Tag: necklace

The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 November 2025
No Comments on The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)
Sticky post

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

Tags abusive, actress, adaptation, August Diehl, Aurélia Petit, bauble, bedtime story, bereavement, bleeding, blue bead, break-in, Cassandre Louis Urbain, catering table, cave, Christmas tree, Clara Pacini, costumes, cut, danger, dead mother, drink, drugs, enchantment, fairytale, film set, film shoot, foster home, France, Gaspar Noé, Germany, handbag, head wound, Hitch, hitch-hike, homeless, hotel, hotel lobby, ice, ice rink, icicles, ID card, identity, imposter, Italy, kiss, labyrinth, ledge, lift, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Marine Gesbert, Marion Cotillard, Midwinter, miniature set, mountain, mountainsides, mulled wine, necklace, nightmare, P.A., playing a role, postcard, precipice, predator, prism, projection box, rape, raven, realm, refracted light, rushes, screening room, skating rink, sleep, snow, snowflakes, stand-in, stranded, streets, succubus, supper table, sustenance, tantrum, The Ice Tower, The Snow Queen, torchlight, tower, Valentina Vezzoso, wandering, warehouse

Features Live Action Movies

Alone in the Night
(Yoru ga Mata Kuru,
夜がまた来る)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 17 October 2025
No Comments on Alone in the Night
(Yoru ga Mata Kuru,
夜がまた来る)
Sticky post

Director – Takashi Ishii – 1994 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 108m

****1/2

After her undercover cop husband is killed by a gang, Nami infiltrates the gang and suffers much abuse as she attempts to identify and take her revenge on his killer – out on Blu-ray as part of the Takashi Ishii: 4 Tales of Nami Limited edition digipack set (2000 copies)

A compelling yet initially indecipherable image is slowly revealed, as we pull out, to be a pink marker pen colouring the handle of a black pistol in the hands of a girl wearing the pyjama top of the man against the side of whose bed she is sitting. He, it turns out, is Mitsuru (Toshiyuki Nagashima from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, Miyagawa, 2002; Godzilla vs. Biollante, Seiichi Yamamoto, 1989; Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Paul Schrader, 1985), an undercover cop; she is Nami (Yui Natsukawa from I Wish, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2011; Still Walking, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008; Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, Takeshi Kitano, 2003), and she’s fed up with his lack of contact while he’s on the job. As they embrace, she pleads with him, “Don’t do it!… Read the rest

Tags 4 Tales of Nami, attack, ballroom, bed, bedroom, boss, broken china, clan, clan leader, cold turkey, condolences, cop, curtains, cut off your finger, dance, dream, dreamlike, drugs, drunk, early morning, everyone knows, fight, fix, flashbulbs, floating corpse, gambling, gang leader, gang rape, gangster, guard, gun, gun instruction, gunplay, handgun, hospital, hostess club, hotel; room, injecting, innocence, Japan, Jinpachi Nezu, junkie, Junko Miyashita, keepsake, Kimiko Yo, Kippei Shina, knife, lift, Limbo, locket, Madam, Mah Jong, media circus, Minori Terada, mist, necklace, night, Noriko Hayami, Norimichi Kasamatsu, nudity, overdose, paparazzi, paper, pink marker pen, pistol, police raid, press, psychology, pyjamas, rain, reporters, rescue, revenge, rock, rooftop, scissors, sea, sex, sex scene, sleaze, slit your wrist, snitch, snow, snow falling, speed, stab, stolen drugs, sword, syringe, Takashi Ishii, thug, torment, torture, Toshiyuki Nagashima, undercover cop, urn of remains, waltz, water, water bed, water surfaces, waterfront, wind, Yasushi Sasakibara, Yui Natsukawa

Features Live Action Movies

Cruella

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 27 May 2021
No Comments on Cruella
Sticky post

Director – Craig Gillespie – 2020 – US, UK – Cert. 12a – 134m

****

A 101 Dalmatians prequel. How a girl named Estella unleashed her darker personality of Cruella de Vil – in cinemas from Friday, May 28th

Disney’s project of mining their pantheon of animated classics for live action feature material continues. Here it’s the turn of Cruella de Vil, the villain from 101 Dalmatians (Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Wolfgang Reitherman, 1961), and a very clever reimagination it is too. It commences with her birth and cleverly conceals certain significant details of her upbringing only to reveal them at the tale’s climax and give everything that went before a completely new spin.

Estella (Tipper Siefert-Cleveland) is the daughter of Catherine (Emily Beecham). Befriended at school by Anita Darling (Florisa Kamara) but picked on by bullies, Estella gives as good as she gets, fights back and gets expelled for figuratively blotting her copybook.

So her mother pays a visit to former employer the Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson) seeking help. But thanks to Estella’s refusal to do as she’s told and stay in the car and her dog Buddy’s strikingly similar refusal to obey Estella this plan goes fatally wrong.… Read the rest