Here is this part one of the month’s round up of films to view at home, starting with Amazon Prime

Memory
The prolific Liam Neeson is back in playing a contract killer who refuses to complete a hit when he finds out the target is a child. Instead, he starts seeking out and killing the people involved in trafficking the girl, and many others whilst he is chased by Guy Pearce’s FBI agent. Neeson acknowledges his age as his character has the early stages of Alzheimer’s which adds a new slant to the story. Martin Campbell is a dab hand at this sort of stuff, and he directs this efficiently. Taj Atwal, from Line of Duty, is good as Pearce’s partner in this superior action movie.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Also on Amazon Prime…
Samaritan stars an even more ancient Sylvester Stallone as the retired titular super hero who is discovered by a young boy and has to return to save the day once again. Stallone is fine and this does, at least, try for something different to most super hero movies though it does outstay its welcome. Run Sweetheart Run is a very silly horror film about a young female lawyer’s assistant who is attacked and then chased by a man she has spent the evening with. Implausible and incoherent.
Ratings out of 10:
Samaritan: 5
Run Sweetheart Run: 3

On Sky Movies, Aisha has surprisingly appeared with little fanfare as it is the type of film that could flourish on the art house circuit and have made an impression in the recently announced British Independent Film Awards. It is told in an almost documentary style by director Frank Berry, from his own screenplay. Letitia Wright stars as Aisha, an immigrant from Nigeria living in Ireland who has not been granted residency yet after being there for five years. Whilst waiting for her application to be heard, she becomes friends with local ex-prisoner, Conor (Josh O’Connor). Both of the leads are excellent and the matter of fact depiction of Aisha’s plight makes it all the more real.
Rating: 8 out of 10

Also on Sky Movies…
Morbius is yet another entry in the Marvel Cinematic Univerzzz. The reliably dreadful Jared Leto stars as Dr Michael Morbius as a biochemist with a rare blood disorder. Looking for a cure he accidently infects himself with a form of vampirism. It is the usual mixture of boring exposition, dodgy CGI and badly staged action in the final act.

Rivals DC have provided us with yet another reboot of their most popular character in The Batman. What’s the point? To make money and in that respect, with over $770 million taken worldwide, it has been a success. If though, you are looking for the tiniest bit of originality in this long, dull, movie, you will be disappointed.

If I had not been fully aware of The Northman, I would have sworn it was a parody, so hilarious is the pompous dialogue. Alexander Skarsgård stars as a Viking prince seeking revenge for his murdered father. The supporting cast includes the considerable talents of Nicole Kidman, Anna Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, but none of them can save this self important guff.

In 9 Bullets, Lena Headey stars as a dancer who goes on the run with a neighbour’s son after the rest of his family is killed. It should be easy enough to make something suspenseful from that set up, but this is muddled and badly edited. The Nan Movie can be added to the list of unsuccessful film spin offs from television series. It is a shame as Catherine Tate’s Nan character, Joanie Taylor, was the funniest one in her sketch show. However, this proves that what works in a short bursts does not necessarily do so when extended to feature length, especially when the caustic humour is watered down as much as in this movie.

Russell Crowe directs as well as stars in Poker Face. He plays a tech billionaire who has terminal cancer, and who sets up a high stakes poker game with his oldest friends. The game is interrupted by a gang trying to rob the house. This is a bit of a mess. There are no issues with Crowe’s direction or the performances but Stephen Coates’ screenplay is all over the place, trying to cram to many storylines in, without developing any of them properly.
Ratings out of 10:
Morbius: 3
The Batman: 2
The Northman: 1.5
9 Bullets: 3.5
The Nan Movie: 4
Poker Face: 5

Finally to films I have rented on Amazon but will also be available on most other rental services.

Official Competition
A millionaire veteran businessman wants to leave his mark in a way that will always be remembered. Having discarded the idea of building a bridge bearing his name, he decides he wants to finance a prestigious movie that will be laden with awards and regarded as a classic. He hires a hot director, Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz), an acclaimed actor, Ivan Torres (Oscar Martínez) and a box office star, Félix Rivero (Antonio Banderas). This film follows the rehearsal process rather than the actual shooting and ends with a closing scene at the press conference following the movie’s opening.

There is a lot of amusement to be had from the way that the two stars clash because of their very different approaches to acting as well as from Lola’s increasingly strange demands on them. That includes performing a scene under a boulder that could fall on them any moment and cellophaning Felix and Ivan together whist she destroys their acting trophies. I am sure that writers Andrés Duprat, Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (the latter two also share directing duties) have drawn on their personal experiences and dialled them up a notch to produce a very funny script.
Rating: 8 out of 10

Emily the Criminal
Emily works delivering food. She is never going to earn enough to pay off her student loans, with the outstanding amount increasing due to punitive interests rates. A minor criminal conviction is preventing her from getting a better paid job but when she gets involved in a credit card scam she finally sees a way out. This is a nicely downbeat, low budget crime drama full of convincing performances, none more so that from Aubrey Plaza as Emily. There are a couple of nail biting scenes as Emily is nearly caught and a well staged ending. The pace does. though, lag a bit about half way through as she starts a relationship with fellow criminal Yousef (Theo Rossi).
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

I have caught up with a quartet of French movies that I missed in the cinema earlier this year, also which can now be rented in the usual places. In Everything Went Fine, André Bernheim has turned 85, and when he suffers a stroke he decides that he wants to end his life. He tells his daughter Emmanuèle and asks he to organise it, something that is against the law in France. This is a pretty grim storyline but master director François Ozon manages to inject just enough levity. It is a little long and starts to get repetitive but is lifted when Emmanuèle and her sister Pascale are picked up by the police on the night they are trying to get their father transported to a clinic in Switzerland. The performances are all sound with Sophie Marceau standing out as Emmanuèle.

From another acclaimed director, Claire Denis, comes Both Sides of the Blade. The brilliant Juliette Binoche stars as Sara, who is in a long term relationship with Jean (Vincent Lindon) but when Jean gets a job with Sara’s ex-boyfriend, François (Grégoire Colin), she starts an affair with her old flame. It is the performances that make this worth seeing, especially from Binoche and Lindon, as the story is fairly predictable and the characters almost universally unlikeable.

Unlikeable, immature and irritating is the only way to describe the title character in Anais in Love. To that end, Anaïs Demoustier does a good job portraying her but it does not make it an easy film to watch as the aimless 30 year old flits from one doomed relationship to another. The Big Hit is based on a true story that happened in Sweden in the 1980s. An out of work actor, Étienne Carboni (Kad Merad), takes on a project to run a drama class at a prison. He gets the inmates to learn and practice Waiting for Godot and they show a real aptitude for it. Consequently, they get to perform the play at a series of theatres. I thought I knew the feelgood route this film was firmly heading down only for my expectations to be confounded late in the proceedings. The actors playing the prisoners are all fine but it is Merad and Marina Hands, who plays the warder, who impress the most.

Ratings out of 10:
Everything Went Fine: 7.5
Anais in Love: 5
Both Sides of the Blade: 6
The Big Hit: 8.5

Also available to rent….

My Old School is a documentary about ‘Brandon Lee’, a 30 year old man who enrolled himself in a secondary school in Scotland in 1993. His deception was not uncovered until he was at university. This film is visually inventive with the use of animated sequences, but the story is simply not interesting enough.

The original Jeepers Creepers was one of the more effective horror films of the early 2000’s, though its reputation has been tarnished by the conviction of writer/director Victor Salva on child abuse charges. Jeepers Creepers Reborn is the fourth go around for The Creeper, and the first with no involvement from Salva. After a decent opening sequence, it soon descends into a cliched story of dumb/annoying teens being terrorised. There are also some very unconvincing effects and a laughable ending.

In Deus, a six person crew is sent on a mission to investigate a mysterious black sphere that has appeared in Mars’ orbit. Despite an obvious low budget, this could have been a suspenseful watch, but the film soon deteriorates into gloomy religious mumbo jumbo. It tries to be deep but ends up as boring. Phil Davis is top billed but he literally phones in his brief appearances.

Ratings out of 10:
My Old School: 5
Jeepers Creepers Reborn: 4
Deus: 2