Hello, and welcome to this week’s film roundup! Each week we take you through the biggest, newest, shiniest cinema releases to give you our take on what looks good and what looks great. This week’s offerings include Donald Trump and buckets of pig’s blood, although unfortunately not in the combination you’re now picturing…
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.
Smile 2
Following Trap as the second horror trailer to heavily feature a big flashy pop concert, Smile 2 is the sequel to the 2022 hit in which a demon haunts victims by making them see an unhinged smiling face everywhere, eventually driving them to commit suicide in front of the next victim. Desperately trying to turn their frown back the right way up this time is Naomi Scott’s Skye Riley – a pop singer about to embark on a global tour. Can she find a way to escape the curse?
The first Smile film was a genuinely good original horror. A smile is supposed to be a happy expression but there is nothing happy about the demented rictus grins that its cast managed to contort their faces into. Horror films have a pretty well-established set of rules by now, including what environments should be safe spaces where the audience can take a breath, but Smile did away with all of that – the scares were just as likely to come in the daylight among big groups of people as they were when the heroes were alone in the dark. And there was some truly disturbing imagery. My local cinema played the trailer a lot, and the bit where someone comes up to a car window and their head snaps down to look through really got to me every time. The only disappointment for me was [SPOILERS] seeing the being behind it all at the end – the relatively low budget started to show, and it lanced a lot of the tension that the rest of the film had built up so well. But that’s a minor gripe, and it obviously didn’t put audiences off – it grossed over $217 million worldwide on a $17 million budget, pretty much guaranteeing this sequel.
Where the first film provided a commentary on mental health, this one looks set to focus on the pressures of fame and celebrity. It feels like a perfect thematic fit for a concept that revolves around fake smiles and delusions. The reviews I’ve seen have a lot of praise for Naomi Scott, who is best known for playing Jasmine in the live action Aladdin remake – she proved in that film that she’s got the vocal talent to take on the concert scenes, but it’s pretty clear from this trailer that she’s also very good at looking utterly terrified.
If you’re a horror fan, this is probably the best new scary movie coming out this Halloween season, and is a bit of a must-see (especially if you enjoyed the first one). If you’re not a horror fan, the next film on our list might put more of a smile on your face…
- Smile 2 on IMDB
- Smile 2 on Rotten Tomatoes
The Wild Robot
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. A robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) crash lands on a planet inhabited only by woodland creatures and has to figure out how to change her programming to work for the animals instead of humans. As she adapts to her wild environment, she finds herself looking after a gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor) and learns to be a mother, too.
The early teaser trailers had almost no dialogue and relied heavily on visual storytelling, with Roz encountering different creatures and mimicking their behaviour to understand how they cope with their environment. I would have been entirely happy if that had been the approach for the whole film, but later trailers have shown there is plenty of dialogue too. The voice cast is actually pretty incredible – as well as Nyong’o, there’s the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal (playing a fox named Fink who becomes like the father figure in Roz and Brightbill’s surrogate family), Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill and Catherine O’Hara.
The animation here is absolutely stunning. Taking the painterly style made popular by the Spider-Verse films, which Dreamworks previously used to great effect in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, the rough textures and rich, vibrant colours are perfect for bringing the forested landscape to life. It looks like an old oil painting of the American wilderness, and contrasts beautifully with the much more modern, sleek edges and artificial glow of Roz’s futuristic body. She is clearly very other, but still warm and appealing thanks to some nice character design full of unthreatening curves and circles.
Dreamworks has always lived in the shadow of Pixar (who have had a successful year with the record-breaking Inside Out 2), often favouring pop-culture gags and immature humour that will entertain the children over carefully crafted works of art that will be popular with critics. But at their best, they can absolutely still turn out some top quality films. Their best to date is the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, the first of which was directed by Chris Sanders, who also directs The Wild Robot. He clearly knows how to inject some heart in with the humour. This is also getting some great buzz from America, where it has been out for a few weeks now – it’s already done so well at the domestic box office that a sequel has just been green-lit.
Whether you need to entertain the kids this half term, or you want a break from the Halloween horror season, or you just want to bask in what promises to be a beautiful bit of cinema, this is definitely one to watch.
- The Wild Robot on IMDB
- The Wild Robot on Rotten Tomatoes
The Apprentice
From an artificial being with a lot of heart and soul, to a real person with neither of those things. The Apprentice is a timely biopic about Donald Trump’s (Sebastian Stan) rise to prominence, with a particular focus on his relationship with lawyer and mentor figure Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).
Sebastian Stan has been getting a lot of praise for his portrayal of Trump, but Roy Cohn feels like the more interesting figure. Between this and Succession, Jeremy Strong is in danger of being typecast as characters with more money than morals, in this film playing the man who taught the future president how enough selfish ruthlessness can get you anything you want. Although the movie is named after the reality show that cemented Trump’s celebrity status, Trump is the apprentice here to Cohn’s morally bankrupt master. And yet, as the film progresses, Trump will out-sleaze Cohn to the top. The other major character is Ivana Trump, played by Maria Bakalova, who has come a long way since playing Borat’s daughter (and trying to seduce Trump ally Rudy Giuliani) in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
The Apprentice has received a lot of backlash from the American right wing, who disagree with its portrayal of the former president, especially when he’s running for office again and this could actually turn some undecided voters off him if they weren’t familiar with his backstory. With any luck they’ll be right. Trump himself is reportedly threatening to sue the filmmakers over a particular scene involving marital rape. It wouldn’t surprise me if this nets Stan or Strong an Oscar nomination, even if the Academy only votes for it to annoy Trump even further. In any event, this looks like it’s going to be a great film with some top acting and deeply unlikeable protagonists.
- The Apprentice on IMDB
- The Apprentice on Rotten Tomatoes
My Hero Academia: You’re Next
For those unfamiliar with the anime, My Hero Academia is set in a world where most people have superpowers, called ‘quirks’. The world’s greatest hero, All Might, bestows his quirk on the previously powerless Izuku and helps him enrol in a school for superheroes. It has run for seven seasons to date and spawned a few spin-off movies already, with this latest being set just after the end of season six. Izuku and his friends must face off against a new threat named Dark Might.
The first five seasons are on Netflix and I have been meaning to watch them for a while, but haven’t got round to it yet, so there’s not an awful lot I can say about this one. I am aware that it is a hugely popular franchise, and will have a massive fan-base flocking to see it – if you are one of those fans then you won’t need me to sell it to you. If you’re not into the series then a lot of the film will likely be lost on you, but even then – it’s basically an anime X-Men movie if mutants made up the majority of the world’s population instead of the minority, so if you like your superhero movies you’ll probably still enjoy it. Maybe binge a few episodes on Netflix before heading out to the cinema just to get a bit of a feel for the characters and world.
- My Hero Academia: You’re Next on IMDB
- My Hero Academia: You’re Next on Rotten Tomatoes
Carrie
Our final film this week is the seminal 1976 horror Carrie, which is getting a cinema re-release following a 4k restoration. In case you haven’t seen it, Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is a shy girl who gets bullied at school and controlled at home by her overbearing religious mother (Piper Laurie). But Carrie is more powerful than any of them realise, and when her classmates pull a prank on her, everything goes very bad very quickly.
The second Stephen King adaptation in a fortnight after last week’s remake of Salem’s Lot, Carrie is a true horror classic. It might not be the scariest movie by modern standards, but its themes of isolation, repression, and the importance of treating others as you want to be treated are just as relevant today as they were in the ’70s. Sissy Spacek gives a perfectly measured and sympathetic performance – even though she’s the one bringing the fire and blood by the end of the film, it always feels like the real monsters are the various people in her life who drove her to that point, and there’s a certain catharsis in seeing her finally able to unleash her emotions in the climax.
Whether you’ve seen it before or you’re coming to it for the first time, it’s great to have an excuse to see Carrie on a big screen.
- Carrie on IMDB
- Carrie on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
With gorgeous visuals and universal appeal, the film of the week this week is The Wild Robot.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Transformers One
- Joker: Folie a Deux
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Trailer of the week
Yesterday saw the release of a first trailer for The Legend of Ochi – an A24 film that I hadn’t heard anything about before. The plot sees a young girl in an island community on the Black Sea befriend a mythical creature feared in local legends, and she sets out to help it against the wishes of her family and friends who see it as a threat. As a broad narrative it’s been done many times before – see ET, for example – but rarely has the misunderstood creature been quite so adorable as Ochi, who looks like a cross between Grogu and a golden lion tamarin. This also has Willem Dafoe running round in silly ceremonial armour for no obvious reason, which is disappointingly lacking in most other films. It looks really sweet and magical, and is being compared to pre-Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson movies in its tone and world-building. The cast also includes newcomer Helena Zengel in the lead role, plus Finn Wolfhard and Emily Watson.
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