Tag: documentary

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Features Live Action Movies

The Old Man
and the Land

Director – Nicholas Parish – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

As he works on the land, an aging farmer hears his two adult children argue about the future of the family farm – plays UK cinemas from Friday, September 20th 2024, with previews from Monday, September 16th following its premiere in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, where it was the best film out of a superb lot

Movies. You think everything’s been done, then along comes something you’ve never seen before. Or, in this case, seen or heard before.

The Old Man in question is an English farmer (Roger Marten) whose family have worked the land for generations. He’s getting on in years, so won’t be around forever. His wife died a while ago, so he’s now running the farm on his own. He has two children who have long since grown up and left home: a son (voice: Rory Kinnear) and a daughter (voice: Emily Beecham), and the big question is, when he dies, will they take over – or will they get rid of the farm?

In recent years, the UK has produced a number of rural movies that stand in stark contrast to the urban- (often London-) based films produced.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Hollywoodgate

Director – Ibrahim Nash’at – 2023 – US, Germany – Cert. 12a – 89m

****

A Western documentary shot with the approval of the Taliban showing the eponymous air base in which the Americans abandoned large stocks of military hardware – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

An extraordinary exercise in both journalism and historical, socio-political filmmaking. A few days after the US military pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, fearless, former journalist Nash’at entered the country as, to all intents and purposes, a one-man film crew. At first, it was a fruitless exercise, but then he somehow managed to get in with a soldier about to be deployed on a big airport.

Negotiating with Afghanistan’s airforce to be allowed to shoot documentary footage, Nash’at secured himself permission to follow and shoot not just the lieutenant, M.J. Mukhtar, but also the new head of the airforce, Mawlawi Mansour, with the proviso that anything Nash’at was told not to film, he was not to film and anytime he was ordered to stop filming, he had to stop filming. Refusal to do either would have meant big trouble. He played along, shooting whatever he could without breaking the air force head’s trust, knowing that the Taliban would have no control whatsoever over the footage when he left the country to edit what he’d shot.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Isabella Tree, as played by Rhiannon Neads

Director – David Allen – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 75m

*****

How Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell closed down their failing farm and instead let nature run wild to regenerate the land’s depleted biodiversity – inspiring documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s. They kept it going for some 17 years. However, by the late 1990s, they were in debt to the tune of one and a half million pounds. Realising that agro-chemical pesticides and contemporary industrial farming practices were destroying the topsoil necessary for biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, the couple then took the bold decision to stop farming and, with a little initial, minor tinkering, set about rewilding the land (i.e. letting nature take its course) and, hopefully, repair the damage done. They faced considerable opposition from the local farming community for the first five years or so. Then things began to happen which brought public opinion onto their side. In 2018, Isabella Tree wrote a book about the whole experience: Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm.

This documentary feature adaptation of Isabella’s eponymous 2018 book about their experience was shot during the pandemic and uses actors to portray the couple’s younger selves, so seamlessly cast that you actually don’t notice.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Catching Fire:
The Story of
Anita Pallenberg

Directors – Alexis Bloom, Svetlana Zill – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 113m

***1/2

The chaotic life of the archetypal rock chick, told through her own words and those of her children – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th

After her death in 2017, Anita Pallenberg’s two surviving children Marlon and Angela discovered a manuscript; she had written an autobiography. Marlon worked his way through it as part of his bereavement process and was so taken with the articulate text that he sought out producers to turn it into a film. (He is one of the film’s executive producers himself, while both directors are credited as among the producers). Numerous clips from an interview with him are used in this resultant documentary, along with excerpts from Anita’s manuscript voiced by an actress, along with interview footage with Angela and verbal audio from Rolling Stones band member Keith Richards, Anita’s partner for a decade and the father of her children.

Like many of the young generation who rose meteorically to cultural prominence in the swinging sixties, Anita Pallenberg was a war baby. Her first years were accompanied by the sound of falling bombs; as she puts it, she didn’t learn to walk, but to run.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Disconnect Me

Director – Alex Lykos – 2023 – Australia – Cert. 12 – 87m

***1/2

A man attempts to live for 30 days without the use of his smartphone, tablet or computer – out on digital from Monday, April 1st

This documentary opens with an advisory to keep your phone handy during the screening, as you may be required to use it at some point. In the UK, it’s only available on digital platforms… but even so, that advisory marks it out as different from most films.

Lykos, who narrates his documentary, is old enough to have grown up without a smartphone or other digital devices, but kids today handle smartphones from a younger and younger age. What would happen, wonders Alex, if I disconnected myself for an entire month? His and his wife’s home contains their two smartphones, two tablets, and a TV. Learning that Alex wakes and checks his smartphone three or four times a night, Alex’s doctor wires him for a sleep test.

Like many of us, Alex finds himself spending an hour on social media and wondering, what just happened? He and others admit to feelings of envy when others post about good things in their lives. A near-tearful divorcee talks about it being hard seeing people having a good time with partner or family.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Anselm
(Anselm
– Das Rauschen
Der Zeit)

Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany – Cert. PG – 93m

****

An exploration of the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer and the influences which lie behind it – 3D documentary plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

Wim Wenders seems to step effortlessly between narrative and documentary feature films, and you never feel that he considers one or the other more important. To him, they are all movies. As with his earlier Pina (2011), similarly about an artist – the choreographer Pina Bausch – this is another portrait of an artist shot in 3D. Wenders’ subject here, again eponymously designated by Christian name, is Anselm Kiefer, a practitioner of the plastic rather than the performing arts.

From the outset, it’s clear that the film needs to be seen in 3D. Wenders’ camera moves deliberately and formally around maquettes that resemble life-sized women wearing dresses, but without the women in them so that they stand as empty objects, often with strange constructions in the space where you would expect their neck and heads to be. The forest setting in which Wenders films them seems almost as significant as the maquettes themselves as we slowly pass by an upright tree trunk between the sculpture and us.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Pelikan Blue
(Kék Pelikan)

Pelikan Blue (Kék Pelikan)

Director – László Csáki – 2023 – Hungary – Cert. none – 79m

****

How three friends wanting to travel to the West after Hungary opened up in 1985 stumbled onto a lucrative scam forging rail tickets – innovative documentary employing animation premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This talks about Hungary opening its borders and allowing its citizens to travel beyond the iron curtain for the first time in 1985. The problem was that for most school students and ordinary working people, travel was too expensive. 1987-90 was the best time, says one man. Owing to peculiarities in the exchange rate system, it was possible to change East German marks into West German marks and triple the value of your money.

One man was in a queue at a counter with a man named Atos who had enough to clear out that particular counter, but he took pity on the other punters behind him and only took half what he could have had. Petya and another grateful friend of his in that queue later found themselves on a plane to Berlin, then sharing a hotel room with Atos.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Monsters

Director – Gareth Edwards – 2010 – UK – Cert. 12 – 90m

*****

Gareth Edwards’ remarkable feature debut is like nothing you’ve ever seen – out on DVD Monday, April 11th 2011 following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, December 3rd, 2010

An extraordinary film defying easy classification, Monsters looks from the outside like a cheap District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009) but is actually something else entirely: a sci-fi road movie, a romantic drama, radical and inventive like nothing you’ve ever seen. Made on a shoestring in and around Mexico with a four-man crew and a two-man cast (plus anyone else who was around at the time), it’s the brainchild of former BBC CG FX maestro Edwards, who added all the creature effects himself in post-production in his living room. A remarkable, transcendent work, it hits DVD with scads of extras.

Pre-emptive titles inform us that a returning space probe broke up over Mexico scattering alien samples gathered during its voyage, resulting in part of that country’s being declared an ‘Infected Zone’, a no-go area for mankind populated by giant monsters. Some years later, Mexico-based photojournalist Kaulder (Scoot McNairy from In Search Of A Midnight Kiss) gets a call from his US-based boss to bring home the latter’s daughter Sam (Whitney Able).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

My Name Is
Alfred Hitchcock

Director – Mark Cousins – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

Idiosyncratic documentary is a personal journey through Hitchcock’s movies narrated by the legendary director himself – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 21st

Hitchcock having been dead for over four decades, he doesn’t actually narrate this film. The voice over is instead a convincing impression by Alistair McGowan and even though you know it’s a trick, you soon settle in to the idea that Hitch genuinely recorded a voice over for this film. Cousins even plays along with the odd, “yes, Mr. Hitchcock.”

Cousins has these days established himself as a documentarian of cinema, covering subjects as integral as the act of looking itself (The Story Of Looking, 2021) and key directors such as Orson Welles (The Eyes Of Orson Welles, 2018). He’s very knowledgeable on cinema and numerous other subjects, and the effect is rather like spending a pleasant evening chatting in the pub with a friend possessing these skillsets (albeit a pub equipped with the ability to unobtrusively show film clips as and when needed). He’s also very much his own man, a superb communicator with his own unique way of looking at things, so you’d expect a film about as well known a director as Hitch to be not only well-informed about its subject but also to offer some unique insight or perspective that mark the production out as coming out of Mark Cousins’ head.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Cave Rescue

Director – Tom Waller – 2022 – Thailand – US Cert. PG-13 – 99m

****

A Thai-based dramatisation of the 2018 Thailand boys’ football team cave rescue, with some of the rescuers playing themselves – on Blu-ray (US only) Tuesday, September 13th

In 2018, the world held its breath when the 12 boys of a football team and their 24-year-old coach became trapped in a cave when rain fell unexpectedly and water levels within the cave system started to rise. Incredibly, the ensuing rescue attempt involving divers from the US, UK, Ireland and Canada got all 13 out alive. According to this film, sadly, there was one fatality among the Thai Navy SEAL divers involved in the rescue.

Quick off the mark, Thailand-based producer-director Waller made the story into a feature film The Cave (2019), aimed at the Thai market. With Netflix having already secured the rights to the boys’ stories – a miniseries Thai Cave Rescue (2022) is coming to Netflix US in September 2022 – Waller and his co-writers had to find an alternative route to telling the story. A meeting with Irish diver Jim Warny, who was involved in the rescue operation, resulted in the decision to base the narrative not around the thirteen people trapped underground but the men and women who attempted to get them out (mostly men, although there are one or two women featured among the paramedics not to mention an assistant to the local Governor).… Read the rest