Tag: front door

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Silent Virgin
(La Virgen Silenciosa)

Director – Xavi Sala – 2025 – Mexico – 127m

*****

A legal secretary frustrated in her job embarks on a relationship with another woman, but her possessive mother does not approve – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This certainly knows how to grab your attention at the start. An icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) hangs on the wall. On the bed, a grown woman pleasures herself until… The earth moves! Everything is shaking, and she quickly recovers her composure as her middle-aged mother runs in to get her out of the house as the earthquake alarm goes off.

After, they eat at the meal table, and her mother (Mercedes Hernández from New Order, Michel Franco, 2020) asks Vale (“Va-lay”; Zamira Franco also from New Order), who she’ll later address as Valeria, to pick up prescriptions while she’s out and makes sure she doesn’t forget her packed lunch. Then it’s train, bus and the walk past colourful stalls to work. Vale’s office with about half a dozen or so people seems to be piled high with paperwork. They are dealing with the cases of people being arrested. One man being interviewed claims that one of them is lying.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Regulars

Director – Fil Freitas – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12 tbc – 105m

***1/2

A single day shift in the working life of the staff at London’s legendary Prince Charles Cinema – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 22nd

2019, that halcyon time before the global pandemic. Independent repertory cinemas struggle on, their poorly paid staff a hotbed of frustrated creativity. This is as true of London’s Prince Charles Cinema (the PCC) as anywhere. Fil Freitas (playing himself, also the writer-director) can’t seem to get out of bed in time for his PCC shifts, scarcely helped by his sharing it (and his life in rented flat hell) with fellow PCC worker Dusty Keeney (playing herself, also the producer). Then, to compound his lateness for work, is the small matter of his inability to open the front door due to someone having dumped an oven outside it, a smartphone photo of which helps on this occasion to provide him with an excuse for being late. Still, his unflustered boss Sam (Ricardo Freitas) makes him sign the late book. (“Really?”)

Despite this start which feels very much like a start, there’s no real plot to speak of here beyond the (perfectly good) idea of portraying a day in the workinglife of the staff at the PCC, so the film ends at the close of day as everyone clocks off after their shift.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Before We Vanish
(Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha,
散歩する侵略者,
lit. Strolling Invaders)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2017 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 129m

***

Three humans claiming to be aliens steal ideas from people’s heads as they prepare for their race’s forthcoming invasion – from LEAFF, the London East Asia Film Festival 2017

This review is of a first viewing of this film. It really doesn’t happen often, but I can imagine liking this film more second time round. It’s a very strange movie.

Hands take a goldfish from a group in a white bathtub and transfer it into a metal pan. A sailor suited schoolgirl carries the fish in a bag to another house. Inside the latter, on its floor, the fish struggles to breathe as it lies on the ground out of water.

Spattered with blood, the girl (Yuri Tsunematsu) walks happily along the middle of a busy road. As she strolls without a care, swerving to avoid her, a lorry crashes headlong into an oncoming car.

Elsewhere, something is wrong with Shinji Kase (Ryuhei Matsuda from The Raid 2, Gareth Evans, 2014). His behaviour alarms his wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa from Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015, and playing in LEAFF this Saturday 28/10).… Read the rest