December roundup... Pinocchio, Scrooge, Wednesday

Guillermo Del Toro's new film Pinocchio dropped on Netflix early December, and it's a great telling of a classic tale.

David Bradley (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones), Ewan McGregor (The Island) and two time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz all lend their voices to these brought to life characters. 

At 1 hour 57 minutes this is the longest stop motion animation film ever produced, it looks amazing. Del Toro has done a fantastic job in making this world come to life, and as the setting is 1930s Italy, there's a lot of focus on Mussolini and war. 

The character designs are great with exaggerated sharp features and the style feels very Tim Burton at times, and that's no bad thing. There's war themes and mild violence but nothing to worry about if you have younger ones, and I really enjoyed the way the film unravels it's sad story, with many life lessons along the way. Del Toro really brings out the emotions of the characters and the score is equally as good.  I'm yet to see the Disney version (with Tom Hanks) but it will have to be special to beat this version.

I think I've seen about three different versions of Charles Dickens' classic Scrooge. The last one I seen was Jim Carrey's version, which I seen in IMAX at Bradford Media Museum. At the time I was only in college and I was blown away by how good the film looked, especially as it was in 3D, back when that was trending in cinema. It was just after Avatar which was also 3D. 

Stephen Donnelly is the director of the 2022 Scrooge and it has an impressive voice cast, with Luke Evans as the voice of Scrooge, and also starring Olivia Coleman and Johnathan Pryce.