![\"Corey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/52560.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n(108 mins, 15) Directed by Francis\u00a0Lawrence; starring Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett\u00a0Wareing\ufeff<\/p>\n
The Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence\ufeff is Hollywood\u2019s go-to guy for dystopian survival stories. The Long Walk, which is adapted from a work by Stephen King, unfolds in a near-future \ufeffUnited States that is now a police state \ufeffafter a savage civil\u00a0war that has stripped the country of its prosperity. Lawrence appears to have appropriated \ufeffDorothea Lange\u2019s Depression-era dust bowl photographs\ufeff as his own personal\u00a0moodboard.<\/p>\n
The Long Walk is an \ufeffannual endurance tes\ufefft\ufeff in which 50 \ufeffyoung men from around the US are selected and made to plod across the country. They must maintain a minimum speed of three miles per hour. Any\u00a0less and they get a warning; \ufeffthree warnings and they get their \u201cticket\u201d \u2013 \ufeffa bullet to the head\ufeff. The last \ufeffcontestant standing wins unimaginable wealth and gets to make a wish.<\/p>\n
The film is a mashup of a whole host of others: The Hunger Games and Battle Royale meet They Shoot Horses, Don\u2019t They? and the documentary Hands \ufeffon a Hard Body, with a touch of Speed thrown in. Unfortunately, all of these references\u00a0are markedly more\u00a0entertaining and thought-provoking\ufeff than this dour\u00a0slog.<\/p>\n
Despite two solid leads\ufeff, David\u00a0Jonsson as Peter\ufeff and Cooper Hoffman as Ray,\ufeff this is essentially\u00a0a\u00a0film about people walking until they\u00a0suffer a breakdown, organ failure or \u2013 worst of all eventualities \u2013 death by \ufeffdiarrhoea. To pass the time, we listen to adolescent \ufeffbanter, some repetitive musings on friendship, and an incongruously stirring orchestral score.<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding the \ufeffshockingly graphic splatter shots\u00a0showing brains sprayed across\u00a0the asphalt, this is unremittingly dull stuff.<\/p>\n
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Corey Hawkins in The Man in My Basement<\/p>\n
\ufeffThe Man in My Basement<\/p>\n
(115 mins, 15) Directed by Nadia Latif; starring Corey Hawkins, Willem\u00a0Dafoe, Anna Diop\ufeff<\/p>\n
There are a lot of moving parts in \ufeffWalter Mosley\u2019s 2004 philosophical suspense novel The Man in My Basement, the story of \ufeffCharles (Corey\u00a0Hawkins), a young African American\ufeff\ufeff on the brink of losing his home, who is approached\u00a0by Anniston (Willem Dafoe), a mysterious white stranger who wants to rent his basement.<\/p>\n
In the novel there is space for \ufeffthe clutter of ideas to percolate and develop.<\/p>\n
In this ambitious but muddled\ufeff feature\u00a0debut by Nadia\u00a0Latif,\ufeff however, they\u00a0are as cramped and stunted as Anniston\u2019s living\u00a0space in\u00a0his self-imposed prison in Charles\u2019s cellar. The film weaves together themes of cultural\u00a0heritage, guilt, the nature of evil and racial tension, and throws in some spurious supernatural elements for good measure. But in\u00a0trying to include everything it ends up saying very little.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a pity, because Latif shows considerable promise with her grasp of the visual\u00a0language of cinema. With its aged bourbon colour palette, the film looks oppressively atmospheric, and neat visual motifs direct us downwards, to hidden secrets in the\u00a0basement and, perhaps deeper still\ufeff, into hell.<\/p>\n
(75 mins, PG) Directed by Constantine\u00a0Costi \ufeff<\/p>\n
![\"Hugh](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/52563.jpeg\")
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