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This weekend there are five new films out for you to choose from: action in The Purge: Anarchy, drama in Joe, more apparent action in Hercules, an E.T. rip-off in Earth To Echo, and a dire piece of CGI nonsense in The House of Magic.
The Purge: Anarchy
The Purge: Anarchy is a sequel to a film which completely passed me by when it came out last year and starred Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey. In The Purge, all emergency services were suspended for a 12-hour period during the purge. Murder becomes legal. In fact, any and all crime is legalised.
This sequel follows this on with exactly the same thing, and stars Frank Grillo, Zach Gilford, Michael K. Williams, Kiele Sanchez, Amy Paffrath, Edwin Hodge and Carmen Ejogo.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Joe
Nicolas Cage stars as Joe, an ex-con, who is the unlikeliest of role models, meets a 15-year-old boy and is faced with the choice of redemption or ruin.
Also starring Tye Sheridan and Gary Poulter, this looks like an intriguing gritty drama, but it’s getting criminally ignored by my nearest Odeon cinemas, probably because it’s not typical Nicolas Cage action dross.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Hercules
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stars as the titular hero, the Greek demigo who, having endured his legendary twelve labours, has his life as a sword-for-hire tested when the King of Thrace and his daughter seek his aid in defeating a tyrannical warlord.
Directed by Brett Ratner on his day off from his brain, while those with nothing better to do include Ian McShane, John Hurt, Rufus Sewell, Aksel Hennie, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Joseph Fiennes and Peter Mullan.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Earth To Echo
Earth To Echo looks a little like Chronicle and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial in parts, as a group of friends investigate a series of bizarre text messages they receive after a construction project begins in their neighborhood.
Starring Teo Halm, Astro, Reese C. Hartwig, Ella Wahlestedt and Jason Gray-Stanford looks way too much of a kids film and too derivative of others, so I’ll give it a…
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The House of Magic
This is yet another kids CGI film, this time about Thunder, an abandoned young cat seeking shelter from a storm, stumbles into the strangest house imaginable, owned by an old magician and inhabited by a dazzling array of automatons and gizmos. Ed Asner and Eugene Levy are the only recognisable names in the cast.
It speaks volumes that it was released in other European countries around Christmas, yet we’re only just getting it in July.
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.