Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Brief History of a Family
(Jiating Jianshi,
家庭简史)

Director – Jianjie Lin – 2024 – China – Cert. 15 – 99m

****

A boy from a broken home starts spending more and more time with the family of a schoolmate, where the family isn’t quite as perfect as it initially appears… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

A boy is doing pull-ups in the school gym. A basketball hits him on the head. He falls. (All in one highly striking shot looking from behind at the back of his head.) He’s on the floor. A nurse patches him up in the san. Going home, he has a minor altercation with a boy who surprises him. But, actually, the boy just wants to know if he’s okay.

Next day, the same boy – driven by guilt, perhaps? – gives him a ride over to his own house on his bicycle. It’s a nicer place than the first boy is used to: the calming sound of bubbles through water can be heard from the fish tank; the whole place seems light, airy, pleasant. The other boy’s choice of music stands in sharp contrast to this – he listens to rap. The pair play videogames until his parents, Mr.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Movies

Bazaar Jumpers
(Pao Ku Shao Nian,
跑酷少年)

Director – Zhiqiang Hao – 2012 – China – Cert. N/C PG – 61m

***

Two Uyghur boys and their parkour team in Northern China hone their skills for an upcoming “China proper” tournament in Beijing – now available to rent online in the new Chinese Cinema Season 2021 in the UK & Ireland as part of the Approaching Reality documentary strand until Wednesday, May 12th

NB.

(1) Please read this review before watching because the recommended N/C PG certificate, while completely legal, perhaps ought to be higher because of one particular sequence (detailed in the final Spoiler Alert paragraph).

(2) The title seems to vary between Bazaar Jumper (singular) and Bazaar Jumpers (plural) on the film’s promotional literature. I’ve gone with the plural as that’s what’s on the film print. The singular is on the trailer below.

Urumqi, Xinjiang, one of the parts of Northern China with a large Uyghur section of the population. That’s not really writ large here, and as I was watching I was wondering what the spoken language was until I worked out it was Uyghur. The film is ostensibly about a group of late teenage, Muslim boys obsessed with parkour (free running), a physical craze in which obstacles such as buildings, walls and street furniture are climbed or traversed rather than gone around.… Read the rest