Tag: dying

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Features Live Action Movies

Valley of the
Shadow of Death
(不赦之罪)

Directors – Jeffrey Lam Sen & Antonio Tam – 2024 – Hong Kong, China – Cert. 15 – 84m

***1/2

The lives of a Christian pastor and his wife become intertwined with that of a youth who believes himself responsible for their teenage daughter’s suicide some years ago – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 14th

For roughly its first half, this delivers a narrative that sits squarely in an evangelical Christian framework. Unable to keep that up, it shifts focus in its second half to fire off in a number of directions.

Pastor Leung (Anthony Wong) and visits an old lady named Chan who is dying in hospital, asking her on her deathbed to accept Jesus as her Saviour. As he’s leaving, the nurse with him spots her grandson coming in, chained between two police officers. His granny is unconscious, and he finds her clasping a crucifix tight in one hand.

Praying alone, the Pastor talks about ”joining in the sufferings of Christ” as well he might: when interviewed by a lady journalist (Amber Van Cheung) about suffering and his experiences, something he is known for speaking about widely, it’s apparent that he and his family – pictured on a cupboard top photo as father, mother and daughter – suffered terrible grief a few years back.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Life of Chuck

Director – Mike Flanagan – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 110m

*****

From the End of the World to the life and essence of what defines one man – remarkable Stephen King adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, August 20th

This is an adaptation of a Stephen King novella, originally one of the four stories comprising the volume If It Bleeds, published in 2020. King is known as a horror writer, but every so often he comes up with something that defies that mould, including stories that have been turned into such films as Stand by Me (Rob Reiner, 1986), The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994) and Apt Pupil (Bryan Singer, 1998). His story The Life of Chuck is different again.

And, as is apparent from its outset, it employs a three act structure – a standard device in classic Hollywood screenwriting that makes the property the obvious basis for a film for any filmmaker savvy enough to spot that element – which the author unexpectedly flips on its head by reversing it. Inspired, in part, by that structure, Mike Flanagan’s film follows this template, starting off with a title card announcing Act 3 and then proceeding to tell its three related acts, all of which in one way of another concern defining moments in the life of a man named Charles Krantz (his dying in hospital, an episode one day in his adult life, an experience in his childhood).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Tucked

Director – Jamie Patterson – 2018 – UK – Cert.15 – 80m

*****

An ageing drag queen with weeks to live takes a younger performer under his wing – British film dealing with gender fluidity and death is available on BFI Player from Thursday, March 17th

Are you straight? So is spaghetti – ’til it gets hot and sticky.

Just one of the dirty jokes in the small club stage repertoire of ageing drag queen Jackie (Derren Nesbitt), 74. One night he collapses on his kitchen floor. He has an aggressive form of cancer and only six to seven weeks left to live.

Another night. He’s asked to show the ropes to a new performer Faith (Jordan Stephens), 21. Discovering Faith sleeping in his car, he offers the boy a home (with no untoward intentions).

Jackie dresses in women’s clothes but also likes women: outrageously gay Faith is shocked to find Jackie isn’t. Faith thinks Jackie should tell his estranged daughter that he’s dying… Read the rest

Tucked is available on BFI Player from Thursday, March 10th, 2022.

Review for DMovies.org.

Tucked was out in the UK on Friday, May 17th 2018. On DVD and VoD in September 2018.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Heaven:
To The Land
Of Happiness
(Hebeun:
Haengbokeui Nararo,
행복의 나라로)

Director – Im Sang-soo – 2021 – South Korea – 101m

*****

A meds thief on the verge of arrest and an escaped convict inadvertently steal money from gangsters – closing gala with a director Q&A as part of a strand of films celebrating actress Youn Yuh-jung at LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival which ran in cinemas from Thursday, November 4th to Friday, November 19th

The sexual frankness of director Im’s earlier A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003) and The Housemaid (2010) is absent from his latest, a producer-suggested project more lightweight than his usual fare which nevertheless achieves a degree of poignancy. Its template is the German film Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Thomas Jahn, 1997) in which two terminally ill men steal a car so that one of them can visit the sea before he dies, the car unfortunately belonging to a gangster and carrying a quantity of cash in the boot.

Writing his own script around this loose premise, Im makes the man who wants to see the sea a convict, inmate 203 (Choi Min-sik from The Tiger, Park Hoon-jung, 2015; Lucy, Luc Besson, 2014; New World, Park Hoon-jung, 2013; Lady Vengeance, Park Chan Wook, 2005), sent to the hospital for an MRI scan where it’s discovered he has a brain tumour and two weeks to live.… Read the rest

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Live Action Movies Shorts

Old Man
And A Dog
(老人與狗)

Director – Ryan Chan Hon-yan – 2019 – Hong Kong – Cert. N/C 15+ – 30m

*****

A security guard nearing the end of his life is given an ageing, dying dog by his grandson – online in the UK in the Fresh Wave short films strand of Focus Hong Kong 2021 Easter from Wednesday, March 31st to Tuesday, April 6th

When they’re in the hospital waiting for grandpa while he sees the doctor, Ka Chun (Karson Chan Ka Hei) asks his mum (Ivy Pang – Tracey, Li Jun, 2018), “how come grandpa doesn’t have a dog?” There follows a huge row between Ms. Chan and the medical staff when she learns they’re not operating on her father because he’s signed ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ papers. The boy, meanwhile, stands beside his grandpa’s bedside. His grandpa (Paul Carr) is on a ventilator.

The elder Mr. Chan visits the hospital on his own. The clock that’s fallen off the wall in the doctor’s office seems to presage his own demise. His boss (Toby Cheng) at the security firm tells him not to come in, he’s too ill. The firm will compensate him, so there are no financial issues.

Ka Chun visits grandpa at home – bringing with him a dog called (somewhat hilariously to English ears) Ah-fuk.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Series Shorts Television

Greenaway
By Numbers

How Peter Greenaway’s obsession with various numeric and other cataloguing systems has led to the creation of highly complex, multi-layered film pieces that joyfully play with audiences

If ever anyone were to make a film about the Dewey Decimal System, it would be Peter Greenaway. He is obsessed with ways and means to classify the world in which he finds himself, systems to organise and make sense of that peculiar world, people’s relationship networks with one another and their movement and actions within that world and those networks.

I first came across him on the theatrical release in Hammersmith of his three hours plus epic The Falls (1980), made in between his early, self-financed short films of the 1960s and 1970s and his first, more conventional in length feature The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982). The Falls takes its name from entries in the section of a directory beginning with the letters F A L L e.g. Orchard Falla, Constance Ortuist Fallaburr, Melorder Fallaburr. The directory chronicles survivors of a Violent Unknown Event, VUE for short… [read more]

Full article at DMovies.org in association with Doesn’t Exist Magazine – purchase your copy now.

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Dick Johnson
is Dead

Director – Kirsten Johnson – 2020 – US – 89m

*****

The director imagines the death of her dad in a film which celebrates both the man himself and the art of cinema – on Netflix worldwide from Friday, October 2nd

I was alerted to this movie both because not only was Johnson’s prior Cameraperson (2016) excellent but also the subject matter of this new film looked promising. Johnson spent three decades as the cameraperson on numerous documentaries (among them Farenheit 9/11, Michael Moore, 2004 and Citizenfour, Laura Poitras, 2014) before making her previous feature out of interesting bits and pieces of footage she had lying around. Her new film is highly personal and almost fits into the home movies or personal diary school of film making – lent an inevitable, additional gravitas given Johnson’s prior artistic and technical career.

C. Richard Johnson (b. 1932 – ) is Kirsten Johnson’s dad. One day, like all of us, he is going to die. So his daughter decided that while he was still alive she would make a film about his dying, filming his possible deaths and staging his funeral service ahead of time.

There’s a huge contradiction at the heart of this idea.… Read the rest