Captain Marvel
Genre: Action, adventure
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Jude Law
Duration: 128 minutes
Class: 12A
KRS Releasing Ltd
Kicking off the new year’s blockbuster season, heavyweights Marvel Studios come to the ring with their first ever female-led superhero film. Long promised and building on close to five years of buzz, Captain Marvel is generating quite a bit of excited chatter both offline and on many social forums.
Set in 1995, during this universe’s version of the Kree-Skrull war, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a former US Air Force fighter pilot, joins the Kree paramilitary group Starforce. Plagued with questions on her past and identity, Carol’s strengths are put to the test when she must protect earth from being caught in the crossfire of a galactic conflict between two alien nations.
Captain Marvel also sees Samuel L. Jackson reprising his role as future director of S.H.I.E.L.D Nick Fury, here missing his iconic eye-patch. A low-level bureaucrat in the film, Fury first comes to know of super-powered beings through his interactions with Captain Danvers. Jackson, 70, was digitally de-aged by 25 years for the film, a first feature-length endeavour for the studio.
Marvel had long expressed interest in a female-driven blockbuster, considering fan favourite characters such as Black Widow, Pepper Potts, or Peggy Carter as possible contenders for the title role. However fan interest in Captain Marvel was consistent, particularly in comic book writer Kelly Sue Deconnick’s run on the series. The script was delivered by Nicole Perlman, famous for completing much of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy before James Gunn’s inclusion in the project, and Meg LeFauve, co-writer of Inside Out. The director’s reigns were handed to Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, best known as creators of the 2006 Ryan Gosling-led indie darling Half Nelson.
While reviews of the film have been embargoed until release, critics took to Twitter following advanced press screenings last week. Many praised Brie Larson’s performance, the nostalgic tone of the 90’s setting, the grand cosmic feeling of the sci-fi elements and most prominently, proclaimed Goose the cat as the film’s break-out star.
Captain Marvel will be released on Friday, March 8.
Ratings
IMDB: N/A
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A
Empire: N/A
Lucas Hedges fights to stay true to himself in Boy Erased.Boy Erased
Genre: Biography, drama
Director: Joel Edgerton
Starring: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russel Crowe, Joel Edgerton, Cherry Jones, Flea
Duration: 111 minutes
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd
Taking to the director’s chair once again, Joel Edgerton’s second feature film project sees the adaptation of Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir Boy Erased, an exposé on the cruelty and frivolity of gay conversion therapy.
Lucas Hedges stars as Jared Eamons, who following a tumultuous relationship and harrowing trauma is forcibly outed as gay to his parents, Baptist preacher Marshall (Russel Crowe) and concerned mother Nancy (Nicole Kidman). Following the revelation, Jared is given an ultimatum, attend a so-called ‘pray the gay away camp’ to be “cured” of his sexuality or be ostracised from his entire family.
Checked into a facility where psychological and physical abuse are the coercive “therapies” of the day, Jared is forced in a programme where the figureheads employ cruelty without prudence and is forced to check out of his entire personality to convince of his fictional heterosexuality and survive the ordeal.
“Edgerton proves an incisive film-maker,”writes David Edelstein for Vulture. “Every beat has weight. Every close-up registers. He values silence – he trusts you to feel things along with his characters.”
“Lucas Hedges portrays a teenager whose best option is to reveal nothing of himself. The key is to make that lack of ‘reveal’ an active rather than passive process, and Hedges does it with remarkable intelligence.”
“Talk about a movie with its heart in the right place,” says Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. “Joel Edgerton manages to criticise the alleged therapy without condemning the individuals caught in its trap.”
Ratings
IMDB: 7/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 81%
Empire: 3 stars
Florence Pugh takes us in the ring in Fighting with My Family.Fighting with my Family
Genre: Biography, comedy
Directors: Stephen Merchant
Starring: Florence Pugh, Dwayne Johnson, Lena Heady, Nick Frost, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn
Duration: 107 minutes
Class: 12A
KRS Releasing Ltd
This biographical sports comedy-drama is based on the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family by director Max Fisher, here once again telling the story that depicts the family life and career of professional female wrestler and WWE star Paige.
Saraya Knight and her brother Zak are encouraged by their parents (Lena Heady and Nick Frost) to watch WWE and play-wrestle together. Pushed to wrestle professionally, Saraya excels and begins competing, however Zak is kept at bay, helping to train new wrestlers instead.
After being signed to WWE under the stage name Paige, Saraya struggles to fit into the WWE style of entertainment and the constant belittling by her promoter Hutch Morgan.
“If you know Paige’s real-life, ragged-leotards-to-riches story, you know how this all plays out. Even if you don’t, Fighting With My Family makes no bones about telegraphing where it’s going,” says Daid Fear of Rolling Stone.
“Fighting With My Family is some of the gentlest and most effective brand PR ever – by the end of the film, you certainly feel as if you’ve seen some wrestling, and I’d dare you to say you didn’t like it,” writes Emily Yoshida for Vulture.
“But what makes it memorable are its funny, sad little corners of very specific humanity.”
Ratings
IMDB: 7.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Empire: 3 stars