Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we run you through the biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. This week: friendly aliens and considerably less friendly zombies…
A quick plug before we get into it – this weekend as part of High Vis Comic-Con, the free comic convention in Kings Heath, Birmingham Anime Film Festival is hosting a screening of Mirai and Promare at the Station pub. Mirai tells the story of a young boy who discovers a magical garden that allows him to communicate with his relatives through time, while the stylishly animated Promare follows a group of firefighting mecha in a futuristic world where some people have developed pyrokinetic abilities. It’s promising to be a beautiful day for wandering around Kings Heath and taking in all that High Vis has to offer, but if you need a break from the heat, come along to one of the screenings and say hello!
Back to the Roundup and the 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.
28 Years Later
28 Days Later, and to a lesser extent its sequel 28 Weeks Later, were landmark films in the zombie genre. Earlier entries like George A Romero’s …of the Dead films cast their walking corpses as slow, shambling wrecks that were rarely threatening on their own, but collectively represented an inevitable, inescapable wave of change that would eventually consume the world. Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland threw that template in the bin, giving their zombies a bit of an adrenaline shot and in the process creating something far more exciting – and more terrifying. The early shot of a deserted and trashed London is so iconic that the Walking Dead pilot episode was practically a shot for shot remake. 23 years after the original (you have to wonder why they couldn’t wait another five years) Boyle and Garland are back with a threequel.
This time around, post-apocalyptic Britain has settled into a new normality. Zombies are still a serious threat, but some communities have learned to protect themselves and start to live their lives. One such community has settled on Lindisfarne, with a heavily fortified causeway separating them from the corpse-infested mainland. But when one of their number leaves the island, they discover that the rage virus has mutated, and the other survivors have changed too.
The first film made a star out of the now Oscar-winning Cillian Murphy, so as you would expect there’s a great cast in this one too. The Lindisfarne group includes Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, while Ralph Fiennes appears to be playing one of the less civilised survivors on the mainland, looking a far cry from his immaculately dressed cardinal in Conclave. The trailer shows that the zombies are very much still full of beans and hungry for something meatier, but (following a theme from the previous films) the living are the bigger threat – it probably wasn’t a zombie who built the rather sinister towers of skulls that upcoming sequel The Bone Temple is named after.
This is a must-see for horror aficionados or fans of British filmmaking.
- 28 Years Later on IMDB
- 28 Years Later on Rotten Tomatoes
Elio
A new Pixar film is always a wonderful thing. Last year’s Inside Out 2 became the highest grossing animated movie of all time (before being overtaken by Chinese film Ne Zha 2). The studio has always been great at coming up with original, heartwarming concepts and Elio looks like it’s following in that tradition.
The film follows Elio, a lonely boy living with his soldier mother on an American military base who dreams of being abducted by aliens. He gets his wish after managing to send a message out into space using the base’s communication equipment, and is mistaken by the alien community as the leader of Earth. He quickly makes friends with a similarly lonely extraterrestrial slug-like creature named Glordon, and starts to find his place in the universe.
This looks really sweet. Elio and Glordon are both very appealing characters (only Pixar can take an eyeless alien slug with rows of shark-like teeth and make it cute), and although the story of a lost kid learning he belongs somewhere is a bit of a kids’ movie staple it will still pluck at the heartstrings. There is some wonderfully inventive animation in the range of alien races that Elio meets and the ships they live on and it all looks as gorgeous as you would expect from Pixar. The cast includes recent Oscar winner Zoe Saldaña as Elio’s mum, plus Brad Garrett, Jameela Jamil and Shirley Henderson (whose character is simply named ‘Ooooo’).
If you need to entertain your kids this week this is definitely the film to go for (and not just by default). But even if you don’t have kids it should still be well worth a watch.
- Elio on IMDB
- Elio on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Two very different films on offer so it really depends what mood you’re in, but I’m giving it to 28 Years Later.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
Trailer of the Week
Slightly controversial one this week, but the trailer has just been released for season 2 of The Sandman on Netflix. The first season was widely regarded at the time as a huge success, telling the story of Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) as he quested to reclaim his powers and restore the Dreaming after being imprisoned by an occultist for decades. Since then however, some truly disturbing stories have come out about Neil Gaiman, the author on whose graphic novel series the program is based. The second season of The Sandman was already well into production by that point but it will now likely be the last, as many Gaiman adaptations have been dropped by production companies suddenly eager to distance themselves from his name. I do not, for a second, want to downplay the seriousness of the allegations against Gaiman – if they are true, and it sounds likely that they are, he is clearly a deeply disturbed and awful man. However, he is also an incredibly talented storyteller, and prior to these revelations coming to light would have been the first person I’d think of if you asked me to name my favourite author. And unlike most books, a TV show is very much a collaborative effort – Gaiman may be cancelled, but that shouldn’t detract from the excellent work done by the legion of actors, producers, directors, scriptwriters, costume artists, effects teams, animators, set builders, sound mixers and so on who have brought his creation to the screen. Take the art on its own merits and this season looks just as compelling as the first, with an excellent supporting cast, moody gothic tone, high fantasy stakes and creepy monsters. I am sure there will be people who want to boycott this due to Gaiman’s involvement, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for doing so, but it looks like they will be missing out on a great show.
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