Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Descent

Director – Neil Marshall – 2005 – UK – Cert. 18 – 99m

*****

A group of female friends go on a caving expedition…which then goes horribly wrong – review originally published in What’s On In London, 2005; 4K Restoration out in UK cinemas Friday, October 24th 2025

Here’s something different: a caving movie. Tough to pull off in terms of production logistics, since you’re dealing with confined spaces, often very small and lacking any light source whatever. Although the (fictional) cave system in question is accessed via the Appalachian mountains, this is a British film made mostly in the studio, where the cave sets were constructed or, in the case of larger spaces, faked by a variety of FX trickery. Amazingly, you never see the join and it all feels incredibly real.

Genre is psychological horror, at least to start with, as a group of female friends go on a caving expedition…which then goes horribly wrong. Mood is set up Dead Calm style via a traumatic car accident in the first few minutes. After that, the tension never lets up. There follows argument, panic, gory injury and more than a few surprises. Defying expectations, the proceedings stubbornly refuse to settle into cliché, keeping you on the edge of your seat right up to an ending which will sit in your mind days afterwards as a subject for discussion.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Peeping Tom

Director – Michael Powell – 1960 – UK – Cert. 15 – 101m

*****

“It’s just a film – isn’t it?” The obsessive home moviemaker who lives in the attic is photographing women as he kills them, leaving an inexplicable look of abject terror on his victims’ faces as they die – plays one night only, Sunday, October 26th, 7.30pm, as part of Film Tottenham celebrates 100 years of community cinema, which runs until Sunday, December 7th 2025, now extended to Sunday, December 21st

More on Film Tottenham’s two current seasons below review.

Review originally written for 2023 UK cinema reissue on Friday, October 27th 2023 alongside major BFI season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger in late 2023

(Warning: may contain spoilers.)

What would have happened to Michael Powell if he and Emeric Pressburger had never met each other? Powell cut his teeth making ‘quota quickies’ in the 1930s British film industry: low budget films whose function was to ensure British talent got a chance in an international industry dominated by product from Hollywood. His final film before he and Pressburger began working together is the impressive The Edge Of The World (1937) about a remote Scottish island.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Taegukgi
The Brotherhood of War
(Taegukgi Hwinallimyeo,
태극기 휘날리며)

Director – Kang Je-gyu – 2004 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 140m

****

When two brothers are conscripted into the Korean War, the older one’s attempts to keep the younger from harm’s way irrevocably damage their filial relationship – plays in LEAFF10 (London East Asia Film Festival 2025) with an In Conversation session with Production Designer Shin Bo-kyeong on Monday, October 27th

Named after the South Korean national flag, this latest Kang Je-Gyu (The Gingko Bed, 1996; Shiri, 1999) offering tells the story of two young Korean brothers caught up in the Korean War (initiated when the Communist North invaded the South in 1950). Like numerous other Oriental movies (e.g Bullet In The Head, John Woo, 1990), the considerable, historical detail realised on the screen is secondary to the emotionally charged, interpersonal core drama.

Thus, shoe shine boy and older sibling Jin-Tae (Jang Dong-gun from Nowhere To Hide, Lee Myung-se, 1999) is saving to send little brother Jin-Seok (Won Bin) to university. When war breaks out, younger brother is conscripted, with elder brother forcibly joined up only when he tries to have Jin-Seok’s conscription reversed. Leaving behind girlfriend Young-Shin (Lee Eun-doo), Jin-Tae learns that his earning the medal of honour might secure Jin-Seok’s release, so sets about on the one hand undertaking as many dangerous missions as possible and on the other refusing to allow Jin-Seok to do so.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Memories
Of Murder
(Salinui chueok,
살인의 추억)

Director – Bong Joon Ho – 2003 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 131m

*****

Three cops attempt to track down a serial sex killer. Based on a real life, unsolved murder case... with Song Kang-ho – plays in LEAFF10 (London East Asia Film Festival 2025) with an In Conversation session with Cinematographer Kim Hyung-koo on Friday, October 24th

On one level, there’s nothing remarkable about Memories Of Murder, a crime movie about cops hunting a serial killer. This is a sub-genre done to death in Hollywood and elsewhere. On another level, however, it has the hallmarks of a really rich and strange talent getting hold of a well-worn formula and doing something fresh, new and original with it.

For one thing, it never dwells on the gore or fetishises the detail of the crimes. At the same time, like much Korean cinema, it never shies away from this material either. It’s unafraid to have an autopsy scene in which the pathologist discovers nine pieces of peach inside a corpse’s vagina but feels just as at ease that a testimony from a survivor throws up an important clue like, I didn’t see the killer’s face because if I had looked at him he’d have killed me, but I did notice he had soft hands.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Princess Mononoke
(Mononoke-hime,
もののけ姫)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1997 – Japan – Cert. PG – 134m

*****

The groundbreaking, mythological Japanese animated epic returns to UK cinemas from Friday, 17th October 2025

Originally reviewed for What’s On in London when the film appeared in the Barbican’s 2001 Studio Ghibli season. It never got a proper theatrical release in the UK at the time. The review presents a fascinating snapshot of the cinema landscape in the UK from the time when, outside of anime fandom, film journalists, and industry insiders, Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki were largely unknown.

Film critics are occasionally privileged to see incredible films that, for one reason or another, never receive proper UK release. The Barbican is currently hosting a season of 11 films by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli (Jib-Lee), an animation company as familiar in Japan as Disney is here, that fall into exactly this category. They include Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and his imaginative fantasy epic Princess Mononoke (1997). Both took the Japanese box office by storm, the latter topping $150m putting it second only to Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Miyazaki’s latest Spirited Away (2001) has topped the Japanese box office for weeks.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Alone in the Night
(Yoru ga Mata Kuru,
夜がまた来る)

Director – Takashi Ishii – 1994 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 108m

****1/2

After her undercover cop husband is killed by a gang, Nami infiltrates the gang and suffers much abuse as she attempts to identify and take her revenge on his killer – out on Blu-ray as part of the Takashi Ishii: 4 Tales of Nami limited edition digipack set (2000 copies) 

A compelling yet initially indecipherable image is slowly revealed, as we pull out, to be a pink marker pen colouring the handle of a black pistol in the hands of a girl wearing the pyjama top of the man against the side of whose bed she is sitting. He, it turns out, is Mitsuru (Toshiyuki Nagashima from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, Miyagawa, 2002; Godzilla vs. Biollante, Seiichi Yamamoto, 1989; Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Paul Schrader, 1985), an undercover cop; she is Nami (Yui Natsukawa from I Wish, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2011; Still Walking, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008; Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, Takeshi Kitano, 2003), and she’s fed up with his lack of contact while he’s on the job. As they embrace, she pleads with him, “Don’t do it!… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Perfect Blue
(Pafekuto Buru,
パーフェクトブルー)

Director – Satoshi Kon – 1997 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 81m

*****

Multi-layered, identity crisis psycho thriller redefines the boundaries of animation, Japanese or otherwise – back out in cinemas in a 4K Restoration on Friday, October 10th

During a gig by girl pop trio CHAM, one of its three singers Mima announces her decision to quit the band. Her intention to pursue an acting career is a move designed to both help her escape the inevitable waning popularity of the pop idol and make the public take her more seriously than they would the innocent girl they perceive her pop idol / persona to be.

Her agent, a former pop idol herself, expresses concern when Mima is first required to play a rape scene in her new daytime TV soap Double Bind and second to pose nude for a photographer. But there’s worse to come for Mima as an internet fan page starts to chronicle an idealised version of her life and a series of bloody corpses start piling up in her wake.

Although it plays like an Argento or De Palma Hitchcockian thriller, Perfect Blue is in fact a cel animated, subtitled Japanese affair that once and for all kills off widespread misconceptions about animation – it’s neither for kids, nor cute, nor simplistic.… Read the rest

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

Tron: Ares

Director – Joachim Rønning – 2025 – US – Cert. 12a – 119m

A CEO uses robots and vehicles from the digital world, which disintegrate after 29 minutes, to hunt down his corporate rival – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 10th

****

Third movie in Disney’s Tron franchise doesn’t presuppose much knowledge of the original film (Steven Lisberger, 1982) beyond Jeff Bridges vanishing into the world of computer games, and coloured motorbikes leaving instantly recognisable colour trails behind them in the computer graphics-styled grid world. In its day, when computer graphics effects were few and far between in the cinema, it’s visuals were memorable. Which instantly states the problem for any contemporary Tron movie: it has to stand out from the crowd of CG-augmented movies released in contemporary Hollywood cinema.

The plot here is pretty flimsy (I don’t say that as an adverse criticism: the movie is what is is, a serviceable, effects-laden Hollywood blockbuster) and is as follows. Two big corporations are vying for market dominance in the area of realising computer programmes from the CG world into our own. Dillinger Systems, run by the youthful and ruthless Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), shows shareholders at a flashy presentation how he can bring the ultimate, obedient, robot warrior Ares (Jared Leto) into our world to provide buyers with the most effective soldier imaginable.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Shadow’s Edge
(捕风追影,
Bu Feng Zhui Ying)

Director – Larry Yang – 2025 – China – Cert. 15 – 141m

****1/2

To hunt a criminal mastermind adept at eluding their surveillance systems, Macau cops bring back an old surveillance man whose expertise predates contemporary technology– Jackie Chan cops and robbers movie pairs him with acting legend Tony Leung Ka Fai – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 3rd

This remake of Eye in the Sky (Yau Nai-Hoi, 2007), already remade in South Korea as Cold Eyes (Kim Byung-seo, Jo Ui-Seok, 2013), introduces the idea that modern technology has its limitations, so it’s sometimes better to resort to older methods of doing things which are less reliant on the new technology.

Macau, 2025, and the police are monitoring four young men in a car using the Surveillance and Pursuit All System (SPAIS – possibly something got lost here in translation) and cleverly manage to get a fleet of patrol cars to box the car in at a roundabout. The only problem is, while HQ can see the trapped car on their real time monitors, the cops on the ground can see that there’s no car there.

Then, a daring bank vault raid to steal the pass code for a crypto currency account throws a pursuing cop into disarray when, following a spectacular fight with a cop in a lift, the perps paraglide off the top of the building to make their bold escape.… Read the rest