Tag: US

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Features Live Action Movies

Project Hail Mary

Directors – Phil Lord, Christopher Miller – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 156m

*****

Hail Mary, Full of Grace. A school teacher is sent to a star 12 light years from Earth to determine why it is surviving the emergent life form killing all other stars, including our sun – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 20th

“What is 2 + 2?” Rudely awakened from cryogenic sleep by the ship’s computer (voice: Priya Kansara from Polite Society, Nida Manzoor, 2023), Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling from Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve, 2017; La La Land, Damien Chazelle, 2016; Drive, Nicholas Winding Refn, 2011) comes under a barrage of questions designed to check his medical status. While he is perfectly healthy, his fellow crew members – the captain (Milana Vayntrub) and the pilot (Ken Leung from Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips, 2024; Lost, TV series, 2008-10; Rush Hour, Brett Ratner, 1998) – have died in their sleep chambers. Who is he, how did he get here? Memories come flooding back, building a picture of his past and revealing the answers, even as he goes about his mission.

Back on earth, Grace was a middle school teacher.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

A Pale View of Hills
(Toi Yamanamino Hikari,
遠い山なみの光)

Director – Kei Ishikawa – 2025 – UK, Japan, Poland – Cert. 12a – 123m

From the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

***1/2

An aspiring journalist in 1982 England delves into her mother’s past life in 1952 Nagasaki and unearths dark family secrets – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 13th

As will be seen from the above logline description, this essentially plays out in two timelines.

One is in Nagasaki, Japan in 1952, less than a decade after the dropping of the atomic bomb, where the married and barely visibly pregnant Etsuko (Suzo Hirose from Lupin III the First, Takashi Yamazaki, 2019; The Third Murder, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2017; The Boy and the Beast, Mamoru Hosoda, 2015; Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015) befriends Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido from River’s Edge, Isao Yukisada, 2018; Himizu, Sion Sono, 2011), the mother of local waif Mariko (Mio Suzuki), who lives in an isolated shack near the river and plans to emigrate to the US with a man named ‘Frank’.

The other is in a town in England somewhere near Greenham Common, Berkshire, in 1982, where aspiring journalist Niki (Camilla Aiko from Dr.… Read the rest

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Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

The Testament
of Ann Lee

Director – Mona Fastvold – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 130m

****

In the mid-eighteenth century, wishing to preach her unique take on the Christian Gospel, Ann Lee crosses the Atlantic with a small party from from Manchester, England, to establish a Shaker community in America – unlikely religious musical is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20th

This review is written after seeing this film for a second time. On my first viewing, I went in cold, knowing a great deal about both Christian history and the Quakers, but nothing about the Shakers (‘the Shaking Quakers’) around whom the historical side of this film is based. As far as I can tell, the historical portrayals of the Shakers here, and their leader Mother Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried in a career-defining role), are pretty accurate.

This is to leave aside the fact that this is also a musical, the genre in which people suddenly burst into song, and we somehow accept it. In real life, people generally don’t burst into song in the ordinary run of things. And yet, it’s a genre convention we accept, and as a genre the musical has a perfectly respectable history. That said, if you’ve been brought up within any sort of English protestant Christian church tradition, from C of E to house churches, you’ll be familiar with people singing hymns as part of their religious worship.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Scream 7

Ghostface in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group's "Scream 7." © 2025 Paramount Pictures. Ghost Face is a Registered Trademark of Fun World Div., Easter Unlimited, Inc. ©1999. All Rights Reserved.”.

Director – Kevin Williamson – 2026 – US – Cert. 18 – 114m

****

A survivor from the original murder spree tries to protect her 17-year-old daughter from the recently reappeared killer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 27th

This cleverly plays to both anyone who has followed the Scream franchise since its inception and anyone coming to it for the first time. It grabs you straight from the start with a clever little sequence, featured in the first quarter of the trailer, in which a young couple (Michelle Randolph and Jimmy Tatro) arrive for their stay at a Woodsboro house where the Stu Macher murders took place decades earlier, now done up as a short stay holiday home for crime thrill seekers. Since the trailer gives it away, it seems reasonable to point out that these two are about to become the latest victims of the so-called Ghostface killer, clad in his familiar mask that to this writer has always conjured Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream (1893).

Jimmy Tatro stars in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7.”

An additional conceit of the franchise is that the Ghostface killer’s trademark mask and cape can be worn by anyone, meaning that if you can disarm or kill them, you can then remove the mask and discover the identity of this particular Ghostface.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies Music

Sinners

Director – Ryan Coogler – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 138m

*****

In 1932, a young blues guitarist finds himself out of his depth when two brothers open a juke joint which comes unexpectedly under siege from supernatural forces – plays one night only, Sunday, March 1st, 6.30pm, as part of Film Tottenham following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, April 18th 2025

It’s a strange thing, but Warner Bros., which has a reputation for tough guy movies from its hard-edged gangster movies of the 1930s, has never made a movie about the blues. If that seems something of a stretch as an assumption, humour me here. The blues came out of the hardships of the Afro-American experience – white racism and the slave trade, poverty and hardship, and there was something raw about it, much as with those early gangster movies that shaped the Studio’s identity.

The idea of Warner Bros. making a movie about the black experience and the blues (or, indeed, building an entire genre around that idea) seems so obvious that it’s a wonder the Studio never did it before. Perhaps it’s significant that Warner Bros. were the Studio that made Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2023), which touches on such material.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Crime 101

Director – Bart Layton – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 140m

*****

A high class lone operator thief and the rigorously analytical cop on his trail cross paths with a disillusioned insurance saleswoman to the wealthy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th

As coloured dots come into focus, they are revealed to be the lights of a Los Angeles freeway upside down, an image which bookends the movie. Davis (Chris Hemsworth) exercise in his sparse apartment before donning a suit. Detective “Lou” Lubesnik (Mark Ruffalo) shaves in his small, untidy bathroom. Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), in her bathroom, goes through the laborious task of applying make-up.

This is essentially a four-hander – more of the fourth character later on.

Davis is a lone operator who thinks through his proposed robberies beforehand in such a way as to ensure that no-one gets hurt. LAPD investigator Lubesnik has become obsessed with a string of robberies he believes committed by the same person, to the detriment, as his colleagues and superiors see it, of his regular police work. Sharon works for a high end insurance company who have been stringing her along for years with hollow promises of board membership to use her now fading good looks to close sales to wealthy clients.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

It’s Never Over,
Jeff Buckley

Director – Amy Berg – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 106m

***1/2

A look at the life of the hugely talented singer / songwriter whose career in the 1990s was cut short by his untimely death – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th

It’s tempting to place Jeff Buckley among the all too long list of rock and roll music casualties who killed themselves via a mixture of excessive lifestyle and drug abuse, a list which includes Jeff’s absent, singer / songwriter father Tim, who died of a morphine and heroin overdose at age 28.

This documentary charts its subject’s life chronologically and thus doesn’t get to the issue of Jeff’s death until late on. Following his early years as a young hopeful living in New York City, Jeff Buckley relocated to Memphis where one day, aged 30, he swam out into the Wolf River (a tributary of the Mississippi) and was never seen alive again. The autopsy, which was pretty much open and shut, recorded that he had one beer in his system. Nothing else. The river at this location had a powerful undertow, so Buckley’s untimely death can be put down to a tragic combination of ignorance and misjudgement.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Goat

Director – Tyree Dillihaye – Co-Director – Adam Rosette – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

***

A goat sets out to prove that despite being small he can play professional roarball just as well as the big guys who populate the sport – animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th

In a world where ‘smalls’ and ‘bigs’ live side by side, Will Harris (voice: Caleb McLoughlin) is a small goat who wants nothing more than to play roarball, and is thrilled when his mum (voice: ) takes him to see his first game with local team the Vineland Thorns. Their star player is Jett Fillmore (voice: Gabrielle Union), a leopard. Like most of the played, she is huge. Much, much bigger than the comparatively tiny Will. The Thorns’ nemesis is Magma, who likewise have their own huge star player, Mane Attraction, who looks like a cross between a lion and horse. Bigs dominate the world of roarball, and keep smalls out of it with the simple motto, “smalls don’t ball.” But Will is the determined sort, not one to take no for an answer.

Other members of the Thorns include: Olivia Burch (voice: Nicola Coughlan), an ostrich depressed by fan comments on social media who deals with the problem by burying her head in the sand.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Primate

Director – Johannes Roberts – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 89m

****1/2

A girl and her friends discover her family’s pet chimp has turned violent and trapped them in the house – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30th

Coming in commendably under 90 minutes, this is a hugely effective thriller about people trapped in a confined space with a monster. Which makes it all the more curious that it missteps for its first couple of scenes, making you wonder if you’re going to regret seeing the film. First up is a scene in which a vet ventures into a house’s exterior enclosure and is attacked by Ben, the distressed chimpanzee, who lives there. The problem is not the scene itself, which is both genuinely scary and sets the scene for what is to follow – indeed, it establishes that there is a chimpanzee in the house about to turn bad – but the fact that it’s almost impossible to relate the scene to the remaining narrative, apart from the fact that it takes place 36 hours earlier. Who was the vet? At what point in the unfolding flashback does this attack take place? The ensuing mayhem won’t leave you any time to ponder such questions, so it arguably doesn’t matter, but for me, because I couldn’t make any sense of it in the scheme of the wider film, it proved annoying.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

H is for Hawk

Director – Philippa Lowthorpe – 2025 – US, UK – Cert.12a – 115m

*****

An academic grieving her recently deceased photojournalist father buys and trains a goshawk then turns in on herself – adaptation of bestselling memoir is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 23rd

Helen (Claire Foy) phones her dad to tell him she’s just seen a pair of goshawks. Her dad (Brendan Gleeson), with whom she would often venture out into the English countryside, is a top photojournalist who has made a career out of waiting with his camera – for hours sometimes – to catch just the right moment to tell a story. Technically, he is retired, but still carries on working. And then a few days after Helen sees the goshawks, her mum (Lindsay Duncan) phones. Dad died, suddenly, unexpectedly. He’s gone. Except that, in the manner of the bereaved, he’s still there. Everywhere Helen goes, she remembers flashes of him from the past, things they did together. They were very close.

She works as an academic, teaching science at Cambridge, and not unusually is disenchanted with her students, wishing they’d show a bit more interest. She has been invited to apply for a position in Berlin, and as her best friend Christina (Denise Gough) says, if she applies she’ll probably get it, so they go out to celebrate.… Read the rest