The Super Mario Galaxy Movie review – bland screensaver of a movie that’s actually worse than AI

At this point, it’s trite to say that a bad film feels as if it’s been AI generated, but this simplistic sequel is next-level – it’s nothing more than an Easter holiday cash grab Here is an inert and uninteresting animated follow-up to The Super Mario Bros Movie , based on the legacy video game about two wacky Italian-Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi, voiced here by Chris Pratt and Charlie Day; this kind of stereotype is evidently the last in mainstream entertainment to be considered offensive. Now they and mushroom-kingdom ruler Princess Peach (voiced by Anya Taylor-Joy) have to rescue Rosalina (Brie Larson), the adoptive mother of the faintly Minion-y creatures called the Lumas. She has been abducted by Bowser Jr (Benny Safdie), the son of wicked turtle Bowser (Jack Black), who did very much the same sort of thing in the previous film. Of course it’s intended for little kids, but it surely didn’t need to be such a visually dull screensaver of a movie, with even more of the cheesy,...

Charm Circle review – Grey Gardens-ish portrait of director’s dysfunctional family

Nira Burstein’s documentary focuses on the acutely troubled lives of her closest relations – and it’s not a happy picture

Like so many young artists, film-maker Nira Burstein has taken the advice to write – or in this case, film – what she knows, so for her first feature she’s turned the camera on her own family, a troubled brood from the outer suburbs of New York City. Although Nira holds the camera herself for much of the time, she edits in home movie footage from many years ago which shows how dramatically time and stress have worn the family down.

The Burstein patriarch Uri is definitely a character, either the film’s villain, comic relief or hero depending on where you stand. A former realtor and part-time guitarist, he wears a yarmulke most of the time and invokes his Jewish religious beliefs as an excuse when he doesn’t want to attend the wedding of his daughter Adina, Nira’s sister, to two non-binary people with whom she’s decided to form a lasting throuple. Uri’s wife Raya, a former musician herself, earned a master’s from Columbia and once practised as an occupational therapist. But around the time that eldest daughter Judy, variously diagnosed with Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder, became “sick” with unspecified problems, Raya also had a breakdown and checked into a psychiatric facility. Professionals, according to Raya and Uri, have labelled her bipolar or schizophrenic, but Uri at least is less interested in clinical diagnoses than with how to cope with Raya and Judy’s behaviours and complains about them constantly. (He notes that even celebrity physician/neurologist Oliver Sacks examined Judy and couldn’t tell what exactly was wrong with her.)

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