The King of Kings review – Charles Dickens retelling of the Jesus story does a serviceable job

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The famous author tells his son and their cat the story of Jesus in this mixed-bag family animation, voiced by an impressive cast This syrupy cartoon account of the life of Jesus (voiced by Oscar Isaac) is narrated, with consummate weirdness, by Charles Dickens (Kenneth Branagh). It’s in fact based on a story Dickens wrote for his children (and wasn’t published until 1934, decades after his death). The idea is that Dickens is telling the story of the New Testament to his young son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) and Walter’s impish cat, explaining to the King Arthur-obsessed Walter how Jesus was the real King of Kings and all that. And so we see Walter and Charles, in their mid-19th-century garb, wandering through scenes of JC’s life nearly two thousand years earlier, from the nativity to the crucifixion – much like Scrooge and his spectral buddies in A Christmas Carol as they wander through past, present and future Christmases. It rather drags out what is already a pretty long running ...
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Mark Kermode on… director Christoper Nolan, a magician of cinema as memory

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From Memento to the Golden Globe-winning Oppenheimer, the head-scrambling British-American director has revelled in using cinema as a time machine – and a conjuring trick

Somewhere between the crowd-pleasing spectacle of Hollywood and the esoteric inventions of European cinema lies the work of Christopher Nolan, the London-born writer-director who next month will receive the British Film Institute’s highest honour – the fellowship. Hailed by the BFI as “a blockbuster auteur and champion of cinema”, five-time Academy Award nominee Nolan is tipped for success at last at the forthcoming Oscars with his recent Golden Globe winner Oppenheimer – a frontrunner for, among others, best film, best director and best adapted screenplay.

The fact that this darkly ruminative three-hour epic has become the highest grossing biopic of all time, outselling the poptastically entertaining Bohemian Rhapsody, says much about Nolan’s ability to connect with mainstream audiences. Stranger still, a substantial number of those who furrowed their brows through the existential crises of Oppenheimer went on to double-bill it with Greta Gerwig’s pink-hued Barbie, creating one of cinema’s most unlikely box-office bonanzas – Barbenheimer!

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