The Jungle Book Review

Jon Favreau's live-action reboot of The Jungle Book is brilliant; you are transported from the very  first second, into the heart of the jungle with Mowgli (Neel Sethi) and Bagheera (Ben Kingsley).

The CGI throughout this film is magnificent and sometimes, you forget that nearly the entirety of the movie is CGI; it's lush, magical scenery and it's realistic animal animations, lovers of the 1963 Disney animation will adore this live-action film. The scenery and cinematography is every scene is breath-taking; it's when we meet Scarlett Johansson's Kaa - in the middle of what looks like the spider forest in The Hobbit - that we see just how great the CGI is.

This environment is as dark as the scenery gets and the eeriness makes a fantastic backdrop for the character of Kaa - who we maybe could have seen a bit more of in the film.

Sethi's portrayal of Mowgli is spot-on and it's hard to imagine if a better person could have been casted; the way Sethi walked, talked, gestured and looked were exactly like the Disney animation and how most fans would picture the animated Mowgli if he were real.

It was nice to see that Favreau got the on-screen chemistry between Baloo (Bill Murray) and Mowgli just right and even threw it the classic "Bare Necessities" song so that fans could have a little sing-along.

What was sloppy - and it was a shame - was the scenes with the monkey kingdom and King Louie (Christopher Walken). Again, the CGI of the monkey kingdom and the animals was breath-taking, but the script was slightly off, Favreau had turned King Louie into this dark and menacing character and the throw-in of the "Swingdance" song was awful. That particular song felt incongruous with the rest of the film; it wasn't needed.

However, what stole the show for me was Shere Khan voiced by Idris Elba. Elba got the voice of Khan spot on and his voice-overs and the CGI went hand-in-hand perfectly to create this show-stopping character. He was cruel, menacing, scary and possibly the best character in the film.

If Disney can carry on doing this well with their reboots of the classics, then they're going to be very successful indeed. This film honoured the legacy that Rudyard Kipling left us and because of that, this live-action reboot is a winner.

Shadowhunters Season One Review

The show follows 18 year-old, Clary Fray (Katherine McNamara) realise that her world is not as it seems as she finds out that she is a Shadowhunter; she's thrown into the deep end of the Shadow World with her best friend (Alberto Rosende).                          

To save her Mum, she has to train with others of her kind including Jace Wayland (Dominic Sherwood), Isabelle Lightwood (Emeraude Toubia) and Alec Lightwood (Matthew Daddario) and go after the Mortal Cup to stop the series villain his plan to ruin the Shadow World.

If you love the The Mortal Instruments or The Infernal Devices books, there is a good chance that you will not like this TV show; it doesn't really follow the first book and the storyline of the first book is skipped over and rushed in the TV show.

The first few episodes of this show are terrible. The beginning of episode one is four minutes of music; it's like an extended music video and doesn't set a good tone for the rest of the show. The next few episodes aren't much better; the acting isn't that great and only Matthew Daddario and Alberto Rosende give good performances.

The characters are loveable and as much as you find Clary Fray annoying, you're rooting for her to save her Mother and as much as you don't like Valentine, you still kind of have a soft spot for him.

Even though the show isn't brilliant, it has something about it that reels you in and makes you want to binge-watch the show again after finishing it. It's a rather odd feeling. You will want to tell everyone that the show is terrible and to not bother watching it, but it's your guilty pleasure.

Shadowhunters ... You either love it or hate it. You will either invest loads of your time in this show and crave season two, or you will want to delete any vestige of it out of your life because it was a waste of your time.

What happened to me? I got sucked in and now, I am so invested in the lives of these characters that I have now watched season one three times.