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With so many animation franchises content to tread water—or in one interminable case, ice—it’s seriously refreshing to see a sequel that’s not only an upgrade on the original, but more thoughtful too. If Wreck-It Ralph launched us head-first into a 16-bit wonderland fit to blow the synapses of bright-eyed kids and weathered gamers alike, this surprisingly vibrant follow-up is a giddy, sugar-coated joy. And it’s an expansion pack that plugs in plenty of new ideas: about friendship, insecurity and the mind-bending transience of the online world. It’s not every animation that features an eBay-spoofing riff involving a corn chip shaped like Beyoncé. The story sends arcade-villain-turned-good guy Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and his new BFF, arcade racer Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), into the internet to find a new part for her broken arcade game. Their arcade’s newly installed “wifey”, as the endearingly slow-on-the-uptake Ralph calls it, is a portal to a host of opportunities for witty visual representations of cyberspace. If it’s sometimes a touch literal—the internet is a sci-fi city filled with buildings marked “Amazon” and “IMDb” and (presumably for legal reasons) “Buzzfood”—the finer world-building is sharp. Every facet of cyberspace has a walking, talking avatar, including a patronizing search engine that notes its “autofill is a touch aggressive today,” and weasely clickbait pop-ups that are shunted aside by ad-blockers clad like burly security men. Refr

The first Fantastic Beasts had a lot of heavy lifting to do. It needed to establish a world connected to the Harry Potter universe, but also one that was self-contained. It had to introduce several busloads of new characters and kick off a story complex enough to sustain another four movies (at least). With all that done, the second instalment should have earned itself some breathing room, a bit of time to cut loose and enjoy the possibilities of a new magical universe. But as beautiful and inventive as it is, The Crimes of Grindelwald often feels like we’re starting the world-building all over again. Trying to establish where everyone is at the beginning of this sequel without giving too much away is going to get confusing, so our apologies in advance. Fascist wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp, looking rough) has broken out of jail in London and fled to Paris to lay the groundwork for an uprising. In order to stop him, the wizarding government approaches Grindelwald’s ex-friend Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law, relishing his fairly brief screen time), who refuses the mission but enlists the help of animal-lover Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) for a more secret version of the same mission. There are about eight other major characters involved, but we’ve only got so much space. Short version: A wizard war is a-brewing. Moving most of the action to Paris gives the film’s creative team the opportunity to run wild with some gorgeous production design. Visually, the world couldn

The Grinch is back, free of the grip of Jim Carrey, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch and, in Grinch terms, a bit less grinchy (ungrinchy?) than you might expect. Unlike the 2000 live-action Carrey movie, this new spin on the Dr. Seuss tale is computer-animated by Illumination, the same studio behind Sing, The Secret Life of Pets and the Minions movies, so by design it feels a little closer to the slim, hand-drawn 1957 book that bore it. (The Grinch’s green color, meanwhile, has another source: the 1966 Chuck Jones cartoon that first brought the character to screen.) British actor Cumberbatch plays the Grinch as a grouchy American, all prissy and nasal and mischievous, but with a sad, soft aspect too—a side of his character amusingly winked at in a scene where he plays “All By Myself” at home on a huge organ. He’s a grump, of course, but this is the 21st century, so he’s a grump with issues and a bit of a backstory. There’s not much psychological exploration, though (fine by us); the film is mainly a series of slapstick episodes, not always neatly hung together, and with barely any memorable side characters. Even the Grinch himself fails to make a massive impact at times. This new version features the voice of Pharrell Williams as the narrator, dipping in and out of Dr. Seuss’s warming rhymes. That binds to the film to its authentic source, but the gaps between the spoken verse still remind us that this is a slender story s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d into a feature. That said, it’s likab