Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we take you through the biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. This week: Heathcliff, Heat, bleats and tweets…
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.
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë’s classic romance novel has had many adaptations over the years, with the earliest dating all the way back to 1920 and a 1939 version being nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Heathcliff and Cathy have been played by such acting royalty as Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Rosemary Harris, Ian McShane, Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Tom Hardy, Andrew Lincoln and Kaya Scodelario. Now, in this latest version from director Emerald Fennell, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi join their esteemed company.
Fennell’s previous work has prepared her well for this. Promising Young Woman established her as a proudly female filmmaking voice, while Saltburn (also starring Elordi) showed that she could portray the highs and lows of a tumultuous relationship in a stately country home. It’s clear from the trailer that she has a great grasp of the setting, with the Yorkshire moors looking bleakly beautiful, full of muted colours and windswept clouds. There is a wildness to it that makes the romantic element more exciting. And she could not have picked much better (or better looking) romantic leads. Margot Robbie (doing a very credible British accent) always gives a committed performance, while Elordi’s Oscar-nominated turn as Frankenstein’s Monster showed he can play a brooding antihero. The cast also includes Hong Chau, Martin Clunes and Jessica Knappett, plus Adolescence’s Owen Cooper as a young Heathcliff, while Charlie XCX gives the soundtrack a haunting modern air.
The reviews for this have been broadly but not overwhelmingly positive, with particular praise for the leading pair and the look of the film. If you’re after a date movie for Valentine’s Day, this stylish adaptation is perfect.
- Wuthering Heights on IMDB
- Wuthering Heights on Rotten Tomatoes
Crime 101
Davis (Chris Hemsworth) is a professional thief, known for hitting high value targets along Route 101. He is being pursued by Lou (Mark Ruffalo), a tenacious detective hellbent on stopping his crime wave and bringing him in. Yes, this is Heat with Thor and the Hulk (plus Catwoman, Joker and an earlier Hulk’s dad for good measure). Looking to pull off one final job, Davis recruits jaded insurance company manager Sharon (Halle Berry) to direct him to some of her wealthier clients.
This might not be the most original premise, but cop vs robber films are often a lot of fun. Hemsworth and Ruffalo are great casting choices – they worked well together in Thor: Ragnarok and the other Avengers movies, which should give their scenes some added chemistry. Plus Ruffalo played a similarly dedicated investigator in the brilliant Spotlight – he’s great at playing a likeable, earnest everyman, while Hemsworth is perfect as a suave, confident criminal. Meanwhile, Halle Berry is probably just enjoying getting to help rob some jewellery without having to put on tight leather and reel off a load of cat puns. The stacked cast also includes Nick Nolte, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro and Corey Hawkins.
As an Amazon production this will probably be available for streaming sooner than you might expect, so if it looks like it’s up your street be sure to catch it on the big screen while you can.
- Crime 101 on IMDB
- Crime 101 on Rotten Tomatoes
GOAT
Caleb McLaughlin (Stranger Things’ Lucas) stars in GOAT as Will, a small goat with big dreams of playing professional roarball – a sport dominated by the biggest and fiercest animals – alongside his idol Jett Fillmore (Gabrielle Union). His natural talent gives him the big break he needs, but how long will he last against so many beasts and predators?
The concept here kind of writes itself – a sports movie about a goat becoming the Greatest Of All Time. The anthropomorphic setting could be part of the same world as Zootropolis – there are some nice character designs and animal jokes to entertain the kids (black panther Jett listening to meme cat music on her headphones is a great touch). And the animation looks brilliant – this comes from Sony Pictures Animation, who were also responsible for the Spider-Verse movies and last year’s mega-hit K-Pop Demon Hunters, and it combines those films’ painterly textures with a reduced frame-rate kinesis that evokes the grungy street basketball that gives the film its inspiration.
As with Wuthering Heights (and there won’t be many comparisons between those two films), the reviews suggest that the style is the main selling point as the substance is a little lacking in depth and originality. But with half term coming up, this will certainly keep the kids entertained.
- GOAT on IMDB
- GOAT on Rotten Tomatoes
Whistle
Chrys (Dafne Keen) and her high school friends find an ancient Aztec death whistle which, when blown, summons their future deaths to hunt them down.
Keen has been someone to watch for a while now, ever since her appearances as X-23 in Logan (reprised in Deadpool & Wolverine) and anchoring the BBC’s His Dark Materials adaptation. This film feels like her official graduation from child actress to teen movie actress, and the physicality of her X-23 role will have prepared her well for the amount of running she will inevitably have to do as a horror lead. The rest of the teenage cast is less well known, but Nick Frost and Michelle Fairley are among the adults hoping to avoid a sticky end. And the reviews seem to be saying that some of those ends are very impressively sticky – director Corin Hardy (The Nun) has gone all out on the gore, which horror fans will probably enjoy a lot.
- Whistle on IMDB
- Whistle on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
WutheRIng, WutheRIng, WutheRIng Heights! Heathcliff! It’s me, it’s Cathy, I’ve come home…
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Send Help
- Shelter
- Hamlet
Trailer of the Week
The fact that Nicolas Cage’s Superman movie never got made has become such a legend that the star (who is such a big fan of the Man of Steel that he named his son Kal-El) has dedicated part of his career to referencing it. He voiced the character in the animated Teen Titans Go! To The Movies, made a brief cameo appearance as the hero fighting a giant spider in another universe in the Flash, and played a wannabe superhero in Kick-Ass. But where DC has skirted around giving him a starring role, Marvel (or more accurately, Sony) is stepping in to finally give him the lead as a top tier superhero. Or at least a version of one. Reprising his voice role in the first Spider-verse film, Cage is playing a live action version of Spider-Noir, the ’20s emo detective version of Spider-Man, in a new series coming soon to Prime Video. If the new teaser trailer is anything to go by, he’s having a whale of a time in full crazy Nic mode, swinging through the shadows of New York and getting plaaasteeered after bar fights. Intriguingly, there will be two versions of the show available – a full colour one and an ‘authentic’ black and white noir one (which has to be the way to go, surely…). You’ll be able to take your pick, or watch both, when it comes to Prime on 27 May.
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