Tag: grief

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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

YMCA Baseball Team
(YMCA Yagudan,
YMCA야구단)

Director – Kim Hyun-seok – 2002 – South Korea – Cert. – 104m

***

In 1905, as the Japanese take over the running of their country, a small group of Koreans form a baseball team to defeat the Japanese – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2025 which runsin cinemas from Wednesday, November 5th to Tuesday, November 18th

A lightweight sports comedy loosely inspired by historical events, this is set in 1905, by which time the Japanese were moving to occupy Korea. Lee Ho-chang (Song Kang-ho) is playing soccer on a local plateau when the ball goes off the edge and into the local YMCA missionary compound below. While retrieving the ball, he is confronted by US-schooled baseball enthusiast Min Jung-rim (Kim Hye-soo).

Much comedy is derived (albeit not that successfully for Western audiences) from Ho-chang’s taking a romantic liking to her, even though she has not the slightest interest in him, preferring (when he turns up later in the narrative) Japanese-schooled Oh Day-hyun (Kim Joo-hyuk) who is already highly skilled at baseball, which arrived in Japan in 1872, some 30 years before it came to Korea. Also in the team is bespectacled Ryu Kwang-tae (Hwang Jung-min), whose bureaucrat father is collaborating with the Japanese administration.… 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

Red Path
(Les Enfants Rouges,
الذراري الحمر)

Director – Lotfi Achour – 2024 – Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When paradise is suddenly taken away from him, a young innocent must come to terms with stark and brutal forces of corruption and death – searing drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 20th

** SPOILER ALERT**

Two boys are herding a flock of sheep cross-country. The older one (Wided Dabebi), who tells the younger not to be scared, but to watch out for mines, knows his way around. The younger one Achraf (Ali Helali) hasn’t told his mother he’s doing this, because he knows she would have forbidden him from coming.

They are navigating the slopes of Tunisia’s Mighila Mountain, which is fabulously beautiful. They find a perfect place to give the sheep a rest, and the older one shows the younger a good spot – they climb to the top of a ridge, with a stunning, panoramic view of the local landscape, and bask on the rock in the sunshine. Life is good. In fact, it is paradise. After some time, they head back down to the watering hole they left earlier, plunge their heads in the cool water.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Michelangelo
Love and Death

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2017 – UK – Cert. U – 91m

*****

Sixteenth Century Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo remains one of the greatest artists of all time, yet his overreaching ambition frequently proved his undoing – back out in UK cinemas to tie in with the 550th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth from Tuesday, May 20th

“From a fountain of mercy… my suffering is born.” These words (voiced by James Faulkner as Michelangelo) accompany images of a present day sculptor (Marco Ambrosini) working away at a piece of marble in his studio. The writings of Vasari (voice: Lawrence Kennedy) take up the story. A boy was born to a noble family in 1475. Art Critic and Author Jonathan Jones places Michelangelo among the greats, like Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Picasso. He deals with the strangest, darkest and most difficult stuff. He is the original famous artist. He had two biographies written about him in his lifetime, and took great interest in them, helping bring them to fruition. He painted, sculpted, built architecture, wrote poetry, even built military fortifications. This was the time when artists started being regarded as creative geniuses, according to Art Historian Jennifer Sliwka. Vasari referred to Michelangelo and his art in terms of Divinity and then the Divine.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Last Dance
(Po Dei Juk,
破·地獄)

Director – Anselm Chan – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12a – 130m (extended version – Cert. 15 – 140m)

**** (regular version) / unseen (extended version)

A failed, professional wedding planner joins a Taoist funeral director as a partner in his company as various crises come to a head in the latter’s family – engaging drama is back out in UK cinemas in an extended version on Friday, April 24th following the original version’s release on Friday, November 15th 2024

There have been movies about undertakers and funeral parlours before, but never one quite like this. Whether or not one is at a stage in life where one has had much experience of bereavement, at some point, each one of us is going to die – and, before that, in all likelihood, have to deal with our nearest and dearest dying and, by extension, undertakers and funeral directors in whatever culture we happen to live. Consequently, there is a universal fascination with such matters.

Hong Kong has a very specific cultural take on this phenomenon in its Taoist priests and rituals. While these have over the years supplied the basis for much beloved and fantastical Hong Kong action or horror fare such as Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983) or the Mr.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Bridget Jones
Mad about the Boy

Director – Michael Morris – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 124m

*****

Following the death of her husband, Bridget must carry on raising her kids even as she restarts her career and attempts to find love, sex and romance once again – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, February 13th

The character of Bridget Jones first burst onto cinema screens in Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) in what turned out to be a hugely successful adaptation of a hugely successful publishing phenomenon. The book spawned three more volumes, and the film spawned adaptations of them. For reasons best known to the producers, they skipped the third published book Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy to film the fourth one, Bridget Jones’ Baby, as the third movie.

The reason may be that Mad about the Boy is set following the death of the heroine’s beloved husband, a top human rights lawyer, making her not the single woman of the first film, but a widow navigating not just life, with all its ups and downs, but grief, which doesn’t sound like a great premise for a comedy. The script, co-written like its three predecessors by author Helen Felding, doesn’t shirk this difficult subject either.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Marines
Who Never Returned
(Doraoji
Anneun Haebyong,
돌아오지 않는 해병)

Director – Lee Man-hee – 1963 – South Korea – 110m

***1/2

A small unit of Korean soldiers pushing North in the Korean War adopt an orphaned girl as a mascot before being all but wiped out – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

This opens impressively with what looks like stock footage of armoured cars and infantry coming up a beach. Soldiers race across open ground to a safe shooting position, briefly going back a couple of dozen or so feet to drag two of their wounded comrades forward into comparative safety.

They move on to a derelict, war-torn town. Burning buildings, half-collapsed sections of walls (one of which partially topples as they wait momentarily beside it). One soldier advances across a patch of open ground, gun in hands, grenade at the ready, watched by his expectant comrades from their positions of cover. Time seems to stand still. Eventually he lobs the grenade and the others move up behind him. He drops into a ditch. Ahead of him, a civilian woman comes onto the waste ground with her small daughter.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Starve Acre

Director – Daniel Kokotajlo – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 98m

***

As a couple become mired in grief following the death of their son, their behaviour turns increasingly obsessive, erratic and violent – terrifying and unsettling folk horror is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 6th and on Blu-ray, DVD and BFI Player from Monday, October 21st

Thinking the fresh air of the countryside will benefit their son’s health, the family of Richard (Matt Smith), Juliette (Morfydd Clark), and their young son Owen (Arthur Shaw) move from their urban home to the wilds of the Yorkshire countryside and the house, named Starve Acre, in which Richard grew up. Owen doesn’t respond too well to the new environment. An unfortunate incident occurs offscreen at a village event, in which an animal gets stabbed in the eye and Owen’s clothing is stained with blood.

His understandably concerned parents take him to Dr. Monk (Roger Barclay) for advice. It isn’t immediately obvious as to what exactly is wrong, and the situation is set to worsen for the couple.

In Richard’s opinion, it doesn’t help that their hardened, elderly neighbour Gordon (Sean Gilder) visits quite often to fill the boy’s head with tales of a mysterious Jack Grey.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Count of Monte Cristo
(Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)
(2024)

Directors – Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte – 2024 – France – Cert. 12a – 173m

*****

An innocent Frenchman framed and imprisoned as a Napoleonic partisan escapes to impose justice on his false accusers – new Dumas adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 30th

There have been numerous adaptions of The Count of Monte Cristo for the screen, not to mention radio and other media, over the years; this latest one is directed by the screenwriters of The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady (both Martin Bourboulon, 2023), who clearly have a strong feel for Alexandre Dumas’ works.

Much of what’s here is familiar: shortly after the fall of Napoleon, on the day of his wedding to sweetheart Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier from The New Girlfriend, François Ozon, 2014), ship’s crew member Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney from Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is arrested for Bonapartism, falsely accused by another crew member Danglars (Patrick Mille from the two 2023 Three Musketeers movies and Love Crime, Alain Corneau, 2010). Neither the crown prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) nor Dantès’ friend Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon from Jumbo, Zoé Wittock, 2020) refute these allegations, although both know them to be untrue, since both have their own reasons for doing so: the prosecutor because Dantès could unwittingly ruin him, Fernand because he too is in love with and wishes to marry Mercédès.… Read the rest