Every Movie To Catch This Summer
Napoleon
In Cinemas Nov 23
Ridley Scott is swinging hard with his historic epic Napoleon starring Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role and Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon’s first wife Josephine in what’s shaping up to be one of the biggest films of the year, and we don’t mean in prestige, we mean literally in size.
Ridley really tried to do as much as he could cramming in as much as he could in 158 minutes. Even at that size half the film was left on the cutting room floor.
‘It’s an astonishing story,’ Phoenix says of Napoleon’s life. ‘Hopefully we captured some of the most interesting moments.’”
A larger cut we may never see (but I really hope we do, do blueray directors cuts still exist in the world of streaming?) features a ton more Josephine and her life leading up to meeting Napoleon. Unfortunately you might have a hard time getting people into a cinema for a four and a half hour long cut of a film.
Joaquin is a master of his art, as is Ridley, but Joaquin started a little at sea in the lead up to the film. Reportedly Scott told Empire two weeks out from shooting that he wasn’t entirely sure what direction to take.
“He’ll come in, and you’re fucking two weeks out, and he’ll say, ‘I don’t know what to do,’” Scott said about Phoenix. “I’ll say, ‘What?!’ ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Oh God. I said, ‘Come in, sit down.’ We sat for 10 days, all day, talking scene by scene. In a sense, we rehearsed. Absolutely detail by detail.”
“Joaquin studies the psyche, and the psyche of Napoleon is so strange,” Kirby told Empire. “The film feels like that. It’s kind of peculiar, and there’s an intensity in that. Napoleon wasn’t stoic and wonderful like Russell Crowe was in Gladiator. He was a dictator, a war criminal, really. It couldn’t be rousing, because that man killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men, in my opinion needlessly. And for what? To get an empire, for what? In the end, it all disintegrated anyway. That psyche run wild is dangerous as hell, and very strange. And this is a portrait of that.”
Loop Track
In Cinemas Nov 2
Hot off the back of a win at the 48 Hour Film competition, Tom Sainsbury brings us a tale of a paranoid hiker on the verge of a mental breakdown needing to rest and reset.
What better way than to do a four day solo hike through the New Zealand bush. Various colourful personalities literally cross his path on his journey but a dark sense of foreboding creeps up on him as he believes something is after him. A good mix of everything kiwi filmmakers are best at, the dark and the funny.
The Killer
Streaming Nov 10
Netflix obviously decided a few years ago that they just didn’t have enough movies about lone spy assassins roaming the planet killing people and getting into the trouble with the agency they work for. I mean, when has that movie ever been made? I can’t think of a single one and I wasn’t bourne yesterday. David Fincher brings his precise style to the table alongside Michael Fassbender, who as usual gives it his all in this performance.
Dumb Money
“I, Tonya” Director Craig Gillespie didn’t waste any time at all bringing the bonkers anomaly of the Wallstreetbets Gamestop story to life. The flick primarily follows Keith Gill (Paul Dano) the man behind the phenomenon. You’ll know him for the bandana and “I like the stock”. We also get to see the big dogs freaking out and finally getting control of the situation. Can this movie reach the hallowed heights of Wolf Of Wall Street or The Big Short? Absolutely not but it gives it it’s best shot.