Tag: cop

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Crime is Mine
(Mon Crime)

Director – François Ozon – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

Two young women, an actress and a lawyer, take advantage of casting couch sex abuse of the former to boost both of their fledgeling careers – sharp period comedy with more to it underneath the surface is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 25th

A swimming pool. A lavish, art deco mansion. Out of a door staggers a clearly distressed, young blonde woman. Leaving the estate, she walks down the street, bumping into people. The setting and her clothes indicate the 1930s.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged M. Pistole (Franck de Lapersonne) calls on young brunette tenant Pauline (Rebecca Marder) to demand 3 000 Fr for five months’ back rent. A qualified lawyer, she manages to negotiate 48 hours’ respite on the grounds that a hotshot producer wants to put her flatmate Madeleine in his new play, and money will follow once the contract is signed. However, once Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz from Only The Animals, Dominik Moll, 2019) comes in to spill her tale of woe – in a manner closer to screwball comedy than rape or crime drama – it rapidly becomes obvious that the situation has changed.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Reawakening

Director – Virginia Gilbert – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

***

When a couple’s daughter returns after a decade’s long absence, the husband starts to suspect she is not really their daughter – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s been ten years since their daughter Clare left home at 14. Not a day has gone by for her parents John (Jared Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) when they haven’t thought about her. The couple are in touch with the police and give periodic press conferences which have, so far, yielded nothing in the way of results.

Yet John, a self-employed electrician, has never given up hope. On the streets, he looks out for his daughter in the hope that he might one day see her again. And then, one day, he sees her sitting at then getting up from a table outside a café. He runs towards her, nearly getting hit by a car in the process, then follows her only to lose her down a turning.

Every morning at the primary school where she teaches, his wife Mary re-pins the poster of their missing daughter over the top of other bits of posters pinned on top of it to ensure that it can be clearly seen.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

***1/2

The hyperactive ghost from the afterlife returns, along with a number of characters from the original – sequel to the 1988 film is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 6th

When the original Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) came out, no-one had quite worked out what Tim Burton was about, and the film was arresting, shocking, completely out there, utterly bonkers and like nothing anyone had ever seen. It’s difficult to know exactly what one could do to achieve that same effect in a sequel, or whether one should even try that approach. In the interim, Burton has had a lengthy and successful Hollywood career, arguably the system’s resident maverick director. When he’s good he’s very good; when he’s not, you wait for the next one and it’s usually an improvement.

In the event, perhaps inevitably, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t have the same shock of the new as its predecessor, but it’s similarly out there and bonkers and recognisably a sequel. It takes a while to get going – the first hour lumbers along with flashes of brilliance, such as a memorable, 3D-animated passenger aircraft crash at sea sequence, but the final third or so (from the point where one of the characters is lured in to the afterlife by another who turns out to be a ghost) is much more effective.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Only the River Flows
(He Bian de Cuo Wu,
河边的错误,
lit. Mistake (or Mistakes)
By the River)

Director – Wei Shujun – 2023 – China – Cert. 15 – 101m

**

A cop must solve a complex murder mystery his chief believes to be an open and shut case – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

A small boy with a toy gun plays cops and robbers in a deserted building, He opens doors like the protagonist of a Hollywood cop movie, looking for an armed criminal. And then he opens the door at the end of the corridor to reveal… a drop. The edge of a half demolished building, a building site with diggers.

This bravura opening is the high point of a film that combines a number of disparate elements in an attempt to construct a gritty police procedural murder mystery. However, it gets rather too caught up in many of these elements, and they swamp the narrative, which becomes incredibly tough to follow as a result. (This reviewer went back a second time to see if he liked it more on second viewing. He didn’t.)

A police chief (Tianlai Hou), who is also a keen table tennis player, encourages his force to get their merit recommendations in. This offers a fascinating glimpse into Communist China’s concept of community – you point out those who are making a useful contribution so that they can be rewarded.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Robot Dreams

Director – Pablo Berger – 2023 – Spain – Cert. PG – 102m

*****

In need of a companion, Dog builds Robot – but then, disaster strikes – charming, dialogue-free 2D animation is out in UK cinemas Friday, 22nd March following its screenings in the 2023 London Film Festival

The 1980s. Brooklyn. The East Village. Bored with endless, cook from frozen macaroni cheese meals from the fridge and channel hopping or playing both parts of computerised table tennis against himself, Dog longs for a companion. To this end, he buys a DIY self-assembly kit from which he builds Robot. For a short period, the pair are inseparable, walking and eating hot dogs together in Central Park, but then disaster strikes after Robot swims in the sea when the pair visit the beach. When it’s time to go home, his battery power is depleted, and he can’t move.

So Dog has to leave incapacitated Robot there. He buys books on robots from the local bookstore to work out how to repair his friend. Alas, on arrival at the beach, he discovers it’s closed since yesterday was the last day of the Summer season. A less than sympathetic cop won’t listen to his entreaties and sends him packing; Dog later returns with bolt cutters and removed the chain and padlock preventing entry, but is apprehended by the unsympathetic policeman before he can rescue Robot.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Light Falls

Director – Phedon Papamichael – 2023 – Georgia, Greece, Albania, Germany – Cert. none – 90m
*****

A Greek island, a lesbian couple from L.A., migrant Albanian workers, a racist cop, and an abandoned brutalist hotel… What could possibly go wrong? – terrific thriller premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Photographer Ella (Nini Nebieridze) and her girlfriend Clara (Elensio aka Elene Makharashvili), Georgians resident in L.A., are holidaying on a Greek island. On the same island, three Albanian youths – two brothers, the older Altin (Jurgen Marku) and the younger Eddy (Juxhin Plovishti), and their cocksure friend Veton (Silvio Goskova) – hang around in the hope of running into rich Western tourists they can fleece. Certainly, when a rich English couple drive up in a nice car and ask the where the nearest pharmacy is (the three don’t speak English), it looks like the three are going to do something awful to them. But then, the man sensibly drives off. The audience is left with a sense of dread.

The three Albanian men have just been turned away from a restaurant when the two L.A. girls enter, hang out, and learn from friendly locals where they can rent a 50cc Vesper (no licence needed).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Spider-Man
Across
The Spider-Verse

Directors – Joachim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 140m

*****

Assorted Spider-Men and -Women interact across many multiverse worlds as an elite Spider force attempts to prevent their interactions causing disaster – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 2nd

The first part of a two-part sequel to Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, 2018) with the conclusion Spider-Man Beyond The Spider-Verse due for release next year. So be warned: Across ends mid-story with a To Be Continued… legend plastered across the screen.

Having played around with the multiverse concept in Into, Across ramps it up to overload, introducing new worlds with titles that appear on screen before you’ve worked out where you are, making you want to hit pause and stop and take it in. You can’t do that in a public cinema, where the image and sound is sharper than it is in the home but you have no personalised remote control, and that’s a defining characteristic of the theatrical cinema medium.

You can of course go back and see a movie again and again for successive viewings, and I imagine that will be happening a lot with Across during its theatrical run because its visuals are consistently amazing, but once it’s available on a home platform where you can freeze it, go back, look at bits of scenes again, this movie will take on a whole new life as the viewers interact with it at their own pace.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Hypnotic

Director – Robert Rodriguez – 2023 – US – Cert.15 – 93m

**

A police detective stumbles upon a conspiracy involving people with mind-bending powers – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th

An underlying insistent rhythm opens Hypnotic, the clicking of a pen in a hand. It belongs to the therapist of Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) and disturbs his recurring memory. He’s in the park watching his seven-year-old daughter. For a moment, his attention wanders. Then he realises she’s gone. Before that, he saw a man, who he is sure must have kidnapped her. The therapist wants to know, does he feel fit enough for active duty?

Then he’s in the squad car with police partner Nicks (JD Pardo), responding to a tip off about an imminent armed robbery of a safe deposit box in a bank. From the CC TV van at the site, he spots two armed security van guys before panning over to the suspicious man (William Fichtner) speaking to a woman on a park bench. She rises and, suddenly convinced there’s a heatwave, starts peeling off layers of clothing as she walks. He says something to the two van guys. After Rourke has talked his way into the bank vault and discovered a Polaroid of his vanished daughter bearing the name Dellrayne inside the safe deposit box, the suspicious man says something to a bank teller, who admits him and the two van guys to the vault.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Infernal Affairs II
(Mou Gaan Dou II,
無間道II)

Directors – Andrew Lau, Alan Mak – 2003 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 119m

***

Prequel in which a cop begins undercover in the triads and a triad undercover in the cops – reviewed for What’s On In London to coincide with UK cinema release, Friday, August 6th 2004

Set mostly in 2002, Infernal Affairs detailed the power struggle between undercover triad member Ming (Andy Lau) in the police and undercover cop Yan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) in the triads. Neither star appears second time round, younger versions of their characters played instead by Edison Chen (Ming) and Shawn Yue (Yan). This strategy’s success is debatable since neither is as watchable.

More successfully, Eric Tsang and Anthony Wong reprise their roles as police inspector Wong and triad member Sam, with the original’s directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak wisely placing these two rather than the youngsters centre stage. Hong Kong buffs will recognise worthwhile bit parts from Carina Lau (Days Of Being Wild, Wong Kar-wai, 1990) and Roy Cheung (City On Fire, Ringo Lam, 1987).

On one level, the film plays out as a buddy movie between honest, good-natured gangster (really) Sam and driven law enforcer Wong.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Infernal Affairs
(Mou Gaan Dou,
無間道)

Directors – Andrew Lau, Alan Mak – 2002 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 98m

*****

Two moles: a cop undercover in the triads and a triad undercover in the cops – reviewed for What’s On In London to coincide with UK cinema release, Friday, February 27th 2004

Hong Kong thrillers are known less for clarity of plot than for bravura action sequences popularised by The Matrix (Larry and Andy Wachowski, 1999). But this latest cops and triads entry manages an interesting twist on the theme of the undercover operative. Or rather, in this case, two undercover operatives.

Ming (Fulltime Killer’s Andy Lau) is a triad member commanded at age 18 by Triad boss Sam (Eric Tsang) to become a mole on the police force. The latter’s tip-offs about rival gangs have over a decade taken Ming’s career through Criminal Intelligence Bureau sergeant to possible head of Internal Affairs investigating… informational leaks to the Triads. Himself!

Yan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai from every other Hong Kong movie you’ve ever seen) is Ming’s nemesis: Sam’s enforcer and a Triad member since his teenage years. But Yan is actually an undercover cop, a fact known only to his recruiter Superintendent Wong (Hard Boiled’s Anthony Wong).… Read the rest