Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Wild Robot

Director – Chris Sanders – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 102m

****1/2

A service robot shipwrecked on a desert island is imprinted as its mother on the mind of an orphaned gosling – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 18th following its screening in the London Film Festival

Waking up on an unknown beach with no idea as to how she got there, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voice: Lupita Nyong’o) is a Universal Dynamics service robot designed to complete any task assigned to her. Without any such task, she feels completely lost. She wanders around the island, populated only by animals, in search of her owner. Unable to understand all the noises the animals make communicating with each other, she has her translation circuits decode their meaning so that, soon, she is hearing them communicate in English.

She accidentally almost destroys a family of geese but managing to rescue a goose egg. She must protect the egg from the fox (voice: Pedro Pascal) who attempts to steal it to satisfy his hunger. Her robotic rationale for this is to question whether the egg is the fox’s property, A thought process that might make sense in a human environment but makes none at all in this animal one.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Unbearable Weight
Of Massive Talent

Director – Tom Gormican – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 105m

****

Down on his luck, actor Nick Cage (playing himself) accepts the job of spending time at a fan’s house for one million dollars, unaware that his host is a crime lord pursued by the CIA – on digital Friday, July 8th and SteelBook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD Monday, July 11th

This unusual entry in the ‘actor playing themselves’ genre is effectively the movie equivalent of fan fiction. That might sound disparaging, but that’s not at all what I mean.

Obsessed with the actor Nic Cage and his movies, writer-director Gormican has written this: a movie in which a character called Nick Cage (Nic Cage playing a version of himself) is an actor down on his luck, desperate to get a part for which he’s just auditioned and which he believes will revitalise his flagging career. He needs this part. He’s heavily in debt. His ex-wife (Sharon Horgan) wants him to spend more time with their teenage daughter Addy (Lily Mo Sheen), specifically, listening to her, since he spends most of his time spouting off about his own career in particular or movies in general.

When the part he’s after falls through, he decides to take the other offer from his agent Fink (Neil Patrick Harris), the one where he gets a million dollars for hanging out with a rich fan.… Read the rest