Mermaid is saved from sinking – by a rapping crab

MATTHEW BOND The Little Mermaid

Cert: PG, 2hrs 15mins ★★★★★

Hypnotic

Cert: 15, 1hr 33mins ★★★★★

Master Gardener

Cert: 15, 1hr 51mins ★★★★★

Sisu

Cert: 15, 1hr 31mins ★★★★★

For some years, Walt Disney has been remaking its back catalogue of much-loved cartoons as liveaction feature films, and the latest arrival is The Little Mermaid, originally released in animated form in 1989. But as we reacquaint ourselves with the independently minded young mermaid Ariel, her all-powerful, sea-dwelling father King Triton, and Sebastian, the talking crab, one big question instantly presents itself. Why on earth did they bother?

So much of what we’re watching on the big screen is obviously computer-generated or some other form of visual effect, that you’re left wondering whether this even counts as ‘live-action’ at all. At times, even newcomer Halle Bailey, the singer-turned-actress who does a decent job in her first leading role as Ariel, doesn’t look real. It’s all a bit strange and discombobulating.

Watching a cartoon, you don’t think twice when a mermaid starts singing underwater. That’s the magic of animation – anything is possible. But when a real liveaction mermaid who’s just fallen in love with a human prince opens her mouth to sing underwater, I can’t be alone in thinking… well, glug-glug.

But, slowly, director Rob Marshall, who definitely brings his experience on Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides to bear, turns things around. He’s helped by rapper and Hamilton star Daveed Diggs, who has a lot of fun as the voice of Sebastian, by a handful of fresh or reworked songs from original composer Alan Menken and new lyricist (and coproducer) Lin-Manuel Miranda, and a nice supporting turn from Art Malik as Sir Grimsby. Melissa McCarthy is less successful as Ursula, the wicked and betentacled sea-witch. But do pay attention when she’s casting her spell. Rather a lot seems to hang on the magical small print.

On paper, Hypnotic sounds terrific, a stylish psychological thriller that stars Ben Affleck and Alice Braga, and is written and directed by Quentin Tarantino’s old mucker, Robert Rodriguez.

Up on the big screen, however, this tall tale of a secret group of people who have psychic powers that can reshape our perceptions of reality is all a bit silly.

It feels derivative, too, like something M. Night Shyamalan might have written on a bad day and Christopher Nolan rejected at first draft.

It’s a shame because, as we kick off with the sort of bank robbery that even the X-Men might have thought twice about, Affleck and Braga are really rather good together.

Paul Schrader will always be remembered for his work with Martin Scorsese, providing the screenplays for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation Of Christ.

But with Master Gardener he’s out on his own – writing and directing – and disappointingly turning a promisingly original opening into something more familiar and melodramatic.

Joel Edgerton is our gardener, a buttoned-up horticulturalist who works on a Southern estate owned by the wealthy widow Mrs Haverhill – played superbly by Sigourney Weaver – with whom he enjoys a decidedly unorthodox relationship.

But all that is threatened, and this intriguing premise slowly wasted, as her pretty great-niece, Maya (Quintessa Swindell), is taken on as an apprentice.

Sisu is one of those hard to categorise films, part wartime drama, part black Scandinavian comedy, part cod spaghetti western.

Set in Finland at the end of the Second World War, it’s the story of a reclusive goldminer who has the misfortune to stumble across a motorised column of retreating Nazis as he sets off to sell his gold.

But it turns out that prospecting isn’t Aatami’s only talent… What ensues is gory, occasionally tasteless but unexpectedly good.