Hello there, 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: a revolutionary tries to rescue his daughter, some masked killers try to rescue their franchise, and a beardy Aussie musician tries to rescue some orangutans…
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.
Birmingham Anime Film Festival
Before we get started on the new releases, a quick reminder that the third annual Birmingham Anime Film Festival hits the Mockingbird and the MAC in Birmingham this weekend!
Starting tonight with a screening of the exciting new Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba movie, Infinity Castle (which has just overtaken Mugen Train to become the biggest selling anime film of all time), BAFF 2025 features everything from true classics like Ghost in the Shell, Perfect Blue and Spirited Away, to lesser known treats like Inu-Oh and A Letter To Momo. Saturday sees a Makoto Shinkai marathon, including the great director’s short films 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden Of Words, his feature length debut Children Who Chase Lost Voices, and two from his Disaster Trilogy, Your Name and Weathering With You. On Sunday, get your giant robot fix with End of Evangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Freedom, and two Patlabor movies. And the festival comes to an end next Wednesday with some free taster episodes of anime series Serial Experiments Lain, Witchblade and Beserk.
For the full schedule and links to buy tickets, head to the BAFF website. We hope to see you there!
One Battle After Another
The latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another follows Bob, a former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) who has been living with his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). When Willa is captured, Bob reunites with his old team to find her and rescue her from his old enemy, Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
The veteran warrior coming out of retirement to rescue his kidnapped daughter is nothing new – Liam Neeson did the same thing in Taken, for example. But this feels like a much meatier film, both in scale and substance. For one thing, DiCaprio is not a one-man army – there’s a great cast backing Bob up, including Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor and Alana Haim. The music, from frequent PTA collaborator Jonny Greenwood, matches the tone of the rest of the film – at once light and serious, playful and tense. There is humour here – DiCaprio struggling to remember his passwords and the oddly satisfying carpet roll that accompanies Del Toro’s disappearance through a trapdoor – but there’s a definite darkness too. Shots of a pregnant woman training to use an automatic rifle and gangs of skaters comparing the atmosphere to World War 3 point to an escalation towards all-out warfare. Expect a lot more action than PTA’s usual output.
Given the nearly three hour runtime, there is inevitably going to be a lot that we don’t see in the trailer, so it’s hard to say much beyond the basic premise, but it’s still looking pretty exciting. The early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive – it currently has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. If the box office numbers can demonstrate that the public enjoy it as much as the critics do, this has to be an early contender for a statuette or two come awards season next year. One Battle After Another feels like just the right mix of director, star and material and should be well worth catching on the big screen.
- One Battle After Another on IMDB
- One Battle After Another on Rotten Tomatoes
The Strangers: Chapter 2
The first Strangers film came out in 2008 and did relatively well, earning enough at the box office for a sequel and developing a bit of a cult status after its cinema release was over. The sequel (The Strangers: Prey at Night) was less well-received, but was enough to turn it into a franchise, leading to last year’s The Strangers: Chapter 1. That was intended to be the start of a trilogy/ soft reboot, following the same continuity as the original two films but standing apart from them. Despite its attempt to start afresh, Chapter 1 hit all the same plot beats as the original and Prey at Night – a couple staying in a remote cabin is targeted by a trio of masked psychopaths, for no reason other than their being there.
Chapter 2 breaks the mould (slightly) by picking up directly where Chapter 1 left off. Maya (Madeleine Petsch), having survived her ordeal in the first film despite multiple stabbings, is recovering in hospital when the three killers turn up to finish what they started. Relocating some of the action away from the cabin gives returning director Renny Harlin a chance to play with the formula a little – this is less of a home invasion (although there are still elements of that) and more of a survival horror. Maya gets to have more interaction with the locals, delving more into the backstory of the town and the motivations, if there are any, behind the killings. Sure, it’s still nothing desperately original (turns out… it’s a cult ritual) but at least it’s different from the other films in the series.
That being said, the reviews have not been kind to the masked nutters this time around. Chapter 2 currently has a paltry 16% on Rotten Tomatoes (to put that in context, Chapter 1 has 21% and the original film has 50%). When you build a franchise around the concept of anonymous strangers, giving them a backstory to help the audience get to know them a bit better rather undermines the effect. After the high calibre of horror we’ve had this year, there isn’t an awful lot to make this one stand out. But if you are a fan of the franchise, you’ll want to see this to help make sure Chapter 3 is able to close off the trilogy.
- The Strangers: Chapter 2 on IMDB
- The Strangers: Chapter 2 on Rotten Tomatoes
Ellis Park
This documentary follows Australian musician Warren Ellis, one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, as he visits the Sumatran wildlife sanctuary that he helped finance. Directed by Justin Kurzel (The Order, Macbeth), it gives an insight into both Ellis’s life and career and the plight of the endangered animals that he is helping to rescue and home.
This looks beautiful and sweet. I’m not too familiar with Warren Ellis, but he comes across as a very warm-hearted man in the trailer, and he’s obviously done the world a lot of good. It’s unusual for a traditional Hollywood filmmaker to put the blockbusters aside and make a (much less lucrative) documentary, which suggests that the subject matter here must have really struck a chord with Kurzel. There are lovely shots in the trailer of the Indonesian wildlife, especially the eagle being released back into the jungle, but expect this to also tell the story of the staff at the park who dedicate their lives to helping these animals recover from poaching and pet trade. It should look stunning on the big screen.
- Ellis Park on IMDB
- Ellis Park on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Come to BAFF, obviously. But failing that, One Battle After Another.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- The Long Walk
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle
- A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Trailer of the Week
It’s been at least 34 seconds since a new Pedro Pascal movie came out, so it’s high time for another one, although this time his face is hidden behind the finest Beskar in the galaxy far, far away. Yes, the Mandalorian is finally getting the big screen treatment, and this time Grogu gets equal billing in the title. The child formerly known as Baby Yoda is on fine form in the new trailer – look at him! He’s pinching Sigourney Weaver’s crisps! Look at him having a little swim! He’s got a teeny tiny telescope! He’s so cute that it’s almost hard to take in the amount of exciting stuff going on around him, from surprisingly hench Hutts to exploding AT-ATs, to a range of angry alien monsters, to the return of best-thing-in-Episode-IX Babu Frik. There has been so much Star Wars content on Disney+ that it’s a surprise (to be sure) that this is the first Star Wars movie since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, but given the popularity of the Mandalorian, it’s a welcome one. The Mandalorian and Grogu will soar into cinemas on May 22nd, 2026.
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