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. There are loads of good ones this week so I’ll dive straight in…
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.
Cold Storage
Featuring one of the stars of Stranger Things, the wasteland setting of Fallout, and the fungal undead of The Last Of Us, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the writer of Cold Storage has been streaming too many big sci-fi shows. But when that writer is the legendary David Koepp, writer of Jurassic Park, Spider-Man and Mission: Impossible, odds are it’s going to be just as entertaining as its obvious influences.
Cold Storage follows Teacake (Joe “Steve “The Hair” Harrington” Keery) and Naomi (Georgina Campbell), two employees of a storage company built on the site of a former nuclear military base. But when they open a secret lab in the basement, they accidentally unleash a parasitic fungus that transforms its hosts into mindless monsters. With help from Liam Neeson, they have to contain the infection again before it spreads and risks bringing about the end of the world.
Director Jonny Campbell’s only previous big screen output is the 2006 Ant & Dec vehicle Alien Autopsy, but since then he has done some solid TV work including episodes of Doctor Who, Westworld and Mark Gatiss’s excellent Dracula mini-series. The tone here looks very tongue-in-cheek, with silly humour and a neon colour palette to lighten up the schlocky violence and gross infected critters. Expect a lot of splatter in a variety of colours and consistencies. Keery looks well-cast, although if this exact film had been marketed as a Stranger Things spin-off about Steve taking a summer job then I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye. Maybe ‘Teacake’ is just The Hair’s new nickname, and this is actually the secret final episode of the show…
Regardless of whether it’s its own thing or a Frankenstein’s monster made of bits of everyone’s favourite TV shows stitched together, this currently has a very respectable 77% on Rotten Tomatoes and looks like a lot of fun.
- Cold Storage on IMDB
- Cold Storage on Rotten Tomatoes
Wasteman
Tonally about as far from Cold Storage as it gets, Wasteman stars David Jonsson (who I still think was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his brilliant performance in The Long Walk) as Taylor, a prison inmate desperate to get out and see his son. A new government policy to deal with the prison overcrowding problem puts the prospect of an early release on the table if he can maintain his good behaviour, but that dream is threatened by the arrival of his new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth). Dee quickly establishes a drug-dealing business in the prison, having his wares flown in by drone and intimidating the guards into turning a blind eye. Unable to escape Dee’s sphere of influence, can Taylor stay in the prison’s good books?
I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Jonsson and Blyth are both very promising young talents who have had a good run recently (Jonsson in Rye Lane, Alien: Romulus and the aforementioned The Long Walk, and Blyth most notably in Hunger Games prequel A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes). Jonsson is great at roles with a bit of sadness behind the eyes, while Blyth looks suitably charismatic and intimidating. Behind the camera, the producers include Philip Barantini who directed the similarly tense Adolescence and Boiling Point.
Wasteman promises to be both a thrilling drama and a scathing look at the state of the British prison service, reportedly based on the accounts and videos of real life inmates (and with former inmates fleshing out the supporting cast). It won’t be an easy watch, but it should be a very rewarding one.
- Wasteman on IMDB
- Wasteman on Rotten Tomatoes
The Secret Agent
I went to a preview of this earlier in the week. Set in 1970s Brazil, The Secret Agent follows Marcelo (Wagner Moura) as he moves to a refugee safe house with the intention of reconnecting with his son Fernando. As the story unfolds, the film reveals more about his past, present and future as he negotiates corrupt police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes), hitman Augusto (Roney Villela), and a severed hairy leg found in a shark.
I am deliberately trying to avoid giving too much of the story away – the film takes a leisurely pace at the start and doesn’t get into the meat of the narrative for a good hour. But it’s never boring – there’s a wonderfully colourful cast of supporting characters flitting in and out of the story, all of whom feel like real people you could sit down and have a fascinating conversation with. Special mention goes to Tânia Maria’s Dona Sebastiana, the instantly lovable old landlady at the safe house and her two-faced cat. Equally colourful is the setting, with a backdrop that takes in both the highs (Carnival!) and the lows (authoritarianism!) of Brazil at the time.
The theme of parenthood runs through the whole film – just about every major character has a tragic relationship with a father, mother or child somewhere in their backstory. Tied to that is a profound musing on legacy and remembrance, epitomised by the occasional cutaway to some present-day research students listening to old tapes of Marcelo and his friends. Death is also a constant presence, from the abandoned corpse in the yard of a highway petrol station at the very beginning, to the excitement of the penultimate act. The very end of the film feels a little anticlimactic, and might divide some opinions, but it works well with the themes of the story and brings it to a very clear conclusion.
I absolutely loved this film, and it’s already doing well with critics. The Secret Agent has been nominated for four Oscars, including Best Film, Best Actor (for Wagner Moura), Best International Film and the new award for Best Casting. It has to be a very strong contender for International Film, although faces competition from Sentimental Value. At the time of writing it has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite all of that, this is a foreign film that hasn’t had much fanfare so don’t expect it to be in the cinemas for long – I thoroughly recommend seeing it on a big screen while you can.
- The Secret Agent on IMDB
- The Secret Agent on Rotten Tomatoes
The Testament of Ann Lee
The Testament of Ann Lee is a musical depicting the rise of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), founder of the Shaker Movement, as she travels from Manchester to New York to found a utopian society.
The Shakers were so called because they would worship through ecstatic dance, so giving an 18th century period drama about a Christian sect the musical treatment is not as far-fetched as it might seem. Seyfried has some strong musical heritage now following her roles in the film versions of Les Miserables and Mamma Mia, and a lot of the early reviews (which have been very positive) are saying that this is one of her career highlights. The cast also includes Lewis Pullman (son of Bill) and Thomasin McKenzie.
This one is written by Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, who also co-wrote The Brutalist, and is directed by Fastvold. It promises to present an unusually feminist take on a period and a religion where women were often expected to sit meekly on the sidelines. The music heard in the trailer sounds great, with a mixture of rhythmic chanting to evoke the religious setting and melodic ballads to show off what Seyfried is capable of.
This looks intriguing and completely different to anything else out at the moment. It should be well worth a watch.
- The Testament of Ann Lee on IMDB
- The Testament of Ann Lee on Rotten Tomatoes
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
In an LA diner, a man (Sam Rockwell) appears claiming to be from the future and looking to avert the apocalypse. AI, he proclaims, will shortly bring about the end of the world, and that diner, on that night, happens to contain just the right combination of people (including Juno Temple, Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz) to maybe have a shot at stopping it.
This looks like an absolutely ridiculous delight. Sam Rockwell is always great fun, and this looks like just the right level of charismatic insanity that he excels at. There is so much weirdness in the trailer that it will be impressive that the film manages to fit it all in, from gigantic hoofed beasts, to a tornado of menacing sci-fi tentacles, to kinda cute killer robots, to considerably less cute evil dolls. But the main villain here is technology, with VR headsets and sinister apps on mobile screens turning teens into zombie-like drones. It’s certainly a timely message with the rise of AI permeating every facet of the world at the moment.
This is director Gore Verbinski’s first film since 2016’s A Cure For Wellness, and it looks like it will be every bit as fun as his Pirates films (although possibly also just as overstuffed). The reviews have been positive, with 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, showing it should live up to the promise of its trailer.
- Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die on IMDB
- Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die on Rotten Tomatoes
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Last but by no means least this week is If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (it’s a good week for long surreal titles…). This one stars Rose Byrne as Linda, a psychiatrist whose own life and sanity are rapidly fraying. With her husband (Christian Slater) largely absent with work and having little more of a presence than a derisive voice on the phone, Linda is left to care for her daughter who suffers from a serious eating disorder. Meanwhile an ominous hole appears in their ceiling, forcing them to relocate to a hotel, and one of Linda’s patients mysteriously disappears. Can she hold onto her sanity while everything around her is falling apart?
I went to a preview of this a few weeks ago and it’s an excellent film, at turns darkly comic, painfully stressful and awfully depressing (a disastrous attempt to acquire a hamster epitomises all three). Rose Byrne has been deservedly nominated for a Best Actress Oscar – Linda is a fascinating character who you don’t know whether to root for or despair over, as her spiralling situation leads to her making choices that take greater and greater liberties with her wellbeing and that of the people around her. She’s kind of a terrible mother, but thanks to Byrne’s performance it’s hard not to feel sympathetic. In an interesting artistic choice, her daughter is almost never shown on screen, making it harder to see her as an independent character and instead really highlighting all the ways in which she makes Linda’s life that much more difficult. The cast also includes Conan O’Brien as Linda’s therapist/ co-worker and A$AP Rocky as another patron at the hotel.
If you’re going through a particularly stressful time of your life, I honestly don’t know whether this film will provide some catharsis (and maybe a touch of schadenfreude) or send you over the edge. Otherwise though, I would strongly recommend it.
- If I Had Legs I’d Kick You on IMDB
- If I Had Legs I’d Kick You on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
It’s a really, really tough one to call this week – I think there are (at least) four films here in particular with a strong case for Film of the Week. But for a number of reasons I’m going with The Secret Agent.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Wuthering Heights
- Crime 101
- Send Help
Trailer of the Week
I’m picking two Trailers of the Week this week, because I thought I had one picked but then a few new ones have dropped today that I can’t ignore. Firstly, the new trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu gives us a little more insight into the plot, with Din Djarin and his precocious protégé going up against the Hutts, the Empire and a whole host of aliens and monsters. Supporting our heroes on the side of the light, there is Sigourney Weaver and a brief appearance of Zeb from Star Wars: Rebels. This looks like a good rollicking space adventure that captures both the scale of the Star Wars movies and the heart of the Mandalorian TV show. And Grogu nibbles on a biscuit.
Finally, we also have the first full trailer for Toy Story 5. Continuing the AI/technology-is-bad theme from Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, but scaling it down for little kids, this one sees the Toys go up against the hypnotic lights of a children’s tablet called Lily Pad (voiced by Greta Lee). The animation style seems to have been updated in places, with a playtime story in Bonnie’s imagination rendered in painted pastels instead of the usual CGI – showing the influence of the Spider-Verse films and Pixar’s own experimentation in films like Turning Red. Which seems appropriate for a film about the clash between the old and the new. But rest assured, all of the classic characters are returning, including Woody (Tom Hanks), coming out of retirement sporting a poncho and bald patch, and Buzz (Tim Allen) enlisting the help of an army of fellow space rangers. Toy Story 3 was the perfect ending to the trilogy, but Toy Story 4 was good enough to justify its existence. Can the fifth entry live up to the rest of the franchise, or will it fall (with style) into oblivion? We’ll find out when it hits cinemas in June.
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