasn't him, it was Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby before him and so on. As for the other characters, McAdams's portrayal of a sidelined boxer's wife is as dreary as it is two-dimensional, and 50 Cent's character is just an outright arsehole. The biggest insult is the suggestion that we could empathise with almost any of these characters.

Boxing films are well known for their cinematic exuberance, and at times Mauro Fiore manages to capture the raw emotions of the moment, but Southpaw visually lacks the ingenuity that others like it have been brave enough to attempt, and ultimately the film is degraded to the archetypal training montages - complete with Eminem soundtrack - that we could all see coming from a mile off.  In the end, Fiore can't manage to stretch the style of Southpaw beyond what we've seen before. 

Of all the great boxing films - Million Dollar Baby, Raging Bull etc. - the triumphant ones create an atmosphere and tell an original story. Whilst the two leads manage to conjure up surprisingly decent performances given the material, Southpaw is ultimately the antithesis of original, and risks fading into mediocrity.