Jack The Giant Slayer (2013)

The first thing we need to get out of the way is the fact that 2013's Jack The Giant Slayer is NOT a reworking of the '60s fantasy classic Jack The Giant Killer but, instead, a retelling of the well-known fairy tale of Jack And The Beanstalk.

The movie - working from a screenplay by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney - does a fantastic job of sidestepping cliché while still paying homage to fairy tale tropes.

After a marvellous pre-credit bit of worldbuilding, that establishes the mythology of the giants and their relationship with the land of Cloister, our likeable hero Jack (Fury Road's Nicholas Hoult) accidentally exposes a magical bean to rain water - creating a beanstalk up to the kingdom of the giants, Gantua, above the clouds.

He joins an expedition to to rescue the errant princess Isabelle (Poldark's Eleanor Tomlinson), who has managed to get herself trapped at the top of the beanstalk, is led by the captain of King's Guardians, Elmont (Ewan 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' McGregor, doing some fine 'stiff upper lip' acting) and Crawe (Eddie Marsan as the grizzled and worldly sergeant major type) - 

Their adventuring party (the whole film has a very Dungeons & Dragons quality about it) includes the treacherous Roderick (Stanley Tucci) - fiancé of the reluctant princess - and his sneaky manservant Wicke (Ewen Bremner) who have their own reasons for wanting to get to Gantua.

Jack The Giant Slayer rattles along with such great pace that you don't notice its almost two hour duration as the story is continually switching up a gear.

Although, in parts, the movie is also obviously quite CG heavy this never distracts from the human story as the characters are so well-rounded and the whole world believable that the viewer is just swept up in events.

Jack The Giant Slayer might be a bit long - and possibly scary - for some children but adults, especially gamers, will love the non-stop action and adventure.

The Knight Before Christmas (2019)

Don't expect any surprises when you snuggle down to watch this wholesome, Netflix Christmas magic, time travel, rom-com.

Kindly 14th Century knight Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse, best known from his role in Poldark as Demelza's 'fancy man') is whisked away from snow-blanketed Norwich, England, to a snow-blanketed, proto-Utopian, Bedford Falls-like, small town in Ohio in 2019 and told he has one week - until Christmas Eve - to achieve his "quest".

Upon arrival, he bumps into science teacher Brooke (Vanessa Hudgens) and the two form a fast friendship when she agrees to let him stay in her garden guest house, thinking he is an amnesiac cosplayer whose memory loss was caused by his collision with her car.

Maybe it's meant to be an element of the crone's spell that catapulted him to our time, but Sir Cole adjusts to the 21st Century remarkably - if not ridiculously - quickly.

Neither he, nor Brooke (who soon realises the knight is actually who he says he is) can figure out what his "quest" actually is until the final moments of this 90-minute tale, despite the audience screaming it at the television screen.

While not a film to be thought about too deeply, I would question writer Cara J Russell's choice for the name for the knight. "Sir Cole" too often sounds like "circle", which is really odd and distracting.

Conversely, Cole shares a lot of interesting factoids about his life back in Medieval England, from his youth right through his training, suggesting elements of this movie are subliminally educational.

A formulaic, twee Hallmark Christmas romance, with a script that veers from quirky to cliché, The Knight Before Christmas still manages to be endearingly sweet.

This is thanks largely to its charismatic leads, despite the total absence of any logical sense of "why" or "how" in the ultra-lightweight storytelling.