Tag: host

Rumours
(2024)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 October 2024
No Comments on Rumours
(2024)
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Director – Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson – 2024 – Germany, Canada – Cert. 15 – 109m

****1/2

The G7 leaders meet at a summit only to find themselves trapped in the woods following an apocalyptic event – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 6th

Every so often, the leaders of the world’s leading liberal democracies – the G7 – gather for summits to deal with the impending global crisis. On this occasion, it’s a bright, sunshiny day. Prior to getting down to business, they are toured through some local woods and shown the remains of one of the Bog People in a deep pit, their corpses perfectly preserved, apart from their bones which have disappeared, thanks to the properties of the bog land environment in which they were buried thousands of years ago. One corpse which they are shown has had his penis cut off and hung ornamentally round his neck. British PM Cardosa Dewindt (Nicky Amuka-Bird) is understandably somewhat taken aback by this.

The seven have their picture taken by the side of the pit, posing with spades. Then it’s on to the gazebo in a large clearing to sit down and discuss the matter in hand.… Read the rest

Tags alcohol, alcoholic, Alicia Vikander, apocalypse, apocalyptic event, bog land, Bog People, bones, bot to entrap paedophiles, Britain, burial, Canada, catastrophe, Cate Blanchett, catering staff, Charles Dance, clearing, corpses, crisis, cross the lake, dark skies, Denis Ménochet, distant, divorce, draft statement, drink, elected leaders, estate, EU President, Evan Johnson, falling asleep, fancy, fantasy, ferry, foggy, follow the rope, food, France, French Premier, G7, Galen Johnson, gazebo, German Chancellor, Germany, giant brain, gibberish, global crisis, gust of wind, Guy Maddin, horror, host, into the water, Italy, Japan, jetty, leaders, LFF, LFF 2024, liberal democracy, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2024, mansion, metaphor, mud, Nicky Amuka-Bird, old age, penis, photo opportunity, pieces of paper, pit, PM, political system, politics, preservation, President, prime minister, protestors, relationship reconciliation, remains, representative, rescue, Rolando Ravello, Roy Dupuis, satire, science fiction, scribble, seven-year-old girl, severed penis, sex, split into groups, statesmen, summit, Swedish, table, Takehiro Hira, terrorists, text, tour, trance, trapped, trapped in the woods, US, US President, waffle, weather, Western democracy, wheelbarrow, wine, woods

Features Live Action Movies

No Bears
(Khers Nist,
خرس نیست)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 October 2022
No Comments on No Bears
(Khers Nist,
خرس نیست)
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Director – Jafar Panahi – 2022 – Iran – Cert. 12a – 106m

*****

An Iranian film director banned from leaving his country rents a house close to the border with Turkey, in which country he is remotely directing a film – available on the following rental streaming services from Monday, March 27th: Amazon Prime, Google Play Movies, YouTube (all £3.49), Apple TV (£4.49), BFI Player (£4.50), and Curzon (£4.99)

In a busy, metropolitian street somewhere in Iran, woman restaurateur Zara (Mina Kavani) is greeted by her partner Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei), who has secured a fake passport for her. She has only three days to use it before the passport, stolen from a tourist, is stopped. But she doesn’t want to travel outside the country without him: he is the only thing that makes her life bearable.

Then we realise we are watching a movie shoot not in Iran but in neighbouring Turkey. The director is Jafar Panahi (playing himself) and he is not allowed out of Iran, so he is renting a room in an Iranian village not far from the Turkish border and watching the shoot remotely via his computer. He’s been assured that the local internet reception is good, but it isn’t and keeps cutting out, making his job all but impossible, although his first assistant director, cast and crew are doing a good job of getting the shots in the can even when they don’t hear from him.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

No Bears
(Khers Nist,
خرس نیست)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 November 2022
No Comments on No Bears
(Khers Nist,
خرس نیست)
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A repressive Islamist regime

No Bears
Directed by Jafar Panahi
Certificate 12a, 106 minutes
Released 11 November

The Iranian director Jafar Panahi (whose son Panar made the excellent road movie Hit the Road) has been in trouble with the country’s repressive Islamist regime for some time and earlier this year was given six years in prison. The campaign to #freejafarpanahi is worth our support, and this release is timely considering what is happening in Iran now.

In No Bears, Jafar plays a fictionalised version of himself, a film director not allowed to leave Iran… [read the full review at Reform magazine]

Read my alternative, longer review here.

No Bears is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, November 11th following its screening in the BFI London Film Festival 2022.

#freejafarpanahi

Trailer:

LFF 2022 Trailer:

Features Live Action Movies

Possessor

Director – Brandon Cronenberg – 2020 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 103m

*****

A woman possesses other people’s bodies via technology to assassinate selected targets – on Shudder from Thursday, June 10th, as well Digital HD or BFI Player rental

Anyone who’s seen Brandon Cronenberg’s earlier Antiviral (2012) will know that he is a force to be reckoned with, operating in much the same area as his father David (whose Crash, 1996, is currently out on VoD and is released on UHD and BD on December 14th) but with his own, highly individual slant. And equally impressive.

His protagonist here is assassin Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) whose boss Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) inserts Vos’ consciousness into others so she can carry out hits on designated targets while occupying their bodies and consciousnesses. Lately, though, things haven’t been going quite to plan. In the body of Holly (Gabrielle Graham), Vos picks up a cutlery knife then repeatedly and bloodily stabs her target with it rather than simply shooting him with the supplied gun. Although Vos gives all the right answers in the psychological evaluation tests following her return, Girder is concerned.

He fears are raised further when Vos asks for time off with her partner Michael (Rossif Sutherland) and young son Ira (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot).… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Possessor

The irredeemable flesh

Possessor
Directed by Brandon Cronenberg
Certificate 18, 103 minutes
Released 27 November

The controversial director David Cronenberg has long been an exponent of something he calls ‘the new flesh’, ways that humanity might transcend its bodies. His son Brandon is the same, his new film Possessor concerning the world of cybernetic industrial espionage. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is an assassin working for a company run by Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), which injects her consciousness into other people as host personalities so that, wearing the clothing of their minds and bodies, she can kill designated targets before being extracted…

His father’s notorious Crash (1996) was restored for reissue in November… [Read more]

Read the full review in Reform.

Read my alternative review here.

Trailer:

Features Live Action Movies

Sputnik

Director – Egor Abramenko – 2020 – Russia – Cert. 15 – 113m

***** some of the underlying concepts and all of the special effects

** everything else

Available on VoD from Friday, August 14th. Now on Netflix

In the early 1980s a two-man Russian spacecraft undergoes a mysterious incident during its return to Earth leaving one of the crew dead. He has had half his helmet and half his head ripped off.

Survivor Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov) is confined to a research base in the middle of nowhere for observation. Supervisor Kirill Averchenko (Aleksey Demidov) recruits psychiatrist Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) who is in trouble for taking ethically questionable decisions concerning the life of a patient, believing that she did the right thing and saved a life. Averchenko needs someone who will do whatever it takes and damn the consequences and he would appear to have judged her correctly. Once there, however, she finds herself in conflict with chief scientist Yan Rigel (Anton Vasilev).

She quickly learns that the surviving, isolated cosmonaut is the host to an alien parasite which leaves his body at specific times of night then returns. And Konstantin, who suffered memory blackout during the return to Earth, doesn’t seem to know about the parasite.… Read the rest

Tags 1980s, alien, brutalism, cosmonauts, eighties, horror, host, isolation, Moscow, Netflix, orphan, parasite, re-entry, research facility, Russia, science fiction, spaceship, special effects