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Features Live Action Movies

Next Goal Wins
(2023)

Director – Taika Waititi – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

*

Big budget, narrative remake / reimagining of the compelling 2014 documentary about the world’s worst national football team mostly falls flat – out in UK cinemas on Tuesday, December 26th

Film productions come in all shapes and sizes: there is a valid place for both small, microbudget, independent, art house films and another for big budget, Studio based, mega-budget, mass market films. Nine years ago, Next Goal Wins (Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, 2014), a tiny, independent documentary film shot with minimal resources, emerged from a production set-up which afforded the filmmakers considerable creative freedom without which it’s unlikely their ultimately remarkable, compelling and insightful film would ever have come together in the way it did. Nine years after the original film, it has been remade as a narrative feature with name actors and a director with a proven gift for comedy.

The documentary was about the world’s worst national football team. American Samoa suffered the worst ever defeat for a soccer team in a World Cup qualifier when they lost to Australia by a staggering 31 goals to nil. The filmmakers hit paydirt when the team hired professional football coach Thomas Rongen to turn their fortunes around: suddenly, they unexpectedly had a film pitting the chilled out, American Samoan way of life against the ruthless, competitive ethos of international team sports.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Lightyear

Director – Angus MacLane – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 107m

**1/2

Stranded on a hostile planet, Buzz Lightyear sets out on a series of missions which eventually lead to his first confrontation with the evil Emperor Zurg – plays in the Annecy Animation Festival 2022 which is taking place in a 100% on-site edition this year right now as a Screening Event on Friday, June 17th, and opens in UK cinemas the same day.

A caption at the start explains that this was the favourite film of child protagonist Andy (from Pixar’s Toy Story franchise) and the reason he got a Buzz Lightyear toy in the first place. Other than that, though, this is a completely separate and self-enclosed film.

As the literal meaning of its title implies, Lightyear delivers a narrative that races through vast periods of time at a stretch, so that we and ace space pilot Buzz Lightyear (voice: Chris Evans) and his colleague Alisha Hawthorne (voice: Uzo Aduba) land their spaceship on an unexplored planet which turns out to be populated with hostile life-forms, specifically (1) plant tendrils which burst out of the planet’s surface and try to drag anything they can back under the ground and (2) giant, flying bugs.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Free Guy

Director – Shawn Levy – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

***1/2

A non-player character in a mayhem-riddled video game decides to take matters into his own hands after meeting the girl of his dreams – out in cinemas on Friday, August 13th

Guy (sic) (Ryan Reynolds) works in Free City. In a bank. Every day he selects the same shirt from his wardrobe, gets a coffee from the same barista, goes to work. Where, at specific times like clockwork, there are robberies. He and his buddy, a security guard named Buddy (sic) (Lil Rel Howery) drop to the floor where they then chat about life, love and other issues.

Then, one day, he meets Molotov (Jodie Comer), a gun-carrying girl with a British accent. He feels as if he’s known her forever, like she’s the missing piece in his life. But she’s a Specs. She wears specs. People who wear specs do things people who don’t don’t. Guy decides he’s going to steal specs from the first bank robber who comes along.

What Guy doesn’t know is that he’s an NPC (non-player character) in a video game called Free City. The game is made by a company called Soonami run by Antwan (Taika Waititi).… Read the rest