Six films for August and they’re mostly good!
Bring Her Back
Bring Her Back is a creepy supernatural horror that digs its claws in very early, with some unsettling VHS footage.
The main plot follows a pair of orphans being moved around the foster care system, and their new foster parent, played fantastically be Sally Hawkins. It’s not a spoiler to say that not everything is as it seems in her home.
This is the kind of horror that you remember.
Very good.
The Pickup
Prime seem intent to shove out a terrible action film every month. This month it’s The Pickup.
The movie follows to armored van drivers who are pulled into a heist. None of it really makes sense, none of the action really works, and you’ll be bored quite quickly. While it’s good to see Eddie Murphy get back to acting, he deserves better than this.
Skip
Nobody 2
Nobody 2 takes the surprising sequel route of not trying to go bigger and better. If anything, this feels like a slightly smaller film with a few slightly bigger action set-pieces.
Bob Odenkirk is, once again, good as the former-agent and now downtrodden dad, as he takes his family on a vacation to the amusement park he spent his childhood at. Trouble inevitably catches up with him and the plot plays out how you’d expect.
It might not do anything new, but it does a very solid job of playing the hits.
Sovereign
Nick Offerman is excellent as a father who has gone off the deep-end in Sovereign, a look into the murky world of the sovereign citizen movement.
It humanizes the desperation that these people come from, while not letting them off the hook for their disconnect with reality. Jacob Tremblay is great as Offerman’s teenage son, pulled along in his father’s wake.
Affecting.
F1
F1 delivers a masterclass in big, summer blockbuster movies.
The racing action is gripping, the pace is maintained through the lengthy runtime, and no-one lets the side down. It’s a very easy watch, if entirely predictable. The most popcorny of popcorn movies.
Good.
Weapons
Zach Cregger’s followup to Barbarian was always going to be one to watch, and Weapons doesn’t disappoint.
We jump between multiple tellings of the story of a class of missing children, slowly learning more about what might have happened. The very strange goings-on build up to something unexpected, but satisfyingly creepy. To say more would be a spoiler. If you like horror, you’ll already have seen this.
Very good.
The August Winner
Some good contenders, but I think Weapons is the best of the bunch.