Tag: circus

The Girl
with the Needle
(Pigen med Nålen)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 January 2025
No Comments on The Girl
with the Needle
(Pigen med Nålen)
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Director – Magnus Van Horn – 2024 – Denmark, Sweden, Poland – Cert. 15 – 123m

*****

A young Copenhagen woman’s attempts to escape poverty following the Great War lead her into a dark nightmare – Denmark’s entry for Best International Feature is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, January 10th

In the darkness, faces writhing, superimposed on other faces. Katherine (Vic Carmen Sonne from Godland, 2022; Holiday, Isabella Eklöf, 2018), behind on the rent for her room by 14 months, is evicted. She works at a rag trade factory as a seamstress, where the owner Peter (Besir Zeciri) wants to be able to help her but cannot grant her widow’s supplement without proof of death of her husband, who has gone missing in the war. She manages to find herself cheaper lodgings. Sensing something more behind Peter’s kindness and an offer of a shoulder to rest on, Katherine has sex with him in an alley in broad daylight.

One day, her husband Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) returns from the war, his face heavily disfigured. She takes him in but, unable to cope with his recurring nightmares, soon throws him out. Something similar is soon visited on her; Peter agrees to marry her, but when his mother (Benedikte Hansen from Borgen, TV series, 2010) explains that her son can do as he wants, but not with her money or her estate, he changes his mind (this, incidentally, is the same plot that drives Anora, Sean Baker, 2024).… Read the rest

Tags 1919, abortion, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2024-25, Academy Awards 2025, Ava Knox Martin, Benedikte Hansen, Besir Zeciri, Best International Feature, Best International Feature 2024-25, Best International Feature 2025, black & white, board and lodging, business fee, business owner, casual labour, circus, community, Denmark, destitute, dismissed, eviction, facial disfiguration, factory, factory owner, fairy tale, fired, foster parents, freak show, husbands and wives, Joachim Fjelstrup, knitting needle, lack of social provision, lodgings, M.I.A., Magnus Van Horn, Michal Dymek, mothers and children, Oscar, Oscars, Oscars 2024-25, Oscars 2025, Poland, post-war, proof of death, public bath house, rag trade, recurring nightmare, redundant, rich and poor, sacked, seamstress, social provision, Sweden, sweetshop, Trine Dyrholm, true crime, Vic Carmen Sonne, war, wet nurse, widow, widow’s supplement, women’s health, World War I, World War One, WW1

Features Live Action Movies

Save the Green Planet!
(Jigureul Jikyeora!,
지구를 지켜라!)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 30 October 2024
No Comments on Save the Green Planet!
(Jigureul Jikyeora!,
지구를 지켜라!)
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Director – Jang Joon-Hwan – 2003 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 118m

*****

NSFW

Convinced that a corporate boss is an alien who killed his mother, a man takes him prisoner and tortures him to find out his race’s plans for planet Earth – plays alongside Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Lee Byong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) is convinced that corporate CEO Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-shik) is not only responsible for the death of his mother but also is an alien spy set to communicate with his extra-terrestrial superiors at the next full moon in seven days time. So, aided by girlfriend Sooni (Hwang Jung-min), Lee kidnaps Kang and brings him back to his underground workshop beneath his hilltop home near which he keeps bees in hives. Lee wants to hear the truth from Kang’s own lips, and is prepared to torture him to get it.

CEO Kang is clearly not a nice guy – he is obviously raking in the money, yet we watch him driven home drunk by a valet who he shamelessly short changes on his fare.… Read the rest

Animation Features Movies

The Crossing
(La Traversée)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 October 2021
No Comments on The Crossing
(La Traversée)

Director – Florence Miailhe – 2021 – France, Germany, Czechia – 84m

*****

Two children undergo a series of adventures as they flee an ethnic cleansing pogrom in this animated feature made with oil paint on glass – from the BFI London Film Festival 2021 which runs from Wednesday, October 6th to Sunday, October 17th in cinemas and on BFI Player

Kyona and Adriel live with their mother, father and younger siblings in their village. One day, soldiers and dark, hooded shadow men arrive to massacre the locals Yelzid people. Somehow the family escape and board a train, but it’s stopped by soldiers for Control and their parents and younger siblings are detained on the platform. Kyona and Adriel must continue on alone and cross the border to safety.

This stakes its place in cinema history as the first feature to be realised using the time-worn animation technique of oil paint of glass. This technique makes the film analogous to watching a moving oil painting, but director Miailhe marshalls her serial images with a strong sense of narrative and additional filmic technique which hold the whole together.

Kyona loves to draw. Her sketchbook, which accompanies her everywhere, opens and closes the film, providing a perfect jumping off point to enter the oil on glass produced narrative.… Read the rest