--A Wrinkle in Time
Oddly, this film has quite a lot of similarities to Annihilation. Both involve a group of people searching for something or someone through an unfamiliar landscape with obstacles along the way. The difference is that Annihilation is very much geared to adults in the telling of the story and "Wrinkle" is 180 degrees in the opposite direction, geared to young adults or children. This film was constructed to be so inclusive that you start looking for it like a game. I know the film was based on a book, but I don't know if that was the case with the original work. (I know someone who read it and he said the book was creepier in tone and plotting.)
Ava Duvernay directed it and while her film SELMA was beautifully directed and affecting, this one is directed with just too much preciousness, with the characters delivering dialogue like they'd smoked pot and are delivering the most fantastic insights, but they're really just stoned. The premise is that a young girl's father (he's white, played by Chris Pine, with a Grizzly Adams beard) has disappeared (ostensibly through a "wrinkle in time" -- and space) and she (black), her brother (?), and a white boy go on this journey to find him with the help of three "celestial-guides" (?) who are played by Oprah (black), Mindy Kaling (Indian) and Reese Witherspoon acting like she just stepped off the bus. Along the way they run into some bad guys like Michael Pena (Latin). The casting is as much a special effect as the visual effects are.
These "guides" are called the three Mrs. and their names just seem so un-clever or under-thought, I couldn't take it seriously... Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who. (Should've been "misses".) The younger brother is called Charles Wallace (his first and middle name, though for a good part of the time I just thought he was from a different mother) and his name "Charles Wallace" is repeated so often that it just becomes intolerable and unrealistic to think anyone would keep calling him that.
The more this film went on the more annoying it became until I didn't care whether they found her father or not. I know there isn't a lot of films with a teen black girl as the lead, but there were so many close-ups of her with the camera swirling around her head with really no reason that it started to seem ludicrous. It kept feeling like a point was being made instead of a movie. And the father (Chris Pine) a supposed scientist, seems as stupid and naive as one could imagine and so it's hard to believe anyone would want to go after him. The girl's white boy classmate is so neutered that he seems like extra baggage. The one good thing in the film is the 9 year old actor playing the lead's younger brother. (Charles Wallace...stoppp!) His name is Deric McCabe, he is of Filipino descent and was born in Whitefish, Montana, and moved to Los Angeles with his parents a year later. He only has 3 IMDB credits, including this one, but you'd think he'd had a whole lot more experience. He starts off as a precocious good-natured younger brother-type, eager to go on this journey, but through some deception, turns into an evil obstacle for the group to deal with. A really good performance and based on this it seems we could be seeing more of him.