Hello, and welcome to this week’s Film Roundup – taking you through the biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. Today we have a satanic simian and an Oscar contender for your consideration…
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.
The Monkey
As everyone who’s seen Toy Story 3 will know, little toy monkeys with percussion instruments can be pretty terrifying. Based on a Stephen King short story (which, now I come to think of it, probably also inspired the Toy Story character), The Monkey tells the story of twin brothers Bill and Hal who find an old monkey toy in their father’s attic. When people around them start dying in gruesome ways every time the monkey taps its drum, they throw it away and try to move on with their lives. But when the monkey reappears a few decades later (with the brothers now played by Theo James), can they find a way to be rid of it once and for all?
There are some big names in horror behind the camera for this one, on top of it being based on a Stephen King story. The director is Osgood Perkins, who recently made his impressive debut with Longlegs. Like that film, this has hints of a supernatural evil exerting its influence over a slice of small-town America. It’s produced by James Wan, the man behind Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring. The cast in front of the camera looks promising too: Theo James was great in The Gentlemen, which has a similar balance of humour and violence, and there are also appearances from Tatiana ‘She-Hulk’ Maslany and Elijah Wood.
The Monkey feels like a cross between It and Final Destination. Stephen King’s authorship is very apparent in the tale of children overcoming a monster, only for it to return for them to have to vanquish it again as adults. But the monkey is not, in and of itself, as threatening a figure as Pennywise the Clown – like Death in the Final Destination movies, it isn’t killing its victims itself, but causing things to happen that inevitably lead to a big bloody mess. The draw is seeing the inventive Rube Goldberg setups that bring the gore. It might not be the most subtle style of horror, but there is a certain tension that creeps in when your favourite character walks past Chekhov’s Loose Bit Of Wiring or Chekhov’s Spikey Thing Dangling From The Ceiling.
If you want to see some over-the-top, inventively entertaining horror, this is the film for you. But if you have young kids, they might be better off with Toy Story 3…
- The Monkey on IMDB
- The Monkey on Rotten Tomatoes
I’m Still Here
I’m Still Here is the last of the ten films nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars to get a UK cinematic release. Based on a true story, it recounts how Brazilian congressman Rubens Paiva – a critic of the country’s new military dictatorship in 1971 – was taken from his home by government officials and disappeared. Told from the perspective of his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres), it focuses on her efforts to find the truth of what happened to him.
Directed by Walter Salles, who also made The Motorcycle Diaries and produced City of God, I’m Still Here frames the politics around a family drama, with the focus on Eunice trying to raise her children with no idea if or when their father might return. It’s a very different kind of horror to The Monkey – one that’s much easier to sympathise with, like a home invasion movie where the invasion is government sanctioned. The shots in the trailer of life in Rio look beautiful, with archive footage and old-school filming techniques creating a dreamy nostalgic effect to portray an idyllic world soon to be interrupted.
This looks like a thrilling drama, and a timely reminder that dictators who make their opponents disappear are rightly regarded as villains in the history books. As well as Best Picture, this is up for Best International Feature Film and Torres is up for Best Actress. There is some stiff competition in two of those categories, but this has a very real shot of winning International Feature – its biggest rival is fellow Best Picture nominee Emilia Pérez, but that will likely have lost a lot of favour thanks to some of the controversial public comments by its star Karla Sofía Gascón (who is also up for Best Actress, and some of her comments were directed at Torres). It’s absolutely worth seeing on the big screen while you can, and certainly ahead of the Oscars ceremony in a couple of weeks.
- I’m Still Here on IMDB
- I’m Still Here on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
It’s a tough one this week given how completely different the two films are, and it really comes down to what you’re most in the mood for, but with the Oscars just a couple of weeks away I have to go for the one that’s been judged one of the best films of the year. Plus, ironically, The Monkey will still be in cinemas here next week, but I’m Still Here probably won’t…
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Captain America: Brave New World – Despite the title, there is nothing brave or new about this one – it’s formulaic and predictable, but in a comfortable sort of way. This is the sort of Marvel film that doesn’t try anything experimental – you know exactly what you’re getting, and if that’s all you want to see then this is a perfectly entertaining couple of hours. Anthony Mackie does a great job of holding it all together, and if he’s going to be leading the next generation of Avengers then this is a promising start to the next phase of the MCU. Ultimately though, this is likely to go down as the weakest Marvel film of the year compared to the funnier Thunderbolts* and the more intriguing Fantastic Four.
- Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
- Companion
Trailer of the week
Somehow, in between filming the massive (and, I would imagine, very physically demanding) blockbusters of Fantastic Four, Gladiator 2 and season 2 of The Last of Us, Pedro Pascal has found the time to squeeze in an intriguing ’80s-set anthology movie. In Freaky Tales, Pascal plays Clint, who is hired for a heist to steal a horde of Asian artefacts from a basketball prodigy, Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis). Only Floyd’s interest in Asian artefacts apparently includes an affinity for samurai swords, and he’s not letting anyone take his stuff without a fight. The story is told from four different perspectives, a la Go or Pulp Fiction, and it all seems to escalate very, very quickly. This looks like bonkers fun with a cool ’80s vibe and a great cast, which also includes Ben Mendelsohn and, although he doesn’t appear in the trailer, Tom Hanks. There’s no official UK release date yet, but hopefully we’ll see just how freaky it gets shortly after the US release in early April.
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