Tag: colleague

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Features Live Action Movies

Black Bag

Director – Steven Soderbergh – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 93m

*

A spy is tasked with finding and eliminating a mole from a list of five suspects – one of whom is his wife… out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 14th

London-based George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) meets with a fellow operative, who informs him the organisation has been compromised. To sort this out, and find and eliminate the mole, the operative has produced a list of five suspects. One of which is George’s wife, Kathryn St. Jean, because she ticks all the suspect boxes. Neglecting to tell Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) that she is one of the names on the list, George enlists her help in concocting a plan to identify the suspect. In the spy business, relationships inevitably involve not telling things to one another and not asking about them either.

Thus, the couple invite four colleagues – Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) and psychiatrist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) – round to their lavish London flat for dinner, where each of the four are surprised to discover three more guests than they anticipated. At the dinner table, George commences his plan by having his guests play a game.… Read the rest

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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

Barking Dogs
Never Bite
(Flandersui Gae,
플란다스의 개)

Director – Bong Joon Ho – 2000 – South Korea – 110m

****1/2

Available exclusively on Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, September 18th.

Lecturer Yun-ju (Lee Sun-jae) is looking out the window of his apartment in a block of flats and having been recently passed over for a professorship is on the phone to a colleague, but can’t concentrate because of a persistent dog barking. He resolves to do something about it. Chancing later upon a dog without an owner near his front door, he takes it up to the roof but then, unable to drop it off the balcony, takes it down to a basement corridor and traps it in an old wardrobe.

Maintenance office worker Park Hyun-nam (Doona Bae) is visited by a little girl in a yellow waterproof to get her missing dog posters officially stamped so that they won’t get taken down.

Hen-pecked by his working, pregnant wife Eun-sil (Kim Ho-jung), Yun-ju learns from a colleague that the person who got the professorship has died so the position should now be his – for a $10 000 bribe. And the barking hasn’t stopped – he got the wrong dog because the little girl’s posters mention that the missing dog can’t bark following a throat op.… Read the rest