Tag: death

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Features Live Action Movies

Restore Point
(Bod Obnovy)

Director – Robert Hloz – 2023 – Czech Republic – Cert. 15 – 113m

*****

A detective investigates the murder of a couple, one of who helped create the technology for restoring people to life after they die – thought-provoking SF thriller is out UK on digital on Monday, April 1st

In essence this is a crime movie about corporate conspiracy and murder, but with a difference putting it into the real of science fiction – although given the speed at which current technological advances are taking place, it’s the sort of thing one can imagine being reality in a matter of years. It’s set in the not too distant future of Central Europe 2041, where technology has been developed to back up people to restore them to life should they die. This has been guaranteed by the State for anyone dying a violent, unnatural death following an increase in violent crime. This in turn is the result of growing social and economic inequality (an element not explored beyond an introductory intertitle on the screen).

This allows for fascinating plot variants to the crime genre. If someone is shot dead, they can be brought back to life within 48 hours – provided they have a backup and only so far as that backup is up-to-date.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Director – Neo Sora – 2023 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

*****

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto performs a final concert of his music in 2022, months before finally dying of cancer on March 28th, 2023 – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th, 2024

Released in the UK within a day of the anniversary of his passing, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final concert is an intimate affair, shot in a sound studio by his son Neo Sora in crisp, iconic black and white, the sound of his piano recorded with state-of-the-art equipment. Within months of this performance, cancer would have taken him from us. This is very different from concert films where the performer(s) is / are still alive. Much of Sakamoto’s music tends towards the melancholy, and watching this remarkable, musical testament, one is constantly reminded of the fact that he is no longer with us.

Caught by the camera, he is clearly aware that he doesn’t have that much time left. One of the pieces, he struggles to get right. “This is too hard”, he says, “I need a break.” Nevertheless, the camera and sound recording equipment proceed to capture him playing his 20 chosen compositions with all the considerable skill of the great player that he is / was.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Drift

Director – Anthony Chen – 2023 – Singapore, UK, France, US – Cert. 15 – 93m

****

A Liberian woman and former London student from a privileged background has lost everything and lives on her wits in a Greek holiday resort until she makes a connection with a tour guide – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

A T-shirt-clad back sits on the beach, facing away from us, looking out to a calm, blue sky and sea. A figure of indeterminate gender at this point. In an isolated, unpopulated landscape. However, as this young black woman (Cynthia Erivo) starts to make her way around the place, elements of both are gradually revealed to us. She travels on a bus with white tourists to a small, sleepy town where Greek lettering on the shop signs gives us some idea of where we are. Later, she takes the return journey and is back on the beach. She washes her underwear (she appears to only have the one pair) and T-shirt in the sea, letting them dry in the sun while she shelters in a cave. She momentarily panics at the sight of a coastguard vessel before realising it’s merely a small fishing skiff.… Read the rest

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Animation Movies Shorts

Pachyderm
(Pachyderme)

Director – Stéphanie Clément – 2022 – France – 11m

*****

A nine-year-old struggles with the trauma that befalls her at her grandpa’s – nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2024 Academy Awards, VoD details below review

She’s nine (voice-over: Christa Theret), and in the Summer she goes to stay with granny and grandpa. She plays on a swing, missing mum and dad, she watches a cabbage white butterfly in the garden. The house is tidy, ordered, perhaps obsessively so. It smells of polish; the kitchen smells of bleach. Tomorrow, grandpa will take her to the lake, where he likes to fish. To get to her bedroom, she must pass the big, intimidating horn mounted at the top of the stairs, a hunting trophy from a pachyderm. In her room, she can see eyes watching her from the wood grain of the ceiling timbers. She doesn’t sleep by counting sheep; she kills monsters. As the floorboards creak outside her door, she hides in the wallpaper, in the flowers, in sleep. After all, as grandma says, what could happen?

Before the trip, she accidentally pricks a finger on one of grandpa’s fishing hooks – lures, as they call them – but grandpa kisses the cut better with the kiss that heals all things.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Driving Mum
(Á Ferð Með Mömmu)

Director – Hilda Oddsson – 2023 – Iceland, Estonia – Cert. 12a – 112m

****1/2

After his mum dies, a man must honour her last wish by driving her to her final resting place… On the way, she talks to him… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 1st

The 1980s. Jón (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson) lives with his mother (Kristbjörg Kjeld) and his faithful dog Brezhnev in a remote part of rural Iceland. Days are spent sitting in the house knitting sweaters and listening to the radio – actually audio cassette recordings of the radio which run out in mid-sentence. These are periodically received in batches in boxes from a visiting trader in a boat in exchange for Jon and his mum’s home-knitted sweaters. Mum regrets never having been to Gullfoss, and Jon points out it’s unlikely to happen now. He is also a keen amateur photographer who operates his own darkroom. Rightly or wrongly, his mum worries about how he will survive after she’s gone.

One morning, he wakes to discover she has died in her sleep. He makes her corpse up as best he can, which leaves much to be desired, since her resultant look is somewhere between a clown and a zombie.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Orphée

Director – Jean Cocteau – 1950 – France – Cert. PG – 112m

*****

Acquitted by mirrors! Rereleased two thirds of a century on, Cocteau’s reimagining of the Greek legend of Orpheus remains as magical as ever – out in the UK on Friday, October 19th, 2018

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was a self-styled ‘poet’, a versatile, avant-garde French artist who worked across a number of different media – novels, visual art, design, theatre, cinema as well as poetry. 1950’s Orphée is one of his most celebrated films. And rightly so.

Famed poet Orphée (Jean Marais) is going through a bad creative patch when newcomer rival Cégeste (Edouard Dermithe) is killed by two speeding, leather-clad motorcycle riders. Orphée becomes obsessed with messages transmitted over the radio of the car belonging to Cégeste’s patron the Princess (Maria Casarès) which seem to him better than any lines he’s written recently.

So obsessed with these broadcasts does Orphée become that he fails to pay enough attention to his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) who becomes increasingly restless. Every night as he sleeps, the Princess – who a voiceover (read by Jean Cocteau himself) informs us is actually Orphée’s death – visits his room through his wardrobe mirror to watch over him.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

There’s Something
in the Barn

Director – Magnus Martens – 2023 – Norway – Cert. 15 – 100m

*

An American family immigrates to Norway where a relative has died and left them a farmhouse with a barn… and there’s something in the barn – badly misjudged horror comedy is out in UK cinemas and on digital download from Friday, December 1st

I have watched this film so that you don’t have to.

Incidentally, it has some of the best film stills I’ve ever seen. They are truly great. Don’t let that fool you: it’s a rotten movie.

One year after the unpleasant death of their Norwegian relative, the Californian nuclear family of dad, step-mum, son and daughter arrive at his farmhouse and barn in Norway which they’ve inherited. The unpleasant death is intriguing and workable if unoriginal horror fare; there is indeed something in the barn, and it’s not happy. So not happy, that it kills the relative.

But once the Californian family appear, the film undergoes a huge shift of tone from straight horror to pretty embarrassing comedy. Or, more accurately, alleged comedy because the laughs (or laugh – I think I may have laughed once) are (is) few and far between. Dad Bill (Martin Starr) is a happy-go-lucky, irritating, nerdy caricature; his new wife – and therefore step-mum to his kids – Carol (Amrita Acharia) is an equally annoying, former self-help guru.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Gurkha Warrior

Director – Milan Chams – 2022 – Nepal – Cert. 15 – 115m

**

A small Gurkha unit is dropped into the Malayan jungle by helicopter on a search and rescue mission to save a number of the comrades who have been captured – previews in UK cinemas on Saturday, November 4th, out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 10th

There’s a very sweet frame story bookending Gurkha Warrior in which an old man takes his young and curious grandson to a hilltop in Nepal with mountains in the background for his annual ritual of laying a commemorative wreath at its foot and saluting in memory of fallen war comrades. When he explains this to his grandson as they walk away along the ridge, the latter picks a flower off a nearby bush and runs back to leave the flower beside the old man’s wreath. His grandfather is deeply moved by this.

That very much sums up this film, the director and star of which both served as Gurkhas. The narrative takes place against the backdrop of the Malaya Emergency (1948-1960), but since that’s never explained and given that audiences are likely to be unfamiliar with the historical background, the film floats in an unfortunate war film netherworld lacking any sort of context.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Rock Hudson:
All That
Heaven Allowed

Rock on vacation in Puerto Vallarta (Photo courtesy of Lee Garlington).

Director – Stephen Kijak – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 104m

***1/2

Matinée idol Rock Hudson epitomised the Hollywood dream until he died of AIDS in 1985 – documentary portrait available on digital platforms from Monday, 23 October

It was only when Rock Hudson tragically died of AIDS in 1985 that the fact that he was gay entered into the consciousness of the American, movie-going public.

He originally came to Hollywood to pursue an acting career after a stint in the US Navy in the final years of World War Two, signing up with agent Henry Willson. Willson had a knack for renaming actors, and it was he who gave the young Roy Fitzgerald the name Rock Hudson with which he was to achieve stardom. Even so, the twentysomething spent the best part of a decade playing roles in Westerns and adventures before director Douglas Sirk cast him in the romantic melodrama Magnificent Obsession (1954) opposite Jane Wyman. Sirk clearly saw a quality in the actor that no-one else had identified, and a screen legend was born.

Rock Hudson, 1954

Hudson was to prove the perfect fit for the onscreen romantic lead and would play similar roles for much of his career which included not only further roles for Sirk in All That Heaven Allows (1955), again with Wyman, and Written On The Wind (1956), opposite Lauren Bacall, but also starring with James Dean in what was to be the latter’s final film Giant (George Stevens, 1956).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Boogeyman

Director – Rob Savage – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 98m

*** 1/2

Two sisters recently bereaved of their mother start to imagine something nasty waiting for them in the darkness of night – Stephen King adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 2nd

An uninvited man Lester Billings (David Dalmachian) turns up at the home-based office of therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina) wanting to talk. His family died, and he is suspected of murdering them… but, he claims, it wasn’t him who did it. Harper has recently lost his wife, so it’s inevitable that Billings’ story will resonate with him. While Harper excuses himself to covertly call the police, Billings starts wandering round the home in which Harper lives with his two daughters – the teenage Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and the much younger Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair).

The scene in the office is the Stephen King short story (published in his Night Shift collection) and only a small part of the movie. It is, however, a highly significant part – the incident that sparks everything else off. Billings claims his family was slain by a hideous monster, and the impressionable Sawyer is at the age of childhood where she imagines monsters lurking in the closet or hiding beneath the bed.… Read the rest