Tag: journalist

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Flee
(Flugt)

On being a refugee

Flee
Directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Certificate 15, 83 minutes
Released 11 February

Review for Reform magazine, February 2022.

There have been animated films about life under the Taliban in Afghanistan before, including The Breadwinner (reviewed in Reform, June 2018), but Flee is different. It covers not only the experience of fleeing your home country, but also the psychological aftermath once you successfully settle in another country. And although animated, it’s a documentary based on a real person. Amin (not his real name), a gay Danish citizen due shortly to marry his long-time partner Kasper, is persuaded by a radio journalist to give a series of interviews about his history as a refugee. His experiences have taken their toll and now threaten to undermine his relationship with Kasper.

Amin’s fond memories of childhood are very different from the way we now think of Afghanistan. As a young boy… [Read more…]

Full review in Reform magazine, February 2022.

Read my alternative review here.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Finding Angel
(Cheonsaneun Baileoseu,
천사는 바이러스)

Director – Kim Seong-jun – 2021 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 114m

****

Who is the mysterious so-called ‘Angel’ who every Christmas delivers a box containing a large sum of money to a needy local resident of a small, rural town? – out in cinemas on Friday, November 26th

For the last seventeen years at Christmas, the ‘Faceless Angel’ has visited the town of Rohsong in Jeonju City, South Korea to leave a box containing money for a local person in need. Last year, an old woman received the money she needed for a knee operation. Who this person might actually be has remained a mystery, but the locals are glad the Angel is there doing what he or she is doing.

Wishing to solve the mystery and with the journalist’s scent of a good story, newspaperman Kim Ji-hoon (Park Sung-il from Samjin Company English Class, Lee Jong-pil, 2020) arrives in the town in December as the temperature plummets. He makes enquiries at the town office but the girl on the front desk (Lee Ga-kyung) stonewalls him. His attempts at talking to the townspeople don’t get him very far until he talks to old Miss Ok-bun (Moon Sook) about renting a room and she promptly puts him up in her freezing upstairs bedroom.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Ring
(Ringu,
リング )
(Collection)

Ring

Director – Hideo Nakata – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

Spiral (Rasen)

Director – Joji Iida – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

** 1/2

Ring 2

Director – Hideo Nakata – 1999 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 95m

*****

Ring 0

Director – Norio Tsuruta – 2000 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 99m

***1/2

Ring plays in the BFI Japan 2021 season October / November at BFI Southbank, also currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme. Ring and Ring 2 are on Shudder.

You watch a short, scary video on the VCR. Then your phone rings… you have a week to show it to someone else – or die! Ring (1998) took the world by storm.

A single parent, TV journalist investigates a cursed videotape…

I review Arrow’s Ring Collection for All The Anime.

Ring plays in the BFI Japan 2021 season October / November at BFI Southbank, also currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI Japan 2021 programme. Ring and Ring 2 are on Shudder.

Trailer:

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Dissident

Jamal Khashoggi and Hatice Cengiz

Spiritual wickedness

The Dissident
Directed by Bryan Fogel
Certificate 12 (Amazon advisory), 119 minutes
Released on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and Ireland from April 1st 2021

On 2 October 2018, the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey to obtain a marriage licence. He never came out. It later transpired that Khashoggi had been murdered on the premises by Saudi officials and his body dismembered, taken away and disposed of.

This fast-paced and frankly mind-boggling documentary examines a good deal more than the murder…[read more]

Full review in Reform magazine.

See my alternate, longer review on this site.

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Dissident

Jamal Khashoggi

Director – Bryan Fogel – 2020 – UK – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

An investigation into the state-sanctioned killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey in 2018 – on Amazon Prime from Thursday, April 1st

If you had to use a single phrase to describe this documentary, it would be “jaw-dropping”. The central subject here is the disappearance of Saudi-born Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi who on October 2nd 2018 entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey to obtain a document and was never seen again.

There are a number of narrative strands: the career of a Saudi exile Omar Abdulaziz Alzahrani in Montreal, Canada who Khashoggi befriended, a brief history of the Saudi regime focusing in particular on the last decade, Khashoggi’s ongoing romance with young Turkish political researcher Hadice Cengiz who he planned to marry and the story of what actually went on inside the consulate recounted by the Turkish prosecutor Irfan Fidan.

Jamal Khashoggi and Hatice Cengiz

It’s jaw-dropping because it delivers one devastating revelation after another. The idea of entering your country’s consulate to collect a document and not leaving alive is horrific enough, but there are numerous other, equally chilling disclosures here.… Read the rest