Weekly Roundup – June 4-10 2018

Cinemas this week are all about the CGI, with the only notable widely available release being Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Chris Pratt will return to Isla Nublar to rescue some of the dinosaurs, with peril, humour and the death of some shady characters likely to follow. It’ll be there from Wednesday, with midnight showings for the particularly keen amongst you.

Further afield you might manage to find a screening of McQueen, a documentary about Alexander McQueen’s life, upending of the snobbish fashion industry and ultimately his untimely death.

Netflix has a treat for CGI fans too, with the excellent Thor: Ragnarok streaming into our devices from Wednesday. From Friday you can also catch Netflix Original Alex Strangelove – a teenage coming-of-age-and-questioning-sexuality tale – and Ali’s Wedding, an Australian film about arranged marriage in which a young man ends up being railroaded into an arranged marriage despite being in love with someone else.

Amazon are still making it hard to find out what’s coming, film-wise, but as of today we can now watch the classic schlock-horror titles Giant from the Unknown, The Killer Shrews and She Demons as well as Paranormal Asylum, a ‘based on true events’ horror film about Typhoid Mary and romantic-comedy When She Showed Up.

Finally, for your purchasing delight in shiny-disc format we have the rather excellent Darkest Hour, in which Gary Oldman proves once again that whenever Brian Cox takes on a role, someone else will soon win an Oscar for the same role. Next up is The 15:17 to Paris, a rather unremarkable attempt by Clint Eastwood to spin 5 minutes of drama into a full-length film starring the people who were actually in a terrorist attack. Another one on the ‘if you really must’ list is Den of Thieves, with Gerard Butler playing a maverick cop on the tail of a gang who are trying to steal money. There’s also Journey’s End and Black Butterfly, neither of which have I seen but both of which I would watch if I had the opportunity.

So there you have it. Another week in cinema – what are you most looking forward to?

Weekly Roundup – Feb 19-25 2018

On DVD from today we have two magnificent pieces of cinematic glory – Geostorm, in which Gerard Butler saves the world from a system of weather satellites that he created to solve climate change and have been weaponised, and The Snowman in which Harry Hole, much loved and much flawed detective of Jo Nesbo’s incredible books, gets a big screen debut in the form of Michael Fassbender, creating a film which I enjoyed but no one else did.

Netflix this week bring us Fullmetal Alchemist, Jem and the Holograms, Forgotten and My Old Lady none of which is particularly amazing but some of which might help you pass a bit of spare time.

Amazon, meanwhile, add Sherlock Holmes, Singin’ in the Rain, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Yogi Bear to their free streaming portfolio.

Finally, in cinemas this week you can see Allison Janney’s BAFTA winning performance in I, Tonya as the cruel and foul-mouthed mother of the titular disgraced skater Tonya Harding, played superbly by Margot Robbie. Also available is one for the oldies, Finding Your Feet, in which Imelda Staunton’s stuck-up Sandra finds herself encouraged to let herself go when she spends some time in the company of her rather more free-spirited sister played by Celia Imrie.

Weekly Roundup – Jan 8-14 2018

On DVD/BD you can pick up the incredibly intense Detroit – the story of one night during the Detroit riots when a group of black musicians come up against some seriously over-zealous police officers. If you missed it in cinemas then you should definitely check it out but be warned – it’s not an easy watch. Elsewhere there’s Good Time starring Robert Pattinson – a film I wanted to see but that barely seemed to get a release before disappearing. Before you rush off to buy it, though, check out the rest of the article! And finally on disc this week we have Una in which Rooney Mara stars opposite Ben Mendelsohn as an abuse victim and abuser respectively.

If you’re looking for good stuff to stream this week, because you’ve already managed to cram in all 10 seasons of Friends, then check out The BFG which is on Netflix from today. From Wednesday you can also watch Good Time with Robert Pattinson as a bank robber trying to free his mentally ill brother from prison after a bank heist goes awry. And finally for this week, you can catch The Polka King with Jack Black. At a level 67% on Rotten Tomatoes, critics and audiences seem to agree that this is a slightly better than average film. High praise indeed!

Coming to Amazon Prime, we have the excellent Miss Sloane starring Jessica Chastain as the titular lobbyist who takes on the US gun lobby. It’s available to stream right now and if you like political drama then you should definitely check this one out. This week we have a big treat for Matt Damon fans as not one but two of his back catalogue are made available. Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood and Invictus, with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, are available from Wednesday. Also streaming from Wednesday are Spike Jonze’s under-appreciated Where The Wild Things Are, Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johansson taking on the dystopian future in The Island and, last but by no means least, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood which deserves to be seen by a much wider audience.

On the big screen this week, three treats – well…two treats and a tired prequel anyway. The one you simply MUST check out is Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I’ll have my review up later this week but the tl;dr is that it’s almost perfect. Secondly, Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. I never got to see Brian Cox’s Churchill in Churchill last year – my local Cineworld decided not to screen it after having shown me the trailer about 50 times – but this certainly looks like a better film. Last, and by every means least, we have Insidious: The Last Key – a barrel-scraping second prequel in the once-interesting Insidious franchise. With a little bit of luck, no one will watch it and that’ll be the end of this series!

That should keep you entertained for the week. Laterz!

Weekly Roundup – Jan 1-7 2018

Quite a quiet week in cinemas overall but everyone should rush to check out Molly’s Game – opening today – as soon as is humanly possible.

Friday sees the release of All The Money In The World, made famous for having managed to completely replace Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer as John Paul Getty in remarkably short order after the film was almost complete. We also have Hostiles, a western drama with Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike, Brad’s Status, where Ben Stiller travels across the country with his son to look at colleges and meets up with some old friends who make him feel bad about his lack of ‘success’ and Renegades, in which a group of Navy Seals try to ‘recover’ some gold from a lake in Sarajevo during the 90s conflict.

Over on Netflix there’s not a great deal to slake your thirst for movies this week. They’ve added the entirely unnecessary Die Hard 4.0 where Bruce Willis and Justin Long have to end cyber terrorism – by blowing shit up, natch.

The world of documentaries is much better served with He Named Me Malala – a look at the events leading up to the attack by the Taliban on Malala Yousafzai and including her address to the United Nations – and AlphaGo – a documentary about Artificial Intelligence taking on the world’s leading player of Go, a game long considered the true test of AI due to the incredibly large number of different combinations.

Amazon Prime is doing slightly better with A Dog’s Purpose and Sleepless both available to watch right now. Coming on Wednesday we have a bunch of stuff to suit most tastes – Jailhouse Rock, Syriana, The Hangover Part II, The Rite, Fallen, Inception, Interview With A Vampire and my pick of the week, V For Vendetta.

DVD/Blu-Ray:

Slim pickings on DVD/Blu-Ray this week – the only film I can find is Jungle starring Daniel Radcliffe. I haven’t seen it so I can’t tell you whether it’s the best or worst thing you could ever buy but scores on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes tend to suggest it’s decidedly average!

Weekly Round-up

Let’s take a look at some of the films coming out over the coming week:

In cinemas this week we have the long-awaited arrival of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Pitch Perfect 3 playing from Wednesday December 20th

Over on Netflix, Friday 22nd sees a new Netflix Original movie Bright, starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. imdb.com says:

Set in a world where mystical creatures live side by side with humans. A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for.

Certainly sounds intriguing!

Friday 22nd also sees Mad Max: Fury Road pop up on everyone’s favourite VoD service meanwhile Wednesday 20th brings Autopsy of Jane Doe – low-budget chiller with Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch, The Road – post-apocalyptic drama with Viggo Mortensen and Bridge of Spies – espionage courtroom drama with Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance.

Included on Amazon Prime Video from Wednesday 20th, releases to look out for include Falling Down – citizen-breakdown drama with Michael Douglas, Mars Attacks! – alien-invasion done by Tim Burton with Jack Nicholson and Poseidon – Wolfgang Peterson’s decidedly average submarine drama with Richard Dreyfuss and Kurt Russell.

And finally, if you’re a physical object collector type of film consumer then on DVD and Blu-Ray you might want to check out Christopher Nolan’s epic movie Dunkirk, which split audiences but to my mind ranks as the best WWII film released in a while.