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Bugonia

Director – Yorgos Lanthimos – 2025 – US, Ireland, South Korea – Cert. 15 – 118m

****

A man with a grievance against a corporation kidnaps its CEO, believing her to be an alien with hostile designs on the human race – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

As Teddy (Jesse Plemons from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024; Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024; Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese, 2023) explains it, they live among us. While he and his autistic bother Don (Aidan Delbis) eke out their very ordinary lives with Teddy working in a warehouse for big pharma company Auxolith, the company CEO Michelle (Lanthimos regular Emma Stone) has her life on a platter: expensive home outside which she works out on the landing every morning, expensive SUV to get her to corporate HQ and back, and an army of corporate minions around her to ensure her every order is carried out. Even so, she still has difficulty speaking complicated lines for a corporate video. But that’s nothing compared to the ordeal Teddy has planned for her.

Teddy and decidedly unsure about the whole thing sidekick Don ambush her when he car arrives home from work and, after a struggle, for Michelle is used to getting her own way and is not a woman to be trifled with, overcome her after injecting her with a sedative.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Under
The Open Sky
(Subarashiki Sekai,
すばらしき世界)

Director – Miwa Nishikawa – 2020 – Japan – 126m

***1/2

A former yakuza killer having served his sentence for murder comes out of prison and attempts to go straight – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2023 between Friday, 3rd February and Friday, 31st March

Masao Mikami (Koji Yakusho) completes his prison sentence and comes out on good terms with the prison staff, who helpfully advise him, in an almost friendly manner, of not returning to his former ways. While it is indeed the convict’s intention to live within the law from here on in, there remains a gulf between him and those charged with guarding him. He thinks the courts should have given him a lesser sentence for the killing he committed, i.e. manslaughter motivated by self-defence not murder. However, he doesn’t appear to bear grudges about this. He seems to have a problem with losing his temper and controlling his anger, something he’s going to have to work on if he is to survive as a law-abiding citizen.

The Shojis (Isao Hashizume and Meiko Kaji), a sympathetic couple of around his age, provide him with free bed and board until he can find a job and get back on his feet.… Read the rest