Hello, and welcome to this week’s Geeky Brummie film roundup, taking you through all the new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. This week brings us fake astronauts, heroic minions, and a host of horrors ranging from creepy to sleepy.
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these films. All of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Fly Me To The Moon
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum star in this fictionalised retelling of the events leading up to the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. With NASA struggling to capture people’s imaginations, and as a result struggling for funding, they hire Johansson’s marketing guru Kelly Jones (no, not the Stereophonics bloke) to boost their public profile. Kelly’s tactics work, despite winding up the straight-faced launch director Cole Davis (Tatum), and soon the astronauts are major celebrities. But as the pressure of the public’s attention increases, so does the risk of failure, and Kelly is placed on a top secret mission to film a fake, backup moon landing in case the real one never makes it.
The idea that the moon landings were faked is an alarmingly popular conspiracy theory, at a time when the integrity of the truth is the most fragile it’s ever been. So there’s something slightly distasteful about a film that adds fuel to that fire, even if it ultimately concludes with the Apollo 11 mission successfully making it to the moon and the backup footage never being needed. Although this is a work of fiction, it’s easy to misinterpret it as a biopic of a real group of people, given that it’s based on such a major world event. Putting that aside though, it’s fun to have a bit of a new twist on the Apollo 11 story given how often it’s been shown on film before.
It feels like there are two separate stories here – the marketing efforts and the fake footage – and it probably could have just stuck with one. Bubbling away beneath both stories and providing the connective tissue is the blossoming romance between Kelly and Cole, which I think is where the real appeal of this movie lies. Johansson and Tatum are both talented and good-looking actors and should have no trouble selling their chemistry. With Woody Harrelson rounding out the cast, there are plenty of stars in this trip to the moon.
- Fly Me To The Moon on IMDB
- Fly Me To The Moon on Rotten Tomatoes
Despicable Me 4
The Despicable Me franchise has a long history with some real highs and lows to its standing in pop culture rankings. The first film was great – a cartoonish and surprisingly heartwarming story (largely thanks to the series’ real MVPs, orphans Margo, Agnes and Edith) about a villain reluctantly finding his good side. Gru (Steve Carell) had just the right balance of likeability and mischievousness – the closest a kids’ film would want to get to an antihero. It also introduced the minions, who to begin with were hugely entertaining little yellow balls of anarchy, gleefully blowing each other up just for the fun of it. They were so much fun that they were immediately misappropriated by the internet into an endless torrent of Facebook memes that seemed to entirely miss the point of why everyone loved them, to the extent that by the time the second film came out everyone was well and truly fed up with seeing them everywhere. Despite that, Despicable Me 2 was actually quite good, introducing Gru’s love interest Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and proving successful enough to spawn a spin-off for the minions. We then had Despicable Me 3 and The Minions 2: Rise of Gru, neither of which I’ve managed to see – they were generally regarded as decent enough but not as good as the earlier films.
That brings us up to Despicable Me 4, which is actually therefore the 6th film in the wider franchise. At this point in any franchise it becomes difficult to avoid following the same formula as the earlier entries, and judging by the trailer it looks as though this will be hitting all the same broad story points as before. Gru’s contented life is interrupted by the rise of a rival villain and, with the help of the minions, he has to use his criminal experience and flair to protect the family he has built around himself. It may be formulaic, but as a kids’ film that’s not always a bad thing – even if it lacks the heart of the first film, this will have enough bright colours, silly noises and general yellow chaos to keep children entertained. The (other) villain is voiced by Will Ferrell, making this a bit of an Anchorman reunion, and the cast also includes Sofia Vergara, Steve Coogan, Stephen Colbert and John DiMaggio, as well as returning players Wiig and Miranda Cosgrove (Margo). The ubiquitous minions’ antics are still good for some laughs (some of them get superpowers this time around promising some send-ups of the typical Marvel tropes), and there looks to be a fun running joke about Gru’s new baby irrationally hating him. All in all, there should be enough here to entertain the parents too.
- Despicable Me 4 on IMDB
- Despicable Me 4 on Rotten Tomatoes
Longlegs
Moving from the slapstick silliness of the minions to something deadly serious now. Longlegs is a psychological horror about an FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) investigating a series of murders by the serial killer known only as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), named after the cryptic word he leaves as a calling card. The atmosphere built by the trailer is intense, with deeply unsettling imagery and sounds slicing into the plot scenes. Nic Cage often gets a bad rep for over-acting, but nobody does unhinged like Little Nicky, and he comes across as incredibly creepy in the little we see and hear from him here. And Maika Monroe has some good scream-queen pedigree after starring in the likes of It Follows, Watcher and The Guest.
The trailer gives so little away that it’s hard to find much more to say about this, other than the fact that it looks excellent. The reviews have been great too – at the time of writing it has a very impressive 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you like your horror films, this is a must-see.
- Longlegs on IMDB
- Longlegs on Rotten Tomatoes
In A Violent Nature
Sticking with the horror genre, next up we have In A Violent Nature. This one follows (literally, for the most part) a vengeful corpse named Johnny – a typical slasher in the vein of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. But while films like Halloween and Friday the 13th treat their monsters as an almost spectral presence, hiding in every bit of off-screen space and only jumping out when an unsuspecting teen wanders into knifing distance, In A Violent Nature fixes the camera squarely on its killer. This is a day in the (after)life of a monster, trudging through the woods after him as he searches for his stolen locket and racks up the body-count by way of anyone who gets in his way.
This had some preview screenings earlier in the week – I didn’t go, but my parents did, and it’s one of the few films they have ever walked out of. Apparently, if you always know where the killer is, it robs the film of any tension and makes it harder to care for any of the characters who get cut down. They, along with other commenters online, have said it was like watching a film student’s end of year project, which wasn’t helped by some poor acting and dialogue. By the sounds of it, the focus is more on gore and violence than actual scares.
It’s hard to know what to make of this without having seen it myself. I get the impression that it might be trying something interesting – perhaps a comic send-up of the slasher genre, or an attempt to rewrite the visual language of horror movies – but if so that seems to be getting lost on the majority of its audience. There is a big disparity between its scores on Rotten Tomatoes, with a Tomatometer (ie critics’) score of 80% and an audience score of 44%, suggesting that critics get it but casual viewers very much do not. If you like your horror films, it might be worth giving this a go and making your own mind up. But if you just enjoy occasionally dipping your toes into the genre for the thrill of a quick scare, you’re probably better off with Longlegs.
- In A Violent Nature on IMDB
- In A Violent Nature on Rotten Tomatoes
Sleep
We briefly mentioned this in the Film Roundup a couple of months ago when it was previewed as part of the Flatpack Film Festival. Sleep is a Korean psychological horror mystery about a man (Lee Sun-kyun, Parasite) whose sleep-walking habits start to present more and more danger to his wife (Jung Yu-mi, Train to Busan) and their infant child. As they try to treat his condition, she finds herself staying awake at night to watch over him, but how long can she keep this up when exhaustion and paranoia start setting in?
This looks pretty disturbing, made all the worse by the fact that it is such a believable scenario. The cast is small and intimate, with most of the action taking place in the couple’s apartment, adding to the sense of claustrophobia. Expect the line between reality and nightmare to be blurred, and some twisty developments. This is Lee Sun-kyun’s last ever film role after his tragically early death last year, so hopefully this will be a strong tribute to his talents. Definitely worth watching if you can track it down.
- Sleep on IMDB
- Sleep on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Easily the creepiest of the horror entries out this week, Longlegs gets my vote.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- MaXXXine
- A Quiet Place: Day One
- Inside Out 2
Trailer of the week
I love a good swords-and-sandals epic, and nobody alive today does them better than Ridley Scott. Gladiator is a true modern classic, and this sequel (a mere 24 years later) looks awesome. It stars Paul Mescal (who was in All Of Us Strangers, still a strong contender for my favourite film of the year) as Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s Maximus from the original, as he follows his father’s footsteps into the Colosseum of Rome. The supporting cast is stacked, including Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Derek Jacobi (the latter two reprising their roles from the first film), Tim McInnerny, Rory “The Hound” McCann, and (a little weirdly) Matt Lucas. Plus, playing the villainous emperors this time around: Joseph Quinn (fresh out of A Quiet Place: Day One) and Fred Hechinger, both looking like a sort of sickly Ed Sheeran. Pascal and Quinn are the new Mr Fantastic and Human Torch for Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four movie, so this will be a good opportunity for them to build their chemistry. The gladiatorial action this time around includes a fight with a guy mounted on a rhino and, very excitingly for a history nerd like me, a naumachia – a recreation of a naval battle for which the Colosseum was filled with water. I am very much looking forward to this…
Leave a Reply