Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Every Thursday we look at the upcoming cinema releases and talk about why you should get excited for them. This week: breaststroke, a Beast, a beastie, and some besties (playing volleyball)…
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these films. All of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Young Woman and the Sea
We’re starting off this week with a biopic of Trudy Ederle, the first woman ever to swim the English Channel. Ederle is played here by Daisy Ridley, who was last seen in her critically acclaimed turn in Sometimes I Think About Dying. It’s another dramatic role to show off her acting chops while she takes a break from the galaxy far far away, which she will be returning to in 2026. The ever-excellent Stephen Graham and Christopher Ecclestone round out the supporting cast.
Ederle’s story is ripe for the cinema. Any story of an epic physical challenge like swimming the 21 miles of the Channel is going to be exciting – it’s a gruelling ordeal fraught with difficulties and danger (and a whole load of jellyfish). Add to that the social drama of a woman in the patriarchal environment of the early 1920s attempting something that only five men had managed before her, and you have the recipe for a really compelling watch.
The early indicators are pretty positive for this one. It was originally going to be a Disney+ exclusive release, but the Mouse House had enough confidence in the finished product to give it a short cinema run – usually a good sign that a studio expects a film to do well. And it’s produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who’s got a bit of experience when it comes to filming on the seven seas and should be able to give it a more epic sense of scale. That said, although I would always recommend seeing a film in the cinema if you can (and I do recommend that here), you probably won’t miss too much by waiting for the Disney+ release.
- Young Woman and the Sea on IMDB
- Young Woman and the Sea on Rotten Tomatoes
The Beast
The Beast is set in a near-future world where most jobs have been taken over by AI. In order to qualify for work, people have to remove the distractions that might be caused by emotions by “purifying their DNA” and cleansing them of the vestigial memories and traumas of their past lives. Léa Seydoux plays an actress named Gabrielle as she undergoes this procedure and recalls lives in 1910 and 2014, forever being drawn in each timeline to George MacKay’s Louis and haunted by a feeling of dread that something horrible is about to happen.
The idea that humans might want to become more like soulless AI to earn a living is a pretty chilling premise before we even get into the brain surgery-induced time-jumping. If it sounds like the process of removing your emotions is going to mess with your head, the trailer shows that you would be right – the editing is trippy, the framing is claustrophobic, and the whole thing is deeply unsettling. There are certainly some horror elements here alongside the sci-fi, as well as romance, period drama and modern satire.
Every review I can find of The Beast has been overwhelmingly positive, with particular praise for Seydoux’s performance and for the connectivity between the different timelines, and favourable comparisons to the likes of Eternal Sunshine and David Lynch. This looks like a really interesting and captivating film and should be well worth tracking down.
- The Beast on IMDB
- The Beast on Rotten Tomatoes
Sting
There’s not an awful lot to say about this one that you can’t get from watching the trailer. A spider grows to a monstrous size and terrorises the residents of an apartment block. Expect some suspense to build up from big ol’ cobwebs, missing pets and scurrying sounds in the walls, and escalate to some grisly deaths.
Lack of originality aside, I am actually really looking forward to Sting. It’s not often that we get a good old fashioned B movie that eschews established franchises and big name stars in favour of a simple story about normal people facing off against giant bugs. And the spider is created by Weta Workshop, the effects company made famous by the Lord of the Rings films, who proved with Return of the King’s Shelob that they know how to handle an oversized octoped.
The reviews I’ve seen have been mixed, with praise for the knowingly over-the-top spider attack scenes but less interest in the human characters’ drama (which should be a side-plot in this sort of film but draw too much of the focus here). Watch it for what it is and I think it could be very enjoyable. As long as you don’t suffer from arachnophobia…
- Sting on IMDB
- Sting on Rotten Tomatoes
Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle
Originally a manga comic series which was adapted into an anime that ran from 2014 to 2020, Haikyu!! is an underdog story about an inexperienced but eager volleyball fan building his high school’s team and leading them to success. Dumpster Battle is the first of two films set to conclude the series, as the team advances to the third round of a local tournament. This was released in Japan in January and, at the time of writing, is the second highest-grossing film in that country in 2024 so far.
Like all films based on a popular anime series, this will have a lot of dedicated fans eager to see what happens next in the story, but will likely be lost on the uninitiated. That said, this should be a lot more accessible than some of the more fantastical anime series – you should be able to follow the drama of a sporting tournament without knowing the full back-story of every character. If you do see it and you enjoy it, there is plenty of back-catalogue to catch up on ahead of the final film’s release.
- Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle on IMDB
- Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
An original trippy sci-fi with pressing themes and what looks like a great performance from Léa Seydoux – my film of the week this week is The Beast.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- IF
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Trailer of the week
A new film by Jon Watts (director of the MCU Spider-Man trilogy), Wolfs follows two fixers, played by Brad Pitt and George Clooney, who prefer to work alone but are forced to work together when they are both hired for the same job. Despite the irritating title, this looks like heaps of fun, reuniting two of Hollywood’s biggest A-listers (plus Holly from The Office).
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