Tag: gang

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Mo Papa
(Mo Papa)

Director – Eeva Mägi – 2025 – Estonia – 88m

*****

A young ex-con imprisoned as a teenager for killing his younger brother tries to make his way in present-day Tallinn – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

I am wary of unscripted feature films. There is a reason why most narrative movies are made working from scripts; actors have lines to speak, to help them get a handle on their characters. Technicians have an idea of what they are realising on the screen or the soundtrack for a director. Without a script, most attempts at making a film are liable to founder. And quite probably result in an indulgent, unwatchable movie.

Mo Papa, according to the Festival’s blurb, was unscripted. On the one hand, I fear the worst. On the other, after three years of watching Critics’ Picks at Tallinn, I know the standard to be generally high, and duff films are happily all too rare. Would Mo Papa turn out to be one of those rare blips?

It’s also an Estonian movie, and because this is an Estonian festival, in a sense that ups the ante. So I’m really hoping it’s going to be good.… Read the rest

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Nobody 2

Director – Timo Tjahjanto – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 89m

**

A professional hitman takes his family on holiday to rebuild their trust, embracing and revelling in the violence that erupts around him – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 15th

“Who are you people?”, asks one of two investigating officers of a man (Bob Odenkirk) and his dog in an interrogation room in the bookend device that opens and closes this sequel. Flashback: he is a married man Hutch with a wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) and two teenage kids Brady (Gage Munroe), 17, and Sammy (Paisley Cadorath), 12. As the days of the week go by – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – mum gets the kids fed and off to their school (which we never see) and she drives off to her demanding real estate job (which, again, we never see).

We do see his work, though. Some days, he lies in, his head flashing back to disturbing and violent memories. Some days, he works: for instance, the day when he enters a hotel lift and brutally fights to the death with the three bodyguards protecting a suited convention guest who has in his possession the Card which our man has been instructed to retrieve.… Read the rest

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Two Way Stretch

Director – Robert Day – 1960 – UK – Cert. U – 78m

****

Three prisoners plot a heist with the perfect alibi… that they are incarcerated in prison at the time – classic British prison comedy is out on UK Blu-ray on Monday, August 4th

Very much of its time, this British prison comedy concerns three convicts and an outside contact who sets them up with the perfect job. The top-billed performer is Peter Sellers, a British household name by this time thanks to radio’s long-running comedy series The Goon Show TIMES, but far from being a straightforward vehicle for Sellers’ indisputable comic talents, the film is very much an ensemble piece, with a main cast that reads like a who’s who of British comedy acting talent of the time.

Prisoner Dodger Lane (Peter Sellers) and his two cellmates Jelly Knight (David Lodge) and Lennie Price (Bernard Cribbins) have engineered themselves a cushy existence in one of H.M. Prisons where every morning at 7 a.m. sharp, groceries are delivered by van via a rope through their cell window and their beloved cat Strangeways is periodically taken out for a walk by friendly Chief Prison Officer Jenkins (George Woodbridge). The latter is due to retire shortly, and soon after that, the three men’s sentence (for the same crime) is due to end.… Read the rest

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This is England

Director – Shane Meadows – 2006 – UK – Cert. 18 – 101m

A young, pre-teenage lad falls in with a gang of skinheads in Post-Falklands War, Thatcherite Britain – originally published in Third Way in 2007, to coincide with the film’s UK release date

The above one line synopsis, although accurate, doesn’t even begin to convey the piece’s considerable strengths. (Note: Meadows would subsequently develop this into a series of TV dramas in the UK using many of the same cast and characters: This is England ‘86, This is England ‘88 and This is England ‘90 in 2010, 2011 and 2015 respectively.)

Meadows is a unique and powerful voice, a teenage school dropout who kicked off his career in features with 1996’s 60-minute feature Small Time and went on to greater things TwentyFourSeven (1997) and critical favourite A Room For Romeo Brass (1999). His highest profile effort is the less impressive Once Upon A Time In The Midlands (2002), which suffers from trying to make an epic with an all-star British cast. Meadows is not about big movies (not yet, anyway) – he began shooting movies with mates as actors and has an uncanny ability to draw incredible performances out of actors and non-actors alike, based as much on the people concerned as on their acting ability.… Read the rest

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Cadejo Blanco

Director – Justin Lerner – 2023 – Guatemala, US, Mexico – Cert. 15 – 125m

*****

A young woman infiltrates a drugs gang in order to find out what happened to her elder sister, who never came back from a night out – out in UK cinemas on and on demand Friday, August 23rd

This opens with a deceptively simple sequence of two young women getting ready to go out for an evening. The older one, who apparently goes out a lot, and we’ll later learn is called Bea (newcomer Pamela Martínez), is pressurising the younger one Sarita (Karen Martínez from The Golden Dream, Diego Quemada-Diez, 2014), who has never been out to a club before. They might be flatmates, but as the scene plays out, it emerges that they are sisters. Bea helps Sarita dress up.

While this may sound banal, it’s shot in a long take, and there’s something utterly compelling about it. Perhaps it’s the script, which appears to do everything it needs to with no flab or wastage. Perhaps it’s the casting: you absolutely come to believe these two are sisters (as far as I can tell, despite having the same surname and looking quite similar, the two actresses are not real life sisters).… Read the rest

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Riddle of Fire

Director – Weston Razooli – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

****

Two siblings and their friend get caught up in a quest through the great hills and woods of Wyoming on their bikes to find a speckled egg so they can bake the boys’ sick mother a blueberry pie – out on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, July 8th

Wyoming. Young siblings Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie A’Dale (Skyler Peters) along with their slightly older friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro) break into the Otomo warehouse to steal a videogame console so they can play on the TV during the Summer holidays. Alas, they’ve reckoned without the two boys’ mother (Danielle Hoetmer) password protecting the TV. She currently has the worst cold she has ever had and isn’t going to relent on the password for the foreseeable future – it’s a beautiful day, and she wants them outside enjoying themselves, not cooped up in the house – unless the kids go to the store and get her a blueberry pie, the one thing that would make her feel better.

So the three kids set out for the local store on their pushbikes, but on arrival find the place has run out of blueberry pies and the cook is off sick (perhaps there’s a bug going around).… Read the rest

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Kill

Director – Nikhil Nagesh Bhat – 2023 – India – Cert. 18 – 105m

***1/2

Trying to prevent the love of his life from becoming trapped in an arranged marriage, a commando finds himself on a train fighting a violent gang of bandits – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 5th

Commando Amrit (Lakshya aka Laksh Lalwani) returns from active duty for a clandestine meeting with his true love Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), who is being forcibly engaged to another man by her family. Her father owns the railway, and her family take her on board the sleeper train for New Delhi where her arranged marriage to her fiancé is to take place, unaware that also on board the train are a party of bandits who plan to rob all the passengers.

The bandits are equally unaware that also on board the train are Amrit and his friend and fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) who intend to remove Tulika and take her away from her family’s plans which threaten Amrit and Tulika’s love. Among the bandits, firebrand Fani (Raghav Juyal) has an unfortunate tendency to kill the wrong opponent or prisoner at the wrong time…

The boy / girl romance element is fairly syrupy and over the top, and features heavily in Amrit’s motivation, especially once Tulika and her beloved younger sister Aahna (Adrija Sinha) are taken prisoner.… Read the rest

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La Chimera
(La Chimera)

Director – Alice Rohrwacher – 2023 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 133m

***

In an attempt to come to terms with his past, an ex-con returns to his home town, where he previously used to rob ancient artefacts from burial sites and graves – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to get in La Chimera, and after watching it, I was none the wiser. Arthur (Josh O’Connor) comes out of prison and gets the train back to Tuscany. He meets some girls on a train, and the profile of one of them reminds him of decorative Etruscan art. He has a run in with a sock salesman, who tells him he smells.

Getting off the train, he tries hard not to be picked up by an old mate, who wants to take him to see a bunch of friends. He’s been in prison for grave-robbing and doesn’t want to get back into that game. Instead, he returns to the house of his deceased (or at least presumed deceased|) girlfriend Beniamina, where her mother Flora (an unrecognisable Isabella Rossellini) refuses to believe that Beniamina has gone. While Flora welcomes him with open arms, and introduces him to her maid and singing pupil Italia (Carole Duarte), she’s happy to be there.… Read the rest

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The Lavender Hill Mob

Director – Charles Crichton – 1951 – UK – Cert. U – 78m

*****

A Bank of England employee stumbles upon the perfect means to rob his employer of the gold bullion he transports there on a daily basis– classic Ealing comedy is back out in a new 4k restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

Holland (Alec Guinness) has a lowly job at the Bank of England supervising the transfer of recently minted bars of gold bullion to the bank’s secure vault by security van., He rides in the back and is forever asking the harried driver to check round the corner for suspected cars lying in wait to ambush the van. He is considered an honest nobody, an appearance he has cultivated for the best part of two decades. He has a mind to rob the van, if only he could work out how to smuggle the bullion out of the country.

Fate intervenes in the form of a newly arrived tenant at the downmarket Balmoral Guest House in Lavender Hill, where he lodges. Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) runs a business selling tourist tat, including lead models of the Eiffel Tour for selling at that Parisian monument. He melts the lead down on his London premises to cast it into the models.… Read the rest

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Crazy Thunder Road
(Kuruizaki
Sanda Rodo,
狂い咲きサンダーロード)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1980 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

Following on from Arrow’s superb BD of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) comes Third Window’s equally impressive BD release of its predecessor in the Ishii canon Crazy Thunder Road (1980) – on Blu-ray from Monday, February 21st 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK

This was Ishii’s Nihon University student graduation project, his first to be shot on 16mm rather than Super 8, which somehow got picked up for distribution by major Japanese Studio Toei which led to their giving him a budget for Burst City. Tom Mes, who as with Burst City supplies a commentary for the film, describes Crazy Thunder Road as “one of the Holy Grails of Japanese film releases if not the Holy Grail.”

When Toei presented Ishii with what seemed like astronomical funding for Burst City, it led him to overreach himself. In retrospect, he considers Burst City unfinished… [Read the full review at All The Anime]

Crazy Thunder Road was out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, February 21st, 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK.… Read the rest