Tag: identity

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The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)

Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic – 2025 – France, Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

Midwinter. A homeless girl stumbles onto a film set where a notoriously difficult actress is shooting an adaptation of The Snow Queen – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 21st

Opening with microscopic images of of snowflakes and more abstract visuals of refracted light, this swiftly delivers a female voiceover (by Aurélia Petit from Saint Omer, Alice Diop, 2022; By the Grace of God, François Ozon, 2018; Happy End, Michael Haneke, 2017; Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas, 2016; The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, 2006) in French with English subtitles for those of us in the UK, in which the word ‘neige’ (snow) is seemingly, endlessly repeated. Then images of a girl wandering snow covered mountainsides gives way to night time small town streets before Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini) is told off for arriving late at the supper table. “I was afraid you’d gone”, says one of the younger girls (Cassandre Louis Urbain).

At night, Jeanne surreptitiously reads a postcard from a friend picturing Alpenaille skating rink addressed to her at the Bon Secours (Good Rescue) Foster Home.

The little girl from earlier comes into her room complaining of a nightmare.… Read the rest

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London Korean
Film Festival
(LKFF)
2025

LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2025 runs in cinemas from Wednesday, November 5th to Tuesday, November 18th

The London Korean Film Festival, now celebrating its 20th year, kicks off tonight with its Opening Gala, a World Premiere of Frosted Window (Kim Jong-Kwan, 2025), followed by a Q&A with director Kim and actor Yeon Woo-jin.

It bows out in two weeks time with its Closing Gala, Harbin (Woo Min-ho, 2024), starring Hyun Bin, with cinematography by Hong Kyeong-pyo who shot Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019).

In between these two events comes a Special Screening of Hi-Five, a superhero comedy by Kang Hyoung-chul (Swing Kids, 2018; Sunny, 2011).

Also, this year the Festival launches its first-ever LKFF Audience Award, giving festival-goers the chance to vote for their favourite film and help shape this 20th anniversary edition. Of the four films made available to press in advance, my vote would go to the enigmatically titled 3670 (Park Joon-ho, 2025), a compelling drama about a gay man who has defected from North to South Korea. The film, which picked up four awards at the 26th Jeonju International Film Festival, transcends Korean, gay and religious demographics to speak to a much wider audience, and in this writer’s opinion deserves a proper UK release.… Read the rest

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3670
(3670)

Director – Park Joon-ho – 2025 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 124m

*****

A gay man who has defected from North to South Korea must get to grips with Seoul’s gay scene and his own sexual and religious identity – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2025 which runs in cinemas from Wednesday, November 5th to Tuesday, November 18th

Sexually active, gay Seoul resident Cheol-jun (Cho You-hyun) grapples with the fact that his partners don’t stick around after physical interaction. Cheol-jun has recently escaped from North to South Korea. He works at a local store counter and attends a class to help defectors adapt to their new way of life. After class, rather than hang out with fellow defectors such as Hak-min (Jeon Du-sik), who is trying to pair him off with pretty class girl Ji-ye (Choi Yun-seol), he follows phone directions to a mixer, a club night to help gay men make friends.

Numbers are assigned. Asked why he is dressed so formally – is he from North Korea, or something – he responds candidly, “I am.” After drinking “love shots” – two men drink with arms intertwined – guests are invited to write “love notes” to the number they fancy.… 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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The Shrouds

Director – David Cronenberg – 2024 – Canada, France – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

An entrepreneur who has created graveyard corpse-viewing technology to cope with his late wife’s death by cancer finds his inner world disrupted when his creation is vandalised and hacked – The Shrouds is out on UK digital from Monday, August 11th

She (Diane Kruger from The 355, Simon Kinberg, 2022; Disorder, Alice Winocour, 2015; Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, 2009; Joyeux Noel, Christian Carion, 2005; Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) lies dead on a slab suspended on air in an underground cave. He (Vincent Cassel from A Dangerous Method, 2011; Eastern Promises, 2007, both David Cronenberg; Default, Choi Kook-Hee, 2018; Trance, Danny Boyle, 2013; Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky, 2010; Mesrine, Jean-François Richet, 2008; La Haine, Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995) screams. He is Karsh, an entrepreneur who has set up the first in a projected series of high-tech cemeteries. Thanks to his proprietary technology GraveTech, clients can install the body of their loved one in a shroud, a wraparound artefact resembling clothing fitted with cameras which record images of the deceased’s decaying body in real time, accessible for viewing by the client whenever they wish.… 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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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

War Paint
Women at War

The Crying Game. Between a Rock and a Hard Place 2017 by Marcelle Hanselaar

Director – Margy Kinmonth – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 89m

*****

A look at the output of various women artists who have documented and dissected war, and what they can tell us – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 28th

Although being promoted, reasonably enough, with an image from World War Two of women working with barrage balloons, right from the start in narration over its opening titles this breaks the mould for anyone expecting it to cover any one specific historical or geographical war. “I’m going to talk to women all round the world”, says director Kinmonth in regard to the concept of war as a catalyst for creativity. “What do women see that men don’t?” Quite apart from her gender, she is well-placed to tackle such a subject having recently made two documentaries on the subject of war artists: Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022), War Art with Eddie Redmayne (2015), and many more before that on the subject of art in assorted social contexts.

The film is a compendium of interviews with living female artists or, in the cases of artists who’ve passed on, their descendants or proponents. Some of the names are familiar, such as Lee Miller, Maggi Hambling or Dame Rachel Whiteread, others much less so.… Read the rest

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The Substance

Director – Coralie Fargeat – 2024 – US – Cert. 18 – 140m

****1/2

Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) hosts a network TV keep fit show, but she’s getting on in years – and so is her audience. The show’s producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) has decided that younger talent is needed in order to attract a younger audience, and gives her the elbow. By a quirk of fate or screenplay, a mailshot about something called The Substance arrives in her penthouse apartment. It’s some sort of beauty product, although the high-end design of the blurb doesn’t explain exactly what it is or what it does. There’s a phone number.

Elizabeth’s identity is bound up with the former show. She calls the number. She engages in conversation with the unseen voice on the other end of the phone. She decides to give The Substance a try. She is told to write down an address. Later, she is sent locker card key number 503 and instructed to collect her package from that address. It turns out to be a derelict entrance with a shutter that only opens part way to about a yard in height, meaning you have to duck under it.… Read the rest

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Reawakening

Director – Virginia Gilbert – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

***

When a couple’s daughter returns after a decade’s long absence, the husband starts to suspect she is not really their daughter – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s been ten years since their daughter Clare left home at 14. Not a day has gone by for her parents John (Jared Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) when they haven’t thought about her. The couple are in touch with the police and give periodic press conferences which have, so far, yielded nothing in the way of results.

Yet John, a self-employed electrician, has never given up hope. On the streets, he looks out for his daughter in the hope that he might one day see her again. And then, one day, he sees her sitting at then getting up from a table outside a café. He runs towards her, nearly getting hit by a car in the process, then follows her only to lose her down a turning.

Every morning at the primary school where she teaches, his wife Mary re-pins the poster of their missing daughter over the top of other bits of posters pinned on top of it to ensure that it can be clearly seen.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Sky Peals

Director – Moin Hussain – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 91m

****

When his estranged father dies after leaving him an answering machine message, a motorway service station employee starts to question the identity of his father and, by extension, of himself – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Adam (Faraz Ayub) receives an answerphone message from his father Hassan (Jeff Mirza) who he’s not seen for years; his father hasn’t much time left, is currently near Adam’s home and wants to meet up and talk. Like the answerphone message left by her soon-to-be deceased husband for the heroine of After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020) – is a British subgenre emerging here with Muslims and bereavement? – the recording plays on Adam’s mind at his workplace, the Sky Peals motorway service station, where he does the night shift preparing burgers in the kitchen and keeps himself pretty much to himself. He complains to his superior that the system isn’t working and customers aren’t getting served their orders, but the old manager has left, and the new one doesn’t start ’til Monday. Meanwhile, people aren’t getting their orders.

The police find a dead body in a car in the service station car park.… Read the rest