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This weekend there are TEN new films out for you to choose from: secretive drama in Snowden, black comedy with Christopher Lloyd in I Am Not a Serial Killer, two boys in Nepal deal with a black hen in The Black Hen, an intriguing real-life tale in Life, Animated, family drama in Krisha, a tale of addiction, aggression and individuality in Midnight Sonder, Spike Lee’s latest in Chi-Raq, epic drama in The Birth of a Nation, gay footballing drama in The Pass, and alleged comedy in Office Christmas Party.
# Snowden, Edward Snowden, he’s the dumbest spy in history,
From North, Carolina, he went on to join the CIA,
One night, when he was clearly pissed,
he showed classified NSA documents to a group of journalists,
When you’re, with Ed Snowden, have a gabber-gabber-do-time, a gabber-do-time, you’ll spill all their se-crets! #
The main man is portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who seems to be starting to make a living out of bad impressions of real people, following on from his role as wirewalker Philippe Petit in The Walk, with a large supporting cast including the Divergent series’ Shailene Woodley, plus Scott Eastwood, Nicolas Cage, Timothy Olyphant, Zachary Quinto, Rhys Ifans, Joely Richardson, Melissa Leo, Ben Schnetzer, plus Tom Wilkinson doing another dodgy American accent as usual.
It looks merely okay from the trailer, but hopefully it’ll be bolstered by Oliver Stone being in the hot seat as he both directs and wrote the screenplay based on the books – The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena.
For this one, I’ll err on the side of…
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
I Am Not a Serial Killer
In a small Midwestern town, a troubled teen with homicidal tendencies must hunt down and destroy a supernatural killer whilst keeping his own inner demons at bay.
Directed by Billy O’Brien, who co-wrote the script with Christopher Hyde, and starring Laura Fraser (The Missing Series 2), Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future), Max Records, and on a low budget of €1.25m, I love the dark tone this has, so I definitely want to see this.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Black Hen (aka Kalo Pothi)
Set in 2001, a temporary ceasefire brings a much-needed break to a small war-torn village in Northern Nepal, bringing much joy among the residents. Prakash and Kiran, two young close friends, are also starting to feel the change in the air. Though they are divided by caste and social creed, they remain inseparable, and start raising a hen given to Prakash by his sister, with hopes to save money by selling her eggs. However, the hen goes missing. To find it, they embark on a journey, innocently unaware of the tyranny brought by the fragile ceasefire.
Directed by Min Bahadur Bham, who co-wrote it with Abinash Bikram Shah, this film stars Khadka Raj Nepali, Sukra Raj Rokaya and Jit Bahadur Malla, and I’d say this is a maybe – the trailer didn’t grab me, but given the civi war setting, and the awards its received, there’s possibly something in this.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
Life, Animated
Owen Suskind was a boy of considerable promise, until he developed autism at the age of 3. As Owen withdrew into his silent state, his parents almost lost hope that he find some way to interact with his world in some meaningful way. However, that way was found through animated films, especially those of the Walt Disney Company, which provided Owen a way to understand the world through its stories to the point of creating his own.
This film covers the life of Owen and how he manages to become as functional as possible with the help of Disney and his family to the point of having his own a life. However, Owen soon learns as well that there is more to real life than what Disney can illustrate in animation even as his family prepares itself for an uncertain future with him.
Directed by Roger Ross Williams and based on the book by Owen’s father, Ron Suskind, and also featuring Jonathan Freeman, Gilbert Gottfried and Alan Rosenblatt, again, I wasn’t wholly sold on the trailer, but it looks possibly worth a watch.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
Krisha returns for Thanksgiving dinner after ten years away from her family, but past demons threaten to ruin the festivities.
Written and directed by Trey Edward Shults, and starring Krisha Fairchild, Alex Dobrenko and Robyn Fairchild, to me, this looks like the trailer sums everything up and that there’s not an awful lot else to go on. Maybe it’s worth a look, but it’s far from my first choice of the week.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
Midnight Sonder
A student with blood complications believes that his medication is the cause of his recent hallucinations. Desperate to find out what they mean, he collides with and injures an innocent woman, sparking her son to pursue the identity of the man responsible for his Mother’s injury. This is a tale of two separate lives spiral together in a tale of addiction, aggression and individuality.
Written and directed by Mayuren Naidoo, and starring Evan Jones, Sheldon Philbert and Marcia Tucker, this low-budget movie didn’t grab me.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Chi-Raq is a new Spike Lee movie, or a ‘Spike Lee joint’ (ho, ho, that joke never gets old, does it?)
Here in the UK, we say ‘ir-aq’, but the US pronounce it ‘eye-raq’, hence the way the title sounds.
The film is a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, set against the backdrop of gang violence in Chicago.
Samuel L Jackson heads a cast that also includes Nick Cannon, Teyonah Parris, Anya Engel-Adams, Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Michelle Mitchenor, Ebony Joy, Felicia Pearson, La La Anthony, Val Warner, Jennifer Hudson and David Patrick Kelly.
Spike Lee films are hit and miss at the best of times, but the trailer for Chi-Raq is a bloody mess. It’s all over the place!
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Birth of a Nation is set against the antebellum South and centers around Nat Turner (Nate Parker), a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer – The Social Network), accepts an offer to use Nat’s preaching to subdue unruly slaves.
As he witnesses countless atrocities – against himself and his fellow slaves – Nat orchestrates an uprising in the hopes of leading his people to freedom.
Parker, directing and writing the screenplay, based on his own story co-written with Jean McGianni Celestin, the film also stars Jackie Earle Haley, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Junior, Penelope Ann Miller, Elizabeth Turner and Aja Naomi King. However, despite its epic structure, it’s one that does nothing for me, so I’ll be giving it a miss.
Note that the film is entirely separate from DW Griffith‘s 1915 epic of the same name.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Pass
Nineteen-year-old Jason and Ade have been in the Academy of a famous London football club since they were eight years old. It’s the night before their first-ever game for the first team – a Champions League match – and they’re in a hotel room in Romania. They should be sleeping, but they’re over-excited. They skip, fight, mock each other, prepare their kit, watch a teammate’s s -ex tape. And then, out of nowhere, one of them kisses the other. The impact of this ‘pass’ reverberates through the next ten years of their lives – a decade of fame and failure, secrets and lies, in a sporting world where image is everything.
Starring Russell Tovey (Him & Her, Doctor Who), Arinzé Kene and Lisa McGrillis, the trailer completely washed over me with nothing to grab onto.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Office Christmas Party – No, David Brent will not be making a second return to the cinema this year after Life on the Road, but while it feels like no time at all since we last had a slew of dire Christmas movies, such as The Night Before and Christmas with the Coopers, now we get this one, poking at the crevice of every office party cliche in the book, and looking incredibly dull, especially Jason Bateman‘s “he meant to swing” quip at the end of this one.
There is a plot regarding this, but like the question of whether there was life before Coronation Street… it didn’t amount to much. (to quote the late, great Russell Harty)
For some reason, it also has two directors – Josh Gordon and Will Speck – when only big CGI animations tend to need those. Somehow, there’s a script (by Jon Lucas and Justin Malen), and the cast includes Kate McKinnon, Olivia Munn, Jennifer Aniston, TJ Miller, Jillian Bell, Karan Soni, Rob Corddry, Randall Park and Courtney B Vance, who’s putting the B in ‘bollocks’
Without naming the film and, thus, giving a spoiler, there is a film I have seen this year which features a vat of rather nasty acid (not that there’s a nice kind of acid… well, acid house music, perhaps), and it dissolved human flesh on contact. I think anyone who makes such a bad film as this really deserves to be dipped into this vat feet first. Cast, crew, anyone. It’s time to stop this rubbish.
As it’s so close to Christmas, this film will hopefully die a quick death. Speed that up with the vat of acid.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.