Spling’s take on silver screen scene

For cinema fans, 2018 is shaping up to be a big year for blockbusters, superheroes and colons in movie titles with Avengers: Infinity War, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Aquaman, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Black Panther, Mission Impossible 6 and Ant-Man and the Wasp all heading our way.

We’re also expecting big things from remakes of classic horrors Suspiria and Halloween featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. We already know what to expect from this plethora of blockbuster titles, so for those film fanatics who aren’t caught up in the mainstream fantasy hype let’s talk about other promising releases heading our way.

INCREDIBLES 2

[caption id="attachment_236498" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Brad Bird is again in the director’s seat for ‘The Incredibles 2’[/caption]

The Incredibles was a near-perfect release from Pixar under the guidance of Brad Bird, which took the brimming world of superheroes to the next level.

Instead of centring on a team of caped avengers, the filmmakers played with the idea of family instead, bringing an added emotional dimension to the fore.

Amazing animation, a sharp-witted script, strong vocal performances, retro superhero comedy and great imagination turned this film into a classic.

Fourteen years later it’s time for us to rejoin Bob, Helen and the rest of the superhero fandamily for yet another fun-filled adventure in The Incredibles 2.

Bird is a perfectionist, which is probably why he wasn’t willing to settle for a second-rate sequel. Craig T Nelson, Samuel L Jackson, Holly Hunter and Catherine Keener reprise their roles.

The story picks up not long after the events of The Incredibles as Bob Parr (aka Mr Incredible) finds himself at home looking after Jack-Jack while wife Helen (aka Elastigirl) is out saving the world.

READY PLAYER ONE

[caption id="attachment_236499" align="aligncenter" width="630"] ‘Player One’[/caption]

An executive producer of three of the titles mentioned in this article, Steven Spielberg has become one of the most influential film personalities of all time.

It took some time for him to gravitate from film to digital when he directed War Horse, but it seems he’s ramping up his directorial credits again by making a film every year, starting with Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks and the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic The BFG.

His latest venture, Ready Player One, is based on the novel by Ernest Cline. When the billionaire creator of a virtual reality world dies, he releases a video challenge to all the users of the platform known as OASIS to find an “Easter Egg”, which will give them his fortune.

Starring Olivia Cooke, Tye Sheridan, Mark Rylance, Ben Mendelsohn and TJ Miller, this action-adventure-sci-fi thriller looks very promising, tapping into the current fascination with virtual reality and exploring the dualities of the real and unreal.

WIDOWS

[caption id="attachment_236515" align="aligncenter" width="630"] 'Widows'[/caption]

After directing Michael Fassbender in the bold film Shame, English director Steve McQueen turned his attention to the antebellum South with 12 Years A Slave, which won him acclaim after landing three Oscars from several nominations.

Now with the best picture winner in his rearview mirror, McQueen has re-focused on Widows, a remake of the 1985 British series.

Set in modern-day Chicago, Widows follows four women trying to take fate into their own hands in order to surmount the debt left behind by their dead husbands.

Written by Gillian Flynn, best known for Gone Girl and Dark Places, this crime drama thriller has a strong line-up, including Jon Bernthal, Elizabeth Debicki, Liam Neeson, Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall.

Many avid film fans will be watching with great interest to see if Flynn can match Gone Girl’s thrills and whether McQueen can continue to build on his strong collective of feature films.

SOLDADO

[caption id="attachment_236501" align="aligncenter" width="630"] ‘Soldado’[/caption]

Taylor Sheridan is one of today’s best screenwriters, whose writing credits include Hell or High Water, Wind River and Sicario.

Having demonstrated he can direct his own screenplays with Wind River, it seems surprising Soldado was entrusted to Stefano Sollima instead of Sheridan or world-class Sicario director Denis Villeneuve.

While a sequel, this will be an excellent opportunity for Sollima to prove himself as a fine director on the international stage.

Josh Brolin, Benicio del Toro and Catherine Keener reprise their roles in a follow-up that centres on the escalating war against drugs along the US and Mexican border.

At the time of the first film, there was heat but not as much tension around immigration law as there is now with Donald Trump’s “wall” talk.

With an added layer of contention this dark drug wars drama-thriller should be even more timely and prickly.

BUMBLEBEE

[caption id="attachment_236500" align="aligncenter" width="630"] ‘Transformers’ franchise spin-off ‘Bumblebee’[/caption]

Bumblebee is a spin-off of the Transformers franchise. While inferior sequels led to the Transformers films hitting a speed wobble in the last few years, the first film owed much of its knockout success to the slow build featuring Shia LeBeouf and the machine Bumblebee.

This is why the Transformers universe spin-off Bumblebee is worthy of anticipation. They’re essentially taking us back to the first half of the Transformers film.

The refresh is that it’s set in 1987 and instead of centring on a boy and his “first car”, it’s about a girl and hers. Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight is behind this production.

With Edge of Seventeen star Hailee Steinfeld taking the lead, this dark horse has the potential to be a runaway success. All for the love of film [caption id="attachment_236516" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Stephen 'Spling' Aspeling[/caption]

Stephen ‘Spling’ Aspeling, a regular contributor to Weekend Post and The Herald, is South Africa’s new No1 film critic, according to Google. Type “film critic South Africa” into any Google search bar and you’ll discover Spling’s website ranks third in the search results, superseded only by the Film Critics Association of South Africa – the organisation Aspeling founded in 2009 – and an outdated Wikipedia page. Spling’s career highlights include being interviewed by BBC 5 Live, reviewing Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom for Indiewire; an accurate Oscars prediction interview with Jeremy Maggs on eNCA and “a nerve-wracking Q&A with my teenage crush, Milla Jovovich, for her role in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter”.

His love of film began as a child in the ’80s but it was after completing his studies in Film, Media & Visual Studies at the University of Cape Town, that he began to take his interest more seriously.

After gaining traction as an online movie critic in 2007, he began reviewing films for lifestyle blog 2Oceansvibe. Today he has review slots on several South African radio stations, hosts special previews for Ster-Kinekor and reviews for various publications. He also judges film festivals and consults for local and international film productions from script to second cut.

• Visit www.spling.co.za for more movie news, reviews and interviews.