Tag: cave

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Features Live Action Movies

The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)

Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic – 2025 – France, Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

Midwinter. A homeless girl stumbles onto a film set where a notoriously difficult actress is shooting an adaptation of The Snow Queen – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 21st

Opening with microscopic images of of snowflakes and more abstract visuals of refracted light, this swiftly delivers a female voiceover (by Aurélia Petit from Saint Omer, Alice Diop, 2022; By the Grace of God, François Ozon, 2018; Happy End, Michael Haneke, 2017; Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas, 2016; The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, 2006) in French with English subtitles for those of us in the UK, in which the word ‘neige’ (snow) is seemingly, endlessly repeated. Then images of a girl wandering snow covered mountainsides gives way to night time small town streets before Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini) is told off for arriving late at the supper table. “I was afraid you’d gone”, says one of the younger girls (Cassandre Louis Urbain).

At night, Jeanne surreptitiously reads a postcard from a friend picturing Alpenaille skating rink addressed to her at the Bon Secours (Good Rescue) Foster Home.

The little girl from earlier comes into her room complaining of a nightmare.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Descent

Director – Neil Marshall – 2005 – UK – Cert. 18 – 99m

*****

A group of female friends go on a caving expedition…which then goes horribly wrong – review originally published in What’s On In London, 2005; 4K Restoration out in UK cinemas Friday, October 24th 2025

Here’s something different: a caving movie. Tough to pull off in terms of production logistics, since you’re dealing with confined spaces, often very small and lacking any light source whatever. Although the (fictional) cave system in question is accessed via the Appalachian mountains, this is a British film made mostly in the studio, where the cave sets were constructed or, in the case of larger spaces, faked by a variety of FX trickery. Amazingly, you never see the join and it all feels incredibly real.

Genre is psychological horror, at least to start with, as a group of female friends go on a caving expedition…which then goes horribly wrong. Mood is set up Dead Calm style via a traumatic car accident in the first few minutes. After that, the tension never lets up. There follows argument, panic, gory injury and more than a few surprises. Defying expectations, the proceedings stubbornly refuse to settle into cliché, keeping you on the edge of your seat right up to an ending which will sit in your mind days afterwards as a subject for discussion.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Return

Director – Uberto Pasolini – 2024 – Italy, Greece, UK, France – Cert. 15 – 116m

**

Odysseus returns home to his island kingdom of Ithaca ten years after the Trojan War to find faithful wife Penelope fending off insistent suitors who threaten to kill son Telemachus – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 11th

A young man (Charlie Plummer) stares out on clear blue Mediterranean waters crashing against the shore’s rocks. In an interior, an older woman (Juliette Binoche) weaves at her shuttle. On a beach, unobserved, the flotsam and jetsam of a shipwreck wash up, as does the unconscious body of a man (Ralph Fiennes). In the local village, a man threatens the young man with a knife.

Under pressure to marry one of the men in the village – her husband Odysseus, the island’s king, never having returned from the Trojan War – Penelope (for the woman played here by Binoche is she) claims she will do so once she has finished weaving her grandfather’s shroud. She is accused of having been weaving it for months.

The Fiennes character is rescued from the sea by a boat, only for crew members to throw him back into the sea.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Ghost Cat Anzu
(Bakeneko Anzu-chan,
化け猫あんずちゃん)

Director – Yoko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita – 2024 – Japan – Cert. N/C 15+ – 97m

****

When her father leaves to sort out his loan shark debt problem, a man-sized, ghost cat is charged to look after her by her grandfather – animated fable plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025 which runs from Friday, 7th February to Monday, 31st March

A man, his arm in plaster, drags his daughter to the picturesque town of Iteru, self-proclaimed Town of Eternal Summer. The demeanour of down-at-heel Karin (voice: Noa Goto) couldn’t be more at odds with that sentiment. Climbing the steps to the local temple to arrive at the door of the monk’s residence, Tetsuya (voice: Munetaka Aoki) proclaims to his father his return, and the fifth grade status of his schoolgirl daughter. What’s he doing now, his father asks. “This and that,” comes the reply. His wife, the girl’s mother, died three years ago.

While Karin is outside looking at a giant statue of Buddha, a human-sized cat arrives on a motorcycle fielding mobile phone calls. Who are you?, the cat (voice: Mirai Moriyama) asks the girl. Tetsuya, meanwhile, asks his father for money to pay off a loan shark and is told never to show his face there again.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Dragonkeeper
(Gardiana de Dragones)

Director – Li Jianping, Salvador Simó – 2023 – Spain, China – Cert. PG – 98m

****

Faced by powerful forces of empire and a ruthless traitor, a girl must accompany an old dragon to ensure the survival of its egg – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 27th

Ancient China. As revealed in a voice-over and an ancient, panoramic, wall-hanging scroll, the empire of the humans united with the dragons to successfully defeat necromancy. But then, the Emperor turned on the dragons, hunting them.

A long time after these events have occurred, a hard-nosed trader Master Lan (voice in the English language version: Tony Jayawardena) and his wallas are receiving some goods at a trading post when they stumble upon an abandoned baby girl. One of the wallas notices strange, blue-lit rocks floating near the baby. The group take the girl back across mountain ranges and vast plains to their small town.

Around eight years later, Ping (voice: Mayalinee Griffith) is living in that town, in the care of an old lady Lao Ma (voice: Sarah Lam), and feeding her pet rat Hua Hua (non-dialogue voice: Jonathan David Mellors) who lives in a hole in a storehouse and often goes with her in her jacket or any container or bag she might be carrying.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Revenge

Director – Coralie Fargeat – 2017 – US – Cert. 18 – 108m

****

It’s a man’s world. Or is it? A predictable male fantasy switches gear to bloody thrill ride when a woman turns the tables on a group of men perpetrating violence against her – available on VoD from Monday, September 10th following UK cinema release on Friday, May 11th 2018

Flown in by private helicopter pilot, Frenchman Richard (Kevin Janssens) takes Jen (Matilda Lutz) to his luxury home in the middle of the desert for a day or so. He is clearly rolling in money, she appears to be in love with him, but perhaps she’s play-acting: something of the gold-digger in her, maybe. She wears skimpy clothing, emphasising sexual aspects of her body. She comes on strong to him. Passion ensures. All of which is a lot less fun to watch than it sounds: the male is little more than a caricature of the sort often found in the less carefully made end of French action and gangster movie production while the girl displays every patriarchal cliché in the book in the way she moves, dresses, acts and interacts.

Director Fargeat has a very different agenda, however.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Sorcery (Brujería)

Director – Christopher Murray – 2023 – Chile, Mexico, Germany – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When the father of an indigenous Christian convert is murdered by her German Christian employer’s dogs, her thirst for justice leads her to employ occult folk magic against his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

1881. Chiloé, the Northernmost island of an archipelago off the coast of Chile. Indigenous, 13-year-old Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) works as a maid for German immigrant Stefan (Sebastian Hülk from All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger, 2022; Little Joe, Jessica Hausner, 2019; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) who together with his wife (Annick Durán) runs a sheep farm. The couple have two young boys, Thorsten (Matías Bannister) and Franz (Iker Echevers). The family are Christians, and Rosa is a convert to that religion.

One day, Stefan’s sheep lie dead in his field, with woven garlands of vegetation round their necks. With tensions understandably high, Rosa’s father approaches Stefan holding a knife, and Stefan releases his two dogs upon him, killing the man. Rosa later places a makeshift cross of two sticks bound together on his basic grave, which she and Stefan’s family visit, Stefan’s wife pointing out that the man wasn’t a Christian.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Dive

Director – Maximilian Erlenwein – 2022 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 91m

***1/2

Two women go diving near a remote stretch of coastline and find themselves in trouble – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 25th following its UK Premiere at Frightfest on Thursday, August 24th

Opening with an image of light shining through the waves on the surface of the sea – reminiscent of nothing quite so much as light similarly shining through the title lettering at the start of sci-fi horror shocker The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) – this promises something dark, foreboding and threatening from the get go. The talkative Drew (Sophie Lowe) plans diving trips for herself and her more taciturn sister May (Louisa Krause).

On this occasion, the pair head toward a remote stretch of coastline in a rental car listening to the radio playing Only You by The Platters, a song which clearly means a lot to both of them judging by the enthusiastic way they sing along. (It would be nice to think that the radio station plays other tunes as well, but this is all we hear, presumably because the production could only afford the movie rights to the one song.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Tunnel
To Summer,
The Exit
Of Goodbyes
(Natsu
E No Tunnel,
Sayonara
No Deguchi,
夏へのトンネル、
さよならの出口)

Director – Tomohisa Taguchi – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 83m

****

Damaged boy meets damaged girl one summer to discover a tunnel in which time passes much faster and innermost desires are fulfilled – from the 2023 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Official Competition section and out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 14th

A rural railway platform in the rain. Puddles on the platform. The tannoy states that the train is delayed by half an hour because it has collided with a deer. The standing boy explains to the sitting girl who isn’t from around these parts that that often happens in this region and offers her his umbrella. At first, she refuses thinking him a bit of a creep, but then comes round. They swap names and numbers on their phones so that she can return his umbrella. They read each other’s names out loud: she reads Tano Kaoru; he reads Hanashiro Anzu.

Next day, Kaoru (voice: Ouji Suzuka) takes the train to high school where the class is introduced to a new girl: it’s Anzu (voice: Marie Iitoyo). Like her initial coldness towards Kaoru, she ignores various girls attempts to be sociable and has a run in with the girl class bully Kawasaki (voice: Arisa Komiya), punching the latter in the face and causing a nosebleed when Kawasaki “accidentally” drops the old manga in which Anzu is engrossed onto the floor.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Mr. Vampire III
(Ling Wan
Sin Sang,
靈幻先生)

Director – Ricky Lau – 1987 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 88m
***1/2
Stunt-filled action comedy in which a travelling con-artist in cahoots with ghosts helps a Taoist priest fight a gang of horse thieves led by an evil sorceress – out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, May 22nd as part of Eureka! Video’s Hopping Mad: The Mr. Vampire Sequels

The third ‘official’ Mr. Vampire film (i.e. to be made by Sammo Hung / Leonard Ho’s Bo Ho Films company).

Set in the early twentieth century of the original Mr. Vampire, this once again takes the constituent parts of the original and shakes everything up a bit to come up with something at once different yet recognisably the same.

Taoist priest Ming (Richard Ng) is not terribly good at the job, so is getting by as a con artist going from village to village banishing ghosts for anyone who’ll pay him, the con element being that he has two ghost assistants, the adult Big Pao (David Lui Fong) and the small boy Small Pao (Hoh Kin-wai from Mr. Vampire II) who act out the part of being banished. Real ghosts with a nasty habit of appearing and messing things up force him to move on.… Read the rest