The Long Walk (2025)

I'm not saying I'm ancient, but I'm old enough to have read The Bachman Books before Rage was excluded from the collection by Stephen King. It was a pretty great read. Four novellas written by Stephen King, under the name Richard Bachman, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The highlight was The Long Walk though, and it's something that fans of King's work wanted to see turned into a movie for decades. Here we are then, but is it any good?

The short answer to that is yes.

The premise is simple enough. America seems to have slid into some kind of horrible totalitarianism, with culture and free thought frowned upon as everyone struggles to make ends meet. This leaves many desperate enough to nominate themselves for a place in the annual event known as The Long Walk. The participants are all teenage boys, one from each state. All they have to do is walk at a constant speed of at least 3 miles per hour. That may sound okay to you, but they get three warnings if they fall below that speed, and then a bullet. There are no toilet breaks, no rest periods, no relief from pain, just walking. Always walking. Until there's only one left. The winner, who will receive a huge sum of money and one wish granted. Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) thinks he has a chance, and knows exactly what he wants his one wish to be. Peter McVries (David Jonsson) seems to be a good ally during the contest, but both young men need to remember that only one can survive to the end. Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) remembers this, and tries to goad others into wasting some of their energy, Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) looks like a very strong contender, and others trying to stay on their feet include Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Hank Olson (Ben Wang), Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), and Thomas Curley (Roman Griffin Davis). 

Adapted from page to screen by JT Mollner, The Long Walk is directed well by Francis Lawrence (best known for helming a number of other movies about a deadly competition, a note that everyone is obliged to mention in any review of this film). There's only so much you can really do with the premise though. This is a film with a lot of conversations happening between people who are walking. It's punctuated by some sudden deaths, and those are sometimes delivered with maximum impact, but it's essentially a lot of walking and talking. Not great cinema, but still a great story nonetheless.

Lawrence has done himself a big favour with his casting. Hoffman does a fantastic job in his lead role, and Jonsson is almost equally good (if slightly hampered by the accent and occasional phrases that make him feel like he's mired in the bog of eternal King-isms). Plummer is even more hampered, but does well, and Wareing, Nyuot, Wang, and co. all do good work, especially when their full journey is shown via stages of physical and mental deterioration. Judy Greer has a couple of scenes that have her fretting over her son (Hoffman), something she does really well, and Mark Hamill is brilliantly cold and jingoistic as The Major, the military figurehead of The Long Walk and the one who will deliver the final shot before the winner is celebrated. 

I did really like this, and it's been good to see many others reacting positively to it, but I can't judge it on purely technical aspects. I think at least some of my reaction stems from finally seeing ANY adaptation of the story in film form. The material is strong enough to make up for any minor failings, and maybe the fact that it is here for us in 2025 will help us avoid making a reality that comes all too close to this kind of fiction. Or maybe we're all just too tired and befuddled to do anything other than keep walking toward a depressingly bleak future. 

8/10

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Alien: Romulus (2024)

It's been a while since an Alien movie has left me feeling anything other than slightly disappointed. I did enjoy the trailer for this, but trailers have been known to mislead us movie fans before. And the fact that Cailee Spaeny had a main role in this made me even more nervous. I have REALLY enjoyed the performances from Spaeny in everything I have seen her in so far, but I have rarely enjoyed any movie that she's starred in. And yet . . . it was time to do the dance that we always do.

Spaeny plays Rain, a young woman hoping to find a way out of her hard life of health-afflicting indentured servitude that feels like a daily batting with a big stick while the carrot of life on a new planet continues to be dangled in front of her. An opportunity arises when a group of like-minded youngsters figure out that there’s a seemingly-abandoned Weyland Yutani vehicle floating in orbit above them. They have a plan to get to a much better place, but they need Rain and her half-brother (full android) Andy (David Jonsson). The obvious problem is that the vehicle isn’t as abandoned as it first appears to be.

Taking place in between the events of Alien and Aliens, apparently, this is a love letter to the whole franchise from director Fede Alvarez. Having co-written the script with Rodo Sayagues, Alvarez does well to use the main creatures in a premise that is once again a pure and unabashed horror movie experience. It moves away from, but doesn’t ignore, the aspects of the backstory that Ridley Scott seemed to become more and more obsessed with, and makes good use of the xenomorph lore while adding some nice details throughout.

Things go wrong when Alvarez feels the need to lift some things from the last movies that didn’t need to be here, whether it is a line of dialogue or a disappointingly lazy “cameo” from someone recreated in the usual painful CGI style that we’re all supposed to pretend is life-like and realistic. And one of the set-pieces feeling a bit too much in line with Don’t Breathe (despite an apparent plot hole at the start of the sequence) is both a positive and negative, depending on how much you enjoy Alvarez and Sayagues revisiting some of their own past glories.

Although I have seen others strongly disagree, I think the cast and characters are a fantastic group, more of less, to start worrying about when faces look ready for hugs. Spaeny is a superb lead, and it’s always toughest for anyone playing a female lead in these movies after the series spent so much time on the shoulders of Sigourney Weaver’s iconic performance. She is strong, smart, but also as vulnerable as anyone else when it comes to facing off against a monster that has acid for blood. Jonsson is equally good, and benefits from being able to deliver more than one persona (thanks to a mod to upgrade him as everyone prepares to get into the thick of any action). Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, and Aileen Wu are appealing enough, and given just enough moments to stand out as individuals from the group, and Spike Fearn is saddled with being the annoying dickhead, which he plays so well that I spent some time hoping for his demise. Let’s not evaluate the performance of the computer-generated cast member, because the film would have been much better without their presence.

It’s imperfect, and I know some will be more annoyed than I was by the multitude of memberberries, but it’s also worth considering just how well this manages to deal with the weight of every other main movie that preceded it while also appealing to those who might be relative newcomers to this universe. The score, cinematography, production design, costuming, etc. are ALL pretty top notch. It’s only the script being a bit too precious about the legacy that drags things down, but it never comes close to other low points in some of the more recent entries in the series. Okay, Jonsson being made to utter a very famous line is bad, but I will put up with it to move a step away from another story of Michael Fassbender creating deadly black liquid while playing some jazz flute.

7/10

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Rye Lane (2023)

Rye Lane was a film that I started hearing good things about as soon as it was in cinemas, with both critics and general audiences seeming to agree on how well it manages to deliver a satisfying rom-com while also knowingly playing around with the familiar tropes. I agree with everyone already in agreement.

Dom and Yas are our main characters, both having recently broken up from their previous partners. Yas seems to be taking things in her stride, although she just might be better at hiding her emotions. Dom, on the other hand, is first seen hiding away in a toilet cubicle to allow himself some uninterrupted weeping time. Once these two people connect, they stick together while navigating a number of tricky social situations, discovering how different they are while, yup, realising what makes them a good match for one another.

Written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, two men who have previously written for a number of different TV shows between them, this is a very funny and very sweet rom-com that adds enough spice or bitterness to each main sequence to avoid giving viewers an overdose of saccharin. Everything is mixed in in just the right amount, taking you through a full and effective journey even as you wait to see if the ending will deliver what you expect from a film within this sub-genre.

Director Raine Allen-Miller, making her feature debut after a handful of shorts, guides the whole thing with confidence. Making some strong choices when it comes to the visual style, Allen-Miller lets you stay close to eh characters, and get to know them, while also filling the frame with colour and culture that allows you to feel as if you are being whisked along by a friend on a whistle-stop tour of their favourite hidden treats in London.

Although I am unfamiliar with David Jonsson (Dom) and Vivian Oparah (Yas), both relative newcomers in terms of onscreen work, they are so perfect in their roles that I immediately became a fan, and hope to see whatever they do with the many upcoming opportunities that should be coming their way in the near future. The “heartbreakers”, although not onscreen for very long, are also well-played, with Karene Peter (Gia, Dom’s ex) and Malcolm Atobrah (Jules, the ex-partner of Yas) presenting enough flaws to show why a relationship was due to end, but never feeling like caricatures. Benjamin Sarpong-Broni is hilarious in a scene-stealing turn, a “friend” of Dom who is now with his Gia, and there is room for some enjoyable turns from Levi Roots, Llewella Giden, Gary Beadle, and a few others. Oh, there’s also a cameo so enjoyable that you should be legally allowed to smack anyone who spoils the surprise for you.

The only big problem with Rye Lane is that, despite having fun with the formula, it IS still very much staying within the confines of the sub-genre it belongs to. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially when everything is done this well, but others may decide to hold that against it. Not me though. I have a soul, and a small bit of warmth in my heart, and I absolutely loved this. Everyone should check it out ASAP. It’s hard to imagine anyone really disliking it, even if you don’t end up enjoying it as much as I did.

9/10

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