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This weekend there are six new films out for you to choose from: Sci-fi in I Origins, remake-drama in The Equalizer, weird stuff in Maps To The Stars, Polish drama in Ida, horror in Honeymoon, and comedy in What We Did on Our Holiday.
I Origins
I Origins is in the running for one of the weirdest-looking plots of the year where the eyes have it, literally. It centres around a molecular biologist and his laboratory partner who uncover evidence that may fundamentally change society as we know it.
Written and directed by Mike Cahill, and starring Michael Pitt, Brit Marling, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Steven Yeun and Archie Panjabi (The Widower), it was released in the US on July 18th and so it’s taken a while to come here, but it looks very intriguing indeed.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Equalizer
The Equalizer proves that if you’re in Hollywood and you can’t think of an original idea, just hijack one from the past, and that’s what Denzel Washington is cast in, as Robert McCall, an ordinary man who exacts revenge on those who have wronged others.
Instead of being a white middle-class Edward Woodward, who was in the TV series from 1985-1989, Denzel plays a former black ops commando who faked his death for a quiet life in Boston comes out of his retirement to rescue a young girl and finds himself face to face with Russian gangsters.
The Equalizer is directed by Antoine Fuqua, who also directed Denzel in Training Day, which everyone raved about but I thought sucked tedious balls, and also stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Denzel Washington, Melissa Leo, Marton Csokas and Bill Pullman.
And it’s also been censored:
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Maps To The Stars is a new David Cronenberg film so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t make a great deal of sense on first viewing.
The Weiss family is the archetypical Hollywood dynasty: father Stafford (John Cusack) is an analyst and coach, who has made a fortune with his self-help manuals; mother Cristina mostly looks after the career of their son Benjie, 13, a child star. One of Stafford’s clients, Havana (Julianne Moore), is an actress who dreams of shooting a remake of the movie that made her mother, Clarice (Sarah Gadon), a star in the 60s. Clarice is dead now and visions of her come to haunt Havana at night…
The film also stars Mia Wasikowska, Carrie Fisher, Olivia Williams, Niamh Wilson, Jayne Heitmeyer, Emilia McCarthy, Amanda Brugel and it looked intriguing first time round, but then got on my nerves.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Ida
Poland, 1962. Anna, an orphan brought up by nuns in the convent, is a novice. She has to see Wanda, the only living relative, before she takes her vows. Wanda tells Anna about her Jewish roots. Both women start a journey not only to find their family’s tragic story, but to see who they really are and where they belong. They question what they used to believe in. Both of them are trying to go on living but only one eventually can.
Starring Agata Trzebuchowska as Ida, with Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik and Jerzy Trela, if I can be entranced by a 2-minute trailer, then this makes it a must-see film for sure.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Honeymoon
Young newlyweds Paul and Bea travel to remote lake country for their honeymoon. Shortly after arriving, Paul finds Bea wandering and disoriented in the middle of the night. As she becomes more distant and her behavior increasingly peculiar, Paul begins to suspect something more sinister than sleepwalking took place in the woods.
Starring Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway in the lead roles, plus Ben Huber and Hanna Brown, it’s another standard horror film where things go bump in the same room you’re in, and doesn’t look like it has enough to stand out from the crowd.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
What We Did on Our Holiday
Doug (David Tennant) and Abi (Rosamund Pike) and their three children travel to the Scottish Highlands for Doug’s father Gordie’s (Billy Connolly) birthday party. It’s soon clear that when it comes to keeping a secret under wraps from the rest of the family, their children are their biggest liability…
This looks like a terrible farce. So, it’s a…
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.