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This weekend there are six new films out for you to choose from: sequel action in London Has Fallen, Coen Brothers comedy in Hail Caesar!, Prison Break‘s Sara in horror The Other Side Of The Door, homeless drama in Time Out Of Mind, Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett in a drama where it being tedious is the only Truth, and syrupy sweet ‘Notebook’ blubbing in The Choice.
London Has Fallen shows that the Houses of Parliament really will need that £7bn refurbishment when they get a visit from Gerard Butler as as the US President’s head of secret service Mike Banning.
After the British Prime Minister has passed away under mysterious circumstances, all leaders of the Western world must attend his funeral. But what starts out as the most protected event on earth, turns into a deadly plot to kill the world’s most powerful leaders and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. The President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart), his formidable secret service head and an English MI-6 agent who trusts no one are the only people that have any hope of stopping it.
I enjoyed Olympus Has Fallen (it was far better than White House Down), but it was still daft as hell. Still, a sequel is often inevitable in such circumstances…
This sequel features a lot of the same cast, and stars Morgan Freeman, Charlotte Riley, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Angela Bassett, Jackie Earle Haley, Robert Forster and Colin Salmon.
But will David Cameron see it? He’s the one getting bumped off, after all!
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Hail Caesar! has a simple premise of: A Hollywood fixer in the 1950s works to keep the studio’s stars in line. That fixer is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) and the latest star, playing Caesar, himself, is Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), who has gone missing.
This trailer concentrates more on one particular scene, but I was still left laughing loudly by the end. The previous trailer didn’t make a whole heap of sense, but Coen Brothers rarely have to. And with that, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. For example, I loved Inside Llewyn Davis and Burn After Reading, but didn’t go a bundle on No Country for Old Men.
In fact, for the first trailer, it reminds me of the Simpsons episode when Homer’s watching Twin Peaks and exclaims, “Brilliant! I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”
This film also stars a huge cast including Scarlett Johansson, Ralph Fiennes, Dolph Lundgren, Jonah Hill, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Clancy Brown, Christopher Lambert, Fisher Stevens, Robert Picardo, Alden Ehrenreich, Agyness Deyn and Channing Tatum.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Other Side Of The Door stars Prison Break‘s Sarah Wayne Callies as Maria, a mother grieving over the loss of her son. She struggles with her feelings for her daughter and her husband and seeks out a ritual that allows her say goodbye to her dead child, opening the veil between the world of the dead and the living. Her daughter becomes the focus of terror. She must now protect against the evil that was once her beloved son.
So she sees dead people…
Also starring Jeremy Sisto, Javier Botet and Jax Malcolm, spooky horror thrillers like this are ten-a-penny and it looks like it could be either hit or miss, but either way, at least it’s not a Poltergeist remake(!)
I think I’ll give Ms Callies the benefit of the doubt with this one…
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Time Out of Mind stars Richard Gere as homeless man George, who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Maggie (Jena Malone). Again, like The Runner, this looks less a mainstream movie and more a ‘TV movie’. Perhaps that’s why it took almost a year to get a release?
During filming, a French tourist mistook Richard Gere – who was in character – for a homeless man and gave him leftover pizza. They only found out it was Gere, later on, after reading a New York Post article. And to show whether or not it’s worth watching, more than 20 attendees walked out during the Toronto International Film Festival screening, in 2014.
Time Out of Mind also stars Danielle Brooks, Abigail Savage, Jeremy Strong, and the strangely-named Dominic Colon.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Truth tells the story of The Killian Documents controversy (a.k.a. “Rathergate”) in the days leading up to the 2004 presidential election.
When veteran newscaster Dan Rather (Robert Redford) and CBS News head Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) choose to air a segment on 60 Minutes falsely accusing President George W Bush of avoiding being drafted to Vietnam through his father’s political advantages, the resulting fallout ultimately costs them their jobs and reputations.
Taken from the novel by Mary Mapes, James Vanderbilt directs and writes the screenplay for a film which also stars Elisabeth Moss, Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid and Bruce Greenwood. However, it looks pretty dull.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Choice is another of those syrupy-sweet romantic movies that make you want to hurl lung butter…
Travis (Benjamin Walker) and Gabby (Teresa Palmer) first meet as neighbours in a small coastal town and wind up in a relationship that is tested by life’s most defining events… it says here.
Also starring Alexandra Daddario (San Andreas), Maggie Grace (Taken 3), Tom Welling, plus Tom Wilkinson doing another of his horrendous American accents, I urge you to give this one a miss.
Bear in mind that this film comes from a book by Nicholas Sparks – he who is also responsible for The Longest Ride, The Best of Me, Safe Haven, The Lucky One, Dear John, A Walk to Remember and The Notebook. Yes, now you know who to blame. There really is just ONE man responsible for all this crap.
Take ‘The Choice‘ to give it a big…
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.