Brave

Watching Brave on a mobile phone as a passenger in a moving car was probably not the best way to watch Disney-Pixar’s latest fairy tale, but it was the only chance I’d get to see it. Even so, it was subject to several interruptions as my 13 month-old tried to pull the phone out of my hand.

The other film I’d rented through Google Play was the British animation, Arthur Christmas, and the difference in quality was remarkable: this is how the professionals do it.

The first, biggest, most obvious thing about Brave is that it is astonishingly beautiful. The lush colours, the realistic water animations, the sheer spectacle of the Scottish countryside – which is as much Brave‘s headline star as New Zealand toplined Lord of the Rings. The obligatory princess, Merida, is breathtaking, too – her hair deserves a movie of its own. Or perhaps this is it.

Brave: a movie about really luxuriant coppery tresses. 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two

The cinematography is beautiful. It’s the first thing I notice. If the first film was glorious Disney sparkle and the sixth was eerie and blue, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 2 goes straight for post-apocalyptic grey. It’s as bleached and hopeless as Terminator 4, but has the poetry and grace of the first Pirates of the Caribbean. It could be Gore Verbinski at the helm, and that is high praise, but fair: Potter 7 pt 2 is a very good film.