Eleanor Reviews

  **/*** (2.5 stars) In the closing months of the Second World War, a specialist team is dispatched to Europe to track down and recover thousands of pieces of art that the Nazis have been systematically collecting for Hitler’s planned ‘Fuhrer Museum’. Unaccustomed to warfare, this team of aging academics, artists and architects are deposited in France with the mammoth task of uncovering centuries of culture. The main issue I have with this film is that is it, simply put, boring: the characters are unfulfilled and pretty much interchangeable; there is no feeling of threat; and moments that I felt were meant to shock or move the audience lacked the impact required. The all-star cast, comprising of George Clooney and Matt Damon in the lead roles, is more distracting than engaging – the whole time, I was aware of the actor instead of the role they were meant to be playing, and again this is largely down the main seven men being underwritten. Cate Blanchett stars as the only w

  **** In a world made entirely of Lego, Emmet is a generic construction worker. He repeats the same system every day and is a slave to the plans and routines set out by President Business. One day, he comes across ‘The Piece’ – an item foretold to have connotations for the future, and something that President Business is eager to obtain. Emmet is then whisked away from his ordinary life by a team of Master Builders who assume that he is the answer to the Prophecy and will defeat the President once and for all. We should start with the fact that the film looks fantastic – you could almost believe that these are real Lego pieces filmed in ‘stop-motion’, and the attention to detail is simply fantastic. Absolutely everything is made from recognisable pieces of Lego, from the circular blue pieces that represent water, to the orange flames. (I was never a big Lego fan myself, so I apologise if I use the incorrect terminology.) When there is an explosion, the outburst of smoke,