David Brent leads the new cinema releases & trailers w/e August 19th 2016

Facebook0 Tweet0

This weekend there are TEN new films out for you to choose from: the return of the character which brought Ricky Gervais to the fore in David Brent: Life on the Road, strong Dutch drama in Clean Hands, a tense ’70s-style thriller in The Childhood of a Leader, a Belgian drama about the Black Bronx in Black, head into space for 400 Days, scare-by-numbers in Lights Out, remake a classic tale in Swallows And Amazons, cannibals return to the big screen for The Evil In Us, Britain revoices a 2-year-old CGI movie for Asterix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods, and Kevin Spacey voices a cat in Nine Lives.

David Brent: Life on the Road sees the return that no-one asked for, for Ricky Gervais’ character from The Office, a comedy which was funny back in the day but given that the billing states: “A camera crew catches up with David Brent, the former star of the fictional British series, The Office as he now fancies himself a rockstar on the road”, this is exactly the same ‘plot’ as the 2003 two-part Christmas special, where he was trying to make an assault on the chars and failing badly. You know he won’t succeed here.

The poster even copies the line he spoke back in the day – “I’m a friend first, boss second. Probably an entertainer third.” Couldn’t he come up with a new line? He’s dangerously heading into Peter Kay territory for lazily repeating old jokes and somehow getting mileage out of it.

Gervais has also become one of those lazy Twitter users who will retweet any old achingly unfunny bollocks and then sit back while his sheep followers retweet it further.

He apparently wrote and direct it himself, with no sign of Stephen Merchant on board, nor are any of the rest of the original lot. However, there is Mandeep Dhillon, Rebecca Gethings, Doc Brown and Olivia Quinn.

Maybe David Brent: Life on the Road will surprise me? It’s possible…

Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!

Clean Hands

Sylvia (Thekla Reuten) has turned a blind eye to her husband Eddie’s (Jeroen van Koningsbrugge) flourishing drug business for too long. When Eddie’s dealings take a turn for the worse, Sylvia wants to protect the lives and futures of their young children and decides to flee. But Eddie will stop at nothing to keep his wife inside the ‘family’.

This Dutch drama looks like it packs a punch, literally, and based on the trailer looks as strong as all those European movie and TV dramas to which we’re getting increasingly treated.

Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!

The Childhood of a Leader tells a chilling fable about the rise of fascism in the 20th Century tells the story of a young American boy living in France in 1918 whose father is working for the US government on the creation of the Treaty of Versailles.

What he witnesses helps to mould his beliefs – and we witness the birth of a terrifying ego. Loosely inspired by the early childhood experiences of many of the great dictators of the 20th Century, the billing states this film is infused with the same sense of dread as The Others and The Omen, showing The Childhood of a Leader is an ominous portrait of emerging evil.

The film has a great cast including Robert Pattinson, Stacy Martin, Liam Cunningham, Bérénice Bejo and newcomer Tom Sweet as Prescott, the boy, and watching this trailer, he looks the spitting image of Danny Torrance in The Shining!

In fact, as I watched the trailer, and before I read the billing, I had that feeling of those classic horror/thrillers from the ’70s and The Omen sprang to mind!

Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!

Black leads with Martha Canga Antonio as 15-year-old Mavela, a member of the notorious gang, Black Bronx. She falls head over heels in love with the charismatic Marwan (Aboubakr Bensaihi), a boy from the rival gang 1080-ers. The two young people are brutally forced to choose between loyalty to their gang or the love for each other. An impossible choice … or not?

This is a film I hadn’t heard of before just now, but I’m definitely intrigued based on the premise and the trailer. Sadly, such indie films won’t get a look-in at the local multiplex, especially during the summer, but I hope to catch it on Blu-ray in due course.

Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!

400 Days is a sci-fi movie which centers on four astronauts who go on a simulated mission to a distant planet to test the psychological effects of deep space travel. They’re locked away for 400 days, leading to their mental state falling apart, and it’s creepy stuff with, as is mentioned, delusions and hallucinations… unless what they’re seeing is real?

Starring Dane Cook, Brandon Routh, Mark Steger, Frank Ashmore, Tom Cavanagh, Nicole Derseweh, Caity Lotz this film has taken almost a year to reach UK cinemas, but it looks like it’s worth a watch.

Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!

Lights Out comes from producer James Wan, usually found directing movies such as Insidious, The Conjuring and 2018’s Aquaman, plus other movies with imaginative sequel titles such as Insidious: Chapter 2, The Conjuring 2 and Fast and Furious 7.

A woman is haunted by a creature that only appears when the lights go out, in a feature adaptation of the 2013 short film, “Lights Out” by the director David F Sandberg. Starring Teresa Palmer, Emily Alyn Lind, Billy Burke, Alicia Vela-Bailey and, for some reason, alleged comedienne Andi Osho, this looks like everything we’ve seen before so I can’t see anything dragging me to watch it.