Back to School!
With the school’s going back, the throng of children in the cinemas has now dissipated. The perfect time then, if you are someone particularly Covid-cautious, to renew your acquaintance with your local movie theatre. You can still find some of my favourite summer selections showing. For example, at the time of writing this, the multiplexes were still showing “Free Guy”, “Jungle Cruise” and “The Suicide Squad”. But of the new September movies out in the last few weeks, the following are ones that you might like to try to hunt down.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (12A): The latest Marvel is a cracker, blending Marvel action with Eastern mysticism and martial arts. The great news is that you don’t need to be a Marvel nerd to enjoy this one. Yes, there are Easter eggs in there for Marvel fans, including a wonderful return of a character from an early film, but It’s almost a standalone story. Highly recommended.
- Censor (15): This delves into the world of “video nasties” from the 1980’s. It follows the mind-bending journey of BBFC censor Enid (a spectacularly good Niamh Algar). A review of one particular video brings back horrifying memories of the loss of her sister as a young girl. Not for the faint-hearted, the irony is that this horror shocker managed to get away with only a ’15’ certificate! It’s an intense watch and, for me, has one of the best endings of any movie I’ve seen so far in 2021. It’s only been on limited release, so you might need to hunt this one out at more art-house cinemas.
- The Night House (15): Another horror. (From their numbers, they seem to have been the easiest movies to make during lockdown). This sees Rebecca Hall as a widow living in a remote lakeside house. She is visited every night by a ‘force’. Grief or nightmares? Fiction or Reality? As an audience, you are left guessing. There’s not too much gore in the movie, but this one managed to really creep me out. And beware that the jump-scares, when they happen (deliciously rarely), are seat-levitatingly effective!
- People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan (15): One of the surprises of the month for me. This movie is a spin-off from a somewhat obscure BBC 3 comedy series about a pirate radio station in Brentford and the misfits who run it. One of their compositions has become the anthem of a whacky Japanese game show. So the team fly out to Tokyo on a promotional tour to try to “make it big” there. The movie is a mockumentary in the style of “The Office” or “Alan Partridge”. So you have to be inclined to laugh at cringe-inducing moments. Fortunately I can and, as a result, I laughed more at this movie than any other recent cinema comedy.
Now, I have to make a confession that I’m just back from a couple of weeks away, so I have yet to see the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect”. I look forward to seeing this in the next week. But – if this floats your particular boat – you might like to check it out too.
So that’s my round-up of mid-September movies. You can of course read my full spoiler-free reviews for these movies, and others, on the website at http://bob-the-movie-man.com, or see my video reviews on Tiktok (@onemannsmovies). Happy viewing!
