Skip to content
This weekend there are five new films out for you to choose from: comedy in Horrible Bosses 2, family fun in Paddington, gritty war drama in Kajaki, foreign drama in Stations of the Cross, and an all-time sci-fi classic in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Horrible Bosses 2 sees Nick, Dale and Kurt, fed up with answering to higher-ups, deciding to become their own bosses by launching their own business. However, a slick investor soon pulls the rug out from under them. Outplayed and desperate, and with no legal recourse, the three would-be entrepreneurs hatch a misguided plan to kidnap the investor’s adult son and ransom him to regain control of their company.
Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx return, star with new cast members Chris Pine and Christoph Waltz in tow. Directing is taken over by Sean Anders (Adam Sandler’s That’s My Boy), and this time it’s all about ‘kidnaping’.
The first one was alright but not brilliant, but the sequel looks a lot more inviting, and it’s always great to see the wonderful Jennifer Aniston being back in it again.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Paddington is someone I first came across when watching his television shows voiced by the late, great Michael Hordern in the late 70s and early 80s, and based on the books by Michael Bond.
The film follows the comic misadventures of a young Peruvian bear with a passion for all things British, who travels to London in search of a home. Finding himself lost and alone at Paddington Station, he begins to realise that city life is not all he had imagined – until he meets the kindly Brown family, who read the label around his neck (‘Please look after this bear. Thank you.’) and offer him a temporary haven. It looks as though his luck has changed until this rarest of bears catches the eye of a museum taxidermist…
Directed and written by the screen by Paul King (Little Crackers, Come Fly With Me), it stars Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Nicole Kidman and now has Ben Wishawas the voice of the bear.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Kajaki
Kajaki Dam 2006. A company of young British soldiers encounter an unexpected, terrifying enemy. A dried-out river bed, and under every step the possibility of an anti-personnel mine. A mine that could cost you your leg – or your life.
Starring Mark Stanley, David Elliot, Malachi Kirby, Paul Luebke and Ali Cook, this looks like an engaging, but tough, watch, so well worth checking out.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Stations of the Cross
Stations of the Cross centres on Maria, who is 14 years old. Her family is part of a fundamentalist Catholic community. She lives her everyday life in the modern world, yet her heart belongs to Jesus. She wants to follow him, to become a saint and go to heaven – just like all those holy children she’s always been told about. So Maria goes through 14 stations, just like Jesus did on his path to Golgatha, and reaches her goal in the end. Not even Christian, a boy she meets at school, can stop her, even if in another world, they might have become friends, or even more. Left behind is a broken family that finds comfort in faith, and the question if all these events were really so inevitable.
This film is an indictment and, at the same time, the legend of a saint. It’s a story of religion, devotion and radical faith, and the film itself comes along just as radical as the subject matter, telling the story in only 14 fixed-angle long shots, allowing the viewer to contemplate the
interactions on screen in an entirely different way than in a traditional ilm.
Starring Anna Brüggemann, Michael Kamp, Moritz Knapp, Birge Schade and Lea van Acken as Maria, this looks like a very intriguing drama and I’d certainly like to see it.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick‘s masterpiece, albeit flawed for me in that the first 20 minutes with the monolith really did my head in, but after that it was perfect, even if a lot of it didn’t make a great deal of sense. It’s inspired other movie makers as well as a number of parodies, not least that in the Simpsons.
And it shows us that we just cannot trust computers, so Arthur C Clarke got that right!
Starring Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter and Leonard Rossiter, is there really a question about whether one of the greatest films of all time is a hit or a miss? Easy choice.
However, I can’t see a re-release at my local Odeon 🙁
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
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.