Tag: life and death

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Choral

Director – Nicholas Hytner – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 113m

*****

Against the backdrop of WW1 and a dwindling male population, the choral society of a small Yorkshire village attempts to mount a performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 7th

The fictional town of Ramsden, Yorkshire, 1916. World War One has been raging almost two years in France, but that almost seems like a distant world to 17-year-old lads Ellis (Taylor Uttley) and Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) whose main concern is eyeing up the local girls and working out their chances. Almost. Because Lofty’s job as a telegram boy, on which rounds Ellis accompanies him, means he’s delivering news of deaths from the Front to wives waiting anxiously at home and, following the 1916 Conscription Act requiring men aged 18 and above to join the armed forces, conscription notes to households from the King. (Prior to the Act, joining up had been voluntary although there was considerable moral and social pressure on men to do so.)

Closer to home, a more immediate concern looms for Ramsden in the form of the local choir, which has just lost its musical director to the army.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Late Shift
(Heldin)

Director – Petra Blondina Volpe – 2025 – Switzerland – Cert. 12a – 92m

****1/2

An experienced and competent nurse in a hospital in the Western world endures a particularly gruelling night shift – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

There’s a moment of calm at the start of Late Shift… Scrubs going through a laundry system… Floria Lind (Leonie Benesch from September 5, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024; The Teachers’ Lounge, Ilker Çatak, 2023; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) on the night bus to her shift… She and a colleague making small talk whilst changing at the lockers… (The film ends similarly, with a reverse of this bookend, peace after the night shift is over.) And then, they’re on shift.

As soon as Mrs. Lind comes into the ward, the chaos starts. She helps a male colleague (bilingual in German and, for the patient, French) lift the demented Mrs Kuhn (Margherita Schoch) out of her wheelchair so Floria can change the lady’s underwear (and, quite literally, clean her shit off the floor). This evening, it’s Floria, one other nurse (Sonja Riesen), and Amelie (Selma Jamal Aldin), an inexperienced med student. Handing over, a colleague runs through by name the patients on the ward this shift and their various medical needs.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Director – Martin Rosen – 1978 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

When a young rabbit visionary foresees doom for those who remain, some of the rabbits leave their warren in search of a safer home, encountering many life-threatening perils along the way – new 4K restoration of animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th, following its World Premiere in the London Film Festival on Saturday, October 12th

LFF: Sat 12 Oct 12:20 World Premiere, Tues 15 Oct 12:15,
both BFI Southbank NFT1.

This opens with a mythological segment involving a powerful God, represented as the sun, and rabbitkind, specifically the archetypal rabbit El-ahrairah. It’s drawn and painted in an arresting, non-naturalistic style involving coloured lines animated against a white background to create the impression of moving, primitive drawings, due in large part to uncredited director John Hubley, whose vision for the film was at odds with that of producer Martin Rosen. The latter ended up firing the former as he wanted something grittier and less lightweight.

It’s arguable this has worked to the film’s advantage: the fable sequence works as otherworldly rabbit mythology, suggesting a race of intelligent creatures capable of constructing creation myths about their species much as human beings do.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

A Greyhound
of a Girl

Director – Enzo d’Alò – 2023 – Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, UK, Latvia, Estonia, Germany – Cert. U – 88m

****1/2

A young, cookery-obsessed girl with a fear of dogs must come to terms with the fact that her beloved granny is dying – animated feature is out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, August 26th

Ireland. Faced with an unsympathetic interview panel for the Ballymaloe Cooking School when she unwisely makes a tatty tart with bananas, young girl Mary (voice: Mia O’Connor) finds she has an ally in her granny (voice: Rosaleen Linehan) who gives the judges a friendly talking to when they reject her granddaughter. The girl can always come back next time. She and granny are driving home on a minor coastal road and granny is refusing to talk about her own childhood – apparently there was an incident involving a dog and a well – when granny swerves to avoid a dog and dents the car. Mary doesn’t like dogs, although she’s a caring child who stopped granny accidentally running over a hedgehog earlier.

Granny has been coughing all day. With the news that Mary’s bestie Ava (voice: Amelie Metacalf) is soon be leaving as her dad has got a job in England, it’s not a great time for the young girl, and it gets worse, when she discovers her gran has a fever and her mum calls an ambulance.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

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

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Red Angel
(Akai Tenshi,
赤い天使)

Director – Yasuzo Masumura – 1966 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 95m

An army nurse is sent to China – as a slogan in one of the film’s trailers puts it, “on the battlefield where life and death is decided.”

*****

Full Blu-ray review published at All The Anime.

In 1939, for her first posting, Nurse Sakura Nishi (Ayako Wakao) is sent to Tianjin Army Hospital. A number of the male patients appear to be faking medical conditions so as to escape the front line, where Japanese casualties are heavy. When she first does her rounds, Private Sakamoto (Jotaro Senba) and a number of the other men are very forward and ask her a lot of personal questions.

Much worse is to come, however, because when she does her night rounds, she finds herself trapped in the men’s dorm and raped by Sakamoto while the others hold her down. Reporting this incident to the head nurse (Ranko Akagi), Nishi learns she’s this soldier’s third victim. The head nurse resolves to have Sakamoto sent back to the front.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, Nishi is then posted to a front-line hospital where medics go through the incoming wounded, pronouncing them dead or designating them for surgery, for which read amputation.… Read the rest