Skip to main content
Games Radar
  • Newsarama
  • Total Film
  • Edge
  • Retro Gamer
  • SFX
Total Film The smarter take on movies
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Subscribe
  • Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • More
    • PS5
    • Xbox Series X
    • Nintendo Switch
    • Nintendo Switch 2
    • PC
    • Platforms
    • Tabletop Gaming
    • Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • SFX
    • Newsarama
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsletters
    • About us
    • Features
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
View
Trending
  • Best Netflix Movies
  • Best movies on Disney Plus
  • Movie Release Dates
  • Best Netflix Shows

Recommended reading

Kevin Bacon as Hub Halloran in The Bondsman.
Streaming Services The best new shows and movies streaming this week on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus and more
Millie Bobby Brown in The Electric State
Streaming Services 6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (March 14 - 16)
A Complete Unknown
Streaming Services 6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (March 28 - 30)
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in Poker Face.
Streaming Services The best new shows and movies streaming this week on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, and more
Lost in Starlight
Streaming Services 6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (May 30 - June 1)
Havoc
Streaming Services 6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (April 25 - 27)
Anthony Mackie as Captain America Sam Wilson, in a dark room holding his famous shield, in Captain America: Brave New World.
Streaming Services The best new shows and movies streaming this week on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, HBO Max, and more
  1. Entertainment
  2. Movies

Movies to watch this week at the cinema: Stronger, Brigsby Bear, and more

Features
By Total Film Staff published December 4, 2017

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Out on Friday December 8

Out on Friday December 8

Jake Gyllenhaal leads an inspiring warts-and-all story of a Boston bombing survivor’s recovery battle. Kyle Mooney does wonders in a comedy-drama that bears multiple viewings.

Yes, here's this week's new releases. Click on for our reviews of Stronger, Brigsby Bear, Better Watch Out, Blade of the Immortal, Menashe, Lu Over the Wall, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Dinner, Human Flow, and A Matter of Life and Death.

For the best movie reviews, subscribe to Total Film.

Page 1 of 11
Page 1 of 11
Stronger

Stronger

“So, am I a hero for standing there getting my legs blown off?” asks Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal). Punchy and grittily realistic, the unvarnished true-life story of Bauman, horribly injured in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, isn’t your average inspirational melodrama. If Patriots Day hymned the city’s strength around the atrocity, here David Gordon Green’s survival tale looks at life after the headlines fade.

Tracing Jeff’s journey from blue-collar slacker to uncertain hero, the tender love story at the film’s core shows him wrestling with responsibility as much as recovery. On-off girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany, quietly excellent) fights his corner, but also battles his publicity-loving mother, Miranda Richardson’s boozy Patty. No dip, depression, or drinking bout of Jeff’s goes unexamined in this tense, intimate film.

Like The Big Sick, it’s smart about the strains of being both lover and care-giver. Yet it’s also full of energy and humour, riding shotgun as wheelchair-bound Jeff brawls with redneck conspiracy nuts, or sets off an LSD-fuelled police chase.

An intense but understated Gyllenhaal is superb throughout, adroitly conveying Jeff’s ambivalence at being hailed as ‘Boston Strong’, while splintered by PTSD and horrific flashbacks. It’s a portrayal as tough and complex as the man it honours. 

THE VERDICT: Gyllenhaal is outstanding in this inspiring warts-and-all story of a Boston bombing survivor’s recovery battle.

Director: David Gordon Green; Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

Kate Stables

Page 2 of 11
Page 2 of 11
Brigsby Bear

Brigsby Bear

Meet James Pope (Kyle Mooney). He’s your average geeky kid, obsessing over his favourite TV show and eagerly dissecting it with buddies online. James, though, is hardly average. He’s an abductee who’s been kept captive since infancy by ‘parents’ (Mark Hamill, Jane Adams) who have concocted everything – an underground bunker in the desert, a scare story about toxic air, even the programme he idolises – to keep him ignorant of, and a secret from, the wider world.

So far, so Room. Yet Brigsby Bear – named after the genial, ursine protagonist of the show only James has seen – quickly sets its hero free, initiating an odd, hilarious and unexpectedly moving journey of self-discovery for a young man suddenly presented with a new life, family and identity. His crutch, quixotically, is Brigsby, a cuddly phantom he resolves to revive in order to make sense of his radically altered circumstances.

What follows is a weird, subversive yet generally good-natured homage to the creative urge, peppered with a nerdy nostalgia. And it’s led by a goofily endearing turn from SNL regular Mooney, with more than a whiff of Dana Carvey’s Wayne’s World doofus Garth. 

THE VERDICT: An outlandish high concept is a recipe for hope and humour in a film that bears viewing more than once.

Director: Dave McCary; Starring: Kyle Mooney, Matt Walsh, Mark Hamill; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

Neil Smith

Page 3 of 11
Page 3 of 11
Better Watch Out

Better Watch Out

Babysitter slasher? Home invasion? Torture porn? Better Watch Out is all of these and much more, as 12-year-old Luke (Pan’s Levi Miller) and his teen sitter (Olivia DeJonge) face a seemingly standard attack before the action takes a turn into shockingly dark territory.

Directed by Chris Peckover, this is also a Christmas horror-comedy – and one of the best since Gremlins.

Director: Chris Peckover; Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Levi Miller, Ed Oxenbould; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

Jamie Graham

Page 4 of 11
Page 4 of 11
Blade of the Immortal

Blade of the Immortal

For his 100th film, Japanese cult auteur Takashi Miike celebrates with something special. Based on Hiroaki Samura’s manga series, this tale of Manji (Takuya Kimura), a samurai cursed with eternal life, is dazzlingly assembled.

Stunning fights and creepy CG come wrapped inside a blade-sharp story, as the swordsman vows to hunt the killers of a young girl’s parents. Truly epic.

Director: Takashi Miike; Starring: Takuya Kimura, Hana Sugisaki, Sôta Fukushi; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

James Mottram

Page 5 of 11
Page 5 of 11
Menashe

Menashe

Performed in Yiddish and shot in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, this is a rare insight into Orthodox Jewish culture.

The low-key tone and casual pacing create an atmosphere akin to a fly-on-the-wall doc, while a nuanced moral conflict builds through the plight of the title character: an affable but flawed widower whose liberal values clash with his community as he struggles to gain custody of his child.

Director: Joshua Z Weinstein; Starring: Menashe Lustig, Yoel Falkowitz, Ruben Niborski; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

Stephen Puddicombe

Page 6 of 11
Page 6 of 11
Lu Over the Wall

Lu Over the Wall

A lonely mid-school muso’s heart is lifted by friendship with a mer-girl in Masaaki Yuasa’s buoyant and bubbly animation. Though Ponyo’s influence laps at his heels, Yuasa’s film offers its own flourishes of vibrant fancy.

The end-stretch is overlong, but the Flash animation style pops with colour, the music is fun, and off-the-scale creature cuteness abounds. Here be mer-doggies!

Director: Masaaki Yuasa; Starring: Kanon Tani, Shôta Shimoda, Shin'ichi Shinohara; Theatrical release: December 6, 2017

Kevin Harley

Page 7 of 11
Page 7 of 11
The Muppet Christmas Carol

The Muppet Christmas Carol

Just 25 years old but already a classic, this is the Muppets’ finest film. Its mashup of slapstick, songs and literary adaptation is suitably anarchic, but crucially it gets Dickens right.

As Scrooge, Michael Caine rises to the challenge and helps find the pathos beneath the puppetry. Made after Jim Henson’s passing, son Brian’s tribute puts the felt in ‘heartfelt’.

Director: Brian Henson; Starring: Michael Caine, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire; Theatrical release: December 6, 2017

Simon Kinnear

Page 8 of 11
Page 8 of 11
The Dinner

The Dinner

After Time Out of Mind, writer-director Oren Moverman and star Richard Gere reunite for a less assured drama about politics, power and parenthood. Two brothers (Gere, Steve Coogan) and their wives (Rebecca Hall, Laura Linney) meet to discuss an unseemly incident involving their offspring.

Loaded with flashbacks, it’s unevenly mounted but kept watchable by the lively script and classy cast.

Director: Oren Moverman; Starring: Michael Chernus, Taylor Rae Almonte, Steve Coogan; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

James Mottram

Page 9 of 11
Page 9 of 11
Human Flow

Human Flow

The subject of 2012 doc Never Sorry, Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei turns director for a stirring study of the refugee crisis. Spanning 23 countries and four continents, the globetrotting canvas may be too broad for some.

Yet the cumulative effect is overwhelming. Poetically shot by a dozen DoPs, including Christopher Doyle, a powerful portrait of horror, hope and humanity emerges.

Director: Ai Weiwei; Starring: Israa Abboud, Hiba Abed, Rami Abu Sondos; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

James Mottram

Page 10 of 11
Page 10 of 11
A Matter of Life and Death

A Matter of Life and Death

Voted the second-greatest British film of all time by this very publication, Powell and Pressburger’s fantasy dazzles and delights. David Niven’s the WW2 pilot who survives an air crash due to a celestial oversight. Now Heaven wants him back. Big ask, especially as he’s fallen in love…

Originally conceived to improve Anglo-American relations, it’s an enduring classic.

Director: Marianne Ahrne; Starring: Lena Olin, Svante Martin, Måns Westfelt; Theatrical release: December 8, 2017

Ali Catterall

Page 11 of 11
Page 11 of 11
Total Film Staff

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

See more Movies Features
Read more
Kevin Bacon as Hub Halloran in The Bondsman.
The best new shows and movies streaming this week on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus and more
Millie Bobby Brown in The Electric State
6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (March 14 - 16)
A Complete Unknown
6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (March 28 - 30)
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in Poker Face.
The best new shows and movies streaming this week on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, and more
Lost in Starlight
6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (May 30 - June 1)
Havoc
6 new movies and shows to watch this weekend on Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, and more (April 25 - 27)
Latest in Movies
Justice League
Before James Gunn took over, Warner Bros reportedly wanted a Henry Cavill Superman film directed by Michael Bay
Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four: The First Steps
Move over, Galactus: Fantastic Four's Joseph Quinn confirms there's another unannounced villain in the Marvel movie
Five Nights at Freddy's characters on stage
Upcoming horror sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 releases first poster, potentially teasing the return of one of the game’s most terrifying characters
Emma Corrin holding a lamp in Nosferatu
Hideo Kojima has offered his thoughts on the best horror movie of 2024: "It felt like being in a dream the entire time, utterly spellbinding"
Tim Blake Nelson as The Leader in Captain America: Brave New World
Marvel fans are realizing that one Captain America: Brave New World character had an impact on past MCU movies, despite not being on screen for 17 years
Mason Thames as Finn and Ethan Hawke as The Grabber in The Black Phone 2 trailer
First trailer for upcoming horror sequel The Black Phone 2 reveals its masked killer is back from the dead, and about to go full Jason Voorhees
Latest in Features
A player looking out at an alien planet during The Outer Worlds 2.
Xbox Games Showcase 2025 needs to build on Microsoft's momentum, but it may need to go beyond The Outer Worlds 2 to pull it off
Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken screenshot
Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken puts an Inception spin on PS1-era survival horror games, and I totally get why it's winning pre-launch awards
Ratopia screenshot showing an underground base where rat citizens carry boxes down below
In this rat-filled city builder, one wrong move can change everything - and in my case it was forgetting to add a toilet
Elden Ring Nightreign screenshot of three characters walking side by side
Marathon and Elden Ring Nightreign have a common problem: the solo experience is way worse, and I can't help but think nailing your game to teams of 3 is a mistake in 2025
When the Light Breaks
A new Icelandic drama with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score provides one of the most emotionally honest depictions of grief I've seen in a long time
Ring Fit Adventure gameplay
6 years after its release, Ring Fit Adventure remains the unrivalled king of fitness games
  1. Elden Ring Nightreign key art
    1
    Elden Ring Nightreign review: "An uncharacteristically frantic and fast-paced ride that boils down the core Elden Ring experience"
  2. 2
    To a T review: "Like standing in a warm spill of sunbeams and eating your favorite home-cooked meal all at once"
  3. 3
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown review: "Radically slick brawls barely feel turn-based, but I'm left wanting more depth"
  4. 4
    Monster Train 2 review: "A truly first class ride through deckbuilder roguelike heaven, and I'm already going off the rails"
  5. 5
    Blades of Fire review: "Following up Metroid Dread with a dark fantasy soulslike full of inventive ideas that I find delightfully infectious"
  1. Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, and Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid: Legends
    1
    Karate Kid: Legends review: "Better than Karate Kid (2010), nothing on Karate Kid (1984)"
  2. 2
    Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning review: "Wraps up this spy franchise in spectacular style with Tom Cruise in peak condition, even if its villain lacks terror"
  3. 3
    Final Destination Bloodlines Review: "Meticulous murderous mayhem"
  4. 4
    Thunderbolts review: "Makes good on the promise of a new start for the MCU"
  5. 5
    A Minecraft Movie Review: "Jack Black's irrepressible star turn helps elevate this video game adaptation"
  1. Alexander Devrient as Colonel Ibrahim, Ruth Madeley as Shirley, Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge Stewart, Varada Sethu as Belinda, Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, Millie Gibson as Ruby, Bonnie Langford as Mel, Susan Twist as Susan Triad, and Yasmin Finney as Rose Noble in Doctor Who: 'The Reality War.'
    1
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 8 spoiler review: 'The Reality War' is "a mix of the good, the bad, and the truly baffling"
  2. 2
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 7 spoiler review: 'Wish World' is "an exciting and ambitious" start to the season finale, with hints of WandaVision
  3. 3
    Rick and Morty season 8 review: "Largely plays it too safe after years of crossing boundaries"
  4. 4
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 6 spoiler review: 'The Interstellar Song Contest' is "a blast and sets the stage for a thrilling season finale"
  5. 5
    Doctor Who season 2, episode 5 spoiler review: 'The Story & The Engine' is "one of the most original and ambitious episodes this show has produced in years"

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers
  • Do not sell or share my personal information

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...