This month, we’ve got quite a mixed bag of films, some pretty good, some ok, some not so good. But, fear not, for summer blockbuster season is upon us, so think of these films as streaming filler to get you through the lulls between cinema visits!

This month’s TTRs consists of: Black Bag; The Crow (2024); Everyone is Going to Die; Fountain of Youth; Freaky Tales; Huesera: The Bone Woman; Jurassic World: Dominion; Kraven the Hunter; Love Hurts; Predator: Killer of Killers.

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: David Koepp
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Gustaf Skarsgård, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan

When an intelligence agent is tasked with fishing out a traitor within their ranks, he puts them all to the test, including his own wife. The idea kind of seems like a Mr & Mrs Smith sequel but far more intellectual. The film certainly takes some interesting twists and turns and demands full attention (as is ubiquitous of a Soderbergh film), and both Fassbender and Blanchett are excellent opposite one another, however it does feel a little monotonous at times when it’s getting from one surprise to the next, with little substance holding it up in its downtime.

Director: Rupert Sanders
Writers: Zach Baylin, William Josef Schneider, based on the comic book by James O’Barr
Cast: Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston, Sami Bouajila

(Full disclosure: I have not read the comic book). The 1994 The Crow is a huge cult classic and has scores of loyal fans, so doing another rendition was risky. When he and his girlfriend Shelly (FKA twigs) are murdered, Eric Draven (Skarsgård) is resurrected and told he can be reunited with her if he avenges their deaths by killing those involved. The story differs from the ’94 film in important ways, including Eric’s motivations, but where it really lacks is in emotional impact, something the first film had in spades. Skarsgård’s performance isn’t bad, but Eric and Shelly’s relationship doesn’t feel deep, and Eric is not as devastated by events as he should be. It all just comes across as very flat and far less dark than the ’94 film, and frankly this adaptation doesn’t hold a candle to it, particularly the late Brandon Lee’s amazing original performance.

Director: Craig Tuohy
Writer: Craig Tuohy
Cast: Jaime Winstone, Brad Moore, Chiara D’Anna, Gledisa Arthur, Richard Cotton,

Home invasion movies are nothing new, but the motivations behind the trespassing always has potential. Divorced Daniel (Moore) finds himself at the other end of a shotgun and trying to protect his teenaged daughter when two women break into his house demanding more than just money. This film comes across as quite amateur, almost like a student film, with its clunky dialogue and flat performances. The ending seemed like a last minute decision to add a ‘shock’ but really didn’t make any sense whatsoever, and other ‘shocking’ scenes also try to distract from what is really a poor story. The only thing stopping the film from being a one-star disaster is Winstone’s commitment to her role.

Director: Guy Ritchie
Writer: James Vanderbilt
Cast: John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson, Laz Alonso, Carmen Ejogo, Stanley Tucci

Guy Ritchie, what are you doing here, directing a film that doesn’t involve a group of armed men on a heist!? Archaeologist Luke (Krasinski) somewhat forces his museum curator sister Charlotte (Portman) into joining him and a group of others on a secret hunt for the mythical Fountain of Youth. It’s a fairly fun adventure, but its influences are so very clear to the point of being unoriginal, its main inspirations clearly being 1999’s The Mummy and the Indiana Jones franchise, specifically Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Krasinski and Portman make for a fun brother-sister duo, but neither seem to be up to their full potential acting-wise, and other than Domhnall Gleeson, the supporting actors tend to fall by the wayside, their characters not particularly memorable. The set designs and stunts are what really make this film at all interesting, for the most part, and that’s likely down to Ritchie’s experience with action films.

Directors: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Writers: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Cast: Jay Ellis, Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Too $hort, Normani, Dominique Thorne, Ji-young Yoo, Jack Champion, Marteen, Zack Roberts, LeQuan Antonio Bennett, Michelle Farrah Huang, Jordan Gomes, Angus Cloud, Tom Hanks

In this anthology of interconnected stories set in 1987, people of various ages and backgrounds deal with their own problems with the backdrop of the music scene at the time, white supremacists spreading hate and criminal activity. The performances are the backbone of the film, particularly the leads of each separate story, and they attempt to make a less-than-sturdy narrative more cohesive. It’s a fairly fun film, but don’t expect much in the way of substance. Also worth noting that it features one of Angus Cloud’s final performances before his untimely passing, so it’s worth a watch in his honour.

Director: Michelle Garza Cervera
Writers: Michelle Garza Cervera, Abia Castillo
Cast: Natalia Solián, Alfonso Dosal, Mayra Batalla, Mercedes Hernández, Aida López, Sonia Couoh, Anahí Allué

If you are an expectant mother/a new mother, perhaps give this film a miss for the time being, because it may freak you out just a tad. When she becomes pregnant, Valeria (Solián) begins seeing strange things and being abused by some kind of malignant entity. There’s an interesting discussion to be had around the themes of women’s mental health when it comes to pregnancy as well as the pressure to have children that is presented by this film, with the subplot of traditional medicines and healing that women use to help each other. The horror aspect is subtle yet effective, and Solián’s performance is fantastic, drawing us into Valeria’s experiences whether we like it or not.

Director: Colin Trevorrow
Writers: Colin Trevorrow, Emily Carmichael, Derek Connolly
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Isabella Sermon, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Justice Smith, Danielle Pineda

Another year, another bunch of crazies thinking that raising dinosaurs is a good idea. Claire (Howard) and Owen (Pratt) live in a remote cabin in an attempt to hide and raise Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a cloned human, in safety, but it’s not long before she is taken by mercernaries and Claire and Owen go after her. All the while, Dr. Ellie Sattler (Dern) is investigating improper use of dinosaur DNA on insects. She is soon reunited with former colleague Dr. Alan Grant (Neill) and they are in turn reunited with Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) when their investigation leads them to Malcolm’s employer, Biosyn. Bringing back Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum felt like fan service, and although it paid off financially, the film was squandered on a boring plot and an anti-climactic resolution.
Read more in DOTT’s Jurassic Park Film Club.

Director: J.C. Chandor
Writers: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, based on the comic book character created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Russell Crowe, Levi Miller, Billy Barratt

Once again, we have Sony trying to rinse every non-Marvel Studios character they own to try and rival the massively popular MCU with their own ‘Spider-Man Universe’. As a youngster, Sergei (Miller) takes on animalistic attributes that make him incredibly strong and a formidable hunter of criminals. As an adult, he is known as Kraven (Taylor-Johnson), and his fury is ignited when his brother is abducted. This film doesn’t offer anything new in the way of comic book side-characters, taking on a fairly similar formula to the Venom films, films that are also lacking in many ways. The stunts and VFX are quite cool but the story isn’t unlike other superheroes – not very original and not a stand out character. Taylor-Johnson puts in a good performance, but he also is formulaic in his portrayal of a ‘man-in-charge’. It could be interesting to see a Kraven vs. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, but it wouldn’t be a terrible thing if this was the last we saw of this incarnation of Kraven.

Director: Jonathan Eusebio
Writer: Matthew Murray, Josh Studdard, Luke Passmore
Cast: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Daniel Wu, Cam Gigandet, Marshawn Lynch, Andre Eriksen, Sean Astin

Sometimes love indeed hurts, but somtimes, so do films. Marvin (Quan), a sweet, caring man, is a realtor with a secret background in the criminal underworld. When he is pulled back into his past, he risks his new life to save that of his former partner. On paper this sounds like a decent action film, but the comedy aspect that comes with this film does not blend well. In fact, many aspects of this film are too juxtaposed to the point of being too strange, such as the age-gap between Quan and DeBose that makes the romance between their characters weird, and the coming together of Marvin’s old and new life. As much as Quan works hard to get into an action role, the writers’ attempt to lace it with comedy takes away from what it all could have been. It’s always fun to see Sean Astin pop up in random films and TV shows, though.

Directors: Dan Trachtenberg, Joshua Wassung
Writers: Micho Robert Rutare, Dan Trachtenberg
Cast: Lindasy LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa, Rick Gonzalez, Michael Biehn, Doug Cockle, Damien C. Haas, Felix Solis, Britton Watkins

In this animated Predator spin-off, we follow the stories of three characters of different ethnicities at three different points in human history that are beset upon by Yautja, an alien predator race that enjoy hunting other species on various planets for sport and competition. This is a terrific peripheral film to compliment the main franchise that delves into more of the Yautja’s motivations and how they’ve hunted humans for centuries. They are akin to Trachtenberg’s previous Predator film, Prey, that centered around a Yautja hunting Native Americans in the nineteenth century. The animation is fantastic, the story and characters excellent, and it deepens the legend of the Predator superbly. A great appetiser in anticipation of Predator: Badlands, due in cinemas later this year.
Check out DOTT’s Film Club: Predator.