Starring: Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson
Directed By: Alex Kurtzman
Running Time: 110 mins
BBFC Certificate: 15
UK Release Date: October 23rd 2017 (UK)

While Hollywood has become increasingly obsessed with interconnected universes, Universal Pictures has felt a little left out due to the lack of comic book characters they own the rights to. To make up for it, they decided to go back to the classic movie monsters that the studio had such success with in the 1930s (indeed, they created an interconnected world of them back then). They’ve been busy attempting to build a linked series of movies around them, called Dark Universe.

The Mummy was the film designed to kick off the Dark Universe, with a big budget, an a-list star and a property everyone knows thanks to its 1990s/2000s resurrection with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. The response from critics and US audiences was muted however, with American box office stalling (although it did manage $400 million globally) and an abysmal RottenTomatoes rating (currently 16%). That’s caused a bit of a rethink about how the Dark Universe is going to pan out, with Bride Of Frankenstein pushed back, and the likes of The Invisible Man (with Johnny Depp) and The Wolfman currently without a release date.

The Mummy however sees Tom Cruise as a kind of modern, low-rent Indiana Jones called Nick Morton. He is in Iraq ‘liberating’ historical artefacts before they can be stolen and put on the black market. In the process, he accidentally manages to uncover the carefully hidden tomb of the Ancient Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who promptly starts to spring back to life, cursing Nick in the process.

The action soon moves to England, where Ahmanet’s undead-ness and malevolence quickly grows. Longtime paranormal fixer Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) thinks Nick is the key to stopping Ahmanet, but as Nick is cursed and now trapped between good and evil, it could kill him in the process.

It’s all okay, but The Mummy never quite works out its reason to exist. Part of the problem is a lack of internal logic and indecision over exactly what it wants to be – is it a monster movie ‘horror’, a summer action blockbuster, or something a little more gothic and strange? Even the fact it borrows heavily from other horror movies, from An American Werewolf In London to The Exorcist, seems less like homage than it does a movie having an existential crisis. It doesn’t help that crisis that Nick’s curse mean he keeps seeing things that’s aren’t really there, which results in large chunks of the film being difficult to trust.

The difficulties continue with uncertainty over how much it needs to be a standalone film on its own, and how much it needs to tease a much wider universe. Russell Crowe’s Henry Jekyll is the main hint that there’s more than just Mummys in this universe, but when he inevitably goes Dr. Hyde at one point, it feels like it’s fallen in from another movie and makes little sense in this film. Other than that, there’s a fair amount of portentous talk about Nick being cursed and what that means, which suggests he’ll be turning up in more Dark Universe films in the future, but it does little to make us want to see him again.

While some films that have very deliberately set out to start a franchise have bombed because they failed to be entertaining movies in their own right, The Mummy almost has the opposite problem. There’s so little that makes it feel distinctive or that hints towards an interesting wider world, that the viewer’s not that likely to care what comes next.

To be fair though, it isn’t a dreadful movie, just one that never works out what it’s doing or why. It provides a few decent action sequences, and Tom Cruise is on pretty good form, but there isn’t a second when it looks like anyone has worked out what they’re doing or why – other than Universal told them to make a new Mummy movie.

There is probably still life in the Dark Universe, but to make it work they need to work out what this universe really is, and then ensure the resulting movie don’t look quite so much like they created it by committee.

The Blu-ray does have a good selection of special features though!

Overall Verdict: As popcorn fluff it works, but it’s very forgettable, never working out why it exists, or what it’s got to do with the wider Dark Universe.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Special Features:
Deleted and Extended Scenes
Feature Commentary
Rooted in Reality
Cruise & Kurtzman: A Conversation
Life in Zero-G: Creating the Plane Crash
Meet Ahmanet
Cruise in Action
Becoming Jekyll and Hyde
Choreographed Chaos
Nick Morton: In Search of a Soul
Ahmanet Reborn Animated Graphic Novel

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Laura Haddock, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel
Directed By: Michael Bay
Running Time: 149 mins
BBFC Certificate: 12
UK Release Date: October 30th 2017 (UK BD/DVD), Out Now (VoD)

People often complain that the big Hollywood movies have no story. If nothing else the Transformers movies have attempted to do something about that. Rather than having no story, they have all the stories, non-stop, simultaneously and accompanied by never-ending explosions. It’s never mattered whether it made any sense or if it’s managed to contradict itself in the same sentence, as long as something is going on that sounds like a plotline.

That continues with The Last Knight, which is moderately more coherent than Dark Of The Moon, and slightly less pointless than Age Of Extinction – and yes, that is damning it with faint praise, but it does mean those who’ve liked what’s gone before, will probably enjoy this one. [Read more…]

We are giving away a limited edition poster and Blu-ray to celebrate the release of POINT BLANK – out 18th September 2017.

They double-crossed Walker, took his $93,000 cut of the heist and left him for dead, but they didn’t finish the job. Big mistake. He – someday, somehow – is going to finish them.

Lee Marvin is in full antihero mode as remorseless Walker, talking the talk and walking the walk in John Boorman’s (Deliverance) edgy neo-noir classic filled with imaginative New Wave style, blunt dialogue and Walker’s relentless quest that, one by one, smashes into the corporate pecking order of a crime group called the Organisation. Angie Dickinson plays the accomplice who uses her seductive wiles to ensnare one of Walker’s prey.

SPECIAL FEATURES
Commentary by Director John Boorman and Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh
Vintage Featurettes The Rock Part 1 and The Rock Part 2
Theatrical Trailer

The Premium Collection, revered films across all genres celebrated in a Premium package set containing the film on Blu-ray, DVD and a Digital Copy (via the Ultraviolet service) giving fans a must own version that allows them to watch however they choose. Each release also includes a collectible slipcase and 4 collectible artcards featuring the films key art and 3 lobby cards style stills.

For your chance to win Point Blank on Blu-ray plus a poster, answer the question below and fill in your details, then press submit! The competition closes on October 1st, 2017, so get answering and good luck. [Read more…]