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: bad guys, baa guys and Baaad Guy (duh)…
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.
But before we get into all that…
Flatpack Film Festival
Birmingham’s biggest independent film festival is back for its 20th anniversary! Starting tomorrow and running until next Saturday 16 May, a range of venues including the Mockingbird, the MAC and the Botanical Gardens will play host to premieres, classics, shorts, special events, live music, Q&As and a whole lot more. The proceedings kick off with the premiere of documentary Chaplin: Spirit of the Tramp, tracing Charlie Chaplin’s Romany roots back to the caravan in Smethwick where he was born. The screening will be presented by the film’s director and Chaplin’s granddaughter, Carmen Chaplin. Other highlights throughout the week include…
- a day of Paul McGann next Friday with screenings of the Doctor Who TV movie at the MAC and Withnail and I at the Botanical Gardens, each featuring live appearances from the man himself
- an open air screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Botanical Gardens, complete with a pre-show Glam Station where you can get professional makeup inspired by the movie
- bus tours of Birmingham inspired by the life and career of Victoria Wood, guided by local comedians Barbara Nice and Rachel Baker
- back at the Botanical Gardens, a screening of 1929 silent Soviet movie My Grandmother, with a live score from Stephen Horne and Meg Morley and performance from Birmingham-based Georgian choir Ensemble Bednieri
- the short film competition, with entries grouped together around such themes as dance, queer stories, animation and music, culminating in an awards show at the end of the week; plus the Short & Suite competition and showcases, featuring films from budding young filmmakers from Birmingham and beyond.
There’s loads more on the schedule, much of which is themed or filmed around Birmingham and the West Midlands, so take a look at the festival website to see the full lineup and book tickets.
Mortal Kombat II
The biggest complaints about the 2021 Mortal Kombat adaptation were that instead of focusing on one of the many established characters from the game, it focused on Cole Young – a character made up for the film – and that it didn’t actually show the fighting tournament that the game revolves around. All of that has been fixed in Mortal Kombat II, which sees fan favourite Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) whisked away to defend the Earthrealm in the titular Mortal Kombat.
Cole (Lewis Tan) does appear again here with his superpowered comfortable sweatshirt, alongside fellow returning characters Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), Kung Lao (Max Huang) and Kano (Josh Lawson), not to mention ancient nemeses Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Bi-Han (Joe Taslim) – aka Scorpion and Sub-Zero. But the focus of the plot is much more on Johnny Cage, with Urban seeming to have a great time playing a washed up actor roped into fights to the death to save the world. Also joining the fight is Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) and her sister Jade (Tati Gabrielle), facing off against villains like Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford) and Baraka (CJ Bloomfield).
If you’re looking for Shakespearean drama or moving character development, you’re probably not going to see a movie named Mortal Kombat. But, if you’re a fan of the games and you just want to see your favourite characters engaged in slickly choreographed duels in fantastical colourful arenas, complete with appropriately bloody finishers and familiar one-liners, this looks like a lot of fun. It ticks all the boxes of a good videogame adaptation – there’s plenty of fan-service without it being completely nonsensical to non-gamers, it doesn’t take any major liberties plot-wise, and most importantly it captures the feel of playing the game (or at least watching someone else play it). With Street Fighter out later in the year, 2026 is a good time to be a fan of beat-em-up games at the cinema.
- Mortal Kombat II on IMDB
- Mortal Kombat II on Rotten Tomatoes
The Sheep Detectives
George Hardy (Hugh Jackman), a shepherd who cares deeply about his flock and reads murder mysteries to them every evening for fun, is found dead. With their heads full of Agatha Christie stories, his sheep suspect foul play and decide to investigate the case and hunt down his murderer.
Based on the novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, this is a fantastic idea for a film and looks genuinely very sweet. The CGI flock’s voice cast includes Chris O’Dowd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brett Goldstein, Patrick Stewart, Bella Ramsey, Regina Hall, Rhys Darby and Bryan Cranston, while the humans include Succession’s Nicholas Braun as the incompetent policeman assigned to the case, and Emma Thompson as Hardy’s lawyer. As well as being a cute kids’ film about a bunch of funny sheep (and anything that includes Roy from the IT Crowd, Roy from Ted Lasso and Murray from Flight of the Conchords is bound to be funny), this also promises to be quite a satisfying whodunnit that may appeal to fans of the Knives Out films or the Thursday Murder Club.
This has had a universally warm reception with critics, garnering it an impressive 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and the general consensus being that it’s an eccentric but surprisingly effective and emotional family film.
- The Sheep Detectives on IMDB
- The Sheep Detectives on Rotten Tomatoes
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour
With behind the scenes access and interviews, this 3D spectacle showcases Billie Eilish’s gig from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour filmed over four nights at Manchester’s Co-Op Live Arena. Concert films are nothing new – last year the recordings of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour found huge success at the cinema – but this feels like it has more potential than most. Billie Eilish is now a two-time Oscar winner, having won Best Original Song for Bond (No Time to Die) and Barbie (What Was I Made For?), so is a dab hand at writing music that translates well to the big screen. She’s credited as a co-director here alongside none other than James Cameron, who knows better than anyone how to capture the kind of epic scale that makes an arena tour so special. Cameron appears on camera in the film too, and they make for a bit of an odd pairing, but it looks like it works. Eilish is famously quite down-to-Earth, and her natural demeanour in the backstage moments contrasts effectively with the big crazy concert scenes.
Billie fans won’t want to miss this, but even if you’re not into her music it promises to be a spectacular show.
- Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour on IMDB
- Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
…GET OVER HERE and watch Mortal Kombat II.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Hokum
- The Devil Wears Prada 2
- Exit 8 – An atmospheric horror which does a decent job of building an unsettling tone, even if it’s a bit light on outright scares. The nameless wanderer at the centre of the story has a more satisfying character arc than I expected, and the second main character – a young boy, also nameless – is the film’s MVP; just the right mixture of capable and vulnerable to give the man both a partner in his predicament and someone to protect. There’s an extra level of entertainment in looking out for the more subtle ‘anomalies’ – signs that we might be heading in a bad direction – although it is a bit frustrating when the characters don’t immediately turn around when faced with the not-so-subtle ones. Still, this is interesting and enjoyable and well worth catching while you can.
Trailer of the Week
As a fan of blockbuster cinema and Greek mythology, Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey is one of my most highly anticipated films this year. After some short teasers, we now have a longer trailer to enjoy. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, making the ten year journey home from the Trojan War where he (alongside Benny Safdie’s Agamemnon and Jon Bernthal’s Menelaus) fooled Troy with a big wooden horse. As he’s waylaid by a plethora of gods, monsters and natural disasters, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) is fending off a host of suitors believing him to be dead, and clamouring to take her hand and the rule of Ithaca. Chief among the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), who clashes with Odysseus’s son Telemachus (Tom Holland). A lot of the focus in this trailer is on the events back at Ithaca, but we also get a better look at Charlize Theron’s Calypso, the cyclops Polyphemus, and the gigantic whirlpool Charybdis. This is the most epic of event cinema and I am very much here for it.
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