Tag: love

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Features Live Action Movies

The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2001 – Austria, France – Cert. 18 – 131m

*****

A masochistic piano teacher with an abusive mother embarks on an affair with a young male student – the opening film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Warning: NSFW.

This is at once representative of Haneke’s wider body of work and very different from it.

Representative because he is one of those directors whose personal use of cinematic vocabulary has been so honed over his years of making movies that he is able to clearly and precisely articulate problematic, controversial and taboo ideas and subject matter that few directors would be able to handle without descending into exploitation or commercialism. He is a director steeped in cinema, fascinated by how the process of making a movie constructs the narrative or other viewing and listening experience, and how that is perceived and understood by audiences.

Different because although Haneke generally writes as well and directs his own films, they are mostly original pieces whereas this one is an adaptation of a book, The Piano Teacher / Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Before We Vanish
(Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha,
散歩する侵略者,
lit. Strolling Invaders)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2017 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 129m

***

Three humans claiming to be aliens steal ideas from people’s heads as they prepare for their race’s forthcoming invasion – from LEAFF, the London East Asia Film Festival 2017

This review is of a first viewing of this film. It really doesn’t happen often, but I can imagine liking this film more second time round. It’s a very strange movie.

Hands take a goldfish from a group in a white bathtub and transfer it into a metal pan. A sailor suited schoolgirl carries the fish in a bag to another house. Inside the latter, on its floor, the fish struggles to breathe as it lies on the ground out of water.

Spattered with blood, the girl (Yuri Tsunematsu) walks happily along the middle of a busy road. As she strolls without a care, swerving to avoid her, a lorry crashes headlong into an oncoming car.

Elsewhere, something is wrong with Shinji Kase (Ryuhei Matsuda from The Raid 2, Gareth Evans, 2014). His behaviour alarms his wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa from Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015, and playing in LEAFF this Saturday 28/10).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Timestalker

Director – Alice Lowe – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

*****

A reincarnated woman falls for the same man in different, historical time periods – hilarious romantic comedy of errors is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 11th

Agnes (Alice Lowe) is a woman falling madly in love. Sadly, the object of her affection Alex (Aneurin Barnard from Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) isn’t really interested. And her attempts at forming relationships seem to always end badly. Although not in the way you might expect – for instance, with her head being lopped off. Yet all is not lost: in the world of the Karmic cycle: you die one day only to be reborn in another time the next. However, Agnes seems destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, consistently falling for Alex the wrong man in each of her different lives at different times in history.

The whole thing plays out like a series of repeated cycles by the same characters in different generations. In that sense, it’s not entirely unlike The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2023), a serious art house science fiction costume drama mashup. Timestalker isn’t necessarily in the same league as that film, but then again, The Beast isn’t a comedy and Timestalker is really, really funny.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

My Favourite Cake
(Keyke Mahboobe Man,
کیک محبوب من)

Directors – Maryam Mogadam, Behtash Sanaeeha – 2024 – Iran, France, Sweden, Germany – Cert. 12a – 97m

****1/2

An old woman living alone in Iran takes a shine to a taxi driver after learning he has no romantic attachments – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

Mahin (Lily Farhadpour), 70, likes to lie in. Every morning, she’s woken by her mobile phone and her friend Pouran’s distinctive Vivaldi Four Seasons ringtone. She waters her small courtyard garden, she goes to the market to buy vegetables, she gets a lift home. She talks to her daughter and grandkids on a videolink – her daughter has long since left Iran. In the evening, she has friends round for a meal, including the hypochondriac Pouran who insists on talking about her recent colonoscopy (of which she’s brought along a disc with a video).

The next day, she gets a cab to a hotel to visit a coffee shop inside its premises, where she is confounded by a menu consisting of a QR code. She visits a park and asks a man there, where do people exercise? It seems they tend to come earlier in the morning than she gets up.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)

Director – Sean Wang – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young, Taiwanese-American teenager must deal with issues of ethnicity, family and love in 2008, when social media has become a significant element of growing up – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

2008. California. Summer. 13-year-old Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang), who prefers to go by the nickname Wang Wang, is rebelling. Mandarin is spoken at home by Nai Nai (‘grandma’; Chang Li Hua) and mum (Joan Chen), but that doesn’t stop mega-sweary English language shouting contests at the supper table between Wang Wang and elder sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) who is due to attend UCSD later in the year. When she’s out, Wang Wang hangs out in her room and posts as her on her Facebook (about which, amazingly, she never comes back to him). In the bathroom, he pees into her moisturising cream (leading to her threatening to period him in the mouth if he ever does it again).

Outside the house, he hangs out with his peers Farhad Mahmood (Raul DIal) and Jimmy Kim aka SOUP (Aaron Chang). Egged on by them in the manner of pubescents everywhere, he attempts to hang out with Madi (Mahaela Park), the girl he fancies.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kill

Director – Nikhil Nagesh Bhat – 2023 – India – Cert. 18 – 105m

***1/2

Trying to prevent the love of his life from becoming trapped in an arranged marriage, a commando finds himself on a train fighting a violent gang of bandits – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 5th

Commando Amrit (Lakshya aka Laksh Lalwani) returns from active duty for a clandestine meeting with his true love Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), who is being forcibly engaged to another man by her family. Her father owns the railway, and her family take her on board the sleeper train for New Delhi where her arranged marriage to her fiancé is to take place, unaware that also on board the train are a party of bandits who plan to rob all the passengers.

The bandits are equally unaware that also on board the train are Amrit and his friend and fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) who intend to remove Tulika and take her away from her family’s plans which threaten Amrit and Tulika’s love. Among the bandits, firebrand Fani (Raghav Juyal) has an unfortunate tendency to kill the wrong opponent or prisoner at the wrong time…

The boy / girl romance element is fairly syrupy and over the top, and features heavily in Amrit’s motivation, especially once Tulika and her beloved younger sister Aahna (Adrija Sinha) are taken prisoner.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Made in England:
The Films of
Powell and Pressburger

Powell and Pressburger on the set of The Red Shoes

Director – David Hinton – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 129m

*****

Martin Scorsese talks about the seminal British filmmaking duo, and how they inspired his own movies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

As a child, Martin Scorsese suffered from asthma and would constantly find himself at home while other kids were outside playing. He often found himself sitting front of the black and white TV watching a show called Million Dollar Movie. This would show a movie a week, playing it several times, and it was at a time when US producers wouldn’t sell their movie rights to TV but British producers would. Consequently, he grew up watching black and white versions of old British movies.

The ones he particularly liked opened with an arrow hitting a target: “a production of the Archers. Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.” When this logo and these names appeared, Scorsese always knew he was in good hands. He watched these movies over and over again whenever they were shown, and learned much of his filmmaking craft from them. The first of these films to which he thrilled didn’t have this logo: it was the Alexander Korda production of The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) and parts of the film have the unmistakeable Powell visual stamp.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Peasants
(Chłopi)

Directors – DK Welchman, Hugo Welchman – 2023 – Poland, Serbia, Lithuania – Cert. 15 – 114m

****1/2

A rural drama of romance, adultery and inheritance is expressed through the remarkable, foot-in-two-camps medium of live action filmmaking turned into animated painting – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

A small rural village in the early 20th Century. Young woman Jagna Paczesiówna (Kamila Urzędowska) is in love with Antek Boryna (Robert Gulaczyk). Unfortunately, not only is Antek already married to Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), who is fed up with his philandering, but also the latter’s father Maciej (Mirosław Baka), who is the richest person in the village, is widowed and wants Jagda to marry him – against her will but in line with that of her parents, who know a good thing when they see it. Alas, after the marriage, she carries on with Antek and things slowly go from bad to worse.

It’s gripping if harrowing stuff and would probably work well enough in live action, although it might not look that dissimilar to many other period costume dramas. It can occasionally be hard to keep track of who’s who, which I suspect is down to the script, an adaptation of a 1906 novel originally written as four volumes covering one year through the seasons Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, a trajectory also followed by the screenplay.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

One Fine Spring Day
(Bomnaleun Ganda,
봄날은 간다)

Director – Hur JIn-ho – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 113m

*****

The romance between a sound engineer and a radio DJ from winter through spring to its falling apart in summer – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2023 which runs in cinemas from Thursday, November 2nd to Thursday, November 16th

Winter. Twentysomething sound recordist Sang-woo (Yoo Ji-tae) lives at home with his family including his grandmother, to whom he’s completely devoted. He is hired by a radio station in a nearby town and finds himself working alongside DJ and talk radio host Eun-su (Lee Young-ae), travelling there in his van. They spend time in the local countryside recording sounds such as the wind across the tall grass and she invites him to her flat for the night. One thing almost leads to another, but woken by his trying to kiss her as she lies on a mattress on the floor after she let him use her bed, she tells him, let’s wait until we know each other better.

They quickly become inseparable, with much walking together, holding and hugging, although she won’t shout about it from the rooftops because, as she explains to him, if the radio station found out they were in a relationship, he’d get the sack.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The End Of Sex

Director – Sean Garrity – 2022 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 87m

***1/2

A married couple’s attempts to rekindle their sex life while their kids are away for a week go horribly wrong – out on digital from Monday, July 3rd

Packing their two young daughters off in the school bus to Winter Camp, Josh (Jonas Chernick) and Emma (Emily Hampshire) suddenly realise they have a week free to do…what? Drive to gymnastics and sit in the parents’ waiting area? Then it dawns on her: we don’t have to close the door. We can be as loud as we want. But while their parenting is generally successful, their sex life is much less so, with an attempt at coitus leading both of them to fake orgasm.

Sex seems to be in the air. Emily takes the opportunity of having extra time available to visit an art gallery with her best friend Wendy (Melanie Scrofano) for an exhibition which turns out to include black and white photographic print enlargements of testicles, where she runs into old art college friend Marlon (Gray Powell) who she fancies and who, it transpires, is not only the gallery owner but also fantasized about her back in their student days.… Read the rest