Category: Animation

A monk invites a filmmaker friend to a remote farm in the Tibetan mountain region where a snow leopard trapped in a sheep pen has killed nine sheep – the late Pema Tseden’s final completed film is out in UK cinemas from Friday, November 22nd

Film maker Dradul (Genden Phuntsok) has been informed by his friend Nyima the Snow Leopard Monk (Tseten Tashi) of an incident and so sets out for the region of the Tibetan Mountains with a small crew in his car. Following roads in the freezing wilderness, the car arrives at a remote farm which consists basically of a stone farmhouse and a sheep pen where the Snow Leopard Monk awaits them, along with the old farmer and his family.

The sheep pen has been breached by a snow leopard, a rare animal that’s a protected species in Tibet, and the old farmer’s adult son Jinpa (Jinpa) is furious that it has killed nine sheep. Confronted with the camera, he argues vociferously that man must live with the snow leopard, and that a small number of kills would be acceptable, but an amount as large as nine is most definitely not okay.… Read the rest

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Tallinn Critics’ Picks selection: Searching for vanishing corpses and disappeared people

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 27 November 2024
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I, the Song - Critics' Picks Best Director

Jeremy Clarke looks back at this year’s Critics’ Picks and finds some unsettling, recurring themes

Let’s Talk about the Weather

This PÖFF is going to be remembered by those of us at DMovies as the year when the weather we left behind us in the UK was colder and more wintry than the weather in Tallinn, where the average seemed to be between five and minus one degrees, very mild for this time of year. I’m checking the weather forecast over there as I write from the UK, to see that it is warmer still this week, and up to seven degrees tomorrow. Global warming is real, people.

The warmer weather had a strange effect on the festival’s annual tram party – basically, you are marshalled around and ushered onto a tram in subzero conditions, and then on the tram you drink lots of vodka to warm up. On this year, no subzero conditions as it was much warmer, so the vodka didn’t need to be consumed in massive quantities in quite the same way, so I stuck mostly to the alternative, very pleasant, local alcoholic beverage and consumed a ridiculous amount of gherkins (the only food on offer but one to which I’m extremely partial).… Read the rest

Tags 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Critics' Picks Competition, Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF, PÖFF 2024, PÖFF 2024: Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF 28, PÖFF 28: Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF: Critics' Picks Competition, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2024, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2024: Critics' Picks Competition, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Critics' Picks Competition

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla Minus One
/ Minus Color
(Gojira-1.0 / C,
ゴジラ -1.0 / C)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 31 October 2024
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/ Minus Color
(Gojira-1.0 / C,
ゴジラ -1.0 / C)
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Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – now in black & white – out in UK cinemas from Friday, November 1st

Something happens when you watch this / Minus Color version of Gozilla Minus One, which director Yamazaki has gone through cut by cut and personally overseen. You are watching a 2023 movie, yet you feel as if you’re watching a 1954 one. Because the film is about Japan, World War Two and its immediate aftermath, the film seems to play better in black and white.

World War Two, Pacific theatre. Unwilling Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) feigns engine trouble and lands on an island for aircraft maintenance, where he is grounded. While there, he notices deep sea fish curiously floating on the surface of the surrounding ocean: they presage the arrival of a huge monster, named Godzilla by the locals. With Koichi failing to fire his 20mm aircraft guns at the creature to kill it, almost everyone else on the small island is killed.… Read the rest

Tags 1940s, 3D animation, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, action, aircraft, animation, battleship, belief, black and white, blowing up, CG, CG animation, cowardice, death, decommissioning, destitution, devastatation, explosion, Godzilla, Gojira, guilt, Hidetaki Yoshioka, Japan, Kaiju, Kamikaze, Kamikaze pilot, Kuranosuke Sasaki, mayhem, mines, minus color, minus colour, mistaken belief, monster, mother and baby, Munetaka Aoki, nuclear, nuclear bomb, ocean, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, Pacific, parents and children, pilot, post-war, post-war Japan, post-war Tokyo, poverty, pull the trigger, pyrotechnics, sacrifice, Sakura Ando, Second World War, self-sacrifice, Setsuro Wakamatsu, ship, shoot-to-kill, stop thief, survival, survivor, Takashi Yamazaki, Toho, war guilt, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2, Yuki Yamada

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Terminator 2
Judgement Day

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 26 October 2024
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Judgement Day
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Director – James Cameron – 1991 – US – Cert. 15 – 127m

*****

A second Terminator is sent from the future to kill the future leader of the war against the machines – plays as part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

In the 1984 original, a Terminator robot (Arnold Schwarznegger) is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother-to-be of the leader of the war in the future against the machines, who are exterminating humanity.

This sequel sees a more advanced T-1000 robot (Robert Patrick) sent back in time to kill Sarah’s now-ten-year-old son John (Ed Furlong). Another Terminator (Schwarzengger) is also running around in the present (i.e. 1991).

Sarah’s recurring nightmare pictures the coming apocalypse when the machines unleash nuclear missiles on humanity. That aside, this is basically an essay on mothers and sons – and fathers and sons – wrapped up in the best chase movie you’ve ever seen.

What makes the film work is the mother and son element. Sarah is a believer in Terminators, the coming war against the machines, and humanity’s fightback in a world where such beliefs are dismissed as delusions.… Read the rest

Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 25 October 2024
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(new 4K restoration)
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Directed by Martin Rosen
Certificate PG
92 minutes
Released 25 October

Reviewed for Reform magazine.

Now fully restored in a new 4K restoration, this 1978 tale of rabbits on the run proved that an animated film need be neither made by Disney nor sugar-coated for children. Watership Down, although a children’s film, came from the producer of the Oscar-winning DH Lawrence adaptation Women in Love (1969), Martin Rosen. He ended up directing it too.

A prologue details the relationship between the creator-god Frith – represented as the sun – and rabbitkind. As with most creation myths outside the Judeo-Christian, there’s quite a bit of sex and violence. The rabbits breed furiously; hitherto non-carnivorous animals are given teeth to keep the rabbit numbers down. The rabbits are given powerful hind legs to outrun their predators.

Having established rabbits as intelligent creatures possessing a mythology and a world view, the main story… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

[Read my alternative, longer review for this site.]

Trailer:

Animation Features Movies

Rebellious

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 24 October 2024
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Director – Alex Tsitsilin – 2023 – UK, Cyprus – Cert. PG – 94m

***

Her true love must rescue the princess before three rival princes after a dragon abducts her on behalf of an evil wizard – fairy tale animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th

A dad reads his small daughter a bedtime story, a fairytale about a kingdom where an evil dragon carries off innocent princesses, sometimes as they are about to be married. I’d never stand for that, intones young Mina (voice: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld), who is herself a princess, and her father a king (voice: David Wills).

Jump forward to her as a young woman hanging out with architecture graduate boyfriend Ronan (voice: Dan Edwards), despite the fact that her more traditional father thinks she ought to marry a foreign prince for political reasons. As Ronan points out, he can handle all the design stuff like strategy, construction and weaponry while she is better at hands on combat, so they make a good pair to rule the kingdom.

There are three princely candidates in the offing: strong but brutish Eastern European Rogdai (voice: Matt Giroveanu), vain Indian ladies’ man Kezabor (voice: Pete Zarustica), and overeating, obese, Oriental Fa Chan (voice: Brian Kim) who is in thrall to his Mommy Dearest (voice: Jennifer Sun Bell).… Read the rest

Tags 3D animation, Abe Goldfarb, Alex Tsitsilin, Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, animation, Anthony Sardinha, architecture graduate, bedtime story, bewitched, boyfriend, Brian Kim, brutish, carried off, CG, CG animation, constrictor, Cyprus, Dan Edwards, David Wills, dragon abduction, Eastern Europe, enchantment, fairy tale, fairy tale archetypes, fathers and daughters, forest, gardens, giant, happiness, Indian, Jennifer Sun Bell, Jon St. John, king, kingdom, ladies’ man, magic, Marc Thompson, Matt Giroveanu, mother’s boy, obese, Oriental, overeating, palace, Pete Zarustica, prince, princess, proposal of marriage, quest, rescue, serpent, shapeshifter, snake, sorceress, spell, statues, strong, suitors, talking bear, traditional, true love, turned into gold, UK, Vanessa Johansson, wizard

Animation Features Movies

The Snow Queen
Magic of the Ice Mirror
(Snezhnaya Koroleva 2
Perezamorozka)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 24 October 2024
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Magic of the Ice Mirror
(Snezhnaya Koroleva 2
Perezamorozka)

Director – Alex Tsitsilin – 2014 – Russia – Cert. U – 81m

Sequel to The Snow Queen is a lacklustre CG effort, with script as perfunctory and animation as lacking in character as the worst video game. Orm the troll returns to Troll City following his vanquishing of The Snow Queen in the first film, where he pretends to be a valiant hero to marry the kingdom’s troll princess before getting tricked by his own reflection. The uninspired UK dub scarcely helps. Produced by the Night Watch franchise’s director Timur Bekmambetov, but of little note otherwise.

Tags 3D animation, Alex Tsitsilin, animation, CG, CG animation, computer animation, fairy tale, hero, kingdom, princess, reflection, Russia, sequel, The Snow Queen, Timur Bekmambetov, tricked, troll, valiant

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

A Sudden Glimpse
to Deeper Things

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 October 2024
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to Deeper Things
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Director – Mark Cousins – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 88m

*****

A look at Scots artist and painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who had synaesthesia – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 18th

I am someone who frequents art galleries, yet I have to confess that before seeing this film, I had never heard of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Cousins starts his film off assuming we know nothing about her.

He starts with images. Who is this old woman on a verandah with palm trees in the background? Or peering down at rocky ground wearing an all-weather coat?

In later years, she frequently wore a necklace she had made resembling, in Cousins’ words, Concorde with droplets.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a woman to whom all men were attracted (“she’d have flirted with you”, a woman who knew her tells Marc) was fascinated by order and disorder. Her arresting 1967 abstract painting Pilgrimage consists of Vermillion squares on brown, jostling as if in a procession across the picture surface.

Her father (and here Cousins cuts in the moving image of Joseph Cotten giving his “if you rip the sides off houses you’ll find swine” speech from Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, 1943) never wanted her to be an artist.… Read the rest

Animation Features Movies

The Wild Robot

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 17 October 2024
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Director – Chris Sanders – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 102m

****1/2

A service robot shipwrecked on a desert island is imprinted as its mother on the mind of an orphaned gosling – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 18th following its screening in the London Film Festival

Waking up on an unknown beach with no idea as to how she got there, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voice: Lupita Nyong’o) is a Universal Dynamics service robot designed to complete any task assigned to her. Without any such task, she feels completely lost. She wanders around the island, populated only by animals, in search of her owner. Unable to understand all the noises the animals make communicating with each other, she has her translation circuits decode their meaning so that, soon, she is hearing them communicate in English.

She accidentally almost destroys a family of geese but managing to rescue a goose egg. She must protect the egg from the fox (voice: Pedro Pascal) who attempts to steal it to satisfy his hunger. Her robotic rationale for this is to question whether the egg is the fox’s property, A thought process that might make sense in a human environment but makes none at all in this animal one.… Read the rest

Directed by Martin RosenCertificate PG92 minutesReleased 25 October

Directed by Martin Rosen
Certificate PG
92 minutes
Released 25 October