Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (PG13)

115 minutes, opens on April 10
2 stars

The story: For its 40th anniversary, the Hollywood supernatural comedy franchise returns to the New York City firehouse where it began as Ghostbusters young and old join forces to save humanity from icy armageddon.

If there is something strange in the neighbourhood, it is the overcrowding.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the fifth Ghostbusters film and a sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). Two years on, single mum Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) – daughter of Ghostbusters founding member Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) – her boyfriend Gary (Paul Rudd) and two teen kids (Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace) have made the Manhattan firehouse their home to continue the family legacy.

Ghost-busting interns Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) and Podcast (Logan Kim) have, likewise, decamped from Oklahoma.

A librarian (Patton Oswalt) and a scientist (James Acaster) are their latest allies, and reuniting as the original team are septuagenarians Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and former receptionist Annie Potts.

Their foe is a powerful horned deity that has escaped from an ancient orb. It wants to freeze the world. And it is an anticlimax, a giant but unconvincing digital effect.

They had to call 11 paranormal exterminators for this? Twelve, actually: Bill Murray is also back. His snark alone could have annihilated the demon.

Gil Kenan (Monster House, 2006; Poltergeist, 2015) directed. The scattershot confection dedicated to co-writer Jason Reitman’s father, the late franchise creator Ivan Reitman, is caught between nostalgic fan service and a new-generation family adventure.

It tries to be both by having too many characters and too much story, little of it thrilling, parts of it passably entertaining. And in the mix is a quasi-romance with a sad poltergeist (Emily Alyn Lind) that is like its own movie.

Hot take: At least the Ray Parker Jr title track is still a banger.

Article 20 (PG13)

141 minutes, now showing
4 stars

The story: Director Zhang Yimou steers a prosecutor (Lei Jiayin) through a tangle of professional and domestic conundrums in China’s hit dramedy, which topped the country’s Chinese New Year box office.

The middle-aged prosecutor Han Ming (Lei) of Article 20 has a bad back and no grand ambition beyond easing into retirement.

Upon his transfer to the Municipal Procuratorate Office, he is nevertheless handed the critical murder investigation of a labourer (Pan Binlong), who stabbed a loan shark (Alan Aruna) for raping his deaf-mute wife (Zhao Liying).

His son (Liu Yaowen) is, meanwhile, facing charges for breaking the nose of a school bully, whose daddy is the dean (Zhang Yi).

The crux of both these semi-fictionalised true cases is the oft-contentious 20th article in China’s Criminal Law on the right to justifiable defence.

It is serious stuff. And yet the contemporary legal thriller is also, improbably, an uproarious marital comedy centred on the verbal sparring between Han and an excellent Ma Li as his headstrong wife. She thinks he is a wimp.

The equivocating functionary is eventually moved by the empathy of Gao Ye as his lead prosecutor ex-girlfriend.

Lei, with his outstanding supporting cast, is so credible, he can be forgiven for his sententious closing oration urging the court to protect good citizens by upholding justice over statutes.

Gong Li’s petitioning peasant in Zhang’s 1992 bureaucratic satire The Story Of Qiu Ju would have laughed at the concept of civil rights in China: There is none here.

Zhang, 74, remains a film-maker of relevance four decades into a storied career, even if 1980s Chinese cinema’s dissident has come round to idealising party policies.

Hot take: This tale of crime and punishment is a shrewd mix of propaganda and screwball entertainment. The performances are irreproachable.