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This week, there are EIGHT new films out for you to choose from: Noomi Rapace goes on the run in What Happened To Monday, there’s sweary comedy with Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson in The Hitman’s Bodyguard, Idris Elba goes up against Matthew McConaughey in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, there’s nothing worth watching in Everything Everything, there’s bizarre Spanish horror in The Untamed, Jacques Cousteau goes on a journey of his lifetime in The Odyssey, Geoffrey Rush is artist Alberto Giacometti in Final Portrait, and Al Gore talks out of his backside again in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
What Happened To Monday is a sci-fi actioner set in the not too distant future, where overpopulation and famine have forced governments to undertake a drastic “One Child Policy”. As such, seven identical sisters live a hide-and-seek existence pursued by the Child Allocation Bureau.
This alternative CAB, directed by the fierce Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close), enforces a strict family-planning agenda that the sisters outwit by taking turns assuming the identity of one person: Karen Settman (Noomi Rapace). Taught by their grandfather (Willem Dafoe) who raised and named them – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday – each can go outside once a week as their common identity, but are only free to be themselves in the prison of their own apartment. That is until, one day, Monday does not come home…
I saw the trailer before I read the billing, so I didn’t realise at first that Noomi would play ALL of her sisters, but it really works brilliantly well. As the trailer progressed, this sci-fi movie looks mad as cheese, and brilliant fun. And while I quite enjoyed her other 2017 action movie, Unlocked, earlier this year, this looks a far more sure bet for anyone who skipped that one.
I’m really looking forward to this one, so check it out when it’s released. Director Tommy Wirkola also made the entertaining Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and I still need to see his Dead Snow and Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead.
Note, also, that in some places, it’s titled the rather lame ‘Seven Sisters‘, which makes it sound like a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical(!)
Hit or Miss? Verdict: I said read the review!
The Hitman’s Bodyguard stars Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson as hitman and his bodyguard, respectively, with Reynolds having to testify at the International Court of Justice, but they shoot a lot, swear a lot and cause a lot of violence. Ultimately, they must put their differences aside and work together to make it to the trial on time.
I was sold on this from the trailer, but I hope it maintains the hit-rate (pun not intended) of jokes, as films like this can go either way. Alas, director Patrick Hughes‘ previous effort was 2014’s terrible The Expendables 3, while screenwriter Tom O’Connor‘s (not that one) only other writing credit is 2012’s straight-to-DVD Bruce Willis bore, Fire With Fire.
Also stars: Salma Hayek, Gary Oldman, Kirsty Mitchell
I also love one of the posters accompanying it, which apes the 1992 drama between Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, The Bodyguard.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
The Dark Tower centres around The Gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), who roams an Old West-like landscape where “the world has moved on” in pursuit of the man in black. He’s also searching for the fabled Dark Tower, in the hopes that reaching it will preserve his dying world.
Based on a Stephen King novel, it’s something I’m not familiar with and I didn’t think the trailer made a great deal of sense – boy travels through to another world, weird stuff happens, yada yada, seen it a zillion times before – but I know it has a following.
All that said, the cast does include Claudia Kim, aka Dr Helen Cho from Avengers: Age of Ultron. She was hot, so I might just have to see this after all 😉
The Dark Tower is released in the UK on August 18th, two weeks after the US and most other countries.
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel
Also stars: Matthew McConaughey, Katheryn Winnick, Abbey Lee, Jackie Earle Haley, Nicholas Hamilton, Dennis Haysbert
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
Everything Everything is a sickly sweet pile of dross, based on the Nicola Yoon novel about teenager Maddy (Amandla Stenberg – Rue in The Hunger Games) who has lived a sheltered life – literally, because she’s allergic to everything, and who then falls for the boy who moves in next door, Olly (Nick Robinson – him from Jurassic World, not the British political pundit on BBC News).
Directed by Stella Meghie, from a scipt by J Mills Goodloe, based on the aforementioned novel, the film also stars Anika Noni Rose, Ana de la Reguera and Taylor Hickson, it comes as no surprise that this film comes from the same studio who brought us similar weepy/near-death rubbish like If I Stay and Me Before You.
If I catch any of my family watching this tripe, I will disown them.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
The Untamed
A couple in a troubled marriage locate a meteorite, initiating an encounter with a mysterious creature. Their lives are turned upside down by the discovery of the creature, which is a source of both pleasure and destruction. I didn’t really know what to make of this bizarre Spanish horror, so it might possibly work…
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
The Odyssey
From 1949 to 1979, thirty years in the life of captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the famous researcher, scientist, inventor, filmmaker whose greatest achievement is to have made the general public more curious – and accordingly closer – to the sea. A genius, a leader of men and a charismatic opinion maker, Cousteau was not without defects, his being unfaithful to ever-supportive wife Simone for example or else his vainglory…, but let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
The spectator leaves Cousteau in mid-1979 at the worst time of his life: his favorite son, Philippe, has just died in the crash of a plane he was piloting. The dashing conqueror of the sea has suddenly become a broken old man, tempted to discouragement but his eldest son Jean-Michel is by his side to help him overcome his grief and go on with his mission.
For the visuals, I say…
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Maybe!
Final Portrait
In 1964, while on a short trip to Paris, the American writer and art-lover James Lord (Armie Hammer) is asked by his friend, the world-renowned artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush), to sit for a portrait. The process, Giacometti assures Lord, will take only a few days. Flattered and intrigued, Lord agrees. So begins not only the story of an offbeat friendship, but, seen through the eyes of Lord, an insight into the beauty, frustration, profundity and, at times, downright chaos of the artistic process.
Final Portrait is a portrait of a genius, and of a friendship between two men who are utterly different, yet increasingly bonded through a single, ever-evolving act of creativity. It is a film which shines a light on the artistic process itself, by turns exhilarating, exasperating and bewildering, questioning whether the gift of a great artist is a blessing or a curse.
Looks tedious as hell…
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Al Gore tries to pretend ‘man-made global warming’ is a ‘thing’. Again. Lots of idiots agree.
Instead of a trailer for this, check out a 10-hour video of paint drying!!!
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.