Belle
(12, 104 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment)

CAPTAIN Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode) brings his illegitimate, mixed race daughter Dido (Lauren Julien-Box) to England and entrusts the child to his aristocratic uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson).

He permits Dido to stay, allowing his great-niece to become a constant companion to her cousin, Elizabeth (Cara Jenkins).

The girls blossom and Lady Elizabeth (now played by Sarah Gadon) prepares to seek a wealthy husband. Belle is the enchanting dramatisation of a true story of fortitude across racial and class divides at a time when pompous men of privilege were vociferously debating the end of slavery in England.

Amma Asante’s handsome period piece illuminates the debate and some of the characters, whose lives intersected at this historical crossroads.

The ensemble cast delivers excellent performances, particularly Mbatha-Raw, who possesses beauty and vulnerability on camera.

She catalyses smouldering screen chemistry with Reid, and Wilkinson brings pomp and circumstance to his pivotal role as a man with the power to chip away at the foundations of the legal firmament.

Maleficent
(PG, 97 mins, Disney DVD)

The Northern Echo:

KING Henry (Kenneth Cranham) is a greedy monarch, who yearns to expand his kingdom by conquering the forest realm where Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) holds sway.

Inspired by the 1959 Disney animation Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent is a visually stunning fantasy, which reimagines the Brothers Grimm through the mascaraed eyes of the eponymous villainess.

Digital effects are impressively harnessed by director Robert Stromberg to realise the forest and its magical denizens and allow the title character to take flight over her domain.

For all its technological might, this fantastical liveaction fairytale is anchored by Jolie’s tour-deforce theatrics.

Sporting a hefty pair of horns, she slinks through every frame, rolling menacing lines of dialogue around her mouth like candy and accentuating thinly veiled threats with an arched eyebrow. Naughty has seldom looked and sounded so nice.

Seve
(PG, 124 mins, Entertainment In Video)

DOCUMENTARY filmmaker John-Paul Davidson pays tribute to Spanish golfer Severiano Ballesteros, who died of brain cancer in 2011. His film intercuts archive footage with dramatisations of Ballesteros’ formative years in sun-drenched Pedrena.

Seve is a beautifully crafted valentine to a man who rose from humble origins as the son of a farmer to become a master of his craft.

Director Davidson is unabashed in his affection for his subject. Dramatic recreations of Ballesteros’ bucolic childhood are tightly interwoven with real-life footage and Tom Hodgson’s script deftly navigates a fractured chronology to give a palpable sense of how an entire community rallied round their boy and shepherded him down the fairways to global stardom.

Walking On Sunshine
(PG, 124 mins, Entertainment In Video)

THREE years after an intense holiday fling, good girl Taylor (Hannah Arterton) flies back to southern Italy after her university finals.

She arrives to discover that her impulsive sister Maddie (Annabel Scholey), who recently broke up with her long-term boyfriend Doug (Greg Wise), has fallen headover- heels for one of the locals and intends to get married in two days.

It transpires that the groom-to-be is Raphael (Giulio Berruti), the same strapping hunk who previously swept Taylor off her feet. Walking On Sunshine is a super-trouping 1980s jukebox musical, which sincerely flatters the creative team behind Mamma Mia! by reusing their template for a soapy summertime wedding on sundrenched Mediterranean shores.

The toetapping hits include Don’t You Want Me by The Human League, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper and Wake Me Up Before You Go Go by Wham! Arterton has an appealing innocence while Berruti is impossibly good-looking.