Why you can trust GamesRadar+
On paper, adapting the children's fantasy classic by Railway Children author E Nesbit - the JK Rowling of 1906 - is a brilliant and commercially astute idea. Unfortunately, the Brit-film result is rarely better than pleasant, despite a cast boasting a manic Kenneth Branagh, a spritely Zoë Wanamaker and an underused Tara Fitzgerald.
David Solomon's screenplay takes vast, fatal liberties with the unimprovable source: deleting acres of plot, bumping the turn-of-the-century kids and their wish-granting sand fairy to World War One England and adding main characters (nasty fat boy, eccentric uncle, flying-ace dad) shamelessly filched from Harry Potter. An overbearingly `spooky' score, the ruthless pace and depressing, dated Henson's Creature Shop animatronics make for a thin, faintly cheap and largely unmagical experience.
So thank God for the brilliance of a cranky, free-wheeling Eddie Izzard, riffing madly away as the voice of the plastic-looking fairy. It's his film, stolen from well-spoken child actors who stand around in charming period costumes.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
I didn't know how badly I wanted to grill and gobble up monsters until this upcoming survival roguelike made it look so tasty
Planescape: Torment was a revolutionary RPG, but many of its devs had no experience with the D&D campaign it was based on: "What the f*ck is that?"
18 years after Guitar Hero 2 released, a streamer has completed the hardest challenge there is - perfecting all 74 songs back-to-back without missing a single note