At The Movies: The Sea Beast gets plenty right, Till Death has a gutsy heroine

The Sea Beast (PG)

119 minutes, Netflix

The story: In a fantasy world where leviathans roam the seas, a feisty orphan lass (voiced by Zaris-Angel Hator) stows away on the ship of a swashbuckling hunter (Karl Urban). They begin an epic journey pursuing the most fearsome of the monsters, the Red Bluster, also known as Red.

Three reasons to watch this film:

It is neither a prequel nor a sequel, and how welcome is that? The Sea Beast from Netflix Animation is a rip-roaring maritime adventure directed and co-written by Academy Award-winner Chris Williams of Big Hero 6 (2014) and Moana (2016).

The voyage is CGI splendour. It traverses mighty nautical battles, devastating tidal storms and luminescent ocean depths with a brief stop inside Red's cavernous belly.

There are many more colourful sea creatures of every fanged, finned, blubbery and tentacled variety, altogether enchanting.

Who writes the history books that inform people's beliefs? Why should they be trusted? They have engendered a cycle of violence by convincing the seafarers here the beasts are enemies, but the girl develops a bond with sensitive, sentient Red and bravely protects her new friend from a wrathful eye-patched pirate captain (Jared Harris).

"You can be a hero and still be wrong," cautions this kids' fable that gets plenty right, not least its anti-hunting message and the lesson to question presumptions.

The story: Megan Fox is a photographer who wakes up in a secluded lake house in the middle of winter handcuffed to the corpse of her abusive husband (Eoin Macken). She barely has time to contemplate what sick joke this is before two hired killers (Callan Mulvey and Jack Roth) arrive to stalk her.

Three reasons to watch this film:

The initial 20 minutes bore you with an uninteresting tryst in an anonymous city. Just when you are about to dismiss Till Death as streaming filler, however, it heads to the scene of the crime and stays there for a nifty home-invasion thriller.

The woman has no phone, no car, no escape, no way to unshackle herself. The snowbound house becomes a death trap. In and out and all around the icy environs she tows the body - Fox's physical exertion is impressive - over a taut day-long cat-and-mouse game to evade the intruders.

The cadaver is a witty motif. It is also, of course, a metaphor for the moribund marriage that has long weighed down the unhappy wife and she is a kick, thanks to Fox, surviving the assault with smarts and guts plus immaculate make-up.