Tag: aircraft

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla Minus One
(Gojira -1.0,
ゴジラ -1.0)

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 – out on 4K, Blu-ray & DVD from Monday, December 2nd

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. (Whether his guns would have had any effect in halting the creature’s advance is debatable. They probably wouldn’t have had any effect whatsoever.) The only other survivor, who had previously congratulated Koichi for a near impossible landing on a tiny runway, blames him for the multiple deaths because he didn’t pull the trigger.

In 1945, in the ruins of post-war Tokyo, Shikishima is accused by a survivor – a woman whose children have died – of being a disgrace.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

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

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

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Hollywoodgate

Director – Ibrahim Nash’at – 2023 – US, Germany – Cert. 12a – 89m

****

A Western documentary shot with the approval of the Taliban showing the eponymous air base in which the Americans abandoned large stocks of military hardware – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

An extraordinary exercise in both journalism and historical, socio-political filmmaking. A few days after the US military pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, fearless, former journalist Nash’at entered the country as, to all intents and purposes, a one-man film crew. At first, it was a fruitless exercise, but then he somehow managed to get in with a soldier about to be deployed on a big airport.

Negotiating with Afghanistan’s airforce to be allowed to shoot documentary footage, Nash’at secured himself permission to follow and shoot not just the lieutenant, M.J. Mukhtar, but also the new head of the airforce, Mawlawi Mansour, with the proviso that anything Nash’at was told not to film, he was not to film and anytime he was ordered to stop filming, he had to stop filming. Refusal to do either would have meant big trouble. He played along, shooting whatever he could without breaking the air force head’s trust, knowing that the Taliban would have no control whatsoever over the footage when he left the country to edit what he’d shot.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Glassworker
(Sheesha Gar,
شیشہ گ)

Director – Usman Riaz – 2024 – Pakistan, Spain – 98m

*****

The son of a pacifist glassblower learning his father’s trade falls for the violin-playing daughter of an army colonel in wartime – complex anti-war drama from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Contrechamps section, released in Pakistan on Friday, 26th July 2024

If you knew nothing about this animated film beforehand, you’d assume it to be Japanese. Love it or hate it, most animation made in Japan falls within very distinctive, stylistic, visual parameters. According to the press blurb, director Riaz is an admirer of Studio Ghibli directors Miyazaki and Takahata as well as more recent directors Mamoru Hosoda and Satoshi Kon. Visually, the film feels more like a Miyazaki than anything else, and of comparable quality too. Yet it’s also highly original, and Riaz, here directing his first feature after a number of shorts, clearly has his own voice.

It opens with a frame story about youthful glassblower Vincent Oliver (voice: Sacha Dhawan) who, with the help of his father, is preparing for the opening of his debut glassware exhibition. He rereads a letter from a girl which his father (voice: Art Malik) had told him years ago to destroy in their workshop’s furnace.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The King and the Mockingbird
(Le Roi et L’Oiseau)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi Et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi Et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Wind Rises
(Kaze Tachinu,
風立ちぬ)

This triple review was originally published in Third Way, April 2014.

The King and the Mockingbird (Le Roi Et L’Oiseau)

Director – Paul Grimault – 1980 – France – Cert. U – 83m

UK release date 11/04/2014

*****

Wrinkles (Arrugas)

Director – Ignacio Ferreras – 2011 – Spain – Cert. 15 – 89m

UK release date 18/04/2014

*****

The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu, 風立ちぬ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2013 – Japan – Cert. PG – 126m

UK release date 09/05/2014

****

Animation is all-too often regarded – if not dismissed – as a children’s medium, yet it’s no more (or less) so than live action. Animated features aimed at a grown-up audience are rare. Incredibly, three are released this month.

The first, The King and the Mockingbird (1980), originally released here thirty years ago as The King And Mr. Bird and known equally by its French title Le Roi Et L’Oiseau, may contain nothing you wouldn’t want children to see but is actually a remarkable fable about overcoming a totalitarian regime. Considered among the greatest animated films ever made, it’s a major influence on Miyazaki (see below). This labour of love by director/animator Paul Grimault, based on a poetic screenplay by Jacques Prévert (Les Enfants Du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945) deals with a despotic king in a towering castle festooned with trap doors which he uses to dispose of anyone and everyone who disagrees with him.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Born To Fly
(Chang Kong
Zhi Wang,
长空之王,
lit.
King Of The Sky)

Director – Liu Xiaoshi – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 128m

***1/2

Genuinely thrilling action movie about Chinese test pilots owes much to US movies Top Gun and The Right Stuff, even as it attempts to justify current expansionist Chinese views – out on Blu-ray and Digital from Monday, February 5th

From above the clouds. Two stealth jets. Down towards the sea surface and an oil platform flying a Chinese flag. Coffee in a cup vibrating Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) style to indicate the imminent approach of the monster. Sonic boom. Aircraft fly past. Oil rig windows blow out. Faces are cut to ribbons. In one cockpit, the pilot radios his colleague and, presumably, anyone else listening (in US English): “we can come and go anywhere we want.”

Then, a Chinese plane after them. In their sights. But, before the American can shoot it down, the Chinese loops the loop, transforming from target to shooter. Vowing, like that villainous Hollywood icon The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) to be back, the US pilots leave Chinese airspace.

The Chinese aircraft, meanwhile, clearly inferior to its US counterparts, suffers flameout requiring its ace pilot to make a forced landing during which its drogue parachute fails to open.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

One Of Our Aircraft
Is Missing

Producers-Writers-Directors – The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) – 1942 – UK – Cert. PG – 103m

*****

Forced to bail out following an otherwise successful mission in which one engine is disabled, a British bomber crew must find their way across occupied Holland to return to the safety of Britain – part of major season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger from Monday, October 16th at BFI Southbank, also on BFI Blu-ray; other films in the season can be found on BFI Player

Made at the height of World War II, the first Powell and Pressburger / The Archers movie to deploy that verbal credit as such – but without their later trademark opening shot of an arrow striking its target – is in essence a propaganda exercise in the guise of a narrative feature film made to bolster wartime morale at home. However, the pair pull the whole thing off with such verve and inventiveness that it feels less an exercise in propaganda and more a rattling good yarn (without compromising either way).

It opens like a bizarre ghost story (as bizarre as the curse upon the Lairds of Kiloran in the castle ruins of “i know where I’m going!”… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Plane

Director – Jean-François Richet – 2022 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

A commercial passenger aircraft flying through bad weather conditions gets into trouble and is forced to land on an island run by military insurgents – out on digital from Monday, March 13th

While this is unlikely to win any Oscars, it’s a shrewdly put together action movie that gets everything right, tells its audience exactly what it’s going to do and then proceeds to do it, wrapping up everything very quickly in about thirty seconds once the narrative is over. That might not sound like much, but most action movies you see fail to meet such criteria. Moreover, a lot of action movies work perfectly well on a small screen, but this one works better if you see it on as big a screen as possible.

Singapore. Scotsman Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler from 300, Zak Snyder, 2007) is cutting it fine and may be about to be late for work again. Since he’s an airline pilot, that’s quite a big deal. Somehow, he gets to the cockpit of the plane with enough time to introduce himself to his co-pilot Samuel Dele (Yosun An from Mulan) ahead of the pre-takeoff, routine inspection by an aviation official.… Read the rest