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. This week: popstars of questionable morals, tunnels of dubious safety, and a boat of mysterious origin…
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.
Michael
Michael charts the rise of Michael Jackson from his child star origins as a member of the Jackson 5 up to his global stardom as a solo artist, culminating in his Wembley concert promoting the legendary album Bad. It stars Michael’s nephew Jaafar Jackson (son of Jermaine Jackson) as the King of Pop, with Juliano Valdi playing him as a kid.
Several members of the Jackson family are credited as executive producers here, which goes a long way to explaining why the film reportedly shies away from any hint of a mention of the controversies and allegations that surrounded Jackson in his later life and continued to grow posthumously. That doesn’t seem to have been a wise choice – not tackling those issues, which the audience is fully aware of, will make the film seem at best blinkered and at worst downright disingenuous. There was an opportunity here to delve more into the roots of that darkness – to examine how it might have been influenced by his upbringing as a child star and the expectations placed on him by his father (played by Colman Domingo). That would have made for a much more interesting and worthwhile film, instead of a fairly bland jukebox movie.
Still, there are some positives. Colman Domingo will elevate any film, and he has one of the more nuanced roles here as the patriarch and domineering manager of the Jackson family. The music scenes look spectacular, with both Valdi and (Jaafar) Jackson getting heaps of praise from critics for their performances both as Michael the person and as Michael the musician.
The critics have not been kind to Michael, with a 38% score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing designating it as bad with a lower case b. But Jackson fans will no doubt love the excuse to listen back to his biggest hits and flashiest performances in the cinema’s surround sound speakers.
- Michael on IMDB
- Michael on Rotten Tomatoes
Exit 8
It’s a good time for fans of liminal spaces at the cinema. In just over a month, the movie adaptation of the Backrooms (to the extent that a vague creepy concept made popular on 4chan can be ‘adapted’) will hit our screens. But first, we have videogame adaptation Exit 8, based on the 2023 game The Exit 8. The film focuses on an unnamed man lost in a subway station, trying to find his way out. He quickly realises that the endless maze of corridors is repeating in patterns, as are the people walking through. Only by avoiding the anomalies in the patterns will he be able to reach the exit. But as the surreal starts to give way to sinister and dangerous, will he make it out alive?
This looks like a uniquely creepy psychological horror, with a good mix of creeping unease and more overt scares. The sterile white tiles of the subway station are effectively madness-inducing, and the cast of strange figures stalking its halls somehow come across as horrible even if they’d seem perfectly normal in any other context. Western audiences might recognise leading lost man Kazunari Ninomiya from the 2006 movie Letters from Iwo Jima – he’s got a tough job here being on camera for most of the runtime, but it looks like he’s managed the right levels of confusion, terror and desperation.
Having been released in Japan last summer, Exit 8 has achieved an impressive score of 92% from critics and 87% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
- Exit 8 on IMDB
- Exit 8 on Rotten Tomatoes
Mother Mary
Mega popstar Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) visits her estranged former costumer Sam (Michaela Coel) to ask her for a new dress ahead of a big comeback gig. But as old resentments come to the surface, events take a supernatural turn.
This looks like a fantastically weird and innately creepy thriller, replete with religious iconography, candlelit shadows and spectral red cloth. Hathaway seems to be giving a great performance – full of confidence and grace on the stage but visibly more vulnerable in person when trying to reconnect with her old friend. I loved director David Lowery’s take on The Green Knight, and this looks similarly surreal in its set design and cinematography (while perhaps owing more to his Ghost Story – another spooky tale involving a sheet of fabric in a dark room).
I’m deliberately avoiding reading too much about where the plot goes, but it has a solid 70% on Rotten Tomatoes and I think looks like a really interesting film.
- Mother Mary on IMDB
- Mother Mary on Rotten Tomatoes
Rose of Nevada
In the mid ’90s, the fishing boat the Rose of Nevada sails into the ocean and never returns, earning a semi-mythical status among the Cornish town that its crew called home. 30 years later it washes back up, and two men (George Mackay and Callum Turner) join its crew, hoping that whatever destiny befell the previous crew will take them to a better life. Instead, they return to shore to find that it’s the ’90s again, and the townsfolk are welcoming them back as the original crew members.
I hadn’t heard too much about this but it sounds fascinating. As a mysterious Cornish folk story, it shares a lot of DNA with director Mark Jenkin’s previous film Enys Men. The grainy film stock effect and narrow aspect ratio add to the dreamy strangeness of it all, as does the sound design (all of which was added in post) and bold use of colour. It doesn’t look like the sort of film that will provide many explanations for the time travel shenanigans, but I don’t think it will be any the worse for it – the focus instead is on Mackay and Turner’s responses to the situation. Do they try to find a way home to their own time and the people they know, or do they embrace their new identities as the new life they were hoping for?
At the time of writing this has 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Whether its strangeness will strike the same chord with audiences remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a good start. This should be well worth watching on a big screen while you can.
- Rose of Nevada on IMDB
- Rose of Nevada on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only watch one film this week…
A few good options this week, but I’m going with the long white hallways of Exit 8.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Lee Cronin’s The Mummy – Reminiscent of early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson films (but with a bigger SFX budget), Lee Cronin’s take on the Mummy strikes just the right balance of horror, silliness, and utter grossness. The makeup work is impressively icky, and the mummified Katie’s decrepit body is exploited for some really sickening moments (one particularly memorable scene will put anyone off a career as a pedicurist). Coupled with some deeply committed performances from the child actors, this makes for an effective horror in spite of the occasional bit of hammy dialogue. Once the source of this film’s version of the Egyptian curse is revealed it loses a little of its Mummy credentials – ultimately it owes more to Insidious than Imhotep – but it’s still a lot of fun.
- The Drama
- Project Hail Mary
Trailer of the Week
After a journey full of more pitfalls and setbacks than the dust cloud behind a cartoon roadrunner, the greatest legal drama of our time is finally coming to the cinema. Coyote vs Acme sees Wile E Coyote take purveyors of chaotic doohickeys Acme to court for personal injury, following years of misadventure at the hands of their faulty products. It’s the kind of gloriously ridiculous concept that the Looney Tunes cartoons have been revelling in for decades, and the new trailer looks every bit as mad as you’d want it to be. Will Forte stars as Wile E’s lawyer, while John Cena is representing Acme – but the real stars are of course the likes of Daffy Duck, Tweety Pie and Bugs Bunny (plus an unusually sinister Foghorn Leghorn). We’ll find out if Wile E finally gets a win when the film reaches cinemas in August.
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