The film opens on a boat being pursued by some form of baddy boat, in the middle of a convenient storm. This boat is captained by our hero, Alice, and she screams some orders at her crew in an attempt to get away from the baddy boat. Her crew tells her - rain splashing dramatically against their face like the good pathetic fallacy it is - that the plan is impossible. “You know what my thoughts are on that word,” she replies, a nice callback to the first film, as well as to her relationship with her late father. Eventually, after a great big CGI filled set piece, they escape the baddy boat via an elaborate manoeuvre across a shallow patch of water. ‘Shallow,’ I think, 'sums up that action sequence perfectly.’ It's the kind of spectacle with so little weight to it and so many bits of unbelievable physics flying about offending scientists that I find myself sitting in the cinema reviewing the film instead of watching it. There is hope, however. Mia Wasiowska’s Alice is surpr...

I've never been a big fan of CGI. One of my biggest problems with the last film I reviewed, X-Men: Apocalypse , was the overuse of CGI. It meant that all the action felt dreadfully weightless and nothing felt alive. So imagine my surprise when the Jungle Book , a film almost entirely made of CGI pretending to be real things, turns out to be one of the most alive, heartfelt films I've ever seen. Everything in The Jungle Book , apart from the actor who plays Mowgli, is CGI and it is simply stunning. The jungle in which it all takes place is so incredibly detailed, you never at any point question its authenticity. Everything moves and works just like you'd expect a real jungle to and you often find yourself exploring every corner of the screen in an attempt to take it all in. The CGI never slips in quality at any point and you're always fully immersed, whether you're in wide open plains, racing along the jungle floor, being chased by a giant ape or floating down a...