What a cast and what a lot of money they must have spent to get them. The mature viewer with a taste for horror-fantasy might enjoy the presence of Jeff Bridges and Oscar-carrying Julianne Moore as Mother Malkin, a powerful witch with a score to settle the lovely and talented Olivia Williams plays Tom's mama, who doesn't want to lose him when the Spook rows his boat across a Peter Jackson-style lake to recruit him younger viewers might also enjoy the deliciously cute Alicia Vikander as Alice, whom Tom (Ben Barnes) saves from being burned as a witch – even though she is one and here comes the great Djimon Hounsou wielding fire and brimstone as one of Mother Malkin's henchpersons. Whether this qualifies as that might depend on who you are. That means it can skirt China's quota rules about foreign productions – opening up the market to one billion Chinese viewers, hungry for entertainment. What's also modern is that it is a partnership between Legendary Pictures – a billion dollar company that started in 2000 with Wall Street money – and the China Film Group, the state-owned production and distribution arm of the People's Republic. The visual effects would have taken much of that, as the film is driven by computers. Now it is an A-list picture with a great cast, a talented Russian émigré director and a serious budget, reputed to be around $90 million. In the 1940s it might have been a B-grade serial for Saturday morning matinees, thrilling children around the world who would turn into George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Seventh Son is a good example of the weird place to which modern fantasy has come. SEVEN combines horror and film noir genres, with overconfident rookie David Mills as the doomed detective of the noir tradition, and book veteran William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) as the desexualized, pedantic survivor familiar to slasher movie fans. The dude, and the kid: Jeff Bridges and Ben Barnes in Seventh Son - Hollywood's latest big-budget fantasy.
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