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Monster
(Kaibutsu,
怪物)

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 126m

****

The mother of a school pupil believes her son is being abused by his teacher, who in turn protests his own innocence, yet the truth is more complex – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 15th

A movie at once spellbinding and infuriating, as a seemingly straightforward narrative is retold from different points of view and shifts subtly as further details emerge. It’s not a film to see if you’re tired, as it requires considerable attention on the part of the audience.

It starts off with a child’s feet walking along a patch of wasteland at night, sirens in the distance and then a blazing urban building which his single-parent mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando from Godzilla Minus One, 2023; Shoplifters, 2018 and Love Exposure, 2008) summons her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) out onto their flat’s balcony to watch. Overheard conversation later suggests that not only was there a hostess bar on the third floor of the burning building, but that Minato’s teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama from Toshiaki Toyoda’s 9 Souls, 2003 and Blue Spring, 2001) used to go there.… Read the rest

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All of Us Strangers

Director – Andrew Haigh – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 105m

*****

A gay Londoner travels by train to visit his parents in Sanderstead, following their deaths in a car crash when he was 12 years old – out on digital from Tuesday, March 12th

He (Andrew Scott) lives alone in a London tower block. Not only is he the single occupant of his flat, there’s almost no-one else in the building. When he goes outside for a breath of fresh air, he sees a guy in the window of one of the other apartments. Later, there’s a knock at his door. It’s the guy (Paul Mescal), who is slightly drunk, comes on strong and tries to get himself invited in. The visitor’s name is Harry. The occupant introduces himself as Adam, but doesn’t let Harry in.

By day, Adam writes screenplays. But he’s got stuck, so after perusing some personal effects, he takes the train to Sanderstead. There, he watches a boy in a window. He follows a man across an area of parkland. Coming out of a shop, the man spots him and asks him to come over. You think it might be a pickup – but no, it’s his dad (Jamie Bell).… Read the rest

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The Zone of Interest

Director – Jonathan Glazer – 2023 – UK, Poland – Cert. 12a – 106m

*****

A drama about the everyday, domestic lives of the Commandant of Auschwitz, his wife, and their family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 2nd

How do people sleep at night? If they do bad things? Well, some people who do bad things are tormented by them. They sleep badly. Their conscience, however repressed by them, disturbs them. The others? Well, they seem to sleep soundly.

The Zone of Interest is about people who, as part of their daily routine, do or at least consent to, even inaugurate, unspeakable things. These people are a respectable married couple and their extended family. The focus here is on the ordinary, everyday activities they pursue rather than the unspeakable activities. A nice bathing trip to the river; a later panic when there might be an infection in the river and family members are bathing in it. (The bad stuff seeps into the everyday, routine, speakable stuff, it seems.) Mum taking the little one round the garden and telling her the names of the flowers. Mum running an efficient household, with an army of servants. Mum trying on a second-hand, fur coat.… Read the rest

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The Goldfinger
(Jin Shouzhi,
金手指)

Director – Felix Chong – 2023 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 126m

*****

Director Felix Chong reunites his two Infernal Affairs stars for a lavish, if frequently incomprehensible, 1980s tale of cops and robbers, corruption and fraud – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, January 5th 2024.

The experience of watching The Goldfinger is a lot like watching the classic Hollywood private eye movie The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946). There, you know that the hero is investigating a string of murders, and the narrative is completely engrossing, even for the viewer watching the film for the umpteenth time, yet it’s also impenetrable and incomprehensible. And so it is with The Goldfinger, which is based not on a novel but on a real life financial scandal.

Real life Hong Kong conglomerate The Carrian Group, founded in 1977 by one George Tan, expanded rapidly and made huge profits until it was declared bankrupt in 1983. The whole operation turned out to be mired in fraud. In the film, set in the late 1970s / early 1980s, the central character Ching (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) is modelled on Tan, starting off penniless but wearing suits that look like a million dollars and blessed with an understanding of what’s required to gain people’s confidence, secure deals and make money.… Read the rest

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Open The Door
(Opeun Deo Do-eo,
오픈 더 도어)

Director – Chang Hang-jun – 2022 – US, South Korea – Cert. 15 – 72m

*****

Serial bad decisions in five reverse chronology episodes of a New Jersey, Korean migrant family’s life suggest terrible consequences – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2023 which runs in cinemas from Thursday, November 2nd to Thursday, November 16th

Chi-hoon (Seo Young-joo from The Age Of Shadows, Kim Ji-Woon, 2016; Moebius, Kim Ki-duk, 2013) drives over to the house of his sister and brother-in-law Moon-suk (Lee Soon-won). Moon-suk is alone, and invites him in, digging out a bottle of whiskey and the best food that can be eaten with it, kimchi. In the ensuing conversation, as the pair get more and more inebriated, various unpleasant family truths emerge. Their mother has severe health issues, the couple are in financial trouble, and Moon-suk casts doubt on his wife’s character, suggesting that she’s not the good person her brother believes her to be and accusing her of wanting to murder their mum.

However, Chi-hoon has a different agenda: he wants to know why Moon-suk has been regularly hitting his sister. At one point, Moon-suk goes into the bedroom, retrieves a revolver and hides it on his person.… Read the rest

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One Fine Spring Day
(Bomnaleun Ganda,
봄날은 간다)

Director – Hur JIn-ho – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 113m

*****

The romance between a sound engineer and a radio DJ from winter through spring to its falling apart in summer – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2023 which runs in cinemas from Thursday, November 2nd to Thursday, November 16th

Winter. Twentysomething sound recordist Sang-woo (Yoo Ji-tae) lives at home with his family including his grandmother, to whom he’s completely devoted. He is hired by a radio station in a nearby town and finds himself working alongside DJ and talk radio host Eun-su (Lee Young-ae), travelling there in his van. They spend time in the local countryside recording sounds such as the wind across the tall grass and she invites him to her flat for the night. One thing almost leads to another, but woken by his trying to kiss her as she lies on a mattress on the floor after she let him use her bed, she tells him, let’s wait until we know each other better.

They quickly become inseparable, with much walking together, holding and hugging, although she won’t shout about it from the rooftops because, as she explains to him, if the radio station found out they were in a relationship, he’d get the sack.… Read the rest

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Killers
Of The Flower Moon

Director – Martin Scorsese – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 206m

*****

A returning WW1 veteran marries into Oklahoma’s Osage Indian tribe at the time of the Osage Indian Murders – 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, October 20th

At slightly over 80 years of age, Martin Scorsese has now been making movies for over 60 years. Like his last, fictional, narrative feature The Irishman (2019), this one is pushing three and a half hours. I always have issues with films that long: the vast majority are that way due to director’s ego and / or inability to tell a story concisely. Some of them might have been better suited to a TV mini-series ( a medium in which, incidentally, Scorsese also works). Yet if you try and imagine Killers Of The Flower Moon cut down in length, it’s difficult. Maybe you could take out the frame story – the performance of a crime drama on the radio on the subject of the Osage Indian Murders – but that sets the scene nicely at the start and takes you back out of the movie equally nicely at the end, so it would be a shame to do so.… Read the rest

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The Innocent
(L’innocent)

Director – Louis Garrel – 2022 – France – Cert. 15 – 99m

***1/2

A trusting woman marries a soon-to-be-released convict in prison only for her suspicious son to start following him after the man’s release and soon find himself out of his depth – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 25th

Warning: plot spoilers.

Sylvie LeFranc (Anouk Grinberg) has fallen big time for Michel Ferrand (Roschdy Zem) and is about to marry him. Her son Abel (Louis Garrel) is less than happy about this, since Michel is the latest convict serving a prison sentence for whom his mother has fallen. He grudgingly attends their prison wedding. Shortly after, Michel is released and the couple embark on their new life together, with Michel promising to go straight and Sylvie, who likes to think the best of people, taking him at his word. She has always dreamed of opening a flower shop, and he gives her the funds to make it happen. They hire premises and start doing it up, getting Abel to help.

Although he can see that the romance is genuine – at least on his mother’s side – Abel understandably doesn’t trust his mum’s judgement and doesn’t trust Michel at all.… Read the rest

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Plan 75

Director – Chie Hayakawa – 2022 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 113m

**1/2

Dystopian drama Plan 75 posits a plan whereby Japanese people can voluntarily have themselves terminated after age 75 and examines some of the resultant social fallout – out in UK cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 12th

Sedate classical piano music is playing on the soundtrack. The image – out of focus, could be looking down a corridor. After a long wait, a man in a T-shirt and jeans walks, in focus, into picture foreground. There appears to be blood on his arm and he is carrying a shotgun. Ahead of him, as it now comes into focus, the corridor floor is sparsely scattered with objects: a cup and a bowl, an old person’s walking stick with four legs, something else which we can’t quite make out. He washes at the sink. Another corridor – a fallen walking stick, a pair of slippers, an abandoned bathrobe or perhaps a towel, a collapsed, half-folded wheelchair, wheel still spinning. T-shirt and jeans with shotgun descends the stairs. After a contentious voice over, T-shirt and jeans waits a long while, then points the barrel of the shotgun at his head and uses his feet to pull the trigger.… Read the rest

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Ashes And Diamonds
(Popiół I Diament)

Director – Andrzej Wajda – 1958 – Poland – Cert. 12 – 103m

*****

Two resistance fighters attempt to assassinate a Communist Party official on the last day of the Second World War – plays at the Phoenix Cinema East Finchley in conjunction with the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival at 18:00 on Sunday, March 19th, also on Blu-ray as part of Wajda’s War Trilogy

Made over a decade after not only the historical setting for the events it depicts in 1945 but also the Jerzy Andrzejewski novel on which it is based which was written in 1947 and published in 1948, this condenses that novel’s two weeks into a mere – 24 hours the last day of the Second World War and the evening and night of the victory celebrations that follow plus the subsequent early dawn.

The war is over and the Nazis defeated, but Poland still finds itself the subject of conflict as opposing factions vie for power. On the one hand is the official Party trying to get everything working again and on the other members of the resistance determined to stop them.

The older Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) and the younger Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) carry out an ordered assassination on Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzeżyński).… Read the rest