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This time, there are SEVEN new films out for you to choose from, led by Glass. Here are the titles, with more info below:
- Glass
Mary Queen of Scots
Beautiful Boy
Monsters And Men
The Raft
London Unplugged
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Glass… Mr Glass… is the character Samuel L Jackson called himself, in 2000’s Unbreakable, from writer/director M Night Shyamalan, who later brought us 2016’s Split, and you need to see that before you see this, as (without giving away the ending) the final scene led to this, and it was a final scene that Mr Shyamalan wanted to put AFTER the credits, but ended up doing so before so most people would actually see it (because too many idiots leave during the credits and miss any potential post-credit scenes).
The premise for this clearly assumes you’ve seen that movie since it states…
Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn (Bruce Willis) pursuing Crumb’s (James McAvoy) superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price (SLJ’s character’s real name) emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.
Jackson’s still the main draw for this film, given how much Willis’ star has fallen in recent years, as he’s mostly pumped out incredibly lame fare like A Good Day To Die Hard and a series of cinema-avoiding movies with Escape Plan 2 director Steven C Miller such as Extraction.
Glass has been released in the same week as Split did in 2017, and that film’s Anya Taylor-Joy is also back.
Also stars: Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Izzie Coffey, Izzie Leigh Coffey, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus, Neal Huff, Ukee Washington, Ann Wood, Robert Michael Kelly, M Night Shyamalan
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Mary Queen of Scots explores the turbulent life of the charismatic Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird).
Queen of France at 16, and widowed at 18, Mary defies pressure to remarry, but iInstead, she returns to her native Scotland to reclaim her rightful throne. Alas, Scotland and England fall under the rule of the compelling Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie – I, Tonya). Each young Queen beholds her “sister” in fear and fascination.
Rivals in power and in love, and female regents in a masculine world, the two must decide how to play the game of marriage versus independence. Determined to rule as much more than a figurehead, Mary asserts her claim to the English throne, threatening Elizabeth’s sovereignty. Betrayal, rebellion, and conspiracies within each court imperil both thrones – and change the course of history.
Mary Queen of Scots has a cracking cast, and with two great female leads (even if neither of them are English – but then look at The Affair where both male and female leads are Brits and the characters are American), I’m really looking to see how this turns out. I don’t bother with history too much, so I’ll just let the film tell me the tale, so it’s going for Oscar glory, no doubt, rather like Ms Ronan and Ms Robbie do on a regular basis.
Director: Josie Rourke
Screenplay: Beau Willimon
Novel: John Guy
Also stars: Gemma Chan, Joe Alwyn, Guy Pearce, David Tennant, Jack Lowden, Ian Hart, Brendan Coyle, Martin Compston, Adrian Lester, James McArdle
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Beautiful Boy is a new film from Amazon starring Steve Carell, based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff (Carell and Timothée Chalamet, the latter seen most recently in Call Me By Your Name), and chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse, and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.
Alas, I almost fell asleep watching the trailer.
Director: Felix van Groeningen
Also stars: Maura Tierney, Christian Convery, Oakley Bull, Kaitlyn Dever, Amy Ryan
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Monsters And Men
The aftermath of a police killing of a black man, told through the eyes of the bystander who filmed the act, an African-American police officer and a high-school baseball phenom inspired to take a stand.
This actually looks really interesting and I definitely want to check this out.
Writer/Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green
Stars: John David Washington, Anthony Ramos, Kelvin Harrison Jr
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Raft
In 1973, five men and six women drifted across the Atlantic on a raft as part of a scientific experiment studying the sociology of violence, aggression and sexual attraction in human behavior. Although the project became known in the press as ‘The Sex Raft’, nobody expected what ultimately took place on that three month journey. Through extraordinary archive material and a reunion of the surviving members of the expedition on a full scale replica of the raft, this film tells the hidden story behind what has been described as ‘one of the strangest group experiments of all time.’
I know nothing about the story behind this, but it could look to be a decent documentary.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
London Unplugged
A portmanteau exploration of disparate characters scattered across London, many of whose lives intersect unpredictably. A refreshing take on the complexities, contradictions and compromises of modern living in the greatest City on Earth.
Well, this seemed like a hotch-potch of various clips but none of it just seemed to make a lick of sense, nor have any reason to exist.
Directors: Layke Anderson, Natalia Casali, Nick Cohen, Mitchell Crawford, Andres Heger-Bratterud, Ben Jacobson, Rosanna Lowe, Gaelle Mourre, Kaki Wong, Qi Zhang
Writers: Nick Cohen, Nick Hopkins
Cast: Juliet Stevenson, Imogen Stubbs, Bruce Payne, Nigel Pilkington, Shaun Prendergast, Max Pritchard
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South – trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.
Similar to London Unplugged, this also looks to be a series of disconnected scenes all thrown together, and it just didn’t gel with me at all.
Director: RaMell Ross
Writers: Maya Krinsky, RaMell Ross
Stars: Latrenda ‘Boosie’ Ash, Quincy Bryant, Daniel Collins
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.