At the Flix with @Timmy666
Hello one and all,
So as August approaches its end, we might be about to close the door on the many Summer blockbusters to have hit the screens this year. That said, there is still a healthy dose of releases for you to get your teeth into this week, including two or three big releases.
Sin City 2: A Dame To Kill For (18)
This week sees the big screen return of Frank Miller‘s graphic novel come to life and the return of Sin City’s most hard-boiled citizens, who cross paths with some of its more reviled inhabitants. If it’s like the first film, it is likely to be a unique and artful cinematic experience with its sense of stylised violence and characters, green screen monochrome backdrops and fresh use of CGI. With a gargantuan A-List cast and a huge advertising push, there’s no doubting its the big draw film of this week. The original had a hefty dose of menace and its pulp sensibility really worked. Will this work a second time or will it be a case of style and no substance?
As Above, So Below (15)
On wide release this week, we have yet another big studio horror movie, promised this time as a “journey into madness and terror”. It makes you wonder what madness and terror exists inside film studios too!
A team of explorers venture into the maze of bones existing in the winding catacombs lying beneath the streets of Paris only to uncover the secret of what this city of the dead was meant to contain. If that sounds like your bag, then go for it!
Being a horror film though, is it a case of “as before, same old, same old”?
Let’s Be Cops (15)
Under the tagline of “Fake Cops, Real Trouble”, Let’s Be Cops is (allegedly) a comedy of two struggling pals who dress as police officers for a costume party and get tangled in a real life web of mobsters and dirty detectives, to supposedly hilarious consequences. It’s never good news when the trailers seemingly contain the best bits, and those bits aren’t funny. Good buddy films fizz with humour and energy. By the looks of it, whatever comedy chemistry might be there, doesn’t appear in this film.
Next …
If I Stay (12A)
Chloe Moretz stars in a supernatural infused melodrama, playing Mia Hall who after a car accident, finds herself in a coma. During an out-of-body experience, she must decide whether to wake up and live a life far different than she had imagined.
This is quite archetypal teenage movie stuff albeit with the added supernatural elements. Following in the steps of other likeminded films (the flawed Peter Jackson film The Lovely Bones and Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter both come to mind), is this a supernatural film that’s actually super or just another retread?
Mood Indigo (12A)
Michel Gondry’s latest film gets a limited run at the Electric Cinema this week. Gondry adapts Boris Vian’s cult novel to provide the foundation for a love story starring Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris. Set in a charmingly surreal Paris, Duris plays wealthy bachelor Colin who endeavors to find a cure for his lover Chloe after she’s diagnosed with an unusual illness caused by a flower growing in her lungs. Even if Mood Indigo is sub-par Michel Gondry, expect a tonne of visual whimsy and heartfelt emotion and an energy fizzing with cinematic inventiveness.
Elsewhere at the mac this week…
You have the opportunity to catch some very contrasting films. Lilting (15) is a film set in contemporary London,which tells the story of a Cambodian-Chinese mother mourning the untimely death of her son. Her world is suddenly disrupted by the presence of a stranger. Though they don’t share a common language, a translator helps piece together the memories of a man they both loved. Worth watching for Ben Wishaw‘s touching performance alone.
Also at the mac this week, Northwest (15) is not just for jumper wearing dark Scandi-drama fans out there. This film has an altogether harder edge, set against the backdrop of the impoverished multi-ethnic Copenhagen suburb of Nordvest. It stars Gustav Dyekjær Giese as a young man caught in a cycle of crime despite having a hidden compassionate nature. Scripted by Rasmus Heisterberg, who wrote the excellent Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair, this looks like an interesting film worth catching this week.
Finally, at the mac, Wakolda: The German Doctor (12A) opened across the UK to strong reviews a few weeks ago, Wakolda is set in 1960, a travelling Doctor strikes up a relationship with a local Argentine family. In particular, she becomes friends with their daughter Lilith, a lonely 12-year-old girl who unknowingly becomes close friends with one of the world’s most terrifying Nazi war criminals, Josef Mengele A.K.A ‘The Angel Of Death’, who is on the run for his crimes in Auschwitz.
