Tag: conflict

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Features Live Action Movies

Face/Off

Director – John Woo – 1997 – US – Cert. 18 – 138m

*****

John Woo’s third US film, his strongest to date, has FBI agent John Travolta switching faces with villain Nic Cage – 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

When screenwriters Mike Werb and Michael Colleary collaborated on original screenplay Face/Off, they had in mind such classic films as post-war gangster tale White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)and identity change outing Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966). Only after completing an initial draft did Colleary see a John Woo movie – The Killer (1989) – at which point he immediately knew the pair had found the perfect director for their material.

This was clearly reciprocal – if Woo had already astounded Hong Kong audiences with A Better Tomorrow (1986) and crossed over internationally with The Killer and Hard Boiled (1992), he had yet to win comparable critical acclaim in America, even though his modest budget American debut Hard Target (1993) had had its admirers and his first blockbusting actioner Broken Arrow (1996) had impressed Hollywood with its box office.

These films both felt like the work of a director for hire not an auteur, and while Woo, like numerous Hollywood immigrants before him, could probably have continued in similar vein, the Face/Off script contained exactly the elements the director needed to take up in Hollywood where he’d left off in Hong Kong.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Marines
Who Never Returned
(Doraoji
Anneun Haebyong,
돌아오지 않는 해병)

Director – Lee Man-hee – 1963 – South Korea – 110m

***1/2

A small unit of Korean soldiers pushing North in the Korean War adopt an orphaned girl as a mascot before being all but wiped out – plays in 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

This opens impressively with what looks like stock footage of armoured cars and infantry coming up a beach. Soldiers race across open ground to a safe shooting position, briefly going back a couple of dozen or so feet to drag two of their wounded comrades forward into comparative safety.

They move on to a derelict, war-torn town. Burning buildings, half-collapsed sections of walls (one of which partially topples as they wait momentarily beside it). One soldier advances across a patch of open ground, gun in hands, grenade at the ready, watched by his expectant comrades from their positions of cover. Time seems to stand still. Eventually he lobs the grenade and the others move up behind him. He drops into a ditch. Ahead of him, a civilian woman comes onto the waste ground with her small daughter.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Battle for Laikipia

Directors – Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi – 2024 – US, Kenya, Greece – Cert. 12a – 94m

**

Disagreements in Kenya between indigenous, pastoralist herdsmen and white immigrant farmers come to a head during a severe drought exacerbated by climate change – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

Shot mostly between 2017 and 2019 – so before the COVID pandemic – this is a brave attempt to relate two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable sides to a specific conflict.

Laikipia is a large, wildlife conservation area of Kenya, and the film was made some 60 or so years after Kenyan independence.

On the one hand, indigenous Kenyan tribesmen have been grazing their herds of goats and cattle on the land, simply wandering around and letting the animals graze at any suitable pasture they find. There is no concept of land ownership, except the unspoken idea that this is their country and this is therefore their land, which seems reasonable enough.

On the other hand, the early part of the twentieth century saw white British settlers awarded large areas of land to set up farms on the more profitable, Western capitalist business model. These people have now lived in the country and run their farms as enclosed ranches for some four generations.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Widow Clicquot

Director – Thomas Napper – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

****

A nineteenth century French widow innovates in the male-dominated world of champagne production – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

In the early nineteenth century, Veuve Clicquot established itself as something of an innovation in the world of champagne. You would imagine that if anyone were to make a period picture about it, it would be the French, but as may well be guessed from the English language translation title here, this is a British production using English actors speaking English.

There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that, but given that France has a sizeable movie industry which, among other things, often makes period costume dramas, watching a film about an historical period in that country in English feels decidedly odd. Perhaps if there were more of an epic sense of scale (think: Napoleon, Ridley Scott, 2023) it might feel less so. The screenplay is based on a book by North American writer Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Perhaps it’s explained with greater clarity in the book, but the film assumes a familiarity on the part of the audience with the ins and outs of the Napoleonic Wars, which take place in the backdrop of the film and on the edge of the narrative, affecting it from a distance, as it were.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Coup D’État
Factory
(A Fantástica
Fábrica
De Golpes)

Directors – Victor Fraga, Valnei Nunes – 2021 – UK, Brazil – 105m

****

An exploration of the role played by Brazilian media conglomerate Globo in various right wing Brazilian coup d’états over the decades – UK premiere on Sunday, May 29th 2pm at BFI Southbank followed by a discussion with special guests: Baroness Christine Blower, Jean Wyllys, Marcia Tiburi alongside the filmmakers

For the Brit, there’s something quite unnerving about coming to this documentary about the Brazilian political system and the role played within it by media conglomerate Globo, which controls the country’s most popular TV channel, newspapers and more. We think we have media bias problems here in the UK, but in this country we at least have a certain amount of press regulation enshrined in law and through such ethical bodies as the Press Council and institutions such as public service broadcasting.

That doesn’t appear to be the case in Brazil where, it seems, the media can do pretty much what they like without anyone holding them to account. Which also means that those outside of the country aren’t well-informed as to what goes on inside it since much of the information (or misinformation) about events from within the country is skewed.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Benediction

Director – Terence Davies – 2021 – UK – Cert. 12a – 137m

****

The life of First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon, his homosexual lifestyle and his heterosexual marriage – out in cinemas on Friday, May 20th

It’s been five years since Davies’ previous film A Quiet Passion (2016) and the curious thing is, both these films have been about poets and poetry. The earlier film was about Emily Dickinson, with its discussion about religion and Christianity very much to the fore; the new film is about Siegfried Sassoon and while the Catholicism he embraced in later years is in the mix, alongside that element Davies’ research revealed others of far greater interest to the writer-director, notably that Sassoon was gay. As you might expect, the first half hour or so concentrates on the First World War, but more time is spent in the middle of the film exploring some of Sassoon’s gay relationships with a small section towards the end skimming over his later years and heterosexual married life.

Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden) saw action in the First World War and had the utmost respect for the men under his command – and they for him. He was appalled by the conditions under which they found themselves serving.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Benediction

Glum heroes

Benediction
Directed by Terence Davies
Certificate 12a, 137 minutes
Released 20 May

Films about poets are few; however, the director Terence Davies has now made two in a row as different as their historical subjects. The earlier A Quiet Passion (Reform, April 2017) concerns the introverted, isolated, American spinster Emily Dickinson while the current Benediction is about First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden) – a homosexual man when this sexual preference was illegal, before the word ‘gay’ was used to describe such things.

His Military Cross earned for bravery as a First World War officer drops into a stream then sinks, an image expressing Sassoon’s dissatisfaction with the way the war is being run, and the hardships endured by the troops. He writes in protest to the top brass, but instead of the court-martial and platform to speak he expects, he is diagnosed with ‘shell shock’, partly thanks to literary mentor Robbie Ross (Simon Russell-Beale). Sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh… [Read more…]

Full review published in Reform magazine.

See also my alternative review.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Escape
From Mogadishu
(Mogadisyu,
모가디슈)

Director – Ryu Seung-wan – 2021 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 121m

****

In the early 1990s, besieged North and South Korean officials join forces to escape from the Somali capital as it descends into lawlessness – out in cinemas and VoD platforms on Friday, March 25th

In 1990, both North and South Korea have yet to have a seat at the United Nations. With many of those seats and hence the UN’s votes being held by African nations, influence in Africa is seen as the key to obtaining a seat. In Somalia, both sides are keen to ingratiate themselves with the ruling Barre military regime in Mogadishu, the capital, with a great deal of subterfuge and hostility between the two rival Korean factions.

However, the regime, which has held power for twenty years, is in trouble. (Barre would be ousted in 1991). As the capital becomes a war zone with government troops fighting rebel militias, the city descends into lawlessness and both sets of Korean representatives need to get out.

If you want a wider picture of the political realities of how all this came to pass in Somalia, this film is not the place to come. The clue is in the title: this is a Korean movie about Koreans having to depart a politically unstable country, and after some skullduggery at the start in which the car of South Korea’s Ambassador Han (Kim Yoon-seok from The Fortress, Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2017; 1987 When The Day Comes, Jang Joon-Hwan, 2017) is raided by bandits on its way to a meeting with President Barre the Southerners have taken months to set up, causing them to run to the meeting on foot and arrive 15 minutes late only to find the President can’t see them because he has another meeting immediately afterwards – with North Korea’s Ambassador Rim (Huh Joon-ho from Default, Choi Kook-Hee, 2018) who unbeknown to the Southerners hired the local bandits.… Read the rest