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This weekend there are seven new films out for you to choose from: engaging drama in Kill Your Friends, comedy in Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, a new slice of Michel Gondry brilliance in Microbe and Gasoline, important documentary in He Named Me Malala, drama in Brooklyn and Burnt, and yet more Nicolas Cage in The Runner.
Kill Your Friends centres around an A&R man who’s working at the height of the Britpop music craze, who goes to extremes in order to find his next hit.
A brief description, but a teaser trailer that looks bloody amazing, starring Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: Days Of Future Past Rogue Cut), Ed Skrein (The Transporter Refuelled), James Corden (oh dear), Rosanna Arquette, Tom Riley, Georgia King and Joseph Mawle (Ripper Street).
The film is directed by Owen Harris (Black Mirror: Be Right Back, Holy Flying Circus) from the novel by John Niven.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is, yes, yet another zombie film. There just aren’t enogh of those, right? Well, it looks amusing enough but it’ll have a long way to go to beat, or even rival, Shaun Of The Dead, so let’s just pretend it won’t at all.
The premise is that three scouts, on the eve of their last camp-out, discover the true meaning of friendship when they attempt to save their town from a zombie outbreak…
The film stars Halston Sage as cocktail waitress Kendall, plus Tye Sheridan, Sara Malakul Lane, David Koechner, Becktoria, Logan Miller and Patrick Schwarzenegger… yes, he’s related. He’s the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver and has starred in such Oscar-winning epics (not) as Stuck In Love and Grown Ups 2.
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse came a bit late for Halloween though, since while the US got it on October 30th (still a bit late for the season build-up), we didn’t see its release until now.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Microbe and Gasoline is about two young friends who embark on a road trip across France in a vehicle they built themselves.
Michel Gondry writes and directs a movie starring Ange Dargent, Théophile Baquet, Diane Besnier and Audrey Tautou, and with Gondry at the helm, this is a must-see.
PS. IMDB’s plot keywords include: vehicle, train, airplane and “punched in the face”.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
He Named Me Malala is a documentary looking at the events leading up to the Talibans’ attack on the young Pakistani school girl, Malala Yousafzai, for speaking out on girls’ education and the aftermath, including her speech to the United Nations.
The attack happened during the afternoon of October 9th 2012, when Malala boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani district of Swat. A gunman asked for her by name, then pointed a pistol at her and fired three shots. One bullet hit the left side of her forehead, travelled under her skin through the length of her face, and then went into her shoulder.
Malala is clearly a hugely inspiring young woman, given what she has gone through, and this comes to the fore when she says “There is a moment to chose whether you remain silent, or stand up.”
He Named Me Malala is so-called because she refers to her father in the film, yet while he named her Malala, she states that she still made what she is today.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Brooklyn is set in 1950s Ireland and New York, where young Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) has to choose between two men and two countries. Sounds a bit like time travel comedy Goodnight Sweetheart, but isn’t anything to do with temperal displacement and instead looks like a tedious period drama where you really don’t care which bloke she picks.
The film also stars Domhnall Gleeson, Michael Zegen, Emory Cohen, Mary O’Driscoll and Julie Walters.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Burnt stars Bradley Cooper as Adam Jones, a two-star Michelin Chef who destroyed his career with drugs and diva behaviour. He cleans up and returns to London, determined to redeem himself by spearheading a top restaurant that can gain three Michelin stars.
Who does he think he is – Gordon effing Ramsay??
Also starring Ex Machina‘s Alicia Vikander, Rush‘s Daniel Brühl, plus Sienna Miller as girlfriend Helen, Lily James, Uma Thurman, Emma Thompson, Matthew Rhys, Omar Sy and Sarah Greene (no, not the hottie who used to co-present Going Live in the ’80s), despite the mostly great cast, the film looks very pedestrian indeed: Chef wants to achieve perfection, but things don’t go his way and, as they’d say in Australia, he chucks a mental.
If you care, then Burnt is out now, but to me, it looks half-baked (oh, ho ho ho….)
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Another week, another Nicolas Cage movie, it seems. The Runner takes the real-life situation of the 2010 BP oil spill, and stars Cage as Colin Price, an idealistic but flawed politician, who is forced to confront his dysfunctional life after his career is destroyed in a sex scandal.
The film also stars Connie Nielsen, Sarah Paulson, plus legend Peter Fonda, and The Wire‘s Wendell Pierce (aka Bunk), and is written and directed by Austin Stark.
It sounds okayish, but nothing more than a TV movie of the week and certainly nothing to rush to the cinema to see.
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.