Thursday new releases: 31 July 2025
The Fantastic Four: First Steps and The Life of Chuck are in cinemas.
First up, I want to show you this lovely little visual combination that appeared on the home page yesterday:
Anyway, this week is the last of my three-show run on RNZ At the Movies so I’ll be linking to the audio segments there and hoping that you’ll listen. Got to get those metrics moving in the right direction.
It was a lean week for new cinema releases with two “alternative content” art documentaries1 going up against the Marvel juggernaut of The Fantastic Four. Luckily, The Life of Chuck had some preview screenings last weekend in advance of today’s nationwide release.
To fill the third segment, I interviewed former-Wellington film critic Richard Scheib about his book, A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic. I had to cut the half-hour conversation down to less than eight minutes for broadcast but you can listen to the whole (interesting) thing here.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
You might be able to tell, I really liked The Fantastic Four. The characters are strong, and their relationships are relatable to the rest of us. As usual, Marvel casting director Sarah Halley Finn has filled the roles with pedigree actors, actors who know how to provide what the script sometimes only hints at.
It’s also superbly designed and realised by a team led by Kasra Farhani, who gave the TV series Loki one of the most strikingly original and detailed worlds I’ve ever seen. Like Loki, The Fantastic Four is shot in England – at Pinewood – and I have a theory that the Marvel productions that are made in the UK just tend to be better. The craft is absolutely first rate and there’s more practical construction and less reliance on digital green screen technologies. Their worlds feel solid. The costumes are knitwear, not moulded plastic armour over fake foam muscles.
It's like the difference between Mexican Coke – the real sugar cane stuff – and the High Fructose Corn Syrup we get in the rest of the world.
[Listen to the review here.]
The Life of Chuck
A couple of times recently I’ve been moved by a film that’s actually about death for a change. Not grief and loss and its impact on everyone left behind – although that’s not to diminish those feelings – but about the process of dying and its effect on the one who’s actually doing it.
A few weeks ago, the Danny Boyle zombie flick 28 Years Later surprised me with the sensitivity of how it approached the inevitable death of a central character.
Now we have The Life of Chuck, a film that’s destined to join the list of favourite Stephen King adaptations alongside The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me. It’s adapted from a King short story by Mike Flanagan, who in 2019 adapted the sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.
The Life of Chuck is constructed as something of a puzzle, though it’s a satisfying one. Its three-act structure goes in reverse so that the mystery of the first third – the end of the actual world – is solved by the final third. It’s Stephen King, so there’s always a risk of it being too clever by half but for me it landed beautifully.
[Listen to the review here.]
I made the entirely arbitrary decision a while ago that “alternative content” like National Theatre Live or Met Opera were not going to be automatically considered for the New Releases section. There’s just not enough time. That doesn’t mean I won’t break that rule for certain topics.