Month: September 2023

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Features Live Action Movies

Bolan’s Shoes

Director – Ian Puleston-Davies – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

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Two traumatised siblings reconnect as adults years after a childhood coach crash coming back from a Liverpudlian orphanage trip to a T.Rex gig in the 1970s – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 15th

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Picture black. A radio DJ dedication to Bob and Sally. T.Rex’s Calling All Destroyers blasts out on the soundtrack against a sudden image of a coach travelling through the English countryside. On board: excited orphanage kids with the trip organiser Simon (Louis Emerick) plus their local vicar (Andrew Lancel) and his daughter Penny (Eden Beach). Sadie (Amelia Rose Smith) nuts Tommo (Alfie Donnahey) for, as she swearily and excitedly explains to Penny, picking on her older brother Jimmy (Isaac Lancel-Watkinson). There is blood. To the consternation of Simon, who isn’t going to let the incident get in the way of the day’s enjoyment. “You’ll thank me in later years,” he says. “You’ll be able to say, I was there.”

After the gig, Simon has fixed up a trip backstage for the kids to meet founding T.Rex member Marc Bolan, getting them past other fans waiting outside for a glimpse of their hero.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3

Director – Nia Vardalos – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 91m

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The Greek-American family from Chicago visit their late patriarch’s small village in Greece to honour his final wish – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 8th

Once again written by and starring Vardalos as Toula, the daughter of the rumbunctious, Greek-American Portokalos family from Chicago, this third outing for the franchise is predictably another celebration of all things Greek, or, at least, Greek-American. The previous two films owed much to the character of Toula’s father Gus (Michael Constantine), the family patriarch insistent on all family members (a) getting married as soon as they come of age and (b) marrying Greek-Americans.

In the first film My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwick, 2002), Toula had to bring him round to the idea of her marrying the non-Greek Ian (John Corbett). In the second film My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (Kirk Jones, 2016), Toula had become an interfering mother to teenage daughter Paris (Elena Campouris) while Gus and his wife Maria (Lainie Kazan) have another wedding celebration following the discovery that their marriage of 50 years was technically invalid.

The third instalment was to have been about Gus and the family visiting Greece to rediscover his roots.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

No More Bets
(孤注一掷,
Gu Zhu Yi Zhi)

Director – Shen Ao – 2022 – China – Cert. 15 – 129m

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A rising star computer programmer and a dropped model are lured into working as forced labour for a fraudulent, foreign online gambling operation – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 8th

Zhao Dongran (Yong Mei), the knowledgeable head of a well-equipped Chinese police team fighting internet fraud, gives a lecture in which she outlines the story of a top flight programmer lured into the shady world of gambling beyond China’s borders.

The talented Pan Sheng (Lay Zhang), after being passed over for a promotion in favour of a not-especially talented young relative of the boss, opts for his safety net – a job offer from a company in Singapore. Along with a number of other recruits, he boards the plane with company rep Cui (Sunny Sun from The Crossing, Bai Xue, 2018), who is in charge of them, but in Singapore the deal rapidly turns sour when in an alleyway the group are rounded up by thugs with baseball bats to be transported to the corporate compound which amounts to a slave labour camp from which Lu (Eric Wang) runs an online gambling company which is in fact a scam defrauding millions of people, many of them in China.… Read the rest