Tag: adaptation

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Features Live Action Movies

Borderlands

Director – Eli Roth – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 102m

*

A ragtag collective of misfits must outwit their pursuers on a hostile planet– videogame adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Intergalactic bounty hunter Lilith (an orange-haired Cate Blanchett) is hired by the universe’s most powerful industrialist Atlas (Edgar

Ramírez) to find his missing teenage daughter Tiny Tina, last seen on Lilith’s home planet Pandora, famed for an ancient civilisation of the Eridians and their much sought after vault which can only be opened by a member of that race. The planet is a renowned hell-hole, and while Lilith knows her way around there, she has no intention of going back.

Atlas, however, makes her an offer she can’t refuse, so it is that Lilith finds her way to Pandora where she is soon united with Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) who turns out to have a love of using children’s cuddly toys as explosive missiles. Tina is accompanied by a soldier on the lam (Kevin Hart) and a sympathetic if none-too-bright muscleman (Florian Munteanu). Her entourage soon expands to include an irritating motormouth robot (voice: Jack Black) programmed by an unknown client to protect Tina and a cynical scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis).… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Kensuke’s Kingdom

Directors – Neil Boyle, Kirk Hendry – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 85m

***1/2

A British boy and his dog are stranded on a desert island alongside a Japanese man looking after a colony of apes – animated adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

With his parents having lost their jobs, Michael (voice: Aaron McGregor) is sailing round the world with his family. They are somewhere in the Pacific. Mum (voice: Sally Hawkins) is the skipper, with dad (voice: Cillian Murphy), Michael’s elder sister Becky (voice: Raffey Cassidy) and Michael himself as crew. He is homesick, missing his dog Stella. Well, not missing her, actually, because he’s secretly smuggled her on board and has her holed up in the cupboard at the front of the deck. Which is why the ship’s supplies appear to be dwindling – he is sneaking her food out of them.

Michael is the misfit of the crew; you sense that the other three family members are enjoying the experience of the trip, but he’d rather be back at home. Mum and dad try to make him feel better – mum ordering him about as skipper but giving him time with her as “mum” to talk about anything that might be bothering him.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Isabella Tree, as played by Rhiannon Neads

Director – David Allen – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 75m

*****

How Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell closed down their failing farm and instead let nature run wild to regenerate the land’s depleted biodiversity – inspiring documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s. They kept it going for some 17 years. However, by the late 1990s, they were in debt to the tune of one and a half million pounds. Realising that agro-chemical pesticides and contemporary industrial farming practices were destroying the topsoil necessary for biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, the couple then took the bold decision to stop farming and, with a little initial, minor tinkering, set about rewilding the land (i.e. letting nature take its course) and, hopefully, repair the damage done. They faced considerable opposition from the local farming community for the first five years or so. Then things began to happen which brought public opinion onto their side. In 2018, Isabella Tree wrote a book about the whole experience: Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm.

This documentary feature adaptation of Isabella’s eponymous 2018 book about their experience was shot during the pandemic and uses actors to portray the couple’s younger selves, so seamlessly cast that you actually don’t notice.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Made in England:
The Films of
Powell and Pressburger

Powell and Pressburger on the set of The Red Shoes

Director – David Hinton – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 129m

*****

Martin Scorsese talks about the seminal British filmmaking duo, and how they inspired his own movies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

As a child, Martin Scorsese suffered from asthma and would constantly find himself at home while other kids were outside playing. He often found himself sitting front of the black and white TV watching a show called Million Dollar Movie. This would show a movie a week, playing it several times, and it was at a time when US producers wouldn’t sell their movie rights to TV but British producers would. Consequently, he grew up watching black and white versions of old British movies.

The ones he particularly liked opened with an arrow hitting a target: “a production of the Archers. Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.” When this logo and these names appeared, Scorsese always knew he was in good hands. He watched these movies over and over again whenever they were shown, and learned much of his filmmaking craft from them. The first of these films to which he thrilled didn’t have this logo: it was the Alexander Korda production of The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) and parts of the film have the unmistakeable Powell visual stamp.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Drift

Director – Anthony Chen – 2023 – Singapore, UK, France, US – Cert. 15 – 93m

****

A Liberian woman and former London student from a privileged background has lost everything and lives on her wits in a Greek holiday resort until she makes a connection with a tour guide – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

A T-shirt-clad back sits on the beach, facing away from us, looking out to a calm, blue sky and sea. A figure of indeterminate gender at this point. In an isolated, unpopulated landscape. However, as this young black woman (Cynthia Erivo) starts to make her way around the place, elements of both are gradually revealed to us. She travels on a bus with white tourists to a small, sleepy town where Greek lettering on the shop signs gives us some idea of where we are. Later, she takes the return journey and is back on the beach. She washes her underwear (she appears to only have the one pair) and T-shirt in the sea, letting them dry in the sun while she shelters in a cave. She momentarily panics at the sight of a coastguard vessel before realising it’s merely a small fishing skiff.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The End We Start From

Director – Mahalia Belo – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 102m

***1/2

As parts of the UK are flooded and submerged by an ecological disaster, a woman births a baby she must then bring up – on Digital from Monday, March 4th following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, January 19th

On the one hand, this starts off with a woman (Jodie Comer) giving birth and then experiencing the process of being a new mother, with all the joys and stresses that entails. On the other, this shows the UK being overtaken and flooded by an eco-disaster, and how people respond to that situation both individually and en masse. The second scenario is reminiscent of any number of disaster and / or science fiction movies about flooding, apocalypse or dystopia (When Worlds Collide, Rudolph Maté, 1951; Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón, 2006; Waterworld, Kevin Reynolds, 1995): if you approach this movie expecting something like that, you’re going to be disappointed, because although that element is very much present in the film, it’s little more than the backdrop.

It plays more like a road movie, in which the heroine – the husband having dropped out of the narrative towards the end of the first reel – meets a series of people on her travels, each of whom offer their own individual insight into the state of things and how the new mother might move forward.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Dune Part Two

Director – Denis Villeneuve – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 166m

*****

Afallen dynastyfights back on a desert planet populated with giant sandworms– out in cinemas on Friday, March 1st

The second part of the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling novel Dune (1965) – the title Dune Part Two following the title Dune Part One on the print of the previous film – poses the filmmakers a greater adaptation challenge than the first in terms of the magnitude of, exactly what do you leave out to turn it into a strong, two and a half hours plus movie, and what do you keep in.

Villeneuve clearly doesn’t want to repeat himself, because he takes a very different approach adapting the second half of the book than he did for the first, which may or may not serve to make the two halves feel weirdly incongruent when viewed, as they surely will be, back to back. Indeed, it makes you wonder whether there exists a much longer cut of Dune Part Two or a much longer version of the screenplay – it all depends on whether the pruning took place at the scripting stage, the shooting stage, or the editing stage.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Dune
(2021)

Director – Denis Villeneuve – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 155m

*****

A powerful family is exiled to a desert planet populated with giant sandworms as part of an interplanetary conspiracy to end their dynasty – back out in cinemas from Friday, February 8th 2024

Frank Herbert’s sprawling novel Dune (1965) was read in the late 1960s and 1970s by any teenage boy with the slightest interest in science fiction and fantasy. It had (a little) space travel but more significantly it had alien worlds, notably the desert planet Arrakis on which 95% of the action takes place, and so ticked the SF box.

Then it had a whole ecology involving the planet’s occupants the Fremen, a drug known as ‘the Spice’, and giant sandworms, so it also ticked the fantasy box.

On top of this, it pitted dynasties – ‘Houses’ – against each other in a tale of interplanetary political intrigue.

The plot was unbelievably convoluted, spawning a lengthy series of sequels. I gave up around the fifth or sixth book. And yet, the first book possessed an almost mythic quality that my diminishing interest in the later volumes was unable to dispel.

The sheer quantity of plot was always going to be a challenge for a standalone movie.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Peasants
(Chłopi)

Directors – DK Welchman, Hugo Welchman – 2023 – Poland, Serbia, Lithuania – Cert. 15 – 114m

****1/2

A rural drama of romance, adultery and inheritance is expressed through the remarkable, foot-in-two-camps medium of live action filmmaking turned into animated painting – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

A small rural village in the early 20th Century. Young woman Jagna Paczesiówna (Kamila Urzędowska) is in love with Antek Boryna (Robert Gulaczyk). Unfortunately, not only is Antek already married to Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), who is fed up with his philandering, but also the latter’s father Maciej (Mirosław Baka), who is the richest person in the village, is widowed and wants Jagda to marry him – against her will but in line with that of her parents, who know a good thing when they see it. Alas, after the marriage, she carries on with Antek and things slowly go from bad to worse.

It’s gripping if harrowing stuff and would probably work well enough in live action, although it might not look that dissimilar to many other period costume dramas. It can occasionally be hard to keep track of who’s who, which I suspect is down to the script, an adaptation of a 1906 novel originally written as four volumes covering one year through the seasons Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, a trajectory also followed by the screenplay.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Kalman’s Day (Kálmán-nap)

Director – Szabolcs Hajdu – 2023 – Hungary, Slovakia, US – Cert. none – 72m

*****

In Kálmán and his wife’s house, another couple gather to celebrate his birthday in what turns out to be a devastating drama about relationships falling apart and coming to an end – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

NSFW. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is adapted from a stage play, never a great selling point for your current scribe because it can lead so easily to stagebound cinema, but inventive camerawork ensures that doesn’t happen here.

The setting is a couple’s home in the woods, and it starts off with housewife Olga (Orsi Tóth) on the phone to a woman Zita (Nóra Földeáki) so in love with the sound of her own voice that at one point Olga leaves the room (and the screen) and drifts out of earshot, only to return some while later, and we realise that although we have missed a huge amount of verbiage, we have missed absolutely nothing in terms of significant content. To cut a long story short, Zita and her husband are coming over today as planned for Olga’s husband Kálmán’s birthday and wants him wants to sign a form saying she and her family live at the house Olga and Kálmán occupy because they want to get one of their kids into a school in its catchment area.… Read the rest