Here is a round up of new films seen at home this month, starting as usual with Amazon Prime:
Double Kill
Holly Prentice stars as twin assassins, Lina and Kia, working together for a shadowy organisation. On one particularly violent night, Lina receives instructions to murder Kia, or her baby daughter will be killed. Michael Hoad’s thriller is a curiosity. The premise is pretty good and I was keen to find out what happened next. But a lot of the dialogue is awful and some of the performances are embarrassingly amateurish. Also the decision to set a film in England, hire a British actress in the lead roles and make her characters American was a puzzle!
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
A dishevelled man arrives at a diner in Los Angeles and claims to have travelled from the future, where artificial intelligence has destroyed humanity. An unknown combination of people from the diner can prevent the AI’s creation through trial and error, but this is the man’s 117th attempt. There is a brilliant opening 12 minute pre title scene as Sam Rockwell’s character first appears that the rest of the film cannot live up to, especially when it gets a little bogged down with flashbacks introducing the various characters. Rockwell is sardonically funny throughout though with good support from Juno Temple and Haley Lu Richardson. The last half hour is awful.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Love of Your Life
Nurse Maya (Margaret Qualley) has a chance encounter with Charlie (Gabriel Basso). They fall in love and marry, only for him to succumb to Covid. Grieving, she travels on a journey of self discovery. That sounds mawkish and it truly is. Qualley is decent but the relentlessly miserable tone grates.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Lure
Six men, believing they’re attending an exclusive dating event, are trapped in a wealthy heiress’s remote estate and forced into violent trials to compete for the chance to father her heir. More gory in a Saw type way than scary, this cheap British horror suffers from poor performers and uninvolving characters.
Rating: 3 out of 10
What We Hide
After their mother dies from an overdose, sisters Spider and Jessie, hide her body out of a fear that they will be separated by the foster care system. Dan Kay’s drama is well enough made and there are decent performances by McKenna Grace and Jojo Regina as the girls, but the story is quite predictable.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Voidance
Amid reported unrest between neighbouring planets Atopia and Cho-Hacha, trainee anti-terror agent Alana Toro (Zoe Cunningham) receives orders to track down and bring in a troublesome rebel group in order to prevent an attack. Each failed attempt allows her to restart the scenario, but with limited chances to get it right. The Groundhog Day scenario is not capitalised on and the extremely low budget is all to evident. Poorly acted and boring.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Misdirection
Criminals Sara Black (Olga Kurylenko) and Jason Wright (Oliver Trevana) plan one last burglary, of wealthy philanthropist David Blume (Frank Grillo), before they flee abroad. But when David returns home unexpectedly, things take a turn. This was a more intense drama than I expected, but it probably had one twist too many.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Two Women
When neighbours Violette (Laurence Leboeuf) and Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) bond over the boredom of parenthood, they realise that the solution maybe to start finding sex in unexpected places, I did not care about either woman and the sex scenes soon became tiresome.
Rating: 3 out of 10
The Get Out
A nightclub owner (Russell Crowe) is on the verge of leaving his dangerous past behind for retirement with his girlfriend (Teresa Palmer). When masked gunmen (Nina Dobrev, Aaron Paul) rob him and he finds himself squeezed by ruthless cartels, a mysterious newcomer (Luke Evans) arrives with an interest in buying the business. I wanted to like this crime drama and Crowe has a great presence, but there are too many characters flitting in and out and the script is not sharp enough.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
On Netflix:
Unabomber
Jacob Tremblay stars as Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist who terrorized the United States for nearly 20 years. It alternates between two timelines: Kaczynski’s time attending Harvard University and his prolonged manhunt decades later. I found Janus Metz Pedersen’s crime drama to be half a very good film. The later story about the investigation and later capture of the murderer was gripping, with great performances by the brilliant Shailene Woodley and Steven Ogg as FBI agents. The college set scenes, though, were quite dull as Kaczynski was neither interesting or as clever as he thought he was.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Norm: The Tale of Norm MacDonald
Judd Apatow’s documentary uses the usual mix of archival footage, photos, and home videos to chronicle the great comedian’s career. As you would expect from that description there us little to distinguish this from numerous other recent documentaries about comedians. But, it dwells little of Norm’s personal life, largely because he was an intensely private man, which means that the focus is on his work, and that means there are lots of screamingly funny clips. I was particularly pleased to see time given to his hugely underrated sitcom as well as footage from his stand up shows, chat show appearances and his stint on Saturday Night Live. A real treat for fans.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Tyler Perry’s Doing Life
A single mother and former prison officer, Anika (Naomi Baker) forms a bond with a reformed ex-convict, Carousel (Jay Reeves) who once protected her during a violent riot in the prison. Now here is an unusual thing. A Tyler Perry movie that is not terrible! Carousel is too good to be true, and Naomi’s family are all horrible clichés. But, at the centre is a very sweet love story played nicely by the leads.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Over on Sky, subscribers can see:
One Last Shot
In the third go round for Scott Adkins’ Navy Seal Jake Harris. This time, he goes up against an old colleague, Carter (Steven Cree), who has gone rogue and infiltrated the White House in an attempt to disable the US missile network. The conceit of making this series of films look like they were made with one continuous shot each still works pretty well, so James Gunn’s direction is the best thing on show here. Adkins is his usual solid self, but the plot, especially the ease that the White House is breached, is very silly.
Rating: 5 out of 10
The Moment
This mockumentary directed by Aidan Zamiri is set in September 2024. British pop artist Charli XCX prepares to begin rehearsals for her arena tour debut while still regularly promoting her Brat album. I had heard of the British artist prior to seeing this film but not any of her songs, nor could I pick her out of a line up, so I was not the intended audience. It starts off as mildly diverting, but soon descends into a series of boring scenes featuring various hangers on who contribute nothing worthwhile. Pop music used to be a vibrant, ever changing thing but for the last 20 years or so, has completely stagnated, save for a handful of outliers. Charli with her bland, derivative, pap is not one of those.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Mexicali
An ex-special forces contractor who has retired to live a peaceful life as an avocado farmer in Mexico must fight again when the local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm. This starts off with an interminable fight sequence and never picks up from there, and does not provide any thrills.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
The Deb
A woke and cynical city slicker (Charlotte MacInnes) is sent to the small country town where her cousin (Natalie Abbott) lives and is excitedly preparing for the debutante ball. This Australian comedy musical gained notoriety by being a huge box office flop in its native country, so it has bypassed cinema screens here. My expectations were not raised by having Rebel Wilson in both the cast and the director’s chair. As I feared, it is dire stuff. A leaden script and poor performances are not helped by frequent songs to explain the plot.
Rating: 2 out of 10
On the iPlayer:
Ask E. Jean
E. Jean Carroll won two lawsuits against Donald Trump for defamation and battery. Beyond that, she built a career as a successful magazine writer. This documentary looks back at her life that is not that interesting until her meeting and subsequent assault by the serial rapist who thinks he is above the law. Those moments have been well documented so do not reveal much that is new, but they are skin crawling and make this worth seeing.
Rating: 7 out of 10