Every month for the rest of 2023, Mega Movie Weekend offers the chance to download and keep a bunch of films at slashed prices. Here’s what’s on sale this month:
Here at Film Stories, we ruddy love a good bargain. Film-related bargains, even more so. I once found a copy of Jerry Zucker’s Rat Race for 20p in a charity shop. Bargain!
The Mega Movie Weekend campaign, running every month until the end of the year, embraces that penny-pinching spirit with gusto. This month’s offerings, running from the 17th – 19th November, go down the action route, with shiny new films (Uncharted, Renfield) and 80s classics (Rambo: First Blood) all represented.
We’ve had a rummage and found the biggest films on offer at the six participating retailers (Amazon Prime Video, BT Store, Google TV, Rakuten TV, Sky Store and Virgin Media Store). They’re all about to get some lovely price cuts to download and keep for the weekend. You’re very welcome.
So, without further ado, strap on your hardiest backpack and find yourself a helicopter – here’re the biggest hits available this Mega Movie Weekend.
Rambo: First Blood
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy
Are we always including the Rambo in the title of First Blood, now? From a marketing perspective it retroactively makes sense, but we do feel bad for ruining a perfectly good pub quiz question. Now that there’re alternative titles, “In what film does John Rambo make his first appearance” is bound to spark furious debate up and down the country. Either way, the film still has Rambo in it, he still wears an increasingly filthy vest, and a still shoots lots of people. Does what it says on the tin, really.
Uncharted
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Sophia Ali
Before The Last Of Us and The Super Mario Bros Movie broke the ‘curse’ of the video game adaptation, the signs of a major shift in Hollywood were already on the wall in early 2022. Uncharted, the globe-trotting action-adventure movie based on the popular PlayStation franchise, sneakily made $407m in what was still a tepid movie-going environment post-covid. Still, if you didn’t catch it in the cinema, there’s never been a better time to watch Tom Holland channeling Cocktail and trotting over a Barcelona rooftop.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
Director: David F. Sandberg
Starring: Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Rachel Zegler
The sequel to 2019’s Shazam! got a bit of short shrift from critics when it struck cinemas earlier this year. Audiences, too, weren’t much kinder: the film made just $133m worldwide off a $125m budget.
We, though, thought it was rather fun. The Baxter family make a fresh and entertaining new super-team, and the old Big staple of adult-actors-acting-like-kids rarely fails to bring a smile to our faces. The score, too, feels delightfully early-noughties-adventure-movie in a Night At The Museum, The Mummy Returns kind of way – if that sounds appealing, give Fury Of The Gods a go – it might just surprise you.
Renfield
Director: Chris McKay
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Nicholas Cage, Awkwafina
Nic Cage plays Dracula. There you go, that’s the pitch. Frankly, the rest of the film could be looped footage of Awkwafina doing a Fortnite dance and we’d still watch it. Instead, we get a goofy little action-comedy with the vampire’s much maligned assistant struggling to make his way out of his master’s shadow. Nicholas Holt is also in it, and he’s great too. Two Nicholases (Nicoli?) for the price of one!
Dangerous Waters
Director: John Barr
Starring: Ray Liotta, Odeya Rush, Eric Dane
Bit of a sad one, this. Back in May 2022, Ray Liotta passed away in his sleep during production of this high seas thriller. The film was ultimately finished in his memory, and emerged onto streaming last month without much fanfare – for a look at Liotta’s final on-screen performance, though, it’s surely worth a look.
The Courier
Director: Dominic Cooke
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Jessie Buckley, Rachel Brosnahan
Benedict Cumberbatch leads a star-studded cast in the most dad-friendly of all genres: the Cold War spy movie. The Sherlock star plays Greville Wynne, a perfectly ordinary British salesman who might, we reckon, get recruited as a spy. It’s based on a true story, so we suppose we could look it up – but far better to just watch the film instead.
Mega Movie Weekend is managed by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) in association with major UK distributors Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Signature Entertainment, Sony Pictures, Spirit Entertainment, StudioCanal, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery.
The last Mega Movie Weekend in 2023 is scheduled for 15th – 17th December. We’ll let you know what’s on offer when we know more. Hooray for bargains!
