Tag: apartment

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Features Live Action Movies

Hidden
(Caché)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2005 – Austria, France, Germany – Cert.15 – 117m

***1/2

Covertly delivered VHS videotapes suggest to an upper middle class family that they are being watched, and begin to tease out guilt for an incident in the husband’s past – the closing film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 20th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

A lengthy, locked-off camera shot of a street. A woman (Juliette Binoche) leaves the house through a full body height metal gate that seems to serve a security function, although the street seems largely quiet and unremarkable. Then the image starts to rewind in the manner of a videotape; what we are watching is a recording in the videotape player of a couple Georges and Anne Laurent (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), who are discussing its contents. The tape has been left outside their front door for reasons that are not immediately obvious and by person or persons unknown.

This opening shot is mirrored by another static shot at the end taken from outside the school of their son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) as pupils leave, in which… well, you’ll have to see for yourself, and director Haneke doesn’t make it easy to see what it is he wants you to see, so you’ll have to work at it… and even then, you may miss it.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2001 – Austria, France – Cert. 18 – 131m

*****

A masochistic piano teacher with an abusive mother embarks on an affair with a young male student – the opening film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Warning: NSFW.

This is at once representative of Haneke’s wider body of work and very different from it.

Representative because he is one of those directors whose personal use of cinematic vocabulary has been so honed over his years of making movies that he is able to clearly and precisely articulate problematic, controversial and taboo ideas and subject matter that few directors would be able to handle without descending into exploitation or commercialism. He is a director steeped in cinema, fascinated by how the process of making a movie constructs the narrative or other viewing and listening experience, and how that is perceived and understood by audiences.

Different because although Haneke generally writes as well and directs his own films, they are mostly original pieces whereas this one is an adaptation of a book, The Piano Teacher / Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Cloud
(Kuraudo,
クラウド)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2024 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 124m

*****

The art of the deal. The past of an internet goods reseller driven by making money who has made enemies among his one-off suppliers and customers comes back to bite him – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 25th

Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) makes a take-it-or-leave it offer to Tonoyama (Masaaki Akahori), who manufactures electric therapy devices: ¥90 000 for his entire inventory. Tonoyama protests that at such a low price he will barely make any money after all the investment he has made. Tonoyama’s wife (Maho Yamada) is horrified and pleads with Yoshii, but he is ruthless. He explains that if he can’t sell the items, the ¥90 000 will ocver him to pay someone to take the unsaleable goods away. Returning home to his sometime live-in girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), Yoshii puts the items online at ¥200 000 each. They quickly sell out. He tells her she can buy whatever she wants with his credit card.

At Yoshii’s day job, in what appears to be a factory floor for the laundering of clothes, his boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) holds him in high regard, feeling his talents are underused as a mere shop floor worker and regarding him as a future leader.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

When Autumn Falls
(Quand Vient l’Automne;
US: When Fall is Coming)

Director – François Ozon – 2024 – France – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

A grandmother’s cooking accidentally poisons her daughter, who survives… in the ensuing emotional turmoil, past truths are revealed, which have devastating effects… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

Michelle (Hélène Vincent) lives alone in rural Burgundy. She goes to church. She goes out picking mushrooms with her old friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Bolasko), who attempts to stop her picking the poisonous ones. At home, Michelle double-checks the mushrooms against photos and blurb in her mushroom reference book. She cooks the mushrooms. She gets a phone call telling her her guests are on the way. She is surprised that the driver is using Laurant’s car.

Her daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) arrives in the car with grandson Lucas (Galan Erlos) in tow. He is looking forward to spending the Summer with his gran. Valérie, however, is constantly angry, blaming her mum for everything, occasionally making remarks about “what you did”. She is clearly upset by something in their past history, although it’s unclear as to exactly what. Although grandmother has given daughter her former Paris apartment, Valérie also seems keen that Michelle sign over the current house to her under a scheme that would exempt Valérie from paying tax on it.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Brief History of a Family
(Jiating Jianshi,
家庭简史)

Director – Jianjie Lin – 2024 – China – Cert. 15 – 99m

****

A boy from a broken home starts spending more and more time with the family of a schoolmate, where the family isn’t quite as perfect as it initially appears… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

A boy is doing pull-ups in the school gym. A basketball hits him on the head. He falls. (All in one highly striking shot looking from behind at the back of his head.) He’s on the floor. A nurse patches him up in the san. Going home, he has a minor altercation with a boy who surprises him. But, actually, the boy just wants to know if he’s okay.

Next day, the same boy – driven by guilt, perhaps? – gives him a ride over to his own house on his bicycle. It’s a nicer place than the first boy is used to: the calming sound of bubbles through water can be heard from the fish tank; the whole place seems light, airy, pleasant. The other boy’s choice of music stands in sharp contrast to this – he listens to rap. The pair play videogames until his parents, Mr.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Conversation

R.I.P. Gene Hackman (1930-2025)

Director – Francis Ford Coppola – 1974 – US – Cert. 12a – 113m

*****

A surveillance expert records a conversation between two people, then worries about turning the recording over to his corporate client as contracted – 50th anniversary 4K Restoration is out on UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, July 15th, 2024

There’s nothing else quite like The Conversation in cinema.

Union Square, San Francisco. People milling around. Among them, a couple (Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams) having a conversation. Also in the square, a man in a plastic mac (Gene Hackman). And another man (Michael Higgins) following them around, holding a bag. And, at two separate windows above the square, two long range microphones.

The first man, Harry, enters a nearby van, inside which is his recording assistant Stan (John Cazale). He’s shortly followed by the other man, Paul, who believes the couple spotted him trailing them.

Harry pays a nighttime visit to his girlfriend Amy (Teri Garr). She wants him to spill his secrets. He claims he has none. He leaves, with her telling him not to bother to come back.

He goes to work in his office, situated at one end of the floor in an otherwise deserted warehouse.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Old Fox
(Lao Hu Li,
老狐狸)

Director – Hsaio Ya-chuan – 2023 – Taiwan – Cert. – 112m

*****

In 1990, against the backdrop of burgeoning share prices, a young boy starts taking car rides from his father’s landlord – is Taiwan’s entry for 2025 Best International Feature – was out in US cinemas on Friday, January 18th 2024

11-year-old Jie (Bae Run-yin) lives with his widowed dad (Liu Kuan-ting), the Maitre d’ at a posh, local restaurant, in their small, cramped apartment above Li’s cafe. Every week, Miss Lin (Eugenie Liu), who the boy calls Miss Pretty, calls by to collect the rent, which both Li (Ban Tie-tsiang) and Jie’s dad regularly pay. Li plans to better himself, and his friend The Major (Kao Ying-hsuan) helps him out by investing cash in stocks and shares and earning Li massive returns.

Jie’s dad is involved in no such scheme, but Jie yearns for a bigger home and with his savings has told the boy they should be able to afford to buy their own place in about three years. But rapidly rising share prices, dragging property prices up along with them, kill his three-year dream.

His dad is a resourceful sort who sews all Jie’s clothes.… Read the rest

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Art Features Live Action Movies

Nobody Likes Me
(Nikdo Mne Nemá Rád)

Directors – Petr Kazda, Tomáš Weinreb – 2024 – Czechia, Slovakia, France – 105m
*****

The female gaze. An introvert woman finds love in an unlikely place where, it turns out, there are catches – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

A figure stands in interior darkness. Watching. She moves forward. She lies down on the bed. She sits up. She makes and eats a simple breakfast. She stands on a moving tram; the brown autumn leaves behind her. At her desk, wearing her military uniform, Sarah (Rebeka Poláková) details to the Commander his itinerary for the day, and fields requests from others for his attention. She seems content in her work.

One evening, Sarah sees a woman across the street in physical difficulty. Perhaps she should help but, frozen on the spot, she stares. The woman starts to throw up – presumably she’s had too much to drink. A man appears from nowhere and comes to the woman’s aid. Sarah can’t take her eyes off him. The female gaze. He looks back at her. She looks back at him.

She gets on well with her dad, a doctor, who she regularly visits at his surgery for health check-ups.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Tenants
(Se-ip-ja,
세입자)

Director – Yoon Eun-Kyung – 2023 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 12 – 90m

*****

In a black & white, futuristic Seoul, a tenant who sublets his rental apartment to prevent his eviction finds out that this approach has its drawbacks – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runsin cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

An alluring image turns out to be merely an image on a wall, an artifice rather than the paradise we at first assume it to be. This is an image many filmmakers have used to open their movies and, depending on what they’ve seen over the years, it will conjure different films for different viewers. For this viewer, it conjures what I consider one of the funniest films of recent decades, Quick Change (Howard Franklin, Bill Murray, 1990) where the image is revealed as a tawdry New York subway train ad above a clown who will shortly proceed to rob a bank.

The Tenants may not be a comedy, but it shares with that film a sense of urban malaise, a feeling of being trapped in a grim metropolis where everything about the place conspires to prevent the protagonists leaving.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

My Favourite Cake
(Keyke Mahboobe Man,
کیک محبوب من)

Directors – Maryam Mogadam, Behtash Sanaeeha – 2024 – Iran, France, Sweden, Germany – Cert. 12a – 97m

****1/2

An old woman living alone in Iran takes a shine to a taxi driver after learning he has no romantic attachments – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

Mahin (Lily Farhadpour), 70, likes to lie in. Every morning, she’s woken by her mobile phone and her friend Pouran’s distinctive Vivaldi Four Seasons ringtone. She waters her small courtyard garden, she goes to the market to buy vegetables, she gets a lift home. She talks to her daughter and grandkids on a videolink – her daughter has long since left Iran. In the evening, she has friends round for a meal, including the hypochondriac Pouran who insists on talking about her recent colonoscopy (of which she’s brought along a disc with a video).

The next day, she gets a cab to a hotel to visit a coffee shop inside its premises, where she is confounded by a menu consisting of a QR code. She visits a park and asks a man there, where do people exercise? It seems they tend to come earlier in the morning than she gets up.… Read the rest