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This weekend there are ELEVEN new films out for you to choose from: a Western remake in The Magnificent Seven, Daniel Radcliffe goes undercover in Imperium, there’s low-budget scifi in The Girl with All the Gifts, British cockney comedy in Gangsters Gamblers and Geezers, Scots-based comedy in Scottish Mussel, the Chelsea Flower Show comes up in Dare to Be Wild, tedious family drama in Little Men, Rob Zombie brings us another horror movie in 31, two foriegn dramas – Baden Baden and Aloys, and concluding with a musical number – The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon.
The Magnificent Seven, with its cover version of The Animals’ House Of The Rising Sun, shows that Hollywood’s well of ideas has run dry yet again.
Director Antoine Fuqua (Olympus Has Fallen) brings his modern vision to a classic story (it says here). With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), the desperate townspeople employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers and hired guns. As they prepare the town for the violent showdown that they know is coming, these seven mercenaries find themselves fighting for more than money.
The cast includes Ethan Hawke, Denzel Washington, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Chris Pratt, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, Matt Bomer, Cam Gigandet, Sean Bridgers, Luke Grimes and Vinnie Jones.
The script comes from John Lee Hancock, Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto, based on the screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni.
I’ll go and see this, but I’m in two minds whether or not it’ll be any good.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
Imperium stars Harry Potter and Horns star Daniel Radcliffe as Nate Foster, a young, idealistic FBI agent who goes undercover to take down a radical white supremacy terrorist group. The bright up-and-coming analyst must confront the challenge of sticking to a new identity while maintaining his real principles as he navigates the dangerous underworld of white supremacy.
Inspired by real events, the film is written by Michael German and Daniel Ragussis, the latter of whom directs, and it also stars Toni Collette, Tracy Letts, Nestor Carbonell, Burn Gorman and Sam Trammell.
Imperium looks like a cracking drama with Daniel Radcliffe really on his mettle.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Girl with All the Gifts
A scientist and a teacher living in a dystopian future embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.
Directed by Colm McCarthy, from a script by Mike Carey, this one stars Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close and Paddy Considine, and looks quite intriguing, as well as the fact it only has a small budget of £4m.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Gangsters Gamblers and Geezers is story about two lovable losers, Krish and Lee who get fired from their call centre jobs.
After spending all their money in a crazy month of partying, they have no money to pay to Olu, their Nigerian landlord. Olu gives the boys 48 hours to pay their rent or else ‘things will get biblical’. With the clock ticking, the boys are forced to embark on an adventure that sees them get involved with two warring London gangsters, a gang of money laundering gypsies, a terrorist gang, a cross dressing dwarf and much, much more!
A series of misunderstandings lead to Krish and Lee being named the most dangerous men in Europe, with the Mi5 and Scotland Yard hot on their tails. The boys need to find a way to escape the mayhem and find the money to pay their rent. After numerous ups and downs, the boys get their money and their dream girls and learn an important lesson that it is hard work as opposed to elaborate ‘get rich quick’ schemes that get them everything they want.
Directed by Amar Adatia and Peter Peralta, and starring Rahul Kohli, Jessica-Jane Stafford, Richie Campbell, Steve Perry, Nicola Duffett and, for some reason, Richard Blackwood and Jodie Marsh, it looks passable, but I hope appearances from the latter two are limited.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Scottish Mussel
Ritchie (Martin Compston) is a Glaswegian chancer with low hopes and no prospects. Disillusioned with city life, he goes undercover at a Highland conservation centre to make his fortune as an illegal pearl fisher with the help of his two hapless and accident prone mates, Danny and Fraser. Here he meets Beth (Talulah Riley, who also writes and directs), a pretty English conservationist passionate about saving endangered mussels from the clutches of pearl thieves in the Scottish Highlands.
Falling for her instantly, Ritchie must beat off competition in the form of Highland Ranger Ethan, a smooth talking American Adonis convinced that Beth can’t resist his charms forever. After the success of pearl fishing attracts the unwanted attentions of old school Glaswegian mobster Gavin and his work at the centre leads him to question his true motivations, Ritchie must risk life and limb to save the Highlands from ecological disaster and win Beth’s heart.
Also starring Morgan Watkins, Joe Thomas, Paul Brannigan, Harry Enfield, Camille Coduri, Rachael Stirling and for some reason, Rufus Hound and Russell Kane, this starts off looking like a reasonable rom-com, but soon degenerates into something very bog-standard.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Dare to Be Wild
Irishwoman Mary Reynold’s journey from rank outsider to winner of a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Written and directed by Vivienne De Courcy, it stars Emma Greenwell, Tom Hughes (The Game) and The Thick Of It‘s Alex Macqueen (Youth)
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Little Men
A pair of best friends have their bond tested by their parents’ battle over a dress shop lease.
Directed by Ira Sachs, who also wrote the script with Mauricio Zacharias, this film stars Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Paulina GarcÃa and Alfred Molina, and looks deeply tedious.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
31
Five carnival workers are kidnapped and held hostage in an abandoned, Hell-like compound where they are forced to participate in a violent game, the goal of which is to survive twelve hours against a gang of sadistic clowns.
Written and directed by Rob Zombie, the film stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Malcolm McDowell, and I won’t be rushing to see this.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Baden Baden
After a failed attempt at working on a foreign film set, 26 year-old Ana (Salomé Richard) returns to her hometown of Strasbourg. Over the scorching summer that follows, she decides to replace her grandmother’s bathtub with a walk-in shower, eat peas and carrots with ketchup, drive a Porsche, harvest plums, lose her driver’s license, sleep with her best friend and get back together with her ex. In short, over this particular summer, Ana tries to get her life together.
Written and directed by Rachel Lang, and also starring Claude Gensac, Lazare Gousseau and Swann Arlaud, Baden Baden has had rave reviews, but I couldn’t get excited about it based on the trailer.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Aloys
Aloys Adorn (Georg Friedrich) is a middle aged private detective who lives and works with his father. He experiences life from a safe distance, through a video camera he keeps recording 24 hours a day, and the massive collection of surveillance tapes he organizes and obsessively watches at home. But when his father dies, Aloys is left on his own and his sheltered existence begins to fall apart.
After a night of heavy drinking, Aloys wakes up on a public bus to find that his camera and precious observation tapes have been stolen. Soon after, a mysterious woman calls to blackmail him. She offers to return the tapes if Aloys will try an obscure Japanese invention called ‘telephone walking’ with her, using his imagination as their only connection. As he is drawn deeper and deeper, falling in love with the voice on the other end of the phone, the woman opens up a new universe that may allow Aloys to break out of his isolation and into the real world.
Written and directed by Tobias Nölle, and also starring Tilde von Overbeck, Kamil KrejcÃ, Yufei Li and Koi Lee, I wanted to like this, but the trailer made the film just looked ‘weird for the sake of weird’.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon
Another one-night-only-in-the-cinemas movie, The Rolling Stones travel to Havana, Cuba, for a one-night-only gig.
Expect all the songs you know and love…. again.
I’m not really sure if this is necessary.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
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.