Thursday new releases: 17 July 2025

As prom­ised, here are the films that would have been fea­tured here on Monday but were held over because we were mak­ing At the Movies for RNZ yes­ter­day. Also, con­tains bonus Smurfs.

The full show is avail­able for download/streaming here and listen­ing is the pre­ferred meth­od of absorb­ing these reviews as the audio clips really add to the stor­ies I am try­ing tell. And the editor-in-chief and I checked it on the com­mute in to work this morn­ing and we can con­firm that it came out really well.

If you want to listen along with the radio audi­ence, you’ll have to wait until Sunday after­noon when it plays as part of Culture 101.

Superman

While I appre­ci­ated the new tone that Gunn is going for, I couldn’t help feel­ing that this Superman can fly because he’s a bit of a light­weight and Gunn him­self is forced, whenev­er he wants the audi­ence to actu­ally feel some­thing, to go back to John Williams’ fam­ous Superman fan­fare. This isn’t emo­tion, its nos­tal­gia, and it’s a trick that’s pulled a lot in the new Jurassic World film, too.

In fact, almost all the char­ac­ters are bene­fit­ting greatly from what the audi­ence is already bring­ing into the cinema with them, rather than what’s on the page. This goes double for the female char­ac­ters – Luthor’s girl­friend Eve Teschmacher, played by Sara Sampaio espe­cially – who are ser­i­ously short-changed and, frankly, not shown very much respect.

Bride Hard

This is clearly a vehicle for Ms. Wilson, the Australian com­ic per­former who made her name test­ing the lim­its of screen vul­gar­ity in wedding-themed films like Bridesmaids and A Few Best Men, and between her and her stunt double she proves game for the action side of things. Unfortunately, the script by Sheina Steinberg and whatever impro­visa­tion­al efforts that are made by the cast, don’t find any depth in the rela­tion­ships and if there’s no depth then the humour just bobs around on the sur­face hop­ing to make land­fall some­where before it sinks.

Universal Language

Universal Language could only have emerged from an ultra-specific loc­a­tion, the extraordin­ary nog­gin of Matthew Rankin, but that unique­ness is what makes it so pre­cious. Filmmakers around the world should take the les­son from this, that any effort you make try­ing to please an audi­ence and not try­ing to work out what is uniquely you, is wasted effort.

I’m not going to pre­tend that Universal Language is for every­one – although the Audience Award at Cannes and 24 oth­er wins around the world might sug­gest oth­er­wise – and I feel sure that this isn’t the kind of film you wander into because the Superman ses­sion was sold out, but if this sort of thing sounds like you, then it will be very you. It was for me.

Universal Language was great. Probably in my top ten of the year, but extremely hard to describe.

Smurfs

This new reboot of the for­mid­able Belgian fran­chise actu­ally appeared in loc­al cinemas a couple of weeks ago because of our school hol­i­day sched­ule but it is being released inter­na­tion­ally this week.

I was very fond of the second film in the Neil Patrick Harris series which came out in 2013 (Katy Perry was the pop star who voiced Smurfette in those days) so I didn’t have an auto­mat­ic aver­sion to this new ver­sion as I may have done.

Adding to that, dir­ect­or Chris Miller being respons­ible for Puss in Boots (anoth­er favour­ite) and I was primed to enjoy this, des­pite the screen­ing start­ing at 9.30am on a Sunday morning.

Smurfs bene­fits from treat­ing the little blue crit­ters as the main char­ac­ters in their own story rather than an annoy­ing sup­port­ing cast and also from com­mit­ting to an excel­lent array of voice tal­ent: John Goodman as Papa Smurf, Nick Offerman as Papa’s broth­er Ken (!) and Octavia Spencer, Natasha Lyonne, and Sandra Oh also fea­tur­ing. Your tol­er­ance for James Corden will be tested by his appear­ance as the lead, No Name Smurf. He also is giv­en a music­al num­ber, as is Rihanna (more under­stand­ably) as Smurfette.

The story is about one of four magic books needed to con­trol the uni­verse being hid­den in the Smurf vil­lage and the efforts to keep it out of the hands of the vil­lain­ous wiz­ard Razamel and his broth­er Gargamel (both voiced by JP Karliak).

There’s a chase around vari­ous glob­al loc­a­tions cour­tesy of some kind of magic portal — our gang vis­it Paris, Outback Australia and Germany. It’s all very inof­fens­ive and some­times quite endear­ing, although it didn’t make me cry like The Smurfs 2.