AUGUST is well and truly underway and with it another twosome of summer blockbusters to wile away those long summer evenings or keep the kids entertained in those long summer afternoons.

Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s classic The BFG stomps back in for a second week. When the titular behemoth whisks ten-year-old Sophie away from her orphanage in Victorian London, she is naturally terrified at first, but the young girl soon realises the 24-foot colossus is actually a gentle and charming creature. However, Sophie’s presence attracts the unwanted attention of the larger, meaner giants so her and the BFG go on a mission to Buckingham Palace to enlist the aid of Queen Victoria in order to get rid of the bad giants once and for all!

This timeless tale has been given the full Spielberg treatment: some spectacular digital wizardry is used to bring the Brobdingnagian BFG to life from a wonderful motion-capture performance from Mark Rylance, whose kind eyes and warm West Country accent suit the nominal character like snozzcumbers suit frobscottle; the film is layered with Spielberg’s trademark whimsy and heart; and the set-pieces often induce a sense of breathless wonder. Spielberg has the uncanny ability to bring to life stories exactly the way you imagined them as a child making The BFG a remarkably nostalgic and heartwarming tale.

It's been 10 years since Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) walked away from the agency that trained him to become a deadly weapon. Hoping to draw him out of the shadows, CIA director Robert Dewey assigns hacker and counterinsurgency expert Heather Lee to find him. Lee suspects that former operative Nicky Parsons is also looking for him. As she begins tracking the duo, Bourne finds himself back in action battling a sinister network that utilizes terror and technology to maintain unchecked power.

Paul Greengrass, Matt Damon, and Julia Stiles make an explosive return to the franchise. The returning director of Supremacy and Ultimatum shows us he still knows how to orchestrate an action set-piece with the best of them, the hand-to-hand showdowns are visceral and wince-inducingly crunchy and the Las Vegas car chase is one for the ages. The newcomers hold their own among the Bourne stalwarts; Alicia Vikander’s CIA agent is as nuanced and gritty as Tommy Lee Jones’ agency director is morally flexible, and Vincent Cassell’s Gallic assassin known only as ‘The Asset’ is a chillingly good fit for the series.

Jack Hanson