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This week, there are EIGHT new films out for you to choose from, led by Mile 22. Here are the titles, with more info below:
- Mile 22
Peppermint
The Captain
The Little Stranger
The House with a Clock in its Walls
A Simple Favour
Climax
Samson
Mile 22 centres around an elite American intelligence officer – played by The Raid‘s Iko Uwais, aided by a top-secret tactical command unit, who tries to smuggle a mysterious police officer with sensitive information out of the country.
This is another collaboration of Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg, with additional occasional collaboration from John Malkovich, who all brought us the incredible Deepwater Horizon, and the first two also brought us Lone Survivor and the superb Patriots Day.
So, I’m definitely in.
Director: Peter Berg
Writers: Lea Carpenter, Graham Roland
Also stars: Lauren Cohan, Ronda Rousey, Terry Kinney, Sala Baker, Poorna Jagannathan, Alexandra Vino, Lauren Mary Kim, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Raven Wynn
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Peppermint starts off looking like a sweet tale of a mother who dotes on her young daughter… whmo she nicknames Peppermint, until one day some drugs cartel baddies let rip and they get caught in the crossfire.
Jennifer Garner plays Riley, who’s still wondering what to do after 5 years of the cops doing nothing, and so she feels she may as well ‘go big or go home’, and tool herself up with all the weaponry she can find.
This is as the trailer tells us it comes from the same director as Taken, so you know what we’re dealing with, here.
They don’t mention that the director, Pierre Morel, also made 2015’s The Gunman, a Sean Penn actioner which flopped, but which I thought was much better than Taken. Still, mention Taken, and you know what we’re dealing with.
So, Riley wants to take out the trash. Will it work? It could make for passable entertainment, but also it looks quite silly.
Writer: Chad St John
Also stars: Richard Cabral, John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr, Juan Pablo Raba, Method Man, Tyson Ritter
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Captain follows Willi Herold (Max Hubacher), a German army deserter who stumbles across an abandoned Nazi captain’s uniform during the last, desperate weeks of the Third Reich. Newly emboldened by the allure of a suit that he stole only to stay warm, Willi discovers that many Germans will follow the leader, whosoever that happens to be. A parade of fresh atrocities follow in the self-declared captain’s wake, and serve as a profound reminder of the consequences of social conformity and untrammeled political power. Simultaneously a historical docudrama, a tar-black comedy, and a sociological treatise, The Captain presents fascism as a pathetic pyramid scheme, a system to be gamed by the most unscrupulous and hollow-souled.
Based on the trailer, this does look to be a fascinating drama, so I do want to see this.
Writer/Director: Robert Schwentke
Stars: Max Hubacher, Milan Peschel, Frederick Lau
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Little Stranger tells the story of Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson – Ex Machina), the son of a housemaid, who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor.
During the long hot summer of 1948, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked. The Hall has been home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries. But it is now in decline and its inhabitants – mother, son and daughter – are haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life. When he takes on his new patient, Faraday has no idea how closely, and how disturbingly, the family’s story is about to become entwined with his own.
I don’t know the original novel, but based on what I’ve seen here, it has a good cast and could make for a good film.
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Screenplay: Lucinda Coxon
Novel: Sarah Waters
Also stars: Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling, Will Poulter, Anna Madeley, Camilla Arfwedson, Kate Phillips, Josh Dylan
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
The House with a Clock in its Walls centres around young lad Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) who, after losing his parents, is sent to Michigan to live with his uncle Jonathan (Jack Black).
He discovers the man is a warlock, and enters a world of magic and sorcery, but this power is not limited to good people: there’s Isaac Izard (Kyle MacLachlan), an evil wizard who wanted to cause the Apocalypse so that he could see what happened afterwards. To do this, he constructed a magical clock with black magic, as long as it exists it will keep ticking, counting down to doomsday.
He died before he could finish the clock, but he hid the clock in his house, where Uncle Jonathan now lives. Now Lewis and Jonathan must find the clock before it’s too late, and before Isaac’s wife, Selena, gets to it.
This film is clearly aimed at children so while it’ll reach its target market, it’s not something I’ll be rushing to see at the cinema.
However, what’s really surprising is that this is a children’s film directed by Eli Roth!
Writers: John Bellairs (novel), Eric Kripke (screenplay)
Also stars: Cate Blanchett, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Colleen Camp, Perla Middleton, Sunny Suljic
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
A Simple Favour (or A Simple Favor in the US), centers around Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), a ‘mommy vlogger’ who attempts to uncover the truth behind her best friend Emily’s (Blake Lively) sudden disappearance from their small town. Stephanie is joined by Emily’s husband Sean (Henry Golding) in this – it says here – stylish thriller filled with twists and betrayals, secrets and revelations, love and loyalty, murder and revenge.
Sadly, this comes from Paul Feig, who usually gives us dross like Bridesmaids and calamities like the Ghostbusters reboot.
And it also features Blake Lively, who can’t act to save her life.
One to miss, then.
Writer/Director: Paul Feig
Novel: Darcey Bell
Also stars: Linda Cardellini, Rupert Friend, Eric Johnson, Jean Smart, Sarah Baker, Andrew Rannells
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Climax
In the mid 1990s, 20 French urban dancers join together for a three-day rehearsal in a closed-down boarding school located at the heart of a forest to share one last dance. They then make one last party around a large sangria bowl. Quickly, the atmosphere becomes charged and a strange madness will seize them the whole night.
If it seems obvious to them that they have been drugged, they neither know by who nor why. And it’s soon impossible for them to resist to their neuroses and psychoses, numbed by the hypnotic and the increasing electric rhythm of the music. While some feel in paradise, most of them plunge into hell.
I didn’t care for writer/director Gaspar Noé‘s Love 3D, and I can’t see this drawing me in, either.
Stars: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Samson
A Hebrew with an unusual gift of strength must respond properly to the call of God on his life in order to lead his people out of enslavement. After his youthful ambition leads to a tragic marriage, his acts of revenge thrust him into direct conflict with the Philistine army. As his brother mounts a tribal rebellion, only Samson’s relationship with a Philistine seductress and his final surrender – both to the Philistines and to God – turns imprisonment and blindness into final victory.
Well, there’s no victory in this as it looks utter junk. God knows why it needed TWO directors!
Directors: Bruce Macdonald, Gabriel Sabloff
Stars: Jackson Rathbone, Billy Zane, Taylor James
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.