Tag: death

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 1988 – US – Cert. 15 – 92m

***1/2

A recently deceased couple hire a bio-exorcist to rid their former house of its new, yuppie occupants – review originally published in Samhain, 1988

Whilst its opening shot recalls the aerial opening of The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) segueying into that of The Witches Of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), this film has been described as a reworking of Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) (!) from the ghost’s point of view. The plot concerns a couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who die and then find that their house – which they have to live in as ghosts – is bought by an horrific collection of yuppie trendies.

The couple try to carry on as normal, picking up the occasional useful tip from a weighty tome entitled ‘The Handbook for the Recently Deceased’ (or diseased, as they first pronounce it!) and despite warnings from their afterlife caseworker Juno (played by veteran Hollywood actress Sylvia Sidney) they decide to employ the self-styled bio-exorcist Beetlegeuse (Michael Keaton) to frighten off the new occupants.

The single most memorable image of Beetlejuice is that of a desert landscape peopled by sea monster-like worms, reminiscent of nothing so much as a surrealist version of Frank Herbert’s Dune.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

A Greyhound
of a Girl

Director – Enzo d’Alò – 2023 – Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, UK, Latvia, Estonia, Germany – Cert. U – 88m

****1/2

A young, cookery-obsessed girl with a fear of dogs must come to terms with the fact that her beloved granny is dying – animated feature is out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, August 26th

Ireland. Faced with an unsympathetic interview panel for the Ballymaloe Cooking School when she unwisely makes a tatty tart with bananas, young girl Mary (voice: Mia O’Connor) finds she has an ally in her granny (voice: Rosaleen Linehan) who gives the judges a friendly talking to when they reject her granddaughter. The girl can always come back next time. She and granny are driving home on a minor coastal road and granny is refusing to talk about her own childhood – apparently there was an incident involving a dog and a well – when granny swerves to avoid a dog and dents the car. Mary doesn’t like dogs, although she’s a caring child who stopped granny accidentally running over a hedgehog earlier.

Granny has been coughing all day. With the news that Mary’s bestie Ava (voice: Amelie Metacalf) is soon be leaving as her dad has got a job in England, it’s not a great time for the young girl, and it gets worse, when she discovers her gran has a fever and her mum calls an ambulance.… Read the rest

Categories
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
Features Live Action Movies

Sky Peals

Director – Moin Hussain – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 91m

****

When his estranged father dies after leaving him an answering machine message, a motorway service station employee starts to question the identity of his father and, by extension, of himself – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Adam (Faraz Ayub) receives an answerphone message from his father Hassan (Jeff Mirza) who he’s not seen for years; his father hasn’t much time left, is currently near Adam’s home and wants to meet up and talk. Like the answerphone message left by her soon-to-be deceased husband for the heroine of After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020) – is a British subgenre emerging here with Muslims and bereavement? – the recording plays on Adam’s mind at his workplace, the Sky Peals motorway service station, where he does the night shift preparing burgers in the kitchen and keeps himself pretty much to himself. He complains to his superior that the system isn’t working and customers aren’t getting served their orders, but the old manager has left, and the new one doesn’t start ’til Monday. Meanwhile, people aren’t getting their orders.

The police find a dead body in a car in the service station car park.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eternal You

Directors – Hans Block, Moritz Reisewieke – 2024 – US – Cert. – 87m

*****

People deal with bereavement with the help of interactive versions of their deceased, loved ones recreated by AI – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 28th

In a rare visual shot in this mostly verbally based documentary, an aerial shot of a graveyard, with light creating lots of little blocks of shadow as it falls on the ranks of gravestones, resembles a slice of internal computer electronics. It’s a pertinent pictorial moment that stands out from almost everything else here.

“Is there some reason you wouldn’t believe me?,” a woman asks her boyfriend. “You died,” comes the sceptical reply. Joshua, from Ontario, Canada, had to endure the trauma of watching the life support machines that were keeping her alive being switched off. After she died, about two weeks short of high school graduation which she was expected to pass, he got the school to graduate her. He later explains this by written chat to her interactive AI.

Psychiatrist Sherry Turkle talks about the problems people face coping with grief in the modern world, where they often live on their own following the death of a partner and don’t have an extended network of family around them like they would have done in former times.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Kinds of Kindness

Director – Yorgos Lanthimos – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 144m

***

A triptych of stories from rising star cult director Lanthimos performed by the same intimate, ensemble cast – baffling auteur exercise is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 28th

Beyond a description of its structure – three separate stories performed by the same ensemble cast directed by one of today’s more idiosyncratic directors – Kinds of Kindness is not an easy film to synopsize. If the term ‘kindness’ in the title is meant to relate to the stories, it’s not immediately obvious as to how that should be (unless kindness is being used in the sense of “type of category” as the stories seem to function, on one level at least, as exploration of categories of transgressive behaviour). In terms of actors giving performances, the film is a masterclass; in terms of technical achievement – camera, editing, sand so on – it’s top of the line stuff; yet, in terms of what the film is about, the point of it, why anyone would want to make this film, you may find yourself completely baffled.

The main cast comprises Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley with support from Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Sorcery (Brujería)

Director – Christopher Murray – 2023 – Chile, Mexico, Germany – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When the father of an indigenous Christian convert is murdered by her German Christian employer’s dogs, her thirst for justice leads her to employ occult folk magic against his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

1881. Chiloé, the Northernmost island of an archipelago off the coast of Chile. Indigenous, 13-year-old Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) works as a maid for German immigrant Stefan (Sebastian Hülk from All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger, 2022; Little Joe, Jessica Hausner, 2019; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) who together with his wife (Annick Durán) runs a sheep farm. The couple have two young boys, Thorsten (Matías Bannister) and Franz (Iker Echevers). The family are Christians, and Rosa is a convert to that religion.

One day, Stefan’s sheep lie dead in his field, with woven garlands of vegetation round their necks. With tensions understandably high, Rosa’s father approaches Stefan holding a knife, and Stefan releases his two dogs upon him, killing the man. Rosa later places a makeshift cross of two sticks bound together on his basic grave, which she and Stefan’s family visit, Stefan’s wife pointing out that the man wasn’t a Christian.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2009 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 144m

Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 13/11/2009.

Haneke’s first period drama for the big screen is set in 1913-14 in a Northern German Protestant village where strange accidents befall the community. A doctor (Rainer Bock), out riding a regular route, is brought down and injured by a wire between two trees. The wife of a farm labourer is killed when factory floorboards give way beneath her. Children are abducted. A baby’s window is left open in Midwinter. A building burns. But who is – or are – responsible?

The film sets out its cast of characters in terms of the social hierarchy. The landowning classes are represented by the local Baron (Ulrich Tukur), his wife (Ursina Lardi) and their child; the professional classes by a widowed doctor, the midwife (Susanne Lothar) “who has made herself useful to him”, the Baron’s steward (Josef Bierbichler), the village Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) and the local teacher (Christian Friedel) – also as an old man the narrator (Ernst Jacobi) – who is courting the nanny of the Baron’s son; the working classes by numerous agricultural labourers who generally feature less prominently in the story.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Dead Don’t Hurt

Director – Viggo Mortensen – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 129m

***1/2

An independently-minded woman whose partner is away fighting a war struggles to survive in the Old West – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 7th

While there is much to admire in this Western, it suffers from unclear flashbacks and parallel editing. Both the trailer (below) and the UK press handouts circumvent this problem by describing a straightforward, chronological narrative (and a fascinating narrative at that). For anyone who doesn’t try to follow plot, this may not be a problem. For those who do, it most definitely is.

Two things happen at the start. One is a shoot out in which Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), a nasty bit of work with scant disregard for either decency or law and order, rides away into the evening after shooting various people inside and outside the town’s saloon, including the deputy sheriff. The town is apparently called Elk Flats, Nevada – something I gleaned not from the film (where, if that information is there, it’s easy to miss, and I missed it) but from the production notes.

This is indicative of a problem with the film overall: there are certain key bits of information it needs to tell the audience, which it fails to deliver in a clear, comprehensible way.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Io Capitano
(Io Capitano)

Director – Matteo Garrone – 2023 – Italy – Cert. 12a – 121m

*****

Two teenage Senegalese boys set out on a journey to Europe and a better life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th

Garrone’s earlier features (Gomorrah, 2008; Tale of Tales, 2015; Dogman, 2018; Pinocchio, 2019) have a particular, muted look, making considerable use of browns and, to a lesser extent, greys or greyish colours. These were all films set in Garrone’s native Italy, featuring characters with an Italian perspective of one sort or another. This new film eschews all that and, while it’s recognisably the work of the same director, exhibits a completely different colour palette in accordance with its different location. It’s brighter and much less dingy.

The different look very much fits with the different intent. Garrone wanted to deal with migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, but portray the journey from the migrants’ perspective rather than that of their destination countries. So this starts with two teenage, Senegalese boys who want to run away to Europe and is made in various African dialects, with the main one spoken by the two boys being recognisable as French.… Read the rest