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: a man in a whale, some mortals in combat, and two girls in trouble…
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 start, a bit of good news…
Mockingbird makes BIFA’s Cinema of the Year longlist
Long-time friend of the podcast The Mockingbird, Digbeth’s much-loved independent cinema, has been selected for the British Independent Film Awards’ Cinema of the Year longlist – one of only 15 cinemas from across the UK. This is a huge achievement – the longlist is selected based on public voting and testimonies, meaning the selection is all down to the overwhelming amount of positivity and love that fans of the cinema have shown for it.
The Mockingbird is everything that an independent cinema should be. Alongside all the big modern releases, it shows a broad range of low budget indie films and foreign movies that simply won’t get shown in multiplexes, plus event screenings like the ever-popular Movies With Wine, themed seasons of classic cinema from all ages, support for local filmmakers and film-loving communities, and of course hosting local film festivals like Forward Film & Television Festival, Flatpack Festival, and our very own Birmingham Anime Film Festival. The fact that they accomplish all of this across just two screens shows what bigger cinemas should be capable of if they cared even half as much about the magic of the movies as these guys do. If you ever read about an interesting film on these Roundups that you can’t find in Odeon or Cineworld, chances are you’ll be able to watch it at the Mockingbird.
From all of us at Geeky Brummie, we’d like to extend a huge and heartfelt congratulations to everyone at the Mockingbird for this fantastic and well-earned achievement. Best of luck for the next stages of the competition, and here’s hoping they get Paul Mescal in to present the award…
Whalefall
In the second film in the space of a month that will make you glad you’re not Austin Abrams, the Resident Evil actor plays Jay Gardiner, a scuba diver looking for the remains of his late father (Josh Brolin). But disaster strikes when he’s caught by the desperate tentacles of a giant squid just as the two of them are swallowed whole by a sperm whale. With just an hour of oxygen left in his tank and in the company of a very distressed squid, can Jay escape the whale’s stomach in one piece?
This follows in the footsteps (or should that be wake?) of many films that focus on a single person trapped in a confined space facing a challenging ordeal to get out. Ryan Reynolds faced a similar problem in Buried, as did James Franco in 127 Hours. But it’s hard to think of a film that stacks the odds against its hero quite as horrifically as Whalefall does. Being trapped underwater is terrifying enough on its own – the sort of primal fear of drowning that everyone can relate to on some level. The ticking clock of the oxygen tank increases the pressure. Add to that the horror of being swallowed by a gigantic creature, and having to fight off a tentacled nightmare in close quarters, and this is shaping up to be a uniquely tense cinema experience. It also makes a nice change to have a whale as the threat, rather than a toothier animal like a shark or crocodile – Pinocchio aside, they’re normally portrayed as gentle giants.
Whether that set-up will hold an audience’s attention for a full hour-and-three-quarters movie will depend on the strength of Abrams’ performance and whether writer-director Brian Duffield can find enough plot moments to keep the tension up. The story is based on a book by Daniel Kraus, which should mean there is plenty of story to fill the runtime. It includes flashbacks of scenes between Jay and his father, which should give Abrams a chance to flex his acting muscles a bit more than he can in an oxygen mask being squashed in a whale. If those scenes can develop his character enough for us to care about him then the main survival plot will carry a lot more weight.
Overall this looks like a fun, original idea that is sure to have everyone on the edge of their seat, and probably terrified to set foot in the sea again.
- Whalefall on IMDB
- Whalefall on Rotten Tomatoes
Street Fighter
Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo) are recruited by Chun Li (Callina Liang) to enter the World Warrior Tournament. But when they find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy, they’ll have to put their old differences aside to survive.
Coming out just a few months after the latest Mortal Kombat movie, this is bound to invite comparisons with the other massive beat’em up gaming-turned-movie franchise. The initial impression given by the trailer is that this is taking itself a lot less seriously (despite MK making great strides in that direction with the introduction of Karl Urban’s Johnny Cage) and should be much more fun as a result. Fleshing a decent storyline out of what is essentially just an excuse to have various fighters punch each other is always going to be a challenge, and the trailer doesn’t give too much away in that respect. But everyone is really here for the fight scenes, and they look excellent – paying plenty of respect to the characters’ abilities in the games with tongue firmly wedged in cheek when it comes to the more outlandish powers.
And there are plenty of characters drawing from the games’ extensive roster. As well as the central 3, there’s David Dastmalchian as M Bison, Jason Momoa as Blanka, Olivier Richters as Zangief, Mel Jarnson as Cammy, Orville Peck as Vega, Cody Rhodes as Guile, 50 Cent as Balrog, and Eric André as announcer Don Sauvage, plus many more. It also has nods to the games’ soundscape and play style as Easter eggs for the gamers in the audience.
Fans of the game won’t want to miss this, but for everyone else it should still be an entertaining couple of hours (even if I suspect certain elements won’t make loads of sense).
- Street Fighter on IMDB
- Street Fighter on Rotten Tomatoes
Forgotten Island
Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) are two best friends who grew up listening to stories of Nakali – a mythical island that they believe is out there somewhere. When they finally find it, and meet teenage dog-man Raww (Dave Franco), they find that to escape they might have to sacrifice all their memories together. Is it worth the cost?
This is the latest film from DreamWorks – a studio that’s generally less well regarded than other animation giants like Disney, Pixar and Ghibli, but often adopts a more fun tone and a sense of humour more directly appealing to the children in the audience. Forgotten Island uses the same painterly style that’s become increasingly popular in animated movies since it was used to such great effect in the Spider-Verse films, with the same frenetic energy as Puss In Boots: The Last Wish and K-Pop Demon Hunters. Although the former film (another Dreamworks entry) features heavily in this film’s advertising, the latter is clearly the bigger influence. Some Asian girls (in this case Filipino) going up against demons and relying on their sisterly bond to survive, all set to a trendy neon pink and blue colour palette, is bound to draw a similar audience to Netflix’s phenomenally successful film.
That being said, this looks like a lot of fun in its own right. It plays on the desire to hold onto the friendships we forge as children and teenagers as we move into adulthood, something that everyone in the audience will relate to on some level. The animation is effective and eyecatching, and there is some fun creature design among the denizens of Nakali, drawing on Filipino folklore. And the supporting cast includes the likes of Jenny Slate, Manny Jacinto and Ronny Chieng (playing a character named King Truffle Wuffle). It’s also getting some great reviews, with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing.
- Forgotten Island on IMDB
- Forgotten Island on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Let yourself get swallowed up by Whalefall.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- The Uprising – Although it has some very distracting ADR, you can’t go too wrong with a bunch of people going at each other with swords. Andrew Garfield gives a great performance as a reluctant revolutionary leader, wanting a peaceful and legitimate justice despite the challenges posed by his less level-headed comrades. The supporting cast is good too, even if some of them don’t last as long as you might expect them to. And as to the whole Robin Hood thing – the film is pretty clear where it stands on that by the end of it, but it feels crowbarred in for some unnecessary brand recognition.
- The Social Reckoning
- Heart of the Beast
Trailer of the Week
In the wake of the success of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, there were several filmmakers looking to capitalise on the wave of fantasy by adapting other classic novels. One of the initially more successful attempts was the Chronicles of Narnia series, which started with the best known book, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe – out of synch with the series of novels, but it paid off with a solid performance at the box office. Prince Caspian and Voyage Of The Dawn Treader followed, each being a perfectly good film but gradually feeling less and less relevant as the popularity of fantasy moved away from family friendly fare like Harry Potter and more towards the adult sex and violence of Game of Thrones. The film series didn’t so much end as peter out.
Enter Greta Gerwig, who has stepped in to revive the franchise from the canonically correct beginning with The Magician’s Nephew, but with a much more rock and roll feel. Replacing Liam Neeson and Tilda Swinton as Aslan and the White Witch are Meryl Streep and Emma Mackey, respectively, with Daniel Craig playing the titular magician Andrew Ketterley. Streep is an interesting casting choice – she can certainly give the role its required gravitas, but having an actress voice a distinctively maned lion is bound to irritate certain corners of the internet. As will the tone of the fantasy elements, although I think it looks fantastic – it evokes classic 80s fantasy and somehow works with the wartime grit of the Earth-based scenes. You just know that, if he were still alive, David Bowie would be in the cast somewhere. This first trailer shows us Aslan in a moment of creation, but stops short of playing his voice – we might have to wait until the film hits cinemas in February to see if Meryl Streep is a good fit.
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