Aquaman (2018)
Genre: Action, fantasy
Director: James Wan
Starring: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson
Duration: 143 minutes
Class: 12 A
KRS Releasing Ltd

After his less than enthusiastic turn in last year’s Justice League, Arthur Curry aka Aquaman makes a comeback in his own solo adventure.

The story begins when a lighthouse keeper,  Tom Curry, rescues Atlanna, the pricess of the underwater nation of Atlantis. They fall in love and have a son, Arthur, who grows up with the power to communicate with marine life.

While Atlanna is forced to give up her beloved family and return to Atlantis, Arthur is rejected by his mother’s people and resigns himself to staying in the overworld.

A year after Steppenwolf’s invasion, Arthur is approached by Mera, a princess of the Xebel kingdom, who persuades him to return to Atlantis. Arthur’s half-brother, King Orm, plans to declare war on the overworld and Arthur must accept his heritage and successfully claim his mother’s throne to thwart him.

Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones)  reprises his role as Aquaman in this brand new adventure and joining him on the bill are an interesting mix of stars.

Amber Heard (The Danish Girl) dons the marvellous red mane of Mera, while Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies) does a regal turn as Queen Atlanna.

Willem Dafoe (Murder on the Orient Express) plays Arthur’s frequent collaborator and mentor Nuidis Vulko and Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring) wears the crown as King Orm. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (The Get Down) also straps into the helmet of Aquaman’s big bad Black Manta.

Aquaman, directed by James Wan,  scored a successful opening weekend in China, netting $93.6 million. Comparatively, its predecessor Justice League only earned $50.5 million on opening.

The film is being released internationally, including Malta, today.

Ratings
IMDB: 8.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A
Empire: N/A

Several ‘Spider people’ inhabit the universe of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Spider-man: Into the spider-verse (2018)
Genre: Action, adventure
Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
Voices of: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Lily Tomlin
Duration: 100 minutes
Class: U
KRS Releasing Ltd

Everyone’s favourite web-slinger makes a marked return to the big screen. A Sony solo-helmed project, Into the Spider-Verse interestingly follows Miles Morales, the break- out star from 2011’s Ultimate Spider-Man. Breaking rank from the tired Parker-centric origin story, Spider-verse stays true to its wacky comic-book roots, opening up the story to the converged timelines of Marvel’s complex multiverse.

Miles, a bright prodigy, inherits his spidey powers and stumbles on to the nefarious Kingpin, who opens a rip in the space-time continuum. The result sees Miles’s universe suddenly populated by several other ‘Spider people’ from other dimensions, who must band together to stop Kingpin and return themselves to their own timelines.

The film has been praised for its creative approach to storytelling and highly-stylised visual identity and crisp animation.

Emily Yoshida of New York Magazine said the film “feels like the first major animated film in ages to actively try something stylistically new.”

She praises Lord and Miller’s (The Lego Movie) tight script for “translating the experience of reading a comic book to the screen”.

Sam Adams of Slate enjoyed the film for its unconventional nature and its refusal to be pegged down by the conventions of the genre, calling it a “thrill to watch one that’s allowed to find its own rhythms, to play with form and content without contorting the plot to fit in a minor character who might become important five movies from now.”

Ratings
IMDB: 8.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 99%
Empire: 5 stars

Shay Mitchell has to contend with supernatural events at a morgue in The Possession of Hannah Grace.

The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)
Genre: Horror, thriller
Director: Diederik Van Rooijen
Starring: Shay Mitchell, Stana Katic, Louis Herthum
Duration: 108 minutes
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

Dutch director Diederik Van Rooijien delivers a supernatural thriller just in time for Christmas.

The plot follows Shay Mitchell (Pretty Little Liars) as Megan, a former police officer and barely functioning alcoholic.

Megan takes a job at a hospital morgue, a graveyard shift where her primary duty is to take in fresh cadavers. One evening, Megan takes in the mangled corpse of Hannah Grace. The latter, though dead, begins to wreak havoc in the morgue.

The film has mostly received poor reviews. 

Owen Gleiberman of Variety commented that the film lacked mystery and lifted a lot of its physical elements from Linda Blair’s iconic performance in The Exorcist. The character is “possessed, although she’s lifeless. Sort of like the movie,” he says.

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter enjoyed the chief performances but they were “not enough to make this hopelessly derivative horror film anything other than forgettable.”

Ratings
IMDB: 5.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 12%
Empire: N/A