Month: September 2025

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

Directors – Tim Burton, Mike Johnson – 2005 – US – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

When his arranged marriage preparations go badly wrong, a young man inadvertently marries a dead woman from the underworld – stop-frame animated marvel is out on 4K Ultra HD and Digital, and in UK cinemas on Friday, October 10th

It is a grey world, and everything must go… according to plan. For there is to be a rehearsal today for a marriage that will take place tomorrow. The son of nouveau riche couple the Van Dorts (voices: Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse) is to wed the daughter of penniless aristocrats Lord and Lady Everglot (voices: Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney). The bridegroom Victor (voice: Johnny Depp) has yet to meet his bride Victoria (voice: Emily Watson) and, left in the vast Everglot vestibule, the young man plays the piano. The tune floats up the stairs and is heard by Victoria who is drawn to it and its performer. She descends the stairs to listen and, against the odds, the pair fall in love.

Three hours into the marriage rehearsal, presided over by Pastor Galswells (voice: Christopher Lee) and poor Victor can’t seem to get his lines right.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Steve

Director – Tim Mielants – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 93m

****1/2

In 1996, the head, his staff and their students struggle to get through a particularly difficult day at a school for troubled teenage boys – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th, and worldwide on Netflix on Friday, October 3rd

Steve (a burned out, visually unrecognisable Cillian Murphy, also the producer) is asked if he’s ready to do an interview to camera. He isn’t, but now is as good a time as any. He drives into work across a vast estate and spots teenager Shy (Jay Lycurgo) dancing to drum and bass music on his Walkman cassette player and smoking a spliff. Steve disciplines his pupil in a friendly manner, then returns to his car after being reminded that today is the day a TV film crew is coming to the school to film a segment for the local TV news magazine programme. Shy attempts, playfully, to ride on the bonnet of Steve’s car. Steve, talks him out of it.

Most of what follows, which covers the next 24 hours, takes place within the school buildings themselves, although the action occasionally wanders (or flies drone-shot style) out into and around the wider grounds of the school estate.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

One Battle After Another

Director – Paul Thomas Anderson – 2025 – US – Cert. 12A – 161m

*****

Over a decade after they disappeared into a safe town with new identities, a father and now-teenage daughter are tracked down by their army officer nemesis… – one of the most extraordinary Warner Bros. action movies you’ve ever seen is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 26th

Radical, black revolutionary Perfidia Beverley Hills (Teyana Taylor) is on the verge of leading the forces of underground far-left organisation the French 75 in an attack on a Californian immigration centre to free those imprisoned when a bedraggled man pulling a trailer, looking to all intents and purposes like a refugee, turns up. Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) tells Perfidia he has all the explosives she could possibly need, and sets about using them with her blessing, putting on an impressive show of pyrotechnics to prove his credentials. Inside the centre, Perfidia locates its commanding officer Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) to sexually humiliate him at gunpoint. Surprisingly, this personal violation only serves to turn the white soldier on.

With Pat and the pregnant Perfidia now a couple, she carries on her high octane, physically demanding revolutionary activities, belly fully swollen, as if there were no child.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Brides

Director – Nadia Fall – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 93m

***

Two radicalised British, teenage girls run away from home intending to become brides for Islamic State – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 26th

When they meet at the local school, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar) strike up an unlikely friendship. In a way, they’re like chalk and cheese – Doe is the quiet one, always observing, while Muna is brash, loud and outgoing. Both come from Muslim backgrounds, and both feel alienated from their classmates, their school and wider British culture. Muna sticks up for herself against school bullies, and effectively gets vilified by the school authorities, and as a result her father, for doing so.

So, without their parents’ permission, they fly off to Turkey to meet up with a man who has groomed them online as brides for Islamic State. When their contact never shows up at the airport, they resolve to find their own way into Syria. As well as following their journey, the narrative frequently lapses into often confusing flashbacks about their home and school lives. And infuriatingly, it never explores how they fare when their their rose-tinted idealism collides with the harsh reality of becoming jihadist brides.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Happyend
(HAPPYEND) 

Director – Neo Sora – 2024 – Japan – Cert. 12A – 113m

***

Two schoolboys play a prank on their despotic principal, who turns it into an excuse to introduce a high tech surveillance system – out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, September 19th

In a future dystopian Kobe, Japan, that looks remarkably like the present day Kobe, Japan, a group of highschoolers fail to get past the tough, power-dressed, Chinese lady bouncer to a club because they’re underage. A couple of the boys, Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka), wandering down a nearby back alley, notice a man in a dark vest taking a crate of beer into the building, strip off their white shirts to reveal similar dark vests underneath, and use crates of beer to gain back door access. Inside, the DJ is electrifying, the beat is strong and the gig is everything they had hoped. There is a police raid, but Kou can’t get Yuta to leave. Somehow, they and the DJ end up being the only ones there, and he gives them a talisman as a mark of respect and tells them to come back for the second set, which is better. But they don’t chance their luck.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Can I Get a Witness

Director – Ann Marie Fleming – 2024 – Canada – Cert. 12a – 100m

The subject matter *****

The film itself *

Can I fast-forward through the boring bits? Dystopian SF outing with good intentions may be the least watchable film of the year – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th

Here’s a movie about one of the most important subjects there is which manages to turn itself into mind-numbingly tedious narrative. It’s hard to imagine more of a missed opportunity.

It’s the first day on the job for gifted sketch artist Kiah (Keira Jang), and before her experienced co-worker comes to pick her up, she’s already having misgivings. She doesn’t want to wear the old-fashioned dress her mother Ellie (Sandra Oh) has picked out for her (her mum bigs the item up as ‘vintage’). Her mum, meanwhile, takes delivery of a mysterious (and apparently equally vintage) fridge, plus a bottle of champagne (which she puts straight in the fridge), along with a mysterious wooden box for which she signs the obligatory paperwork without hesitation (she used to work getting people to sign these herself, so she knows the contents backwards).

Kiah is still getting herself ready when her co-worker turns up co-worker Daniel (Joel Oulette) turns up, so while he’s waiting, Ellie treats him to a piece of her special pie, which he finds delicious.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Islands
(2025)

Director – Jan-Ole Gerster – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 123m

****1/2

A British ex-pat tennis coach working for a hotel on a sun-drenched island in the Canaries gets more than he bargained for when he befriends the couple whose young son he is coaching – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 12th, and on BFI Player from Monday, October 27th

Tom (Sam Riley) wakes up in the desert and walks back to his car. He often nods off – at one point he is woken by a tap on his car window by the local police chief Jorge (Pep Ambròs) in a scene reminiscent of the one in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), one of the differences being that he’s a local and he and the cop not only know each other, but are friends. (Another is that in Psycho, the motorist is a woman and the cop a man, which brings a whole other dynamic into play.) Jorge fines him for a traffic violation, but apologises for the fact, and the two men’s friendship is able to accommodate that.

The desert, or beach, is a very specific location: Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands. And Tom has manoeuvred his life into a very nice routine, thank you very much, as he sees it.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

On Swift Horses

Director – Daniel Minahan – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A husband’s dreams are undermined in 1950s America by the separate lives and desires of his secretly racetrack-gambling wife and his reappearing, disappearing drifter-gambler brother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 5th

Lee Walker (Will Poulter from Warfare, Alex Garland, 2025; Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow, 2017; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Michael Apted, 2010; Son of Rambow, Garth Jennings, 2007) returns home to the US from the Korean War to his adored wife Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones from Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung, 2024; Where the Crawdads Sing, Olivia Newman, 2022) who lives in the isolated house she inherited from her mother in the calm prairie lands up North. Their relationship is deeply carnal. And yet, something changes in that relationship dynamic the night Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi from Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro, 2025; Priscilla, Sofia Coppola, 2023; Saltburn, Emerald Fennell, 2023) turns up, and she is instantly attracted to him. Of course, that can’t be, because she is with Lee.

Part of the attraction is that Julius, a drifter who turns up unannounced, is also an inveterate card sharp and gambler.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Paul & Paulette
Take a Bath

Director – Jethro Massey – 2024 – France – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

A young American photographer in Paris runs into a girl obsessed with the darker side of French history – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 5th

Opening with sepia-toned engravings then photos depicting the last couple of centuries of Paris, this switches to an image of a girl walking and kneeling and a male “Once there was a girl” fairytale voiceover about a girl who would immerse herself in history, who was drawn both to the stars and the gutter, who liked Bad Things. Immediately, it’s juxtaposed with a female “Once there was a boy” voiceover about a boy who came to Paris with a camera around his neck. He photographs the girl. She confronts him. He points out that before her execution (on which site the girl has been kneeling, as if awaiting execution) Marie-Antoinette would have had her hair cut so as not to impede the blade. The girl has long, black hair.

In voiceover, she talks about how a spoon’s meaning changes once you know that Marilyn Monroe ate ice cream with it on the last day of her life. They visit a church which appears to contain the site of Marie-Antoinette’s cell.… Read the rest