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Now we’re well into January, awards winners and nominees are appearing in the list of releases, but there’s also a lot of dross in there as well. This week’s films are: The Wolf of Wall Street, Devil’s Due, Collider, Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and Waar.
The Wolf of Wall Street
In The Wolf of Wall Street Leonardo DiCaprio plays Belfort, a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 36 months in prison for defrauding investors in a massive 1990s securities scam that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including shoe designer Steve Madden
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey and Kyle Chandler, this is a good film, but not as good as I was expecting. You can read my review here.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Verges more on a hit.
Devil’s Due
After a mysterious, lost night on their honeymoon, a newlywed couple finds themselves dealing with an earlier-than-planned pregnancy. While recording everything for posterity, the husband begins to notice odd behavior in his wife that they initially write off to nerves, but, as the months pass, it becomes evident that the dark changes to her body and mind have a much more sinister origin.
Starring Allison Miller, Zach Gilford, Sam Anderson, Roger Payano and Vanessa Ray, Devil’s Due is another of those ‘found footage’ films which, quite frankly, I’ve seen way too many of – and that’s only a handful, but it’s enough. They all tend to be the same and come across as a thriller without much in the way of thrillers. In this film, a woman is about to give birth to a child who, is clearly, the devil. So it’s a bit like The Omen.
A couple of points came to mind as I was watching the trailer. Firstly, while I love a film in a ‘scope’ ratio (i.e. 2.35:1), I don’t think it suits a film that’s meant to be showing camcorder footage. That’s because camcorders generally shoot in 16:9, so 1.85:1 is the closest general cinema ratio to that. Also, while it looks like it was intended for release around Halloween, it’s been bumped to January 2014, and January/February isn’t just a Barbara Dickson song, it’s the time of year where films get dumped.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Collider
The last survivors on Earth are a disparate group of individuals who, one by one, find themselves in a dark house. Then a man appears to tell them they have just 12 hours to ignite the Collider to re-open the portal and they can get back to 2012 (obviously, what passes for the present day).
Starring Teresa Tavares, Iain Robertson, Lucy Cudden, Jamie Maclachlan and Amy Cudden, it looks rather tedious, quite frankly. In such a situation, people would generally band together. They wouldn’t all turn on each other when they’ve only got one chance to get back to reality.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus
Jamie (Michael Cera) is a boorish, insensitive American twentysomething traveling in Chile, who somehow manages to create chaos at every turn. He and his friends are planning on taking a road trip north to experience a legendary shamanistic hallucinogen called the San Pedro cactus. In a fit of drunkenness at a wild party, Jamie invites an eccentric woman — a radical spirit named Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann) — to come along. What is meant to be a devil-may-care journey becomes a battle of wills as Jamie finds himself locking horns with his new traveling companion. But on a remote, pristine beach at the edge of the desert, the magic brew is finally imbibed, and the true adventure begins.
Starring Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffmann, this is a drug-fuelled road movie which looks like an utter pile of nonsense and there’s not a single moment in the trailer which makes me want to sit through the full 98 minutes.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Miss!
Waar
The film is based on stylized depiction of actual life events surrounding the war on terror in Pakistan including the attack on a Police Academy at Lahore in 2009. Major Mujtaba is a former army officer, who took an early retirement from the service. The plot involves a counter-terrorism operation being conducted in the Northwestern tribal region of Pakistan, led by Ehtesham and coordinated by an intelligence officer played by Ayesha. Ehtesham and the intelligence officer come to know of a major terrorist attack that can only be countered with the help of Major Mujtaba.
Starring Shaan, Hamza Abbasi, Shamoon Abbasi, Aisha Khan, Meesha Shafi and Ali Azmat, this film has action, explosions, gunfire, fit women & more explosions. It’s also got a score of 9.5/10 on IMDB, and it looks like the best offering of the week.
Hit or Miss? Verdict: Hit!
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.