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This week, there are SIX new films out for you to choose from: Steven Spielberg pulls out another special effects-laden story in Ready Player One, Wes Anderson comes back with the long-awaited and amazing-looking Isle of Dogs, Katie Price (no, not THAT one!) is all loved-up in Midnight Sun, there’s tedious family drama in The Bachelors, the God story returns for Easter with Paul, Apostle of Christ, and finally, three parents get too interested in their daughters’ sex lives in Blockers.
Ready Player One takes place in 2045, as James Halliday (Mark Rylance), the creator of wildly popular virtual reality utopia called OASIS lies on his death bed. Thus begins a hunt for his fortune and ownership of the whole VRMMO world with puzzles and riddles based on Halliday’s obsession with pop culture of decades past.
After years of searching for Haliday’s “Easter Egg,” one average teenager named Wade Watts solves the first clue, he sparks excitement and hope back to the hunt, and throwing him into a world of people willing to kill for the information he has, changing his life forever.
Detour‘s Tye Sheridan takes the lead into this world as Wade Owen Watts, in this new film from Steven Spielberg, based on the novel by Ernest Cline.
This film looks pretty decent, but I’m not familiar with the novel, and it is a rather long 140 minutes.
Writers: Ernest Cline, Zak Penn, Eric Eason
Also stars: Hannah John-Kamen, TJ Miller, Ben Mendelsohn, Simon Pegg, Olivia Cook, Lena Waithe, Kae Alexander, Ralph Ineson
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Isle of Dogs is a new stop-motion animation movie, but from an unlikely source – director Wes Anderson and, as such, I’m looking forward to this FAR more than anything else this week, although it’s not showing in the smaller cinemas.
Set in a dystopian future Japan where dogs have been outlawed due to a “dog flu” and have been quarantined on a remote island, Isle of Dogs follows, on the eponymous island, five local dogs named Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Duke (Jeff Goldblum), Boss (Bill Murray) and Chief (Bryan Cranston) who are fed up with their isolated existence until a boy named Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin) who ventures to the island to search for his dog, Spots. Atari receives their help and they will protect him from the Japanese authorities who have come to retrieve him.
Once again, Wes Anderson comes up trumps with a delioursly offbeat movie that’s quite unlike anything I’ve seen from him before.
It almost has a cast of thousands, as everyone wants to work with Mr Anderson, including Scarlett Johansson, Liev Schreiber, Tilda Swinton, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Harvey Keitel, Kara Hayward, Fisher Stevens, F Murray Abraham, Ken Watanabe, Courtney B Vance and Yoko Ono.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Midnight Sun takes the award for “Film Where You Most Want To Punch Everyone In The Face For Being Such A Sap”
Based on the Japanese film, Midnight Sun centers on Katie Price… yes, stop right there! “What does Katie Price want to do?”, we hear asked in the trailer. Good God! For anyone not familiar, Katie Price is also the name of the model who was once known as Jordan. When she started, she looked quite attractive. Then she distorted her face and body with godknowswhat and now looks a shadow of her former self.
Anyhoo, in this film, the 17-year-old (Bella Thorne) sheltered since childhood and confined to her house during the day by a rare disease that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Fate intervenes when she meets Charlie (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and they embark on a summer romance.
Director: Scott Speer
Writers: Eric Kirsten (based on the motion picture screenplay Taiyô no uta by Kenji Bando)
Also stars: Rob Riggle, Quinn Shephard, Ken Tremblett, Jenn Griffin
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Bachelors
After the loss of his wife, Bill Ponder (JK Simmons) and his 17-year-old son, Wes (Josh Wiggins), move out of their small town into the big city in an attempt to have a fresh start. As they each begin to adjust to their new life and seek ways to heal their wounds, they both find comfort in newfound romance.
Wes meets Lacy (Odeya Rush), an introverted but fierce girl whose enigmatic personality captivates Wes’ attention, and Bill meets Carine (Julie Delpy), a compassionate and elegant teacher whose own past heartaches resonate with his. As relationships are tested, Bill and Wes grow apart and back together again while discovering their true selves in the process.
Watching this trailer, it looks like every syrupy-sweet drama you’ve seen before where each character ‘finds themselves’.
Writer/Director: Kurt Voelker
Also stars: Jean Louisa Kelly
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Paul, Apostle of Christ
The story covers Paul going from the most infamous persecutor of Christians to Jesus Christ’s most influential apostle.
Looks like they missed a trick making Jim Caviezel Jesus again, reprising his role from The Passion of The Christ.
It could be: Jesus II: He’s back! And this time, he’s bringing his Dad!
Director: Andrew Hyatt
Writers: Terence Berden, Andrew Hyatt
Also stars: James Faulkner, André Agius
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Blockers looks like one of those 15-rated sweary gross-out comedies that I’m really getting tired of, and this one has the distinctly unpleasant premise of three parents (Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz – both above, and ex-WWE star John Cena) who’ve watched and loved their daughters as they grow up, and now they’ve just realised that the girls have discovered boys, and they have to try to stop their daughters from having sex on Prom night…
Why the hell would any parent even want to *think* about something like that??
It was bad enough that Mitchell (Cena) says he can’t chest-bump his daughter any more without “feeling her boobs”, making it sound like some dodgy Pornhub video, before things got worse and it descended into Bad Neighbours-style territory with a ‘butt-chugging’ beer contest.
As such, ‘Blockers‘ is so-called, because they’re ‘cock-blockers’, but you can’t put ‘cock’ in a title. Perhaps if they’d gone all ‘Alan Partridge’ and made it ‘cook’…
I haven’t heard of most of the people in Blockers, and I have no desire to see one minute of it… Well, one MORE minute of it, beyond this trailer.
Director: Kay Cannon
Also stars: Kathryn Newton, Graham Phillips
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.