It is time for my monthly round up of new films seen on streaming services other than Netflix, this month.
Starting with Amazon Prime:
The Relic
A grieving mother, Miranda Baker, who thinks her child is reaching out to her from beyond holds a séance to communicate and unwittingly unleashes evil in her home. There are, eventually, some creepy moments and Corey Pettit is pretty good as Miranda. But it feels cheap and most of the rest of the performances are very clunky.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Deep Cover
Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Kat, an American actor whose is running an improv workshop in London. Two of the attendees are method actor Marlon (Orlando Bloom) forced to make a living doing commercials and Hugh (Nick Mohammed), a repressed IT guy, who decides to attend the classes to boost his confidence. The lives of all three are turned upside down when Detective Billings (Sean Bean) offers them £200 each to infiltrate a criminal organisation run by Fly (Paddy Considine), because real officers are too easily recognisable. So we have an original premise, a stellar cast and a very enjoyable old fashioned romp. Sure, the premise is silly and the bad guys are more cartoonish than scary, but there are a lot of genuinely funny gags, and director Tom Kingsley keep things movie at a fast pace. All three leads appear to be having a great time and deliver top notch performances.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Over on Sky, subscribers can see:
Mountainhead
Four tycoons, good friends on the surface but cutthroat underneath, gather for a poker weekend. Jason Schwartzman is Hugo, the host and creator of a meditation app, looking to get one of his friends to invest in his business. Steve Carell is Randy, whose contacts in Washington, DC can influence the military and the country’s power grid. Diagnosed with incurable cancer, he can’t believe money can’t fix that, but hopes to cheat death by getting his friends to create an artificial intelligence able to upload a human brain. Ramy Youssef is Jeff, whose company has a superefficient AI, and Ven (Cory Michael Smith) is the owner of a social media app called Traan. As they meet, news on a global financial meltdown surfaces but the selfish group seem immune to it. It is always a challenge centring a film on people with no redeeming qualities. Whilst it is clear that writer/director Jesse Armstrong thinks they are abhorrent, and God knows venal creatures like these are assuming positions of power in America in particular, it all feels heavy handed and the characterisations outlandish. Carell is excellently repellent, though.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story
The famous and celebrated Irish author died last year, so this is a timely documentary about her life and works from writer/director Sinéad O’Shea. It includes what presumably the last interview with O’Brien, and her personal journals narrated by Jessie Buckley and being the great actress that she is, she really brings them to life. I only knew O’Brien from the underrated 1983 film, Country Girls, based on her debut novel, so the content was all new to me and I found it pretty interesting.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Home Delivery
Melanie Field plays plus sized model who invites her family to stay with her in the run up to the birth of her first child. This is one of those comedies that has extremely exaggerated characters saying embarrassing things in what feels like a semi improvised way. It all falls very flat.
Rating: 3 out of 10
The following can be bought or rented on the usual services:
La Cocina
This is the second adaptation of the 1957 stage play The Kitchen by Arnold Wesker. Written and directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios, it concentrates on exploited migrant workers in the frenzied atmosphere of a New York restaurant kitchen. I feel I have seen enough dramas set in a high pressure kitchen with people shouting “yes chef” every few minutes and this does not go down that route. But it is one of the most wearying films of the year. Noisy, erratically plotted and really overlong. I should have cared about the workers but I was bored beyond belief.
Rating: 2 out of 10
Restless
Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal), is a hard-working nurse who is a single mum to a son away at university. Her peace is destroyed when an aggressive guy, Deano (Aston McAuley), moves into the property next door and has loud parties with his mates every night until the early hours of the morning. Deano responds with hostility when Nicky politely asks him to turn the music down. the police will not help and the situation starts to escalate. Jed Hart wrote and directed this British drama and he manages to deliver a tense film that just about stays believable, apart from one instance when Nicky takes the law into her own hands. Marshal very impressively portrays a woman on the edge after a series of sleepless nights and it was quite stressful watching at times.
Rating: 7 out of 10
On Apple TV+:
Fountain of Youth
Directed by Guy Ritchie, two estranged siblings, Luke and Charlotte Purdue, played by John Krasinski and Natalie Portman, team up to find the supposedly mythological Fountain of Youth, using their knowledge of history to follow the clues. There are obvious debts to both the Indiana Jones and The National Treasure movies in this globe trotting adventure. The budget and scale would work better on a big screen but, paradoxically, seemingly the only way films like this can get made these days is by streaming services funding them. It is mostly briskly entertaining, though after his restraint with the excellent The Covenant, Ritchie does indulge himself with his trademark annoying visual flourishes a few times. I also could have done without the dream sequences, and the momentum flags towards the end.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Echo Valley
In this star studded thriller directed by Michael Pearce and written by Brad Ingelsby, Julianne Moore stars as Kate Garrett who works training horses on her near bankrupt southern Pennsylvania farm. Her addict daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) lives with her. When Claire inadvertently throws away drugs belonging to dealer Jackie Lawson (Domhnall Gleeson) she puts both of their lives in danger. This is quite a dour thriller that is kept afloat by the performances, particularly Sweeney. However as the twists mount, it gets very implausible.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
On Paramount Plus:
Into the Deep
As a child, Cassidy (Scout Taylor-Compton) witnessed her father die in a brutal shark attack. Now years later, she must face her demons as her husband, Gregg (Callum McGowan) embarks on a dive expedition with friends. Things take an unexpected turn when the dive site becomes surrounded by sharks and they are also confronted by criminals who need to dive for their latest batch of drugs. The main plot is predictable but serviceable. There are, though, frequent flashbacks to Cassidy as a child with her grandad, played by Richard Dreyfuss, that just slow things down dissipating the tension. I was wondering why one of the stars of the greatest of all shark movies agreed to appear. The answer comes with the closing credits where he gives a lecture on shark conservation.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Doing the rounds on Movies 24 are
Journey to You
After getting passed over for a promotion, Monica (Erin Cahill) joins a tour group walking the Camino de Santiago, in Spain. This had potential and certainly does not follow one of the Hallmark boiler plate plots. But, there is a lot of very dull chat between Monica and her love interest Luis (Erik Valdez) and way too much religion.
Rating: 2.5 out of 10
Mystery Island: Winner Takes All
A group of contest winners travel to a mystery-themed resort to solve a simulated murder, but , guess what, a real murder occurs and they are all suspects! If I believed in guilty pleasures then Hallmark murder mystery series would be one of them. Mystery Island was new to me, although it is the second in the series. It has the usual mixture of red herrings and dubious motives. My main gripe is with the lead characters who investigate the real crime. Neither Charlie Weber’s cop nor Elizabeth Henstridge’s doctor convince and they have no chemistry in their will they-won’t they romance. The supporting cast is very good though including Jack Brett Anderson as a slimy financier, Kristin Booth as a crime writer, Kezia Burrows who runs the resort and Alice Franziska Woodhouse as a true crime podcaster. I would rather see series about her character!
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Finally, on My 5:
Deadly Girls Trip
When her friend dies during a weekend getaway, suburban mum to be Lacey (Kristi Murdock) begins to suspect that the two friends who went on the trip know more about her death than they are letting on. This is typical of a Lifetime thriller. None of the characters are believable, the set feels over designed and the acting stilted.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10