Tag: Oscars

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

20 Days
In Mariupol
(20 днів
Y Маріуполі)

Director – Mstyslav Chernov – 2023 – Ukraine – Cert. 18 – 94m

*****

A Ukranian-born, Associated Press video journalist and his stills photographer go to Mariupol where they report on Russia’s assault and invasion of that city – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 6th

There are some films that are incredibly tough to watch which you nevertheless know you need to watch. This documentary is one of those films. The experience of watching it clearly pales beside the actual experience of being in the Ukranian city of Mariupol during the first 20 days of the attack and subsequent siege by Russian armed forces, more so beside the actual experience of being trapped there. And I am British, so Ukraine is not my country; I find it almost incomprehensible to imagine what it would be like if what has happened to Mariupol were to happen in my home town. (If you’re an urban Brit, insert the name of your city at this point.)

I’m not convinced that the credited director Mstyslav Chernov, a Ukranian-born, Associated Press video journalist who has reported on conflicts around the globe since joining AP in 2014, set out to make a feature film. He was just (just!)… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Creator

Director – Gareth Edwards – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 133m

****

A widower finds himself protecting an AI in the form of a child as anti-AI North American forces wage a war on the Asian-Pacific countries where people have integrated with AI robots – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, September 28th

Over a decade ago, I was blown away by Gareth Edwards’ little indie British film marvel Monsters (2010) which broke all the accepted wisdom of film production. Based around a deceptively simple script concept, it was shot by a four-man crew and a two-man cast (plus anyone else who was around at the time) with lots of post-production VFX work added by the director himself.

That got him an agent and two big budget Hollywood franchise FX movies – the Godzilla reboot (2014) and the Star Wars movie Rogue One (2016). The former isn’t bad for a Hollywood movie, although I personally far prefer the Japanese-made Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno, 2016), while the latter is one of the better Star Wars films. However, neither quite possessed the quality that had got me so excited about Monsters.

I suspect Edwards feels the same way, because whilst he clearly relishes the chance to work with the palette of a huge Hollywood FX budget, on this his fourth film, as with Monsters, he has once again broken the rules – this time within a huge Hollywood FX budget film.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Bobi Wine:
The People’s President

Directors – Moses Bwayo, Christopher Sharp – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 121m

*****

Aided by his wife Barbie, Uganda’s opposition leader, the musician Bobi Wine, takes on the country’s corrupt dictator of 35 years President Museveni, in the run up to the 2021 election – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 1st

At the start of this remarkable documentary about Uganda, a small group of people engage in impromptu Christian prayer in a car before going about their business. While few more outward religious trappings are shown, the subject is a man possessed by a desire for justice for ordinary citizens, especially the underprivileged and voiceless, facing a corrupt regime determined to stay in power by any means possible, with the army and police under their control.

Successful pop singer and musician Bobi Wine… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

Bobi Wine: The People’s President is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 1st.

Trailer:

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Features Live Action Movies

Oppenheimer

Director – Christopher Nolan – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 180m

*****

Drama about the father of the atomic bomb, shot with IMAX cameras and best watched in IMAX 70mm format – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 21st

There are certain hallmarks to Christopher Nolan’s feature length movies. Since The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008), his second Batman movie, he has been shooting a proportion of each one with IMAX cameras. Seen projected on a screen the size of three double-decker London buses at London’s BFI Waterloo IMAX, these are larger than life experiences in a way that movies shown in the viewer’s own home on a screen, even a large one, can never be. And while Nolan is interested in character and performance, most of his movies in the IMAX format, even the historically inspired WW2 movie Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017), contain memorable action, exploiting the vastness of the IMAX screen to great kinetic effect whether it’s Batman roaring along on the Batbike, co-conspirators free floating inside a falling transit van in Inception (Nolan, 2010) or British WW2 soldiers trapped inside a flooding ship.

There is, however, a problem with watching Nolan’s IMAX-intended films in a lesser theatrical cinema format: the framing.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Mission: Impossible
Dead Reckoning
Part One

Director – Christopher McQuarrie – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 163m

*****

Tom Cruise’s seventh and director Christopher McQuarrie’s third Mission: Impossible outing delivers globetrotting action and one of the most incredible stunts ever committed to film – out in UK cinemas on Monday, July 10th

It seems almost fatuous to attempt to synopsise this latest Mission: Impossible effort because it basically boils down to various parties including Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his allies chasing after a key which most of them don’t know what it opens. I tell a lie, actually two halves of a key (this sounds a lot like the ancient artefact in this year’s Indiana Jones movie, which I’m sure is pure coincidence) each one of which can be used to verify that the other is the genuine article and not a fake. This MacGuffin, the thing all the characters want and which propels them through the story, in turn provides producer and star Tom Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie and their collaborators with the excuse for a series of exhilarating, bravura set-pieces.

There’s also the visual pleasure of this franchise’s usual amount of people wearing photorealistic masks to disguise themselves as other people, and later ripping off (or having others rip off) their fake faces to reveal their real ones.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Elemental

Director – Peter Sohn – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 109m

*****

Can a romance between a girl of fire and a boy of water succeed in a city populated by beings of earth, air, fire and water where entrenched separate ethnic identities run deep? – latest Pixar / Disney animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 7th

In search of a better life, a young fire people couple Bernie (voice: Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (voice: Shila Ommi) move to Element City, which is populated by not only fire people but also earth people, air people and water people. The couple find a cheap, rundown place to rent and Bernie turns it into The Fireplace, a store selling all manner of fire products from the fire people’s culture. Cinder gives birth to a girl Ember who grows into a twentysomething (voice: Leah Lewis). The plan is that when Ember is ready, she should take over the running of the store and let Bernie peacefully retire. Managing shop customers can be challenging, however, and while Ember is good at most aspects of the job, she has one flaw that lets her down – her fiery temper: she loses it with the most difficult customers.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Indiana Jones
And The
Dial Of Destiny

Director – James Mangold – 2022 – US / UK – Cert. 12a – 154m

*****

In the late 1960s, the newly-retired archaeologist is dragged by his goddaughter into a globetrotting adventure involving Nazis and ancient artefacts – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, June 28th

In 1945 in Europe, at the close of the Second World War, whilst fighting Nazis led by archaeologist Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) both in a castle and on a train, archaeologists Henry Jones (Harrison Ford) and Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) gain possession of an ancient artefact, the Archimedes Dial aka the Antekythera mechanism.

Over two decades later in 1969 in New York, on the day of his retirement from academia, Jones is approached by his late colleague’s daughter – his goddaughter – Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who, following her research into her father’s obsession with the artefact, believes she knows the location of one half of the dial, broken into two separate pieces by its maker Archimedes to prevent it falling into unsuitable hands.

She’s wrong though: Jones has it, although possibly not for long as a cabal of Dr. Voller plus Nazis including the trigger-happy Klaber (Boyd Holbrook), the 7’2 Hauke (Olivier Richters) and a CIA agent Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson) turn up to regain its possession.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Spider-Man
Across
The Spider-Verse

Directors – Joachim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 140m

*****

Assorted Spider-Men and -Women interact across many multiverse worlds as an elite Spider force attempts to prevent their interactions causing disaster – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 2nd

The first part of a two-part sequel to Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, 2018) with the conclusion Spider-Man Beyond The Spider-Verse due for release next year. So be warned: Across ends mid-story with a To Be Continued… legend plastered across the screen.

Having played around with the multiverse concept in Into, Across ramps it up to overload, introducing new worlds with titles that appear on screen before you’ve worked out where you are, making you want to hit pause and stop and take it in. You can’t do that in a public cinema, where the image and sound is sharper than it is in the home but you have no personalised remote control, and that’s a defining characteristic of the theatrical cinema medium.

You can of course go back and see a movie again and again for successive viewings, and I imagine that will be happening a lot with Across during its theatrical run because its visuals are consistently amazing, but once it’s available on a home platform where you can freeze it, go back, look at bits of scenes again, this movie will take on a whole new life as the viewers interact with it at their own pace.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Cairo Conspiracy,
(original title:
Boy From Heaven,
Walad Min Al Janna,
صبي من الجنة)

Director – Tarik Saleh – 2022 – Sweden, France, Finland – Cert. 12a – 126m

***

A naive, young, Egyptian student at a top Islamic university is recruited as a spy for the secret police – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 14th

Adam (Tawfeek Barhom), a bookworm born and raised in rural Egypt where he works as a fisherman like his father before him, visits the local mosque where his trusted Imam gives him a letter informing him he’s been accepted into Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University, the top seat of Sunni Muslim learning and thought. He’s worried his widowed father won’t let him go, but his father fatally accepts it as the Will of Allah. In his university dorm, Adam finds his bed taken by fellow student Raed (Ahmed Laissaoui) and winds up in the bunk below. (The university is for men only: no women. At least, we see none here.)

Unexpectedly, the Grand Imam, the head of the university, dies and a successor must be chosen. At the security forces building, the General (Mohammad Bakri) listens to the analysis by Colonel Ibrahim (Fares Fares) of the possible candidates, throwing all files on the floor except one – the one with whom the President’s views align, the candidate who must win.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Winners
(Barandeha,
برنده‌ها)

Director – Hassan Nazer – 2022 – UK, Iran – Cert. PG – 85m

****

A missing Oscar statuette is found by two kids in the Iranian provinces who work scavenging rubbish dumps – the UK’s official entry for the 95th (2023) Academy Awards Best International Feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 17th #winnersfilm

An Oscar statuette goes missing in Tehran when the woman charged with bring it to the production company office somewhat foolishly leaves it in the back of a taxi while she nips out at her home to collect something. While she is out of the vehicle, a policeman instructs the driver to move on as he isn’t allowed to stop there. She comes back and the taxi is gone – and the statuette with it.

It ends up in the taxi company’s lost parcel office, where an employee who has no idea what it is decides to borrow it for the evening as it will look good in his home, wrapping it in a towel before placing it in his bag. Travelling through the small town of Garmsar on his motorbike, he is forced by a broken down car blocking the road to take a detour across bumpy, poorly-maintained roads which, in turn, cause the poorly packed statuette to fall off his bike where it is found by a girl, Leila (Helia Mohammad Khani), who hands it to her nine-year old friend Yahya (Parsa Maghami).… Read the rest