April Preview

Ah, March. Do you remember March? It was this weird bronze medal of a month, always coming third in the month Olympics and confusing everyone with it’s inconsistently changing weather. At the time we all thought it was going to last forever, but then all of a sudden we find ourselves staring April in the eyes and getting all sentimental about the passage of time. Luckily though, our chaotic temporal hurtling only serves to present us with more and more cinematic delights to bathe our brains in. Delights such as these:

The Double – 4^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG8qATRtNuU

Richard Ayoade, not content with being really, really good at telly turned his hand (and one can only assume at some point, the rest of himself too) at film with 2010’s ‘Submarine’, which he wound up being really, really good at too. This time round in his film hat he directs a pair of Jesse Eisenbergs in his surprisingly stylish working of Dostoyevsky’s novel of the same name, wherein a man gradually loses his marbles when confronted by his doppelgänger/clone/evil twin/robot double/future self/look-a-like con-man/personal Tyler Durden/series of spooky mirrors. I don’t know, I haven’t read it.

Noah – 4^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qmj5mhDwJQ

God said to Noah/ there’s gonna be a floody-floody/ and a movie adaption/ by Darren Aronofksy-ofsky. That’s right, the man who not only sounds like the ’60s Batman theme-tune but also brought us ‘Requiem For a Dream’ and ‘The Fountain’ is taking on The Bible’s most adorably sing-along story of a man, a boat, and things going in two-by-two, hurrah. I don’t need to tell you how messed up this is going to be, suffice to say Russell Crowe’s Noah will be going toe-to-toe with demons, psychosis, Ray Winstone’s army of doomed-to-be-drowned hard-nuts and the wrath of God. Things are going to get muddy-muddy.

Divergent – 4^th April

httpv//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutgWjz10sM

April 4^th is looking like quite the busy day; if stylized British interpretations of Dostoyevsky or bleak American interpretations of Bible stories there’s always ‘Not-The-Hunger-Games’, by which I mean ‘Divergent’. Based on the popular book series, a young woman (Shailene Woodley) struggles for survival in her faction-based authoritarian future-city while grappling with the affections of muscular men-folk (Theo James). She’s also some kind of chosen one. They might as well have called this ‘Trending Teen Tropes: The Movie’, but at least they know their audience, no matter how shamelessly they pander to it. Bloody ‘them’.

The Quiet Ones – 10^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GNyQusclgw

So, Hammer Horror’s back. Following the respectable takings of ‘The Woman In Black’, the recently resurrected studio now brings us some fairly standard-sounding spooky shenanigans about poltergeists and Jared Harris’ decidedly angular facial hair. Daring PhD students and their professor perform a seriously-dodgy-sounding experiment on a disturbed woman in a vain attempt to cure her problems and in doing so cause all manner of supernatural goings-on to… er… well, go on. That’s what you get when you do experiments in old creaky houses, I guess.

Calvary – 11^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGM5rq_vX4U

If you’re one of the four people who saw 2011’s so-black-it’s-a-spacial-anomaly comedy ‘The Guard’ you’ll be over, under and over the moon again to know that the duo of Brendan Gleeson and John Michael McDonagh are back together. If you’re one of the everyone else, however, just replace “John Michael McDonagh” with “The brother of the guy who made ‘In Bruges’” and “Brendan Gleeson” with “Brendan Effin’ Gleeson”. ‘Calvary’ sees Gleeson’s beleaguered priest facing the pressures of countless Catholic confessionals, a troubled family past and serious death threats in an affable, yet consigned, Irish way.

The Raid 2: Berendal – 11^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG9uFX3uYq4

Whenever I think of ‘The Raid’, my limbs hurt. I also slightly hiss. That’s not a criticism by any stretch, it’s more me feeling an empathic pain at the memory of the amount of punches, kicks, gunshots, stabbings and all other brutal ows present in Gareth Evans’ Indonesian action flick. So when we find out that the sequel to said brilliantly-choreographed violence-fest (which follows the extended punch-tastic adventures of Iko Uwais’ super-cop, Rama, immediately after the first film) is meant to be even MORE ridiculous… I just- I feel sorry for the stunt crew, I really do.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – 18^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlM2CWNTQ84

If movie revenues are an indicator of anything, then logically you must have seen ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ one-and-a-half times. With the frustratingly unfocussed reboot of everybody’s friendly neighbourhood superhero making all the bread, it only made sense for them to try and open a bakery with this year’s follow-up. So this time Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) finds himself in an awfully large tussle between Paul Giamatti’s Rhino, Dane DeHaan’s Green Goblin and Jamie Foxx’s Electro(if the posters are anything to go by). He also looks awkward and loved-up in front of Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy. But then again, we all would.

Locke – 18^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyoO35P41YM

You know what I miss? I miss those ridiculous high-concept films about somebody trapped in a small space. I also miss long, late-night car journeys and Tom Hardy. If only somebody could bring all these elements together to make a tense 90-minute film about a Welsh cement worker, the M1 and a series of phone-calls from unseen personages that tear his poor life apart all within the confines of his car. Sigh. I suppose I’m being overly hopeful in that- hm? What’s that? Wait- they already did that? Someone actually made the film I just described last year and it’s finally getting released next month? For reals? Get in.

Transcendence – 25^th April

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTen3-B8GU

It’s always nice to see Johnny Depp dressed (relatively) normally and not perpetuating sinking franchises/working with Tim Burton. This hasn’t happened since 2011’s ‘The Rum Diary’ which feels like a million, million years ago. Anyway. ‘Transcendence’ sees Depp’s terminally-ill computery-scientician-fella get his mind uploaded to a computer by his wife (Rebecca Hall) and colleague (Paul Bettany) and in doing so becomes a true artificial intelligence. He also goes a bit snooker-loopy and starts to bring about some kind of apocalypse. Oh Johnny Depp, you cheeky scamp, what are we going to do with you?