Tag: blow up

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Broken Arrow
(1996)

Director – John Woo – 1996 – US – Cert. 15 – 108m

***

Woo’s second US outing pits Christian Slater against nuclear stealth bomber co-pilot turned bad John Travolta in the Arizona desert – part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

The first project to see the light of day from WCG Entertainment, whose initials stand for Woo Chang Godsick. This triumvirate of names belongs to respectively the director of A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992), his longstanding Hong Kong producer Terence Chang, and former agent Christopher Godsick – whose William Morris client list had included Woo himself and the director’s onscreen alter-ego Chow Yun‑fat.

Like his earlier successful action blockbuster Speed (Jan de Bont, 1991), Graham Yost’s script was initially written for producer Mark Gordon. After Woo’s more modestly budgeted US debut Hard Target (1993) was followed by disappointing setbacks on other American projects; Yost’s screenplay was exactly the entry into the US blockbuster market Woo needed. While the resultant film may be ultimately less satisfying than Woo’s best work, it quickly established him as a top Hollywood A-list director.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

How to
Blow Up
a Pipeline

Collaborators – Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, Daniel Garber – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 103m

****

An eco-terrorism thriller based on the manifesto by Andreas Malm – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, April 21st.

Credited as a film by its four main collaborators (its three writer-producers and its editor) rather than (as is the usual industry practice) merely its director Goldhaber (Cam, 2018), this is based on climate change activism apologist Andreas Malm’s non-fiction treatise which argues for the destruction of property e.g. fossil fuel industry infrastructure as part of the fight against the fossil fuel industry which is causing climate change. What the book doesn’t do is tell the reader the techniques and specifics that would enable them to actually blow up a pipeline.

Likewise, this movie doesn’t provide the viewer with the knowledge and technical wherewithal that would enable them to blow up pipelines after watching it. Like Malm, it offers moral justification(s) for the act. It shows a committed group of young people who have between them carried out extensive research into everything necessary for their planned act and reached a point of moral choice where they feel they have no other option than to carry out such an action.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Peter Von Kant
(Peter Von Kant)

Director – François Ozon – 2022 – France – Cert. 15 – 85m

***1/2

A re-imagining of R.W. Fassbinder’s all-female-cast The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, with the three central gay characters switched from female to male – plays in cinemas from Friday, 30th December

Köln, 1972. Peter von Kant (Denis Ménochet) is a successful film director who resides in his apartment with his personal assistant Karl (Stefan Crepon). He is visited by his old friend, the singer Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), whose blown up picture adorns one of his walls. She introduces him to young man of Arab extraction and actor wannabe Amir Ben Salem (Khalil Gharbia) with who Peter becomes besotted and who subsequently moves in with him.

Their passionate relationship is, however, doomed, with Amir suddenly leaving some months later on the pretext of visiting his wife when she unexpectedly phones him from a nearby city. After Aamir has left him, Peter becomes an emotional wreck. On his birthday, he waits on the phone, hanging up in seconds when he realises the caller isn’t Amir. He vents his emotional distress on his three birthday visitors: his mother Rosemarie (Hanna Schygulla), his boarding school student daughter Gabrielle (Aminthe Audiard) and Sidonie.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Features Movies

Snotty Boy
(Rotzbub)

Directors – Santiago Lopez Jover, Marcus H. Rosenmüller – 2021 – Austria, Germany – 95m

*****

A young artist with a predilection for large ladies with large breasts finds himself in confrontation with closet Nazi racists – from the Annecy 2021 Animation Festival in the Official Competition section

1968, the small, rural Austrian town of Siegheilkirchen. Teenage schoolboy Snotty Boy (voice: Markus Freistätter) is obsessed with members of the opposite sex. He is equally obsessed with drawing. He combines the two passions in making a flick book of newly arrived in town, large-breasted girl next door Trude (Katharina Straßer) in her underwear so he can watch her remove her bra whenever he wants.

Two boys at school, the enterpreneurial and duplicitous Spotface (Mario Canedo) and his side-kick Grasberger (Maurice Ernst) discover the book and befriend him so he can draw them pictures for sale to the town’s boys. Class swot and tell-tale Fridolin shows a purchased Trude drawing to his mother and gets Snotty Boy in trouble.

Such activities run counter to the way the authorities would have things. The school is run by a repressive priest (Juergen Maurer) who is first seen teaching his bored class of boys St. Paul’s admonition against fornication.… Read the rest