Tuesday new releases: 18 November 2025

Last week­end was evid­ently the week­end that movies decided they were going to try and enter­tain us. Three high pro­file releases — two sequels and one remake — with noth­ing more on their mind than tak­ing our minds off the state of the world.

But wait, I hear you cry. Isn’t The Running Man a dysto­pi­an satire of mod­ern soci­ety and our col­lapse into becom­ing mind­less con­sumers of tit­il­at­ing but irrel­ev­ant real­ity TV? Doesn’t it pur­port to be a pun­gent cri­tique of the capitalism’s seem­ingly inev­it­able con­sol­id­a­tion of mono­poly rule, dehu­man­isa­tion of the masses and olig­arch­ic excess?

Well, no. Maybe in 1987 (when the first big screen adapt­a­tion came out) or 1982 (when Richard Bachman/Stephen King’s nov­el was pub­lished) this might have been seen as some kind of warn­ing but in 2025 Edgar Wright’s new ver­sion con­tains so little insight, has so little to say, that its pur­pose is simply to be as nos­tal­gic for the 80s as the Spinal Tap movie is.

Glen Powell is Ben Richards, a work­er without a job. Blacklisted from all the enter­prises owned by “The Network” due to his attempts at organ­ising his col­leagues into a uni­on, he is unable provide for his fam­ily and is fur­ther humi­li­ated by the fact that his wife (Jayme Lawson) is a host­ess at a gentlemen’s club and that it is her tips that pay for the medi­cine their two-year-old needs.

Intending to audi­tion for a minor — although just as demean­ing — game show for a few New Dollars, Richards’ tal­ent for insub­or­din­a­tion catches the eye of exec­ut­ive pro­du­cer Josh Brolin and he is instead forced to become a con­test­ant in the Network’s flag­ship show, The Running Man. Three con­test­ants have thirty days to sur­vive being hunted by a group of trained killers while the pub­lic at large — des­per­ate for blood and reward money — attempt to spot them and dob them in.1

Richards’ bloody minded­ness sees him sur­vive the first week and even make some unlikely allies, but as he gets closer to the 30-day vic­tory line he becomes aware that the dice are loaded, the deck is stacked and the house always wins. Or does it?

Wright was fam­ous for his light touch when he was work­ing with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the Cornetto Trilogy but without them his eye for mater­i­al isn’t so sure. The Running Man is full of east­er egg ref­er­ences to King char­ac­ters and stor­ies, as well as oth­er 80s action movies and I sus­pect that if half as much effort had gone in to the rest of the script than we might have had a film that moved us a little bit.

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Also not help­ing is Powell, an empty shell of an act­or now inflated thanks to his efforts at the gym.2 I find his charms to be so indefin­able as to be prac­tic­ally non-existent and The Running Man gets me no closer.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (some are call­ing it Now You Three Me which would have been much fun­ni­er) is the return of a fran­chise that has been suc­cess­fully dormant since 2016 — a group of stage illu­sion­ists are enlis­ted by a shad­owy fig­ure to cre­ate a gag that will pub­licly reverse some kind of great injustice.3

My prob­lems with the first two were mostly philo­soph­ic­al: when the magic of cinema can make you believe any­thing, why should we believe what these pur­por­ted pres­ti­di­git­at­ors are show­ing us. My belief simply refuses to be sus­pen­ded. I love stage magic — my review of the superb HBO spe­cial, Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, proves this — but there’s noth­ing that hap­pens in these Now You See Me Films that makes me think these act­ors are actu­ally doing the tricks.

I must be get­ting soft in my old age, though, as I didn’t hate the new one quite as much as the pre­vi­ous two, per­haps because the vil­lain is a South African dia­mond mogul and is played by Rosamund Pike in “boo hiss!” pan­to­mime vil­lain style.

Talking of old age, that’s the very minor sub­text of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, in which the band that were fam­ously con­sidered old rel­ics in 1984 return for one final con­trac­tu­ally oblig­ated per­form­ance. Eighty-two year old Harry Shearer as bass play­er Derek Smalls looks as if he would prefer to have made the whole film sit­ting down but they do even­tu­ally make it to the stage and per­form cred­it­ably until the inev­it­able final disaster.

Before that we get what looks like an eld­erly Spinal Tap trib­ute act, rehears­ing the old songs — and play­ing them beau­ti­fully, it must be said — repeat­ing the old jokes and rehash­ing old disputes.

Unlike the oth­er two films this week, Spinal Tap II actu­ally achieves its very mod­est ambi­tions and I enjoyed myself a lot.