It is time for a round up of new films seen on streaming services other than Netflix this month.
We start this month with Amazon Prime:
The Pod Generation
Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are a married couple living in the not-so-distant future. As Rachel and Alvy decide to have a child, to leave Rachel’s work and body unaffected by pregnancy, they opt for the sought-after Womb Centre, a service of tech giant Pegasus that provides the wealthy with detachable pods to grow their babies. I found this vision of the future completely alienating, and, as a result the film cold and very dull
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Black Flies
Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) is a young paramedic assigned to the New York City night shift with an uncompromising and seasoned partner Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn). Sheridan, Katherine Waterston in a small role as Gene’s wife and especially Penn give outstanding performances. Initially the gritty, grimy, depiction of the city by writer/director Jean Stephane Sauvaire feels authentic. But it becomes so relentlessly bleak, with every black member of the public either a criminal or drug addict, that it begins to feel phoney and almost a parody of itself. It also lacks a compelling plot instead feeling like a string of set pieces held loosely together.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
The Idea of You
Anne Hathaway stars as 40 year old single Mum Solène Marchand who starts a relationship with 24 year old boy band member Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine). It took me a while to be convinced by Hathaway but she has given a series of excellent performances recently. It is disappointing, then, to see her in this trope laden rom com. The boy band element also makes it feel outdated.
Rating: 3 out of 10
5lbs of Pressure
Fresh out of prison after serving time for murder, Adam (Luke Evans) returns to his old stomping grounds to seek out a son who doesn’t know him (Rudy Pankow) but Eli (Zac Adams), the brother of the man he killed is looking for revenge. Despite the cast being largely British and the filming entirely taking place in Manchester, this movie is set in New York. Neither the accents or the locations are believable and the story is both dull and derivative.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Land of Bad
Brothers Luke and Liam Hemsworth star alongside Russell Crowe in this action movie from William Eubank, who also co-wrote it with David Frigerio. A US Army special forces unit containing both Hemsworths, is ambushed during a mission to retrieve an intelligence asset and their only remaining hope lies with a remote Air Force drone operator (Crowe) assisting them through a brutal battle for survival. The constant macho posturing of the men in the unit is a bit tiresome to start with but a finicky Crowe is good value.
There is one brilliant fire fight half an hour in which kicks starts the film. It barrels along after that until some people are captured, at which point it stalls. However, it is redeemed with a terrifically incongruous extended scene of Crowe in a supermarket, leading up to a nail biting climax.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Doing the rounds on Movies 24
… is yet another Jane Austen inspired Hallmark romantic drama, Paging Mr Darcy. Austen scholar Eloise Cavendish (Mallory Jansen) is giving the keynote address at a Jane Austen conference, hoping to get a Princeton professorship. To impress the person who will make that decision, she has to fake liking the cosplay part of the event, and she befriends the conference’s resident Mr. Darcy cosplayer Sam Lee (Will Kemp). Hopefully this is the last of the Austen themed Hallmark movies this year, but thanks to Jansen, it is one of the better ones.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Branching Out is also on Movies 24. Sarah Drew stars as a single mum who, when building a family tree, tracks down her daughter’s biological father. This is pretty dismal stuff, The plot drags and the daughter is so annoying!
Rating: 2 out of 10
Over on Sky Movies, subscribers can see:
Monolith
A disgraced journalist starts podcasting about unsolved mysteries in the hopes of reviving her career. She invites listeners to phone in with their stories and she starts to receive a number of calls about strange black bricks. Having just one character on screen, with everyone else on the phone no longer seems like a novelty in the wake of Locke and similar movies. But it remains a way of building a sort of claustrophobic tension and Lily Sullivan is suitably intense as the podcaster. The twist will probably be divisive but it largely worked.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Force of Nature: The Dry 2
Eric Bana reprises his role of Aaron Falk from the 2020 movie, The Dry. Robert Connolly returns as director and this time he has written the screenplay, based on Jane Harper’s novel Force of Nature. Falk investigates after five women go on a hiking trip as part of a work team bonding exercise and only four return. The missing woman was covertly helping Falk with his investigations into illegal financial activity at her company.
I enjoyed the original film but I think this is an improvement. The mystery is suitably knotty and Bana has got under the skin of his character. I could have done without the flashbacks to a traumatic childhood incident but otherwise telling the story using parallel timelines works well. Here’s hoping that that Bana will be back for Exiles, the third book in the series.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Cult Killer
In order to clear the name of her mentor, Mikeal Tallini, Cassie Holt (Alice Eve), a young investigator forms an alliance with a serial killer. Eve is the main star of this Dublin set film though the promotional material features Antonio Banderas, who plays Tallini and features mostly in brief flashbacks only, more prominently.
Banderas seems to be forging a parallel career in art house cinema and pulpy, English language, thrillers and he is very good here in his limited screen time. The always impressive Olwen Fouéré also provides a chilling performance. The plot has plenty of holes but the action is well staged and it is easy to enjoy this pacy, often gory, revenge movie with a good, pounding, score by Aoife O’Leary and Gerry Owens.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Turtles All the Way Down
When a sixteen-year-old Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced) struggling with obsessive–compulsive disorder reconnects with her childhood crush, she confronts the possibility of finding love and happiness in the face of mental illness. Watching this, I felt like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon. Merced is a good young actress but endless scenes of mopey teens does nothing for me.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
The following can be rented on the usual services:
The Origin of Evil
The consistently excellent Laure Calamy stars as a con woman who assumes her imprisoned lover’s identity as the biological daughter of a wealthy businessman. Calamy is the main reason to watch this would be twisty thriller. She convinces as both a seemingly loving daughter and a twisted schemer. But the overall feel of the film is far too languorous, dissipating any tension that is built up.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Mean Girls
I am sure that, given enough time, everything will be remade as a musical, whether on stage or on film. The latest to get the treatment is Mean Girls, the 2004 teen comedy. I do not think this will have the same lasting affection though there are some funny lines delivered by the talented supporting cast playing teachers, including Tina Fey and John Hamm. Aside from the lead, Angourie Rice, the younger cast are pretty bland and the musical numbers unmemorable.
Rating: 5 out of 10
The Listener
After a 15 year hiatus, Steve Buscemi returns to directorial duties with this drama shot in only 6 days and featuring just Tessa Thompson as a helpline volunteer talking to various desperate people on an overnight shift. I had high expectations for this and Thompson does a great job, but the callers are just not very interesting for the most part
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Sometimes I Think About Dying
Daisy Ridley stars as Fran, a socially awkward office worker who spends most of her time in isolation and daydreams of her own death. When a new colleague arrives, she is attracted to him. Maybe her life is about to change? This is a beautiful study of loneliness, and how some people find it difficult to connect, with a brilliant, career best, performance by Ridley.
Director Rachel Lambert and cinematographer Dustin Lane capture the bleakness of the setting of Astoria, Oregon which adds to Fran’s isolated state. I have seen a number of good films with poor endings recently but this bucks that trend.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
The Civil Dead
Clay (Clay Tatum) is a struggling photographer in Los Angeles. Out of the blue, an old high school acquaintance and wannabe actor, Whit (Whitmer Thomas), appears. Clay does not want anything to do with him and the situation is complicated by the fact that Whit is a ghost and only Clay can see him. I mostly enjoyed this freewheeling film, harking back to the 80s and 90s heyday of American Indie cinema.
Clay would be annoying to know in real life, but in this short dose, he is a beguiling presence, with Tatum excelling in the role. The story does feel a little stretched at feature length though.
Rating: 7 out of 10
On Paramount Plus:
Cold Meat
David Petersen (Allen Leach) is on the road in the Colorado Rockies. In a diner, he protects a waitress, Ana (Nina Bergman) from her abusive ex-husband. He then continues his journey, through a blizzard, but is run off the road by the aggrieved ex-spouse. When he wakes up in a mountain canyon, can he survive until help arrives? This has a terrific first half hour or so that culminates in a shocking twist. The rest if the film is fine, but cannot live up to the opening act.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Finally, on My 5:
True Justice: Family Ties
A law school student and her friends, set out to prove her brother is innocent of murder by finding the real killer. I enjoy most of the Hallmark mystery series as undemanding entertainment, and this hopefully will be first in another set of those. There are some decent twists, with good performances by Marisa McIntyre, Alexander Nunez and co-writer Nikki Deloach.
It makes more sense to have law students sleuthing than the usual librarians, shopkeepers or bakers, but actual legal processes are mostly ignored.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10