At The Movies for Wednesday 14 August 2024

AT THE MOVIES #979             ONLY YOU, DICK DARING

 

Simon Morris checks out three films that depend on a star to lift their game.   Two succeed – a romance with a sting in the tail called It ends with us and an endearing Kiwi road-movie called Bookworm.   But video-game adaptation Borderlands defies even an eight times Oscar nominee…

 

 

 

 

It ends with us is based on a romantic novel that went viral a couple of years back.  The film version may do even better, thanks to a star performance by Blake Lively (The shallows).  Directed by, and co-starring, Justin Baldoni (TV’s Jane the virgin). 

 

 

 

 

Bookworm is about an 11-year-old girl’s quest to find New Zealand’s mythical Canterbury Panther, with the unwilling help of her long-lost father.   Directed by Ant Timpson (Come to daddy) it stars Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) and star-in-the-making Nell Fisher (TV’s Stranger things).

 

 

 

And Borderlands, a B-movie video-game adaptation gets an A-List cast – Jack Black and Kevin Hart (Jumanji), Jamie Lee Curtis (Everything everywhere all at once) and, playing her first interplanetary bounty hunter, Cate Blanchett (Tár).