Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we run through the biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. This week: journeys through space, time, and um… stately mansions where everyone’s trying to kill you…
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these movies yet so all of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Project Hail Mary
Based on a novel by Andy Weir (who also wrote The Martian), Project Hail Mary is set on an Earth that appears to be doomed. Stars across the galaxy are being infected by their neighbours and dying, and our Sun is in the path of whatever is causing it. Just one star has mysteriously survived, so Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt forms a plan to send someone on the 12 light year journey to study it and find out how. That someone is science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), who is uniquely qualified for the study despite having no experience as an astronaut. But it’s a hail Mary – the time the journey will take means they have just one shot to get the answer to saving our solar system.
This has a great set-up, and Ryan Gosling has the ability to bring a little levity to what could have been a very depressing film without downplaying the pressure of having the fate of the world on his shoulders. His incredulity at being selected for the mission is palpable and believable. Hüller is a fantastic actress too, playing Eva as almost apologetically serious – she knows this is the biggest ask in the history of the planet, but also knows the consequences if Ryland says no. Something spoiled in the first trailer and then developed more in later trailers is the introduction of Rocky – an alien scientist who wants to study the star for the same reason we do, and who develops a friendship with Ryland as they learn to work together. Although I still wish they’d kept this more of a secret in the marketing – the premise is exciting enough to get me to the cinema without it – I must admit that the scenes with the two of them look beautiful.
Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the guys behind the Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street (and producers of the Spider-Verse films). It looks funny and charming, and it’s getting fantastic reviews with a very respectable 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (and 98% audience score) at the time of writing. Whether you like sci-fi, comedy, disaster movies, or just enjoy watching Ryan Gosling, this will be one to watch.
- Project Hail Mary on IMDB
- Project Hail Mary on Rotten Tomatoes
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
2019’s Ready or Not was a surprising little gem of a movie – delightfully over-the-top and with a simple premise. On her wedding night, Grace (Samara Weaving) learns that her new husband’s disgustingly wealthy family has a tradition of playing a game with new additions to their ranks. She chooses hide and seek, and quickly discovers that this was a pretence for a satanic ritual with the family trying to hunt her down and kill her. Fighting back, she manages to dispatch them one by one and survive the night. The sequel picks up where that film left off, with Grace waking up in hospital after her ordeal and realising she’s been handcuffed. It turns out that the family she killed left an enormous fortune, and four other wealthy families are keen to sweep it up. To choose which of them gets it, they want to play another game of hunting Grace, and as extra motivation they’ve also brought in her sister (Kathryn Newton). Can she survive a fresh batch of posh murderers?
This is very much a re-hash of the original, but that was so much fun it’s hard to find fault with that approach. The new cast includes Elijah Wood and Sarah Michelle Gellar, meaning Grace will have to fight off both Frodo Baggins and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Samara Weaving was excellent in the first film – fully committed to the general daftness but still giving the character just enough heart that you’re completely rooting for her by the end. This should be hugely enjoyable and a must for horror fans.
- Ready or Not 2: Here I Come on IMDB
- Ready or Not 2: Here I Come on Rotten Tomatoes
Arco
In the Oscars last year, Flow proved that a beautiful independent European film with a strong environmental message could beat the flashier big budget blockbusters to take the award for Best Animated Feature. Arco is arguably this year’s equivalent to Flow, and was duly nominated for the Oscar (both films also came out in the UK after the Oscars had taken place), but the Academy clearly hadn’t learned its lesson and awarded the prize to the behemoth that is KPop Demon Hunters. Still, this looks absolutely gorgeous. Set in two periods of the future – 2075 and 2932 – the film follows Arco, a boy in the far future who breaks the rules to take a time-travelling rainbow cloak and head into the past before he’s old enough to do so legally. He crashes in 2075 and befriends Iris, who has to help him recover the diamond that will allow him to return to his own time.
The traditional hand drawn animation doesn’t look quite as smooth as we’ve come to expect nowadays, but it makes up for it with a distinctive style and a brilliant colour palette that accentuates the surreal sci-fi world building. Both time periods see the Earth in a state of decline, with the 2075 population living in protective domes with robots helping them survive the natural disasters ravaging the planet, and the 2932 population living in homes built in the sky to give the surface a chance to recover from their influence. For what is ostensibly a kids’ film, a lot of thought has clearly gone into the timeline of how the world will end. But it’s not all doom and gloom – the relationship between Arco and Iris looks genuinely very sweet, and there are some clear Miyazaki influences in both the visuals and the themes.
Whether you go with kids or not, this looks like a beautiful story and should be well worth a watch on the big screen.
- Arco on IMDB
- Arco on Rotten Tomatoes
La Grazia
Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, La Grazia follows fictional Italian president Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo) in the final days of his term, as he wrestles with some controversial decisions that could end up defining his presidency – whether to legalise euthanasia, and whether to pardon some killers. He confides in his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti).
I haven’t heard too much about this, but it looks like a fascinating character study and a timely debate about issues that many current world leaders are grappling over. Servillo (who frequently works with Sorrentino) carries the weight of that responsibility well. If the trailer is anything to go by then the soundtrack is unexpected, but exciting, adding a modern edge to what could have been quite a stuffy drama. This is much more grounded and slower paced than the other releases this week, so if that’s what you’re in the mood for this will be a great pick.
- La Grazia on IMDB
- La Grazia on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
…it’ll have to be a real hail Mary.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- How To Make a Killing
- Hoppers
- Scream 7
Trailer of the Week
I can’t pick between two massive trailers that have dropped this week, so I’m going to make like the Oscar for Best Live Action Short and declare a tie. It’s a win for Zendaya either way.
First up is Dune Part Three, set to be the last of Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptations of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novels. The trailer starts off relatively sedately, with Timothée Chalamet’s Muad-Dib Paul Atreides and Zendaya’s Fremen Chani picking names for their unborn child. But then the chanting starts, and as it gets angrier and angrier we’re treated to glimpses of epic battles, new characters (including an almost-unrecognisable Robert Pattinson as Scytale and Anya Taylor Joy’s Alia Atreides, who had been set up in a vision in Part Two) and returning characters (including Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan and, surprisingly, Jason Momoa’s Duncan Idaho, who died in Part One). Despite the lack of sandworm action this looks every bit as grand and thrilling as we’ve come to expect from Villeneuve, and it will be a long wait until it arrives in December.
Next up is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland’s latest spin in the spider-suit since 2021’s No Way Home and the last Marvel movie to be released before Avengers: Doomsday gets the whole gang back together again in December. Following the events of the last film, Zendaya’s MJ and Jacob Batalon’s Ned have forgotten who Peter Parker is, and the trailer wrings a lot of angst out of that setup. But Spidey has been keeping himself busy, with flashes of fights with villains like Boomerang, Tarantula and the Hand, plus more significant battles with an armoured tank (helped and hindered by Joe Bernthal’s Frank Castle, making his big screen debut after his Daredevil introduction and Punisher spin-off series), Michael Mando’s Scorpion (first teased in the post-credits scene of Spider-Man: Homecoming all the way back in 2017), and a mysterious villain/entity that appears to jump between people’s consciousnesses. It also teases some strange mutations happening to Peter’s DNA, with Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner on hand to help figure out what’s going on – are we going to get a big-screen Man-Spider? Or is all this talk of mutation a sign that the X-Men are going to make an appearance? Seemingly absent from the trailer is Sadie Sink, who has been announced as part of the cast in an important but as-yet unrevealed role, and there are rumours that she might be the MCU’s new Jean Grey – that would fit with the appearance of the original X-Men actors (but notably not original Phoenix Famke Janssen) in the cast for Doomsday. However it all fits with the wider story, this looks like a great popcorn film with plenty of action and character moments, and will definitely be one to watch when it hits cinemas at the end of July.
Leave a Reply