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This weekend there are six new films out for you to choose from: stop-motion animated drama in Anomalisa, a 17th-century chiller in The Witch, threequelitis for Allegiant: The Divergent Series, predictable drama in The Ones Below, kids CGI comedy in Kung Fu Panda 3, and lame comedy in Fifty Shades Of Black.
Anomalisa is Charlie Kaufman‘s first stop-motion film, about a man crippled by the mundanity of his life.
The lead character, Michael Stone, is voiced by David Thewlis (The Zero Theorem, An Inspector Calls) and other voices include Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lisa, and Tom Noonan as “Everyone else”.
Charlie Kaufman, who co-directs with Duke Johnson, rarely does anything that’s predictable and I’m a big fan of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I very much want to see this.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Witch is set in New England, 1630, where William (Ralph Ineson – Prey, The Office, and a million voiceovers) and Katherine (Kate Dickie – Prometheus, Filth) lead a devout Christian life, homesteading on the edge of an impassible wilderness, with five children.
When their newborn son mysteriously vanishes and their crops fail, the family begins to turn on one another. The Witch is a chilling portrait of a family unraveling within their own fears and anxieties, leaving them prey for an inescapable evil.
The first trailer for The Witch packs a lot of weird shit into the trailer, most of it befalling Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), and I wasn’t wholly sold on it from the first trailer, but I’m more drawn to it from this one.
Written and directed by Robert Eggers, as the trailer shows, and as IMDB confirms, the film is shot in a slightly-narrow 1.66:1 widescreen ratio. Rather a curious oddity. I can’t really see why, but John Maclean also did the same for the recent Slow West, also shot with Arri Alexa cameras.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Allegiant is the third in the Divergent Series, following Divergent and Insurgent, and this new UK trailer shows that there’s a whole lot more running about and heart-wringing still to be done in order to expose the powers that be…
Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) and Tobias Eaton venture into the world outside of the fence, going over the wall, and are taken into protective custody by a mysterious agency known as the Bureau of Genetic Welfare.
The film also stars Theo James, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q, Jeff Daniels, Jonny Weston, Bill Skarsgård and the bizarrely-named Autumn Dial. Yes, you read that right.
Directed by Robert Schwentke, who took over the reins from Insurgent onwards, Allegiant looks like yet more tosh, but I’ve sat through the first two, so I’ll no doubt end up sitting through this.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Ones Below stars Clémence Poésy and Stephen Campbell Moore as a couple expecting their first child, who discover an an unnerving difference between themselves and the couple living in the flat below them who are also having a baby.
Also starring David Morrissey, Laura Birn and Deborah Findlay, as the trailer plays out and the two couples’ lives intertwine, I can imagine the entire movie playing out since it’s a ‘predictable-thriller-by-numbers’ that you’ve seen many times before.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Kung Fu Panda 3. Yes, it wasn’t just enough of a threat to force the first two on us, it’s time for the return of lazy, irreverent slacker panda, Po (voiced by Jack Black). And now there’s the official trailer.
When Po’s long-lost panda father Li (voiced by Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston) suddenly reappears, the reunited duo travels to a secret panda paradise to meet scores of hilarious new panda characters. But when the supernatural villain Kai begins to sweep across China defeating all the kung fu masters, Po must do the impossible-learn to train a village full of his fun-loving, clumsy brethren to become the ultimate band of Kung Fu Pandas.
The film also features the voices of Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross, James Hong, Rebel Wilson and Dustin Hoffman.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Fifty Shades of Black stars Marlon Wayans as Christian Black and… yes, you’re ahead of me. I don’t even need to say that this is a spoof movie based on Fifty Shades of Grey because you noticed that from the trailer.
Spoof movies themselves have really lost their way over the years. They started off being quite funny, but the more they made, the less they were funny. That said, I got more laughs out of The Naked Gun 2.5: The Smell Of Fear than I did out of the first Naked Gun movie (and let’s forget about the third one!). Then we had all the Scary Movie movies, and they soon outlived their usefulness, but still they continue. Really, what’s the point of it all?
You could ask what’s the point of life, but there’s no point asking a question when you know the answer is ’42’. Douglas Adams said so.
But I digress. Fifty Shades of Black also stars Jane Seymour and was released in the US on January 29th, a time of year that’s either reserved for really crap films or ones that’ll be likely to sweep the board at the Oscars and BAFTAs. Now, which do you think this one fit into?
Laugh? I nearly voted for Fifty Shades of Grey to sweep the board(!)
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.