This month has been about catching up on recent releases, many of which didn’t make it to cinemas near me and thus I had to wait until they were available to stream. There’s quite a variety with something for everyone, from dramas to comedies and horrors to childrens’, so let’s get stuck in!

This month’s Tiny Tapes consists of: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple; It Was Just an Accident; M3GAN 2.0; Mercy; Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man; Rental Family; Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere; Zootropolis 2

Director: Nia DaCosta
Writer: Alex Garland
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry

Following immediately on from 28 Years Later, Dr. Kelson (Fiennes) finds himself once again helping young Spike (Williams) when he is accosted by Jimmy Crystal (O’Connell) and his gang of Jimmy known as the Fingers, whilst also drugging infected Alpha leader Samson (Lewis-Parry) to see if it changes his behaviour. As much as I had looked forward to the continuation of the 28 series, both instalments of 28 Years Later haven’t been quite the continuation I’d personally hoped to see. While the performances were fantastic, particularly from Fiennes, Williams and O’Connell, it all got a little too bizarre with the Jimmys and the whole ‘bone temple’ aspect, taking away from the rage virus itself. Knowing that there is to be a third film, making 28 Years Later a trilogy, now has me intrigued about yet wary of what the next step will be. I would assume it would have something to do with Samson, and possibly bringing back Cillian Murphy’s Jim to tie things up in some way, but I shan’t get my hopes up again.

Director: Jafar Panahi
Writer: Jafar Panahi
Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, Delnaz Najafi, Afssaneh Najmabadi, Georges Hashemzadeh

In this very poignant film, a group of Iranians who were formerly prisoners of their own government happen across a man who may have been the man who tortured them while imprisoned, and they have to make the decision to either let him go or take their revenge. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what torture must be like, and then to have your torturer bound and gagged before you, you with the power to free him or give him a taste of his own medicine, or even kill him. I’d like to think I would never have it in me to hurt or kill, but without being in a situation like this, I could not say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty. Much of this moral ambiguity is what drives the film, along with the potential for the life of each ex-prisoner being once again upended if they were to carry out revenge. The film is beautifully shot in some pertinent settings, with many uncut and unedited shots that keep the emotion and pacing from being disturbed, emphasising some darkly funny and deeply emotional moments. Director Jafar Panahi risked his own freedom, and possibly his life, in making this film, as he has done with his other films, as the Iranian government does not take kindly to criticism in any form, making this film all the more necessary and important in fighting for freedom of speech and to criticise leaders.

Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writer: Gerard Johnstone
Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jemaine Clement

AI girlbot M3GAN returns to wreak more havoc in this sequel that sees her teaming up with the family whom she previously tormented in order to bring down AMELIA, an android developed by the military to infiltrate and assassinate that has become self-aware and gone rogue. The first film was relatively fun, if rather unoriginal, but this second tries to bring back M3GAN in the most obvious way (Hi! I’ve been living in your home in a back-up file for two years!) and for a reason that is more or less a repeat of the plot of the first movie, just on a larger scale. There’s not much to hold the viewer’s attention and doesn’t exactly bring anything new to the idea of AI running rampant in its self-awareness. It makes one wonder if there will be a third film in which somehow AMELIA will return and team up with M3GAN to dispose of another foe who will inevitably join their team of superbots. In spite of both films severly underperforming, a third is indeed rumoured to be on the way,

Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writer: Marco van Belle
Cast: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, Kylie Rogers

As AI continues to court controversy and inspire stories, we have yet another that puts the idea of using AI to make important decisions to the test. This time, it has been given the power to make the ultimate decision: life or death. Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) finds himself accused of his wife’s murder, and he has 90 minutes to clear his name before the supposedly-infallible AI Judge Maddox (Ferguson) passes his sentence. It’s hard to originate an idea these days when it comes to AI, as people have been making stories about it since before sci-fi was even a solid genre, but the way in which the ideas are executed are what tend to pique audiences’ curiosities. Unfortunately, Mercy struggles to pique any kind of strong interest, in spite of a somewhat intriguing premise. Ferguson’s Maddox isn’t the most convincing AI and it’s pretty clear from the beginning how things are going to end up. The strongest aspect of the film is Raven’s investigation that he conducts from the seat his is strapped to, even if some of his methods are rather far-fetched, and the twists and turns it takes (some of which are, again, are fairly predictable by the middle of the film). It was interesting at first, but then got away from itself.

Director: Tom Harper
Writer: Steven Knight
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, Sophie Rundle, Barry Keoghan, Stephen Graham

Tommy Shelby (Murphy) returns in what essentially amounts to a feature-length episode of Peaky Blinders (thought it’s really only about ten minutes longer than the series’ finale, its longest episode), and that is not a bad thing in the slightest. Picking up a few years after the final episode, it’s 1940 and Britain is at war. Tommy’s son Duke (Keoghan), who now leads the Peaky Blinders, has agreed to help Nazis infiltrate Britain. Tommy, now living in relative isolation, is called upon to come and set his son straight and, for all intents and purposes, stop the Nazis. It’s certainly quite a big way to end the current iteration of the much-loved show (a sequel series is apparently in the works), and between Steven Knight’s writing and Tom Harper’s direction, it is pulled off well. Murphy easily falls back into Tommy’s brogues and brings back the complicated character with aplomb, as though he never left our screens (it’s only been four years, but still). The grit and danger of the series runs through the film, as do the threads of family and grief, leaving an ending that fans can be satisfied with.

Director: Hikari
Writers: Hikari, Stephen Blahut
Cast: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto

If Brendan Fraser is in a film, you know you’re in for a treat, no matter the genre. In Rental Family, Fraser plays Phillip, a struggling actor living in Tokyo. He soon finds himself hired by Rental Family, a business that provides actors to pretend to be family members, friends, scapegoats, you name it. Through this work, Phillip meets and befriends people that are in need of much more than an actor: they need a friend, a father, a partner-in-crime. It’s been known for some time that Japan does have businesses just like this, and so the idea of renting actors in this capacity isn’t unheard of, but delving into the reasons why this kind of service exists and the relationships it could naturally build are where the heart of the film lies. The people and stories that Phillip, and his colleagues, encounter are sorrowful at best and heartbreaking at worst, though each as real as the next and filled with commentary on how some societies function when feelings are repressed and the idea of lying to protect is challenged. The performances are exceptional, particularly from Akira Emoto as an aging actor with dementia and Fraser, whose ability to express deep emotion gives this film so much of its beauty and humanity.

Director: Scott Cooper
Writer: Scott Cooper, based on the books Deliver Me from Nowhere by Warren Zanes and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young

As a Bruce Springsteen fan, I was quite keen to see this biopic that tells of Springsteen’s (White) rise to fame and all the trappings and emotional upheaval that came with it, including his troubled relationship with his father and his own struggle to build romantic relationships. The story revolving around Springsteen and his parents was quite touching, particularly when it came to handling his father, who was an alcoholic and also had some mental health issues, with a final scene between the pair being particularly emotional. The film comes across as very honest when it comes to Springsteen’s relationships in general and how some of his songs were both inwardly and outwardly inspired. But on the whole it doesn’t really offer anything new that we don’t see in the majority of biopics, particularly those based on the lives of musicians. Springsteen’s struggles, while very real I’m sure, keep the film from showcasing the highs that I’m also sure he must have had. With other muscial biopics such as A Complete Unknown about Bob Dylan and Back to Black about Amy Winehouse recently produced, the genre is getting saturated, and Springsteen’s own story doesn’t exactly stand out amongst them.

Directors: Jared Bush, Byron Howard
Writer: Jared Bush
Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Shakira, Idris Elba, Patrick Warburton, Quinta Brunson, Danny Trejo, Alan Tudyk, Nate Torrence, Don Lake, Bonnie Hunt, Jenny Slate

The citizens of Zootropolis (or Zootopia, if you’re in the US) return in another critter caper! This time, officers Judy Hopps (Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Bateman) team up to bring down a corrupt family and clear their names after the are framed for a crime they didn’t commit. The first film was fantastic, very funny, well-written and featured great characters and settings. This second film features much of the same but to a slightly lesser degree and with a slightly less interesting story that gets a little monotonous at times, at least for adults. The kids will no doubt enjoy it just as much as the first, as many of the same lovable characters return with comedy and friendship aplenty, as well as some bright new characters to get to know and new themes to learn about.