Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we take you through the biggest new film releases and why you should be excited for them. This week: cops, the occult, Oshi, and the ochi…
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 Naked Gun
A requel of the comedy classic, The Naked Gun sees Liam Neeson stepping into Leslie Nielsen’s police shoes as Frank Drebin Jr (son of Nielsen’s Frank Drebin), the new leader of Police Squad.
I can’t actually find too much information about the plot, beyond Drebin taking on a case for Pamela Anderson, but the plot isn’t really the important thing here. This is an old-fashioned genre spoof movie, ripping on everything from TV cop shows to the likes of James Bond and Mission: Impossible. Director Akiva Schaffer has an impressive comic portfolio under his belt, including SNL, I Think You Should Leave and The Lonely Island. He also did a wonderful job reviving Chip & Dale for the Rescue Rangers movie, showing that he’s capable of taking a beloved property that a lot of people have nostalgia for, and updating it for a modern audience without compromising what people loved about the original. So, just like all the classic Nielsen movies, expect this to be full of gags, including carefully-crafted puns, thoroughly distracting background jokes, subtler cop drama send-ups, and even a bit of satire (such as Drebin’s surprise that cops can be arrested by other cops).
Liam Neeson is a brilliant bit of casting too. He’s done so many serious roles that he only has to apply the same gravitas here for the ridiculous dialogue to come across as deadpan. This is far from his first comedy – he gave some very funny appearances in Derry Girls and the Lego Movie, for example – but this is one of the first chances he’s had to really flex his comic muscles in a lead role. Alongside him and Anderson (in a femme fatale role that looks like it was made for her), the cast also includes Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston, Kevin Durand, CCH Pounder and Busta Rhymes.
If you’re a comedy fan – particularly US style comedy, as this falls very much on that end of the British-American comic scale – this will be a must-see. It’s getting much better reviews than I was expecting, with a lot of praise for capturing the essence of the original so well.
- The Naked Gun on IMDB
- The Naked Gun on Rotten Tomatoes
Bring Her Back
From classic comedy to… very much not. Bring Her Back is the second horror film from Danny and Michael Philippou, following their brilliant breakout hit Talk To Me. This one follows Laura (Sally Hawkins), a foster mother who recently lost her daughter, as she takes on two new charges in the form of brother and sister Andy and Piper. But they soon start to realise that Laura is up to something sinister, as they discover more and more signs of occult practices. Could she be trying to bring her daughter back?
There have been previews of this on all week, and while I haven’t managed to see it yet, my parents have. They said it was by far the best horror film they’ve seen in years, although it gets pretty disgusting at times. Even Mark Kermode said that he had trouble watching some scenes. It sounds like it goes to some truly unsettling places in its exploration of grief and sorrow. All of this is anchored by what is, by all accounts, an incredibly effective and creepy performance by Sally Hawkins, an actress normally best known for a sort of chirpy, unassuming likeability (see Paddington or The Shape of Water).
This is a good time for horror fans, with Weapons and Together on their way soon and both looking very promising too, but Bring Her Back is setting the bar high with very positive reviews.
- Bring Her Back on IMDB
- Bring Her Back on Rotten Tomatoes
Savages
It is often the case at the Oscars that the Animated Feature Film category includes, alongside the heavy hitters like Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks and Ghibli, a completely left-field choice that nobody’s heard of. Back in 2017, that was My Life as a Courgette – a charming French stop-motion coming of age story about an orphan boy learning to trust people again after the death of his mother. It lost out to Zootropolis (which has a sequel out later this year) but now has a higher rating on IMDB than all the other nominees – including fellow stop motion epic Kubo & the Two Strings and gorgeous anime classic The Red Turtle. Savages is a new film by the same director (Claude Barras) and animators, and looks to be every bit as charming as its veggie predecessor.
Savages follows Kéria, a young girl living on the edge of Borneo’s rainforest, who is given a baby orangutan to look after (named Oshi – presumably no relation to Ochi, the cute little orange creature at the centre of this week’s fourth release). With the rainforest under threat, she and her friend Selaï go on an adventure to find little Oshi a safe home.
There’s a very clear ecological message here, as well as a commentary on the rights of indigenous peoples. While the animation looks a little simplistic in places, especially in the very stylised human characters, the scenery looks as lush and vibrant as the Borneo rainforest should look. It’s getting some great reviews – at the time of writing it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes – and of course Oshi is adorable. This is clearly a kids’ film but there will be a lot for parents to enjoy here too, and it’s definitely one of the artier ways to occupy your children over the summer holidays. I don’t expect it to get a wide release so catch it when you can (I believe it’s on at the MAC in Birmingham but may pop up in some other places too). And don’t be surprised if it’s competing with Zootropolis 2 when next year’s awards season rolls around…
- Savages on IMDB
- Savages on Rotten Tomatoes
The Legend of Ochi
For some reason, the sources I normally use to see what films are coming out all agreed that this was meant to come out months ago, so I wrote it up back then and lamented at the time that nowhere seemed to be showing it. Fortunately it now finally has a cinema release, although I am just going to link back to my original write-up rather than typing it all out again. Some highlights though: an adorable little creature created entirely through next-level puppetry and animatronics, and, if that’s not enough to sell it, there’s Willem Dafoe prancing around in silly armour. What’s not to love?!
- The Legend of Ochi on IMDB
- The Legend of Ochi on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
There is strong competition this week, but to kick off a string of summer horrors I’m backing Bring Her Back as my film of the week.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps – This was everything I wanted it to be – great fun, perfectly cast and acted, funny and exciting in equal measure. The drama had just the right balance of personal and high stakes, with more focus on the genuine, loving, squabbling relationship between Marvel’s First Family than there was on the world-ending threat preparing to consume the Earth. The CGI on Galactus felt a little off in places, but otherwise the retrofuturistic world was beautifully realised, and complemented by Michael Giacchino’s fantastic score. I am looking forward to seeing how they, and Doctor Doom, find their way into our universe for the big Doomsday crossover due out next year…
- Superman
- F1: The Movie
Trailer of the week
James Cameron’s Avatar and its sequel, The Way of Water, are among the most successful films of all time. With collective box office takings of over $5 billion and reports of people needing therapy to get over the fact that they’ll never live on the alien world of Pandora, it’s fair to say that people have taken it into their hearts. So the expectations are high for third film, Fire and Ash, whose trailer dropped this week. This doesn’t give away too much plot, but, like the first two, there is some beautiful CGI on display courtesy of Cameron’s innovations in IMAX filming and motion capture rendering. Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully and Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri are back, along with Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet and Jemaine Clement. This time, the villain is Oona Chaplin’s Varang, leader of a new volcano-based tribe of Na’aviw whose lives haven’t been as comfortable as their jungle- and sea-dwelling kin introduced in the first two movies. It looks as pretty as ever and I think we can expect this to hit some more big box office numbers when it reaches cinemas in December.
Leave a Reply