Tag: Penélope Cruz

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The Bride!

Director – Maggie Gyllenhaal – 2026 – US – Cert. 15 – 126m

**

In 1930s Chicago, Frankenstein’s monster seeks love and companionship, so a dead girl, possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley, is reanimated as his Bride – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 6th

Stuck for eons in a black and white limbo, having died of brain cancer after writing the novel Frankenstein – perhaps the novel was part of a brain tumour – and feeling that she’d not managed to say within it what she needed to say, the departed spirit of Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley from Hamnet, Chloe Zhao, 2025; The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021; Misbehaviour, Phillippa Lowthorpe, 2020) observes the world of the living, in colour, and enters it to take possession of a living woman in 1930s Chicago through whom she intends to say what still needs to be said. She picks the fearless and vivacious Ida (Buckley again) in the orbit of ruthless gangster Lupino (Zlatko Burić from Superman, James Gunn, 2025; Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund, 2022; Pusher, Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996).

Being fed one oyster too many in a nightclub, Ida wilfully throws up over one of Lupino’s men.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Ferrari

Director – Michael Mann – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 130m

*****

As Enzo Ferrari’s racing team takes on a particularly tough race in 1957, the complexities of his private life prove equally challenging – out in UK cinemas on Tuesday, December 26th

You might reasonably expect a movie about legendary driver turned racing car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari to be about motor racing, and while that’s undeniably true of this film, it’s about far more. In essence, it’s a character study about a man’s life focused on a brief period of his career, in which complex professional and personal issues intersect.

Based on a script by the late, great Troy Kennedy Martin (1932-2009 – writer of The Italian Job, 1969; BBC TV series Z Cars, 1962 and Edge of Darkness, 1985), Mann’s film covers four months in 1957 building up to a particularly tough race, the Mille Miglia, the route for which covers 1 000 miles of open country roads.

Alongside the considerable challenges and demands of the race itself, the personal life of Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is nothing if not complex. His marriage to business-savvy Laura Garello Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) is on the rocks thanks to the death from muscular dystrophy in 1956 of their son Dino aged 24.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The 355

Director – Simon Kinberg – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 124m

***

Five female agents from different national security agencies team up to prevent a deadly new cyber-weapon falling into the wrong hands – out in cinemas on Friday, January 7th

An illegal deal is going down 150 miles south of Bogotá, Columbia. A ruthless and powerful mercenary (Jason Flemyng) will stop at nothing to get hold of a deadly new cyber-weapon – a hand-sized device which is capable of accessing and utilising any other computer control system and that can be plugged into a laptop. However, things don’t go according to plan when the sellers’ mansion is raided by Colombia’s Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (DNI) and the cyber-weapon taken by operative Luis (Édgar Ramirez) who pans to sell it on and vanish with the money.

Posing as a married couple, CIA operatives Nick (Sebastian Stan) and Mace (Jessica Chastain) are sent to Paris, France to rendezvous with Luis and buy the cyber-weapon off him. In their temporary apartment, Nick unexpectedly kisses her and they sleep together, but later he is fatally shot when the operation goes wrong because an operative of the German national security organisation the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BDN) Marie (Diane Kruger) snatches the bag.… Read the rest