Tag: baby

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Last Blossom
(Housenka,
ホウセンカ)

Director – Baku Kinoshita – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 90m

*****

A man lives with his wife and child… only they are not really his wife and child – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

Here’s a movie that breaks all the moulds. I could (and will) tell you several things about it, any of which would (and will) immediately spark preconceptions about what it is. And those preconceptions would (and will) be wrong.

If we start off with it as a drama about family life, which it arguably is, that doesn’t quite give you the full idea. This is a pretty strange family: it’s effectively a single parent mum Nana (voice: Hikari Mitsushima) and her baby son Kensuke who have been taken in by the kindly Minoru Akutsu (voice: Junki Tozuka) who wants to help them. Akutsu is in love with Nana, but he’s the quiet type and can’t bring himself to verbally express his love for her. (Which, I guess, makes this into a romantic drama of sorts. Certainly a tale of unrequited love, albeit an odd one.) And over the years, as the boy grows, the man comes to think of the boy as his own son.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Little Amélie
or
The Character of Rain
(Amélie
et
la Métaphysique des Tubes)

Directors – Maïlys Vallade & Liane-Cho Han – 2025 – France – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

A Belgian diplomat’s baby daughter growing up in Japan comes to realise, by her third birthday, that she is not God – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th; previews Saturday, 7th and Sunday, 8th February

In the beginning was God. At least, that’s how the new-born Amélie (French language version voice: Loïse Charpentier) sees herself. She is, essentially, a tube which swallows, digests and ejects (as per the film’s French language title). She has a perfect command of verbal language, so sees no need to say anything. That said, she makes great use of voice-over throughout the piece. She remains motionless, practising “the gift of serenity”. “Your child is a vegetable”, proclaims a doctor to the child’s parents. She remains in this state until her second birthday, when life is interrupted by an earthquake – nothing significant in the wider scheme of things, but a momentous event in the interior life of a small child. She attempts to speak, but to her horror the words in her head don’t emerge, only baby noises.

Amelie is the third child of Patrick (French voice: Marc Arnaud) and Danièle (French voice: Laetitia Coryn), and has two older siblings, Juliette (French voice: Haylee Issembourg) and André (French voice: Isaac Schoumsky).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Running Man
(2025)

Director – Edgar Wright – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 133m

***1/2

In an America controlled by a TV network producing violent game shows, a poor man signs on for its biggest show The Running Man whose contestants never come back – Stephen King adaptation available to buy on digital Tuesday, January 13th & to rent on Tuesday, January 27th; on 4K UHD Steelbook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD Monday, March 2nd, 2026

His baby daughter is sick, and medical treatment is expensive. His wife is working as many shifts as she can at a hostess club (we never see it – it’s described in dialogue) in an attempt to bring in some money. But it’s not enough. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs to find more money to pay the bills and keep his family alive. While he is good at what he does, he has a tendency to speak up when things aren’t as they should be, and this gets him into trouble. As in, he has been blacklisted by previous employers of whom he’s fallen foul. So, he turns to the Free-Vee TV network that controls and runs everything, providing a subsidised TV to every home and non-stop, reality TV and game show programming.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Prime Minister

Directors – Michelle Walshe, Lindsay Utz – 2025 – US, New Zealand – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

A portrait of Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister – out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, December 5th

There has never been a documentary quite like this before, and perhaps there never will be again. For one thing, it turns out that Jacinda Ardern’s partner Clarke Gayford is an established TV producer who shot a wealth of home movie footage, albeit with professional equipment, throughout the period for which she served as New Zealand’s Prime Minister. For another, this home movie footage covers her pregnancy and the early years of her daughter Neve. For a third, as an MP she became involved with a project in which MPs would record their thoughts at various points during their tenure. When she agreed to this, no-one, including herself, had any idea that she would subsequently become Prime Minister. And that’s the fourth reason: this is a portrait of a PM in office who had no intention of being either a party leader or the Prime Minister of a country. And then who suddenly found herself the sole candidate for the post of leading New Zealand’s Labour Party weeks ahead of a General Election, in which she led the party to victory,

In this documentary, Jacinda (as I shall call her) describes being the leader of a country as “the worst job in politics”.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Savages
(Sauvages)

Director – Claude Barras – 2024 – Switzerland – Cert. PG – 87m

French with English subtitles.

*****

An indigenous pre-teenage girl stands up to loggers destroyingthe local rainforest – stop-frame animated feature from the director of My Life as a Courgette is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

From its opening moments in darkness following unsettling creature noises suggesting a jungle forest, followed by jungle forest establishing shots – a frog jumping across a river via a series of stones, a snake slithering around a tree, a baby orangutan (non-verbal voice: soundtrack composer and co-sound editor Charles de Ville) swinging on a branch – it’s clear that this has high ambitions indeed. All the above would be one thing to execute in live action – a few location natural history shots… possibly library footage. In model – or stop-motion – animation, you need to physically build everything in terms of miniature model sets, so to achieve such images is a major undertaking.

Having already set the production bar high, this then pushes it up further with the rasping sound of a chainsaw, as the tree heights on which the baby orangutan and its mother (voice: de Ville again), who has just rescued the infant from the attentions of the deadly snake, are resting suddenly topples into a camp of workers who are going about their allotted task of destroying the creature’s natural habitat.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Most Precious
of Cargoes
(La Plus Précieuse
des Marchandises)

Director – Michel Hazanavicius – 2024 – France – Cert. 12a – 81m

*****

In Winter in a forest, a poor woodcutter’s wife rescues an abandoned baby thrown from a passing train and, despite her husband’s misgivings, raises the girl as her own – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, April 4th

Once upon a time… In the woods through which many trains pass… In a war… Yes, that war… In Winter, when everything is under snow… The wife (voice: Dominique Blanc from La Reine Margot, Patrice Chéreau, 1994; Indochine, Régis Wargnier, 1992) of a poor woodcutter, unable to have children, is outside and prays to the Gods of the Trains. Whether they hear her and look upon her kindly, or whether they even exist, it’s impossible to say. Following her prayer, however, she hears the sound of a baby crying. How did the baby get there? Well, unbeknownst to the woman, a man in a goods wagon threw it out of a passing train. She locates the baby girl, takes it home, feeds it. It’s the child she never had.

Her husband, the woodcutter (voice: Grégory Gadebois from Everything Went Fine, François Ozon, 2021; Redoubtable, Michel Hazanavicius, 2017), on returning home, discovers the baby and is furious.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Alienoid
(Oegye+in 1bu,
외계+인)

Director – Choi Dong-hoon – 2022 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 12 – 142m

*****

In Part One of a proposed double feature, aliens incarcerate prisoners in human brains and time travel between present day and fourteenth century Korea and mayhem ensues – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2022;

Part Two Alienoid: Return to the Future plays in LKFF 2024

The first film of a two-part adventure, which would be more sensibly released as Alienoid – Part One (which may already be the case in some territories), this revolves around multiple protagonists in two separate timelines divided by six or seven centuries. In the fourteenth century, Guard, who morphs between true robot and fake human appearances not unlike the T-1000 of Terminator 2 Judgement Day (James Cameron, 1991), and his even more confusing companion Thunder, who is sometimes a car, sometimes a flying pod and sometimes any number of human manifestations (both / all played by Kim Woo-bin), fail to save a woman from dying after an alien escapes incarceration within her brain, however Thunder rescues the woman’s baby.

The pair travel forward in time to raise Lee Ahn (Choi Yu-ri) in the twenty-first century where she sees what she’s not supposed to: the impregnation process whereby alien prisoners are incarcerated in human brains, a memory wiped immediately afterwards from the humans used for this purpose, meaning people wander around not knowing there are aliens trapped inside their heads.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Sleep
(Jam, 잠)

Director – Jason Yu – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 95m

***1/2

A pregnant woman becomes convinced that her husband is possessed when he starts sleepwalking and otherwise behaving oddly in his sleep at night – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th

One night, a wife wakes up and looks at her husband. He’s sitting on the end of the bed and says, calmly, “someone’s inside”. She hears banging. She gets up, and we see she is pregnant. Fearing an intruder, she goes into the next room, household drill in hand. It’s the door to the verandah banging, wedged open with his flip-flop. She finds their dog, Pepper, a Pomeranian, hiding behind the box container with the laundry liquid. Returning to the bedroom, she sees him wearing one flip-flop.

Sleep is a horror thriller about both a sleep disorder and intermittent possession by a ghost. The wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) is a former film executive, the husband Hyun-Su (Lee Sun-kyun) a struggling actor in whose career she believes. On their wall, a wooden plaque proclaims, “Together, we can overcome anything”. Their new downstairs neighbour Min-jung (Kim Guk-hee), who moved in after the difficult old man who used to complain to the couple about the noise moved out, pops round to say hello and complain about the banging that’s been going on for the last week.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

àma GLORIA

Director – Marie Amachoukeli – Co-Director (Animation) – Pierre Emmanuel-Lyet – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 84m

Live Action **** / Animation *****

After her beloved nanny returns to Cape Verde, six-year-old Cléo visits her for the Summer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, July 22nd

Six-year-old Cléo (six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini) in France, but is mostly cared for by her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). One day, Gloria gets a phone call informing her that her mum has died, so she has to return to her home island in Cape Verde. Cléo is distraught, and makes Gloria promise that they will see each other again.

Gloria makes arrangements for the little girl to spend the Summer with her on her island. She meets the family from whom Gloria was separated by being in France – the pregnant Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela), the alienated ten-year-old César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) and, in due course, Fernanda’s baby Santiago. Gloria spends some considerable amount of time mothering the newly-born Santiago, causing Cléo to experience extreme sibling rivalry for Gloria’s attentions. Eventually, these emotions come to a head in the little girl…

This is one of those sadly all too rare films which in the process of telling a story from a child’s point of view completely gets inside their head.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Eraserhead

Director – David Lynch – 1977 – US – Cert. 15 – 89 mins

*****

A look at where Eraserhead came from – and where its weirdness led. First published in 1996.

The current vogue for Special Editions and Director’s Cuts prompts David Lynch to rerelease Eraserhead with a Dolby Stereo sound remix.

The pre-existing gem of a soundtrack was textured by Lynch and collaborating sound designer Alan Splet to incorporate a host of industrial noises alongside such unforgettable effects as the hero’s girlfriend’s mother gargling during a dinner table fit. Eraserhead remains arguably the most original and innovative vision the last twenty years of American cinema have produced.

Not that film or director came from the mainstream. Abandoning painting as an art student, Lynch began making animation / live action films with the brief loop Six Men Getting Sick (1967) with the four minute The Alphabet (1969) and the half hour The Grandmother (1970) funded by American Film Institute grants. The AFI then funded Eraserhead, which mushroomed to feature length and required completion finance from elsewhere. Reactions to the result vary between boredom, revulsion, or admiration (this writer aligns with the latter).

Invited to his girlfriend Mary’s (Charlotte Stewart) for dinner, “Printer – on vacation” Henry (Lynch regular Jack Nance) learns she is pregnant.… Read the rest