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This week, there are ELEVEN new films out for you to choose from: A young Jean-Luc Godard makes his presence felt in Redoubtable, Ellen Page is amongst The Cured, there’s a gory tale of revenge in… er…. Revenge, Clive Owen channels Peter Andre as he goes on the search of a mysterious girl in Anon, the late, great John Hurt goes into That Good Night, Mansfield 66/67 gives us a Jayne Mansfield documentary, terrorists strike in Entebbe, lazy writing and cliches kick in for Breaking In, learn How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Melissa McCarthy wastes our time in Life of the Party, and there’s unwanted CGI sequels in Sherlock Gnomes: Gnomeo and Juliet 2.
Redoubtable tells a tale which I’d never come across before, showing the relationship in the late ’60s between French film director Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) and his muse, Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin), from start to finish since, while she’s approaching 20, he’s in his late 30s. What can go wrong?!
Check out our review here.
Pre-order the Blu-ray.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Read the review!
The Cured has an interesting premise in that after a zombie outbreak, someone managed to cure a number of them, so they can rejoin the rest of society… but are they REALLY cured? What do you think?! After all, why else would they make such a film?
Some of the ‘cured’ are discriminated against by society and their own families, which causes social issues to arise, and which leads to militant government interference.
However, no *career* cure can be found for Ellen Page, who starred in the godawful remake of Flatliners.
Check out our review here.
Writer/Director: David Freyne
Also stars: Peter Campion, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Sam Keeley, Stuart Graham, Amy De, Chelsea Debo
Pre-order the DVD.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Read the review!
Revenge
Never take your mistress on an annual guys’ getaway, especially one devoted to hunting – a violent lesson for three wealthy married men.
I was expecting a dripping romnatic nonsense movie from this generic title, but it looks like Mad Maxine with balls, as she gets revenge (obvs!) on three guys who do her the ultimate wrong…
Writer/Director: Coralie Fargeat
Stars: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Anon is set in a near-future world where there is no privacy, ignorance or anonymity. Our private memories are recorded and crime almost ceases to exist.
In a modern world where advanced biosyn implants mean everyone is subjected to a relentless visual stream of information they call the ‘Mind’s Eye’, privacy and anonymity as we know it has vanished. With everyone’s personal information on public display and each person’s life recorded down to the millisecond, personal information is downloaded to a vast grid called ‘The Ether’, a database which law enforcement can access and use to prosecute criminals.
In trying to solve a series of unsolved murders which appear to be linked, and unable to identify the killers, it soon becomes apparent that what they have in common signals a major breakdown in the system on which society has come to rely. Sal Frieland (Clive Owen) stumbles onto a young, nameless woman (Amanda Seyfried) who appears to have subverted the system and disappeared. She has no identity, no history and no record. Sal realises it may not be the end of crime… but the beginning.
Known only as The Girl, she must be found before Sal becomes the next victim.
Writer/Director Andrew Niccol‘s Gattaca had a lot that was great about it, so I’m very intrigued to see this.
Also stars: Colm Feore, Sonya Walger, Mark O’Brien, Joe Pingue, Iddo Goldberg, Sebastian Pigott, Rachel Roberts
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
That Good Night
Ralph (the late, great John Hurt), a once-famous screenwriter, is in his seventies and terminally ill. He has two final missions: to be reconciled to his son, Michael, and, secretly, to ensure he is not a burden to his wife, Anna, as he goes “into that good night”.
The ‘trailer’ I found was a clip from the film, and it shows Mr Hurt at his amusing best, so I definitely want to give this a go.
Director: Eric Styles
Writers: NJ Crisp (based on the play), Charles Savage (screenplay)
Also stars: Sofia Helin, Max Brown, Erin Richards, Charles Dance
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Mansfield 66/67
This documentary is about the last two years of movie goddess Jayne Mansfield‘s life and the rumors swirling around her untimely death being caused by a curse after her alleged romantic dalliance with Anton LaVey, head of the Church of Sat -an.
I don’t know a great deal about Janye Mansfield as she died before my time, so it may be worth a watch.
Pre-order the DVD.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Entebbe
In July 1976, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked and forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda. The Jewish passengers were separated and held hostage in demand to release many terrorists held in Israeli prisons. After much debate, the Israeli government sent an elite commando unit to raid the airfield and release the hostages.
This could be okay, given the premise, but oh, those dodgy accents!!!!
Director: José Padilha
Writer: Gregory Burke
Stars: Daniel Brühl, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
Breaking In looks like a poor man’s Panic Room, as a group of burglars want to steal the money within a fancy house, yet the granddaughter of the dead owner won’t give up without a fight, even though she’s outside and the baddies are inside with her two screaming brats.
The lead actress, Gabrielle Union, even has a man’s name for her character – Shaun.
Breaking In doesn’t yet have a UK or US release date. I won’t be ‘breaking in’ to the studio to find out when they’re planning to put it out.
Director: James McTeigue
Screenplay: Ryan Engle
Also stars: Billy Burke, Richard Cabral, Ajiona Alexus, Levi Meaden, Seth Carr
Pre-order the DVD.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
How to Talk to Girls at Parties, from John Cameron Mitchell, director of the acclaimed Hedwig and the Angry Inch, takes us to an exotic and unusual world: suburban London in the late 70s.
Under the spell of the Sex Pistols, every teenager in the country wants to be a punk, including our hopeless hero Enn (Alex Sharp). Hearing the local punk Queen Boadicea (Nicole Kidman) is throwing a party, Enn crashes the fun and discovers every horny boy’s dream; gorgeous foreign exchange students. When he meets the enigmatic Zan (Elle Fanning), it’s lust at first sight.
But these girls have come a lot further than America. They are, in fact, aliens from another galaxy, sent to Earth to prepare for a mysterious rite of passage. When the dark secret behind the rite is revealed, our galaxy-crossed lover Enn must turn to Boadicea and her punk followers for help in order to save the alien he loves from certain death. The punks take on the aliens on the streets of London, and neither Enn nor Zan’s universe will ever be the same again.
This trailer had a lot going on in it, but not a lot that I found must-see.
Writers: Philippa Goslett, John Cameron Mitchell, Neil Gaiman
Also stars: Ruth Wilson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Matt Lucas, Joanna Scanlan, Elarica Gallacher, Eloise Smyth, Tom Brooke
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Pre-order the Blu-ray.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Life of the Party sees Melissa McCarthy in a rare departure of role where she does her bit for the Suffragettes by acting against type and portraying the overweight woman who falls over a lot.
Here, she’s going back to college and embarrassing her daughter in the process, mostly with her potty talk.
When her husband suddenly dumps her, longtime dedicated housewife Deanna turns regret into re-set by going back to college – landing in the same class and school as her daughter, who’s not entirely sold on the idea. Plunging headlong into the campus experience, the increasingly outspoken Deanna – now known as Dee Rock – embraces freedom, fun, and frat boys on her own terms, finding her true self in a senior year no one ever expected.
Director: Ben Falcone
Screenplay: Ben Falcone, Melissa McCarthy
Also stars: Debby Ryan, Gillian Jacobs, Julie Bowen, Adria Arjona, Maya Rudolph, Stephen Root, Heidi Gardner
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Sherlock Gnomes: Gnomeo and Juliet 2, simply reduced to the fictional detective’s name (kinda) in this trailer, is unsurprisingly, the sequel to Gnomeo and Juliet – coming over seven years after that movie, and looks entirely ideas-free.
Simply put, garden gnomes, Gnomeo and Juliet (James McAvoy and Emily Blunt), recruit renown detective, Sherlock Gnomes (Johnny Depp), to investigate the mysterious disappearance of other garden ornaments… Wowee!
Director: John Stevenson
Also stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mary J Blige
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.