Welcome to The BRAG’s weekly rundown of what’s hot in the coming seven days of cinematic releases. Obviously last week I should have said to go see Wonder Woman, but you can’t fault me for not trusting DC after everything else.
Anyway, DC aren’t the only ones who know how to kill a franchise. This week, Universal (or should I say… ugh… Dark Universe) try their hand at prematurely ending a potential series, while others dig into English history for inspiration.
Plus, today’s the first day of every Sydney cinephile’s favourite fortnight – Sydney Film Festival is here for its 64th iteration! As you would no doubt be aware, given all that sweet, sweet content we done gave ya.
Cruising on to entry #1…
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The Mummy
In 1999, goofy comedy bro Brendan Fraser redefined himself as Rick O’Connell and shot to super-stardom, in Stephen Sommers’ action/adventure/horror movie The Mummy. Every Indiana Jones fan suddenly had a new epic franchise land in their lap. Twenty years later, and box office be damned, Sommers and Fraser are both out – replaced by boring normie Alex Kurtzman and global sensation Tom Cruise, respectively.
READ our full review of The Mummy here.
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To their credit, they’ve not simply glommed on to the ’90s franchise’s formula. But, to their distinct discredit, they didn’t glom on to the ’90s franchise’s formula. Instead of an occasionally dark Uncharted-style romp, they’ve crafted a gloomy supernatural action flick worthy of Zack Snyder’s DC output.
It’s not unforgivably bad, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what Jordan Vogt-Roberts cooked up for Warner Bros’ own monster revival. Would you expect better from the man who wrote two of the Transformers films? Besides, it just can’t be what the first film was – juicy.
tl;dr Never forget. Never forgive. Vengeance for Brendan Fraser.
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Churchill
RT: 34%
The board wishes to move that the person who edited this trailer be placed gently in the bin. Ok? Ok. Brian Cox is vying for an Oscar by joining the ranks of performers who’ve portrayed the late, great Winston Churchill (among them Albert Finney, Brendan Gleeson and Bob Hoskins), but the problem he has is the recent trend in which unbelievable true stories are farmed out to uninspired screenwriters.
READ our full review of Churchill here.
So the trailer may not be that inaccurate, according to the reviews. Most see it as a dry, plodding affair in which Cox’s fine acting can’t carry the requisite weight. The tale follows Churchill in the days leading up to the invasion of Normandy in WW2, as his first world war experiences haunt him at every step. His emotional turmoil is dumped into small rooms with overacting colleagues instead of communicated with real visual poetry.
All power to Aussie director Jonathan Teplitzky for picking up the position, but then again, why is an Aussie making a film about Churchill in 2017? The name alone is not going to sell the ticket, friendo.
tl;dr What a goose, right? Why would anyone think invading Normandy was a bad idea?
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My Cousin Rachel
Hooray, a period drama. At least, that’s what I thought, until I reached the end of the trailer – a panoply of beautiful shots that show a genuine cinematographic flair. What may simply have passed for another treatise on the evils of manipulative women certainly fared better in the trailer cut than Churchill did.
Adapted from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier (writer of The Birds), the film follows Philip (Sam Claflin, fresh from The Hunger Games), made miserable by the passing of his guardian Ambrose. Philip inherits his estate, but is soon visited by Rachel (Rachel Weisz), Ambrose’s widow and a distant cousin, who is both mysteriously alluring and potentially dangerous.
All this cousin-loving business wouldn’t have flown in the pre-Game Of Thrones days, I tells ya. As a reminder of that fact, Iain Glen (aka Sir Friendzone) is here on HBO’s behalf, as if to sanctify Claflin and Weisz’s naughty incest.
tl;dr Who doesn’t like a little cousin lovin’?
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Resident Evil: Vendetta
Set between the events of the games Resident Evil 6 and the latest entry RE7: Biohazard, this Japanese animated feature pits franchise stalwarts Leon S. Kennedy (Matthew Mercer), Chris Redfield (Kevin Dorman) and Rebecca Chambers (Erin Cahill) against Glenn Arias (Alexander Polinsky), a villain threatening to release a new virus that creates monsters he can control.
So far, so batshit! Fits well into the wheelhouse of modern-day Resident Evil, then, which notoriously jumped the shark around the time RE5 incorporated crazy racism and RE6 incorporated bad game design. It’s unlikely you’ll check this out unless you’re a true franchise nut – the kind who stuck it out with Milla Jovovich for (jesus) six films.
By all accounts, you’re better off picking up the new game in VR – at least then, when the bad dialogue finishes, you get to shoot stuff. Attempting to get involved with the action is considered a faux pas in most cinemas.
tl;dr Looks like CG people are still in that uncanny valley.
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Sydney Film Festival
Yeeeeeeaaaah boiiiii, movies all damn day! It’s festival time, and Sydney Film Festival is taking over screens across the city. I’ve written a handy little guide on the festival program, and we stayed on top of the news cycle by running through the seven Cannes films they added at the last minute.
Naturally, I and my brain-diseased circle of peers will be filling our greasy eyeballs up with Freak Me Out entries, but there’s also cinema screenings of Akira Kurosawa‘s classic features (if you can manage to snag a single ticket), some extremely beautiful and innovative VR efforts (more on them soon), the always divisive Official Competition, and the first opportunity to check out season 2 of SBS series Cleverman.
I’ll see you in the Festival Hub, where I’ll be getting mah drank on and pitching screenplays to people who probably aren’t producers but say they are to get cheaper booze.
tl;dr And this year’s Official Competition winner is… THE CONTROVERSIAL ONE, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED
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And now for THE VERDICT – maybe you only get to see one of these flicks on the big screen, and you don’t wanna waste that night out. So, drum roll please…
While My Cousin Rachel promises the most interesting stand-alone experience on offer this week, you simply can’t go past Australia’s biggest film festival. See you at Okja!
Until next week!
