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Kontinental ’25 (Kontinental ’25)

Director – Radu Jude – 2025 – Romania – Cert. 15 – 109m

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Although operating within the bounds of the law, a bailiff is smitten with guilt and remorse for the effect of her job on a ‘client’– out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

Carrying large bags, he scavenges at the bases of tree trunks in the woodlands, swearing profusely when his foot goes a foot in to the stream when he tries to fill his water bottle. In a bizarre nod to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) – or more likely those briefly seen in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), he rests beside a dimetrodon sculpture then smokes a cigarette by a dilophosaurus. He rides a ski lift, passes a father and small son on their bikes on a footbridge, downs his packed lunch with vodka on a river bridge. He hangs around cafes asking for either work or five lei. He says “fuck you” after the woman offering him an early Sunday morning cleaning job has left. He gets hassled by a robot dog. He returns to his boiler room home.

While he sleeps, the bailiff Mrs Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) knocks on his door, gendarmes in tow, to evict him, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Shrouds

Director – David Cronenberg – 2024 – Canada, France – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

An entrepreneur who has created graveyard corpse-viewing technology to cope with his late wife’s death by cancer finds his inner world disrupted when his creation is vandalised and hackedThe Shrouds is out on UK digital from Monday, August 11th

She (Diane Kruger from The 355, Simon Kinberg, 2022; Disorder, Alice Winocour, 2015; Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, 2009; Joyeux Noel, Christian Carion, 2005; Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) lies dead on a slab suspended on air in an underground cave. He (Vincent Cassel from A Dangerous Method, 2011; Eastern Promises, 2007, both David Cronenberg; Default, Choi Kook-Hee, 2018; Trance, Danny Boyle, 2013; Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky, 2010; Mesrine, Jean-François Richet, 2008; La Haine, Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995) screams. He is Karsh, an entrepreneur who has set up the first in a projected series of high-tech cemeteries. Thanks to his proprietary technology GraveTech, clients can install the body of their loved one in a shroud, a wraparound artefact resembling clothing fitted with cameras which record images of the deceased’s decaying body in real time, accessible for viewing by the client whenever they wish.… Read the rest