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A Hidden Life

Director – Terrence Malick – 2019 – US / Germany / Austria – Cert. 12a – 174m

Standing against evil. A married Austrian farmer conscripted as a soldier for the German army in WW2 is imprisoned for refusing to sign the standard oath of allegiance to Hitler – in cinemas from Friday, January 17th

Opening with and periodically punctuated by documentary footage of Hitler and the Third Reich, this is Malick’s retelling of the wartime life experience of a real life couple. Deeply in love, Franz and Fani Jägerstätter (August Diehl and Valerie Pachner) run their farm near a remote, mountainous Austrian country village. With the Third Reich on the ascendant, he gets called up for military service and is billeted in a nearby castle and trained while she, the kids (three girls) and her sister Resie (Maria Simon) struggle to manage the farm without him.

When France surrenders, many men are released from national service and Franz is allowed to go back to farm, wife and family. However it’s only a matter of time before he’s called up again. And this time, the only way out of signing the oath is to go to prison. [Read more]

A Hidden Life is out in the UK on Friday, January 17th.… Read the rest

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Lucid

Director – Adam Morse – 2018 – UK – Cert. 15 – 86m

***

Available on Sky, Virgin, iTunes, Amazon, Xbox, PlayStation, Microsoft from Monday, September 7th

After his clearly well-heeled mother (Sadie Frost) gives Zel (Laurie Calvert) a thick envelope of notes for the last time, he goes out and gets himself a job as car park attendant at an exclusive members club. This involves sitting in a small booth with a window and making the monied customers feel welcome as they drive in in their flash cars. It also involves putting up with smart-suited but boorish boss Theo (Cristian Solimeno) although the latter’s girlfriend Kat (Sophie Kennedy Clark) proves considerably more friendly.

Meanwhile, Zel has developed a crush on Jasmin (Felicity Gilbert), one of his fellow residents in the block in which his flat in one of the more upmarket bits of Central London is situated, but is too tongue tied to do anything about it. He makes the acquaintance of another neighbour Elliot (Billy Zane), a therapist who offers, for free, to coach him in lucid dreaming, i.e. dreams in which the dreamer is fully conscious. These provide the dreamer with a safe space, for example to talk to a member of the opposite sex they fancy.… Read the rest

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Misbehaviour

Director – Philippa Lowthorpe – 2020 – UK – Cert. 12a – 106m

*****

Women’s Liberation activists disrupt the 1970 Miss World contest in London, in a real-life story starring Keira Knightley – on DVD from Monday, September 7th. Also on Amazon and iTunes.

One of the great achievements of the British historical drama Misbehaviour is that it recreates a single event on which two separate stories hang. The 1970 Miss World competition coincided with the rise of not only the nascent women’s liberation movement but also increasing international unease with South Africa’s Apartheid regime.

The pitfall awaiting anyone writing a script about all this (or directing one) is that it means constantly walking a tightrope, getting the balance right so that justice is done to both intertwining narratives. It is to Misbehaviour’s great credit that it manages to pull off this difficult feat.

The two narratives are very much an insider’s and an outsider’s view of the contest… Read the rest

Originally published in DMovies.org. Misbehaviour is available on DVD from Monday, September 7th. Also on Amazon and iTunes.

Trailer:

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Movies Music

On Bach,
Beethoven,
Bill Nelson
and spiritual outlook

Published to coincide with the Bandcamp download release of Bill Nelson’s album And We Fell Into A Dream.

A year or so back, I was fortunate enough to attend a fascinating discussion group at Tottenham Quakers. The brief was ‘A piece of music, writing, art or other inspiration which reflects your spiritual outlook – please bring something along that you are happy to talk about or just bring yourself along!’ So we had a small stone used as an aid to bereavement – actually the only physical object anyone brought along, everything else was one way or another mediated through various pieces or recording, translation or delivery technology – three pieces of music and one set of extracts from the Gospels, chiefly the story of the woman caught in adultery.

The latter was, for its presenter, a way of showing how spot on some of Jesus’ comments and actions were in regard to the human condition, whether or not you bought into the wider package of Christianity.

Two of the three pieces of music were sourced from movies, at least that was how those who brought them had discovered them.

Bach chamber piece ‘Double Concerto D Minor for Violins Second movement – Largo Ma Non Tanto’ from Children Of A Lesser God (Randa Haines, 1986), incidentally an adaptation of a stage play, was for its teacher character the most beautiful thing he had ever heard which he wanted to share with a student.… Read the rest

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Les Misérables

Director – Ladj Ly – 2019 – France – Cert. 15 – 104m

****

Exclusively in cinemas from Friday, September 4th

Although this takes its title from Victor Hugo’s eponymous novel, it’s not really an adaptation except in the loosest possible sense. It ends on a quote from the book:

“There are no bad plants, nor bad people – only bad cultivators.”

What it DOES have is a poor underclass and a bunch of cops whose job it is to keep them in order and keep the peace. An optimistic prologue shows the whole of France watching a world cup match and celebrating as France wins – a joyous, transcendent occasion and an example of how things could or ought to be.

Then it quickly shifts gear: three cops in their car patrol a poor housing estate. Chris (Alexis Manenti) is white with an in your face, tough guy approach that commands the residents ‘respect’. The equally tough and no-nonsense Gwada (Djebril Zonga) is black, generally more conciliatory and better at negotiating with local people on the ground. Newcomer Ruiz (Damien Bonnard), in his first day on the job, hails from the countryside and finds himself at odds with the approach of the other two, particularly Chris.… Read the rest

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Air Doll
(Kuki Ningyo,
空気人形)

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2009 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 111m

****

Fantasia Film Festival 2020 virtual edition from Thursday, August 20.

An unusual film for director Kore-eda, closer to After Life (1998) than almost anything else he’s done because of both fantasy element and whimsical tone. An inflatable sex doll is affectionately cared for by its owner Hideo (Itsujo Itao) who has sex with it at night. He has named the doll Nozomi after a former girlfriend. One morning when he’s at work, Nozomi wakes up as a flesh and blood woman played by Doona Bae, goes to the window and feels rainwater on her hands.

Nozomi tries on some of her (sexualised fetish) clothes, settling on a chambermaid costume. She heads out into the world, where everyone is busy getting to school or work. She follows an old widow (Sumiko Fuji) around, then a party of young schoolchildren. She passes an old man in a park. Eventually she stumbles into the video store where Junichi (Arata) works. The shop appears to her as a wonderland and she lands herself the counter assistant’s job. However she’s not very good at it, her experience of life being virtually nil and her knowledge of movies even less.… Read the rest

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The Bold,
The Corrupt
And
The Beautiful
(Xue guan yin,
血觀音)

Director – Yang Ya-che – 2017 – Taiwan – Cert. 15 – 112m

*****

A dysfunctional family, a property investment scam and sex and drugs meet head on in this impressive, female character-driven Taiwanese drama-thriller – exclusively in these cinemas for three days from Friday, September 4th

One family, three generations of women, each with their own demons. Middle aged matriarch Madame Tang (Kara Wai) is in the process of setting up illicit property deals with a network of corrupt state officials to the tune of $3m Taiwanese. Her scheming daughter Tang Ning (Wu Ke-Xi, writer and star of Nina Wu / 2019) is involved in sexual intrigues and addicted to a lethal mixture of drink and prescription meds. Teenager Tang Chen (Vicky Chen Wen-chi) seems both incapable of forming healthy relationships of any sort with other people and constantly spying on them through gaps in doors or curtains – or just by being in places she’s not really wanted.

Tragedy befalls the Lins, one of the families involved in Madame Tang’s scheme, when they are shot dead in their family home by intruders. Somehow their teenage daughter Pien (Wen Chen-Ling) survives the massacre. Her boyfriend Marco (Wu Shu Wei) is the murder suspect.… Read the rest

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Yes, God, YES

A plea for honesty

Yes, God, YES
Directed by Karen Maine
Certificate 15, 77 minutes
Released digitally on 17 August

Despite its provocative title suggesting a racy sex comedy about religion, this is actually a gentle independent film exploring the everyday inadequacies of American teenagers growing up within a conservative Catholic tradition. Essential life issues, including sex, truth telling, lying and religion, come up.

There’s a rumour going round Alice’s Catholic high school that she (Natalie Dyer) has been “salad tossing”. Having no idea what this means, she spends much of the film trying to find out. Impressed that Nina (Alisha Boe) has been on a four-day camp and seems to have her life together, Alice signs up.

The camp takes place at a Catholic retreat centre staffed by a nun and Father Murphy (Timothy Simons). Alice is immediately attracted to Chris (Wolfgang Novogratz), the camp leader and school football team captain. When Nina asks Alice to surrender her watch and mobile phone “because you’re on Jesus’ time”, Alice keeps her phone hidden to play games on it… [Read the rest]

I review Yes, God, YES for Reform.

Available to view on Amazon Prime and iTunes.

Trailer:

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Sputnik

Director – Egor Abramenko – 2020 – Russia – Cert. 15 – 113m

***** some of the underlying concepts and all of the special effects

** everything else

Available on VoD from Friday, August 14th. Now on Netflix

In the early 1980s a two-man Russian spacecraft undergoes a mysterious incident during its return to Earth leaving one of the crew dead. He has had half his helmet and half his head ripped off.

Survivor Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov) is confined to a research base in the middle of nowhere for observation. Supervisor Kirill Averchenko (Aleksey Demidov) recruits psychiatrist Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) who is in trouble for taking ethically questionable decisions concerning the life of a patient, believing that she did the right thing and saved a life. Averchenko needs someone who will do whatever it takes and damn the consequences and he would appear to have judged her correctly. Once there, however, she finds herself in conflict with chief scientist Yan Rigel (Anton Vasilev).

She quickly learns that the surviving, isolated cosmonaut is the host to an alien parasite which leaves his body at specific times of night then returns. And Konstantin, who suffered memory blackout during the return to Earth, doesn’t seem to know about the parasite.… Read the rest

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Eat Drink Man Woman
(Yin Shi Nan Nu,
飲食男女)

Director – Ang Lee – 1994 – Taiwan, US – Cert. PG – 124m

*****

Originally published in Home Entertainment.

Ageing restauranteur Chu (Lung Sihung) lives in Taipei with his three daughters – Christian schoolteacher Jia-Jen (Yang Kuei-mei), high-flying businesswoman Jia- Chien (Wu Chien-lieu) and teenage fast food assistant Jia-Ning (Wang Yu-wen). His problem (as with the mother in Lee’s Sense And Sensibility/1996) is that none of his daughters are married – and the clock is ticking.

Opening (scooter) traffic shot boasts encompassing sound, later rivalled by such DS subtleties as hymn singing (on a wonky Walkman) and a playground full of kids. Better yet are the cooking noises – bubbling, frying, pouring, steaming – rendered more mouth-watering still by accompanying oriental cuisine visuals. Should be watched with a lavish meal ready for consumption by the time of (or even before) the final frame.

Film 5/5

Sound 5/5

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1994 (67th) Oscars.

Originally published in Home Entertainment.