Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we look at the hottest new cinema releases and talk about why you should be excited for them. This week we have Robert Pattinson, Danny Dyer, Robert Pattinson, Keke Palmer, Robert Pattinson, Joana Santos, and Robert Pattinson…
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.
Mickey 17
For his first new film since the Parasite became the first foreign language movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars, Korean director Bong Joon Ho has adapted the novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. It tells the story of Mickey (Robert Pattinson), who volunteers as an ‘expendable’ – someone taken on dangerous missions in space where there is a strong chance of death. Each time he dies a new clone of his body is created with most of his memories intact, so that he can carry on where he left off. But one day, he is mistakenly regenerated while his 17th self is still alive, causing there to be two Mickeys wandering around in the universe. The corporation he works for has strict rules to exterminate both bodies when this happens, so can the two Mickeys work together to stay alive?
If you haven’t been paying attention to his career, it’s easy to dismiss Robert Pattinson as That Guy From Twilight, but (like his fellow castmate Kristen Stewart) he’s well and truly proven by now that he can be a fantastic actor given the right material. From less well-known films like Good Time, The Lighthouse and The King to massive blockbusters like Tenet and Batman, he’s made some consistently interesting choices in his work (presumably being set for life with the sparkly vampire pay cheque and financially free to pick the roles he wants). And it looks like he’s having a very good time with this one, embracing the silliness of the concept (death becomes a lot less serious when you know it’s a temporary setback that comes with the job) but also allowing the emotion to come through when needed.
There’s a lot of fun to be had in the supporting cast too. Mark Ruffalo is chewing the scenery as the cartoonishly Trumpian politician Kenneth Marshall, Toni Colette is his wife, Naomie Ackie and Steven Yeun are co-workers who are fascinated by Mickey’s reincarnation, and Tim Key is in there somewhere as ‘Pigeon Man’.
This is very much a sci-fi, with strong echoes of Moon, and like all good sci-fi it has a lot of scope to muse on what it means to be human – something that Bong Joon Ho is also very adept at bringing to his films. It clearly has a much bigger budget than he would normally be working with, but it also has the feel of a more independent film with an original and creative storyline. Expect this to be funny but also to have some heart.
- Mickey 17 on IMDB
- Mickey 17 on Rotten Tomatoes
Marching Powder
Moving on now to a film that is marketing itself as something with humour and heart but I suspect will have substantially less of either. In Marching Powder, Danny Dyer plays Jack – a middle-aged man arrested for drugs and given six weeks to get his life in order. As well as ditching his habit, he has to repair his relationship with his wife, fend off his antagonistic father in law, and put his stepbrother on the straight and narrow too. But when he slips at the first hurdle, everything starts to spiral out of control.
The trailer proudly proclaims that it’s ‘from the absolute legends behind The Football Factory and The Business’. Whilst I question whether anyone who refers to themselves as absolute legends can ever truly be an absolute legend, that does give you a good idea of what to expect here. If you enjoy films with London hard men punching each other over football results, taking copious amounts of cocaine and yelling the C-word at each other across a crowded flat-roof pub, this is the movie for you. It’s probably not a movie for me. I do quite like the one joke in the trailer where Danny Dyer answers his doorbell with white powder all over his face, the caller says “hi”, and he replies “very”. I suspect that is the wittiest this film is going to get. It’s quite telling that it doesn’t seem to even have an entry on Rotten Tomatoes…
- Marching Powder on IMDB
One of Them Days
One of Them Days stars Keke Palmer and SZA as best friends and flatmates Dreux and Alyssa. When they discover that Alyssa’s boyfriend has spent the money that was set aside for their rent, they have to scrape the funds together against the clock before they’re kicked out.
I hadn’t heard of this at all before writing up this week’s roundup, but having watched the trailer a couple of times now and read some of the reviews, I think it looks like a great comedy. I love the guy standing outside the payday loans building giving very sound advice about borrowing money, and the blood donor scene glimpsed at the end of the trailer looks all kinds of chaotic. I’m not particularly familiar with SZA – she’s obviously better known for her music and this seems to be her first major acting role – but she seems to be a natural. And Keke Palmer has always impressed me in the handful of things I’ve seen her in. I once went to a test screening for a truly awful Dolly Parton vehicle called Joyful Noise, which had Palmer playing Queen Latifah’s daughter, and I remember my one positive takeaway being that she would be someone to watch out for. Since then she’s mostly popped up in horror (Scream Queens, Scream: The TV Series, and Nope) or in voice acting roles (the Ice Age movies, Big Mouth and Lightyear), but it looks from this like she’s quite comfortable in comedy too. The reviews have all said that the two have great chemistry, and it currently has an impressive 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 90% audience score.
If you fancy something more grounded than Mickey 17 this weekend but still lighthearted and fun, this looks like a great option.
- One of Them Days on IMDB
- One of Them Days on Rotten Tomatoes
On Falling
On Falling follows Aurora, a Portuguese migrant working in an Amazon-esque warehouse in Edinburgh, as she tries to resist succumbing to the loneliness that threatens to consume her at work and at home.
This is another one that I’ve heard very little about, although this time the trailer doesn’t give much away about the plot. It stars Joana Santos, who seems to be quite well-known in Portugal but hasn’t done a lot of English language work. This is director Laura Carreira’s first feature length film, so I can’t comment much on what she will bring to it besides observing that, as a Portuguese woman living in Edinburgh, she may have been drawing from some personal experiences in writing the movie. There will likely be some strong social commentary on the gig economy, and particularly the way it seems to ensnare migrant workers worst of all.
- On Falling on IMDB
- On Falling on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
If you like Robert Pattinson, you get 18 RPattzes for your money. If you don’t like Robert Pattinson, you get to watch him die painfully at least 16 times. Mickey 17 really does have something for everyone.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- I’m Still Here
- The Last Showgirl
- The Monkey
Trailer of the week
I’ll keep this one pretty short. Do you want to see Kevin Bacon as an undead bounty hunter tasked by the Devil to send escaped demons back to Hell? Of course you do. I present to you the trailer for The Bondsman, which is coming to Prime Video on 3 April.
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