booby-trap Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Novocaine
(2025)

Directors – Dan Berk, Robert Olsen – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 110m

*****

An assistant bank manager who is medically unable to feel pain pursues the bank robbers who have kidnapped his brand new and first ever girlfriend – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 28th

(There have been several other movies with this title. Apart from having the same title, this one appears to be completely original.)

San Diego, California. Driving to work in gridlock, Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) is the type to annoy fellow motorists by obsessively maintaining the correct space in front of his vehicle when no-one else is doing so. At work, he’s the assistant bank manager. He’s a genuinely nice guy who genuinely cares from people, such as long-standing customer Earl (Lou Beatty Jr.) who Nate helps through an unpleasant foreclosure on his workshop by doing things on a schedule that will help ease the man’s pain.

Also, there’s this new teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder) at the bank who Nate rather likes but can’t bring himself to talk to. In fact, despite her obvious attentions, he goes out of his way to avoid talking to her.

Somehow, she talks him into a lunch date where she has cherry pie and he… doesn’t.… Read the rest

Gurkha Warrior

Director – Milan Chams – 2022 – Nepal – Cert. 15 – 115m

A small Gurkha unit is dropped into the Malayan jungle by helicopter on a search and rescue mission to save a number of the comrades who have been captured – previews in UK cinemas on Saturday, November 4th, out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 10th

There’s a very sweet frame story bookending Gurkha Warrior in which an old man takes his young and curious grandson to a hilltop in Nepal with mountains in the background for his annual ritual of laying a commemorative wreath at its foot and saluting in memory of fallen war comrades. When he explains this to his grandson as they walk away along the ridge, the latter picks a flower off a nearby bush and runs back to leave the flower beside the old man’s wreath. His grandfather is deeply moved by this.

That very much sums up this film, the director and star of which both served as Gurkhas. The narrative takes place against the backdrop of the Malaya Emergency (1948-1960), but since that’s never explained and given that audiences are likely to be unfamiliar with the historical background, the film floats in an unfortunate war film netherworld lacking any sort of context.… Read the rest