Tag: enigma

Weapons

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2025
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Director – Zach Cregger – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 128m

****

One night, all but one of the children in one class in the town school disappear into the dark, leaving the townsfolk baffled as to what happened to them… – Fortean-sounding mystery is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 8th

One night at 2.17am, the 17 other kids in Alex’s class got up out of their beds, went downstairs, opened their front doors, and ran out into the night. As a child relates the incident, we observe it in flashback. The kids run with arms half outstretched at an angle, as if playing at being aeroplanes in the school playground. If you’ve seen the film’s poster, this strange angle of the arms is also apparent. As it also is in the film’s trailer, which starts with this flashback. But what is in the mind of these kids? Where are they going? To what purpose?

For that matter, why the title Weapons? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that you’ll know the answer once you’ve seen the film.

Thus begins one of the most intriguing cinematic mysteries of recent years. To unpack his prologue, writer-director Cregger opts for an astute, six-part, character-based structure.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

War Paint
Women at War

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 28 March 2025
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Women at War
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The Crying Game. Between a Rock and a Hard Place 2017 by Marcelle Hanselaar

Director – Margy Kinmonth – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 89m

*****

A look at the output of various women artists who have documented and dissected war, and what they can tell us – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 28th

Although being promoted, reasonably enough, with an image from World War Two of women working with barrage balloons, right from the start in narration over its opening titles this breaks the mould for anyone expecting it to cover any one specific historical or geographical war. “I’m going to talk to women all round the world”, says director Kinmonth in regard to the concept of war as a catalyst for creativity. “What do women see that men don’t?” Quite apart from her gender, she is well-placed to tackle such a subject having recently made two documentaries on the subject of war artists: Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022), War Art with Eddie Redmayne (2015), and many more before that on the subject of art in assorted social contexts.

The film is a compendium of interviews with living female artists or, in the cases of artists who’ve passed on, their descendants or proponents. Some of the names are familiar, such as Lee Miller, Maggi Hambling or Dame Rachel Whiteread, others much less so.… Read the rest

Tags 1066, 1979 Iran revolution, 1992, 2005 Darfur genocide, 2022-3, AC/DC, Afghanistan, Agent Orange poisoning, air raid, air raids, aircraft, American Pavilion, Ami Bouhassane, amplifying stories, annihilation, anti-aircraft guns, architect, artist, atrocity, ATS searchlight women, Austria, Balloon Command, barrage balloons, Bayeux Tapestry, Bletchley Park, Blitz, bombed houses, bombed out, burka, burned, ceasefire, Changi, Changi prison quilt, children’s drawings, consequences of war, creativity, crimes against humanity, crucifixion, culture, Dame Laura Knight, Dame Penelope Lively, Dame Rachel Whiteread, Darfour, Donetsk, drawing, Dutch, enigma, European Court of Human Rights, factory, factory girl, Falkland Islands, fashion model, freezing conditions, Galahad, Gladys Hines, history, Holocaust memorial, homeless, horse head impaled, hospitality, identity, Lee Miller, Linda Kitson, London, London Vogue, Luftwaffe, m Assil Diab, m searchlight beams, Maggi Hambling, Marcelle Hanselaar, Margaret Thatcher, Margy Kinmonth, martyrs, Maya Lin, miscarriage, missile, morality police, Mozambique, mural, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York City, Nigeria, Nina Berman, nineteenth century, official war artist, painting, Palestine, Palestinian Women, Pallanytsia, password, Patricia Thorncroft, photographer, plane, postage stamp, production line, propaganda, protest, protester, quilt, RA Summer Show, Rachel Reckitt, rape as a weapon of war, rape scene, Royal Academy, Russia, Second World War, Shirin Neshat, Singapore, social media, soldiers as rapists, spray paint, Sticker Project, stitched by nuns, Sudan, Sudan war, tiles, travelling car window, twentieth century, UK, Ukraine, US economy, US support for WW2, veil, Venice Biennale, Vietnam War, Vietnam War Memorial, violence and death, war and militarism, war crimes, War Paint, war photographer Lee Miller, war reportage gender imbalance, war zones, war-making, warplanre, wartime fashion photos, wartime propaganda, Washington DC, welcome bread, window sicker, witness, Women at War, women discarded after rape, women in the workforce, women in war zones, Women Life Freedom, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2, Zhanna Kadyrova

Features Live Action Movies

Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 February 2025
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(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)
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Director – Peter Weir – 1975 – Australia – Cert. 12a – 107m

*****

A group of teenage schoolgirls supervised by two teachers go on a picnic beside an isolated volcanic outcrop: three of them never return – Valentine’s Day previews on Friday & Saturday, February 14th & 15th, then is out in UK cinemas from Friday, February 21st

Two locations sear themselves into your brain when watching Picnic at Hanging Rock, whether for the first time or the umpteenth. One is the obvious one – the eponymous, towering rock formation in Victoria, Australia, at once an inescapable presence in a landscape and an invitation to come into its labyrinth and explore. The other is Appleyard College, a turn of the (nineteenth into twentieth) century boarding school for young ladies, shot in the real life 1870s-built, Georgian mansion Martindale Hall. They are two very different worlds, one natural, wild, and inexplicable, the other buttoned down and socially stratified.

The picnic, which takes place on St. Valentine’s Day, 1900, only seems to take the first third of the film’s running length. Two teachers, Miss Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray from The Last Wave, Peter Weir, 1977) and the French mistress Mlle de Poitiers (Helen Morse) are in charge of around a dozen teenage girls, all dressed very prim and properly.… Read the rest

Tags 1900, Anne Lambert, Australia, boarding school, brook, buttoned down, Christine Schuler, disappear, Dominic Guard, down to earth, doze, enigma, fee-paying school, fellow students, finance, foul play, gardener, Gheorghe Zamfir, go exploring, Helen Morse, hot weather, inexplicable, isolation, Jane Vallis, John Jarrett, Karen Robson, labyrinth, location, maid Jacki Weaver, mansion, Margaret Nelson, Martindale Hall, missing, mystery, natural, orphan, out in the heat, outcrop: Valentine’s Day, panpipe, perfect day, permission, Peter Weir, picnic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, police, prim and proper, primal, principal, Rachel Roberts, remove shoes and stockings, rock formation, Russel Boyd, school authorities, schoolgirls, search, secrets, sex, socially stratified, St. Valentine’s Day 1900, student attendance, supervision, teachers, teenage, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, trees, turn of the century, unpaid fees, vanish, Victoria, Vivean Gray, volcanic, well-off, wild, working class, young ladies