Tag: parents and children

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Features Live Action Movies

Jurassic Park

(Review originally published in Third Way, May 1993.)

Director – Steven Spielberg – 1993 – US – PG – 127m

*****

A wealthy philanthropist brings dinosaurs to life from preserved fragments of their DNA to populate his island theme park – in cinemas from 16th July 1993 and back out again on Friday, September 1st 2023

“God creates dinosaurs.

God kills dinosaurs.

God creates man.

Man kills God.

Man creates dinosaurs.”

– Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), chaos theoretician.

“Dinosaurs kill man.

Women take over the world.”

– Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), palaeobotanist.

“Creation is an act of will: next time, it’ll be flawless.”

– John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), creator of Jurassic Park.

Set to become the biggest grossing movie of all time (if it hasn’t already done so by the time you read this), Steven Spielberg’s latest offering concerns a theme park built around the dream of rich industrialist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to delight children with wonders come to life. The wonders are dinosaurs, cloned from dino DNA ingested by prehistoric insects subsequently drowned and preserved in amber. For more on this aspect of the story, read co-screenwriter Michael Crichton’s original (and best-selling) novel; Spielberg, who races through small chunks of plot as quickly as he can, isn’t interested in them half as much as he is in dinosaurs.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

127 Hours

Director – Danny Boyle – 2010 – US – Cert. 15 – 93m

UK release date 07/01/2011, cert. 15, 93 mins

The trailer for this gives a pretty good impression of about its first third. Experienced, youthful and single outdoor explorer Aron Ralston (James Franco) mountain bikes through the Utah landscape, meets a couple of girls and shows them an incredible underground lake, continues on his merry solo way until, rock climbing, he slips down a crevasse where a falling boulder pinions his wrist…trapping him for the eponymous and subsequent 127 hours / the rest of the film.

Where Buried (Rodrigo Cortés, 2010) relentlessly encased its leading man in a coffin from opening to closing frame, 127 Hours not only starts off in wide open landscapes but also punctuates its narrative with memory flashbacks, dreams and visions. Thus, when you see Aron freeing himself, you’re not initially sure whether he’s actually doing so or merely imagining it in his head. Such devices provide space to deal with the transcendent in a way that Buried never really did.

If Buried is a horror movie (will he survive being buried alive? can he escape?), 127 Hours starts off as outdoor adventure then veers into the question of: if you knew for certain you were going to die, what would you want to do with the ever decreasing amount of time you had left?… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Innocent
(L’innocent)

Director – Louis Garrel – 2022 – France – Cert. 15 – 99m

***1/2

A trusting woman marries a soon-to-be-released convict in prison only for her suspicious son to start following him after the man’s release and soon find himself out of his depth – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 25th

Warning: plot spoilers.

Sylvie LeFranc (Anouk Grinberg) has fallen big time for Michel Ferrand (Roschdy Zem) and is about to marry him. Her son Abel (Louis Garrel) is less than happy about this, since Michel is the latest convict serving a prison sentence for whom his mother has fallen. He grudgingly attends their prison wedding. Shortly after, Michel is released and the couple embark on their new life together, with Michel promising to go straight and Sylvie, who likes to think the best of people, taking him at his word. She has always dreamed of opening a flower shop, and he gives her the funds to make it happen. They hire premises and start doing it up, getting Abel to help.

Although he can see that the romance is genuine – at least on his mother’s side – Abel understandably doesn’t trust his mum’s judgement and doesn’t trust Michel at all.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Puffin Rock
and the
New Friends

Director – Jeremy Purcell – 2022 – US, UK, Ireland, China – Cert. U – 92m

***1/2

The puffin and animal community of Puffin Rock is thrown into crisis by the arrival of a few refugees, the disappearance of a puffin egg and a terrible storm – spinoff feature from preschool children’s animated TV series out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 11th

Irish animation house Cartoon Saloon’s Puffin Rock TV series (2015-2016) has deservedly won awards in the world of preschool children’s television. Narrated by Chris O’Dowd, who acts as a running commentary and offers guidance to the two main characters, it centres around two preschool puffins Oona and her younger brother Baba who live on the isolated, human-free island of Puffin Rock with their kind, protective and loving parents. Through O’Dowd’s voice-over and the introduction of other animal characters, episodes deliver simple facts about natural history in a friendly and informative manner. While this educational is never allowed to get in the way of the storytelling, it’s a welcome extra. The programmes are around six minutes in length. (The series can be found on Netflix in the UK, where three six minute episodes are gathered into twenty minute batches comprising three episodes.)… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Paris Memories
(Revoir Paris)

Director – Alice Winocour – 2022 – France – Cert. 15 – 105m

****

A woman tries to recall her memories of a Paris terrorist attack – out in UK cinemas on Friday, Aug 4th

Were it not for a singularly unconvincing sex scene (as in, why are these two characters having sex?) about ten minutes before the end, this might have been one of my films of the year. That knocks it down from ***** to ****. That gaffe aside – and it’s a monumentally huge one – this is, otherwise, most impressive.

It starts off with Mia (Virginie Efira) in her Paris flat, feeding the cat, dropping and clearing up a glass, and talking with her partner Vincent (Grégoire Colin), a surgeon who heads up a hospital department. She rides her motorbike to her radio station workplace, where she has a gig as a Russian-French translator. Afterwards, in the evening, she meets Vincent in a restaurant for a meal, but he gets a call from the hospital and has to go back in. After a bit, she heads for home, but it’s raining heavily, so she stops off at another restaurant to have a drink and wait out the rain.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles
Mutant Mayhem

Directors – Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

The much loved comic-generated franchise gets a remakable reboot in animation that breaks the filmmaking mould to really get under the skin of the teenage experience – out in UK cinemas on Monday, July 31st

Hollywood animated children’s films since the advent of computer animation. They all look the same. Okay, that’s not entirely fair, but with notable exceptions like the Laika films and the recent Spider-Verse films there’s a definite homogeneity to this output overall, industry wisdom dictating the production parameters and the overall look and feel. There’s a mould there, the films make money and producers are terrified to break that mould. Not so here.

The irony is that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property, born out of a late night joke between two comic book artists who never expected to sell more than a one-off issue, has spawned numerous spin-offs in comics, animated TV series, video games and movies. Somehow, the previous six movies – three in the 1990s (including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Steve Barron, 1990; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze, Michael Pressman, 1991), one in 2007, and two more in the last decade following a reboot in 2014 – never quite delivered on the promise of the franchise, as if everyone concerned was too focused on the moneymaking potential and trying to play everything safe, an approach completely at odds with that of the two artists who originated the property and simply thought of it as a fun idea worth developing.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Talk To Me

Director – Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou – 2022 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 94m

**

Under peer pressure, a teenager takes her turn contacting undead spirits at a party, with devastating consequences – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 28th

For me, this was probably always going to be an uphill struggle: people wilfully contacting undead spirits really isn’t my idea of fun (and I knew that going in). It starts off really well, with a Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) vibe as a lengthy widescreen shot effortlessly glides around a teenage party culminating in an horrific knife murder and suicide.

After this, it switches to other characters. Mia (Sophie Wilde) hasn’t got over the death of her mother two years ago, and goes to a party with her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) where the host produces the embalmed hand of a psychic.

Apparently, if you grasp the hand and say first “talk to me” then “I let you in”, the first spirit in the vicinity will possess you. “It’s always different,” says the girl who produced the hand, who also informs them that it mustn’t last more than 90 seconds, because after that the possessing host can’t be sent back to the place from whence it came.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Are You
There God?
It’s Me,
Margaret.

All stills: Dana Hawley / courtesy of Lionsgate UK

Director – Kelly Fremon Craig – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 105m

****

An 11-year-old girl navigates the difficult waters of religion and womanhood, talking privately to God as she does so – bestselling novel adaptation is out on digital Tuesday, July 18th and on Blu-ray & DVD Monday, August 7th

Is God there, can you talk to God, and does doing so make any difference? 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) talks to God, beginning with the “Are You There?” question and then continuing to talk to God as if God’s presence were real. Whether God is real or not, the practice of talking with God has a history in certain Christian traditions, and probably in other religious traditions with which I’m less familiar too. It does not, of itself, prove the existence or non-existence of God one way or the other.

In terms of organised religion, Margaret finds herself in a confusing place. She is the sole child of Jewish father Herb (Benny Safdie) and Christian mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) Simon. It’s a good marriage and the Simons are a very happy family, living in a cramped New York apartment with his Jewish mother Sylvia Simon (an hilariously dour yet joyous Kathy Bates).… Read the rest

Categories
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

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Name Me Lawand

Language for the deaf

Name Me Lawand
Directed by Edward Lovelace
Certificate PG, 91 minutes
Released 7 July

Lawand, a young Iraqi boy, has been written off. He is different, he apparently doesn’t want to communicate with others. No one in his home country can help him. And that’s that.

Except, his parents don’t believe it. They are sure something can be done for their son, just not in Iraq. So, although all their friends and family are there, they leave the country believing it has nothing whatsoever to offer their son. And they move to the UK and settle in Derby.

Lawand’s issue is that he is completely deaf, and therefore can’t be taught in a school set up for those with functioning hearing. As such, he has no way of learning language from those who can hear. A different approach is required to enable him to develop basic language skills.

This documentary… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

[Read my longer review on this site]

Name Me Lawand is out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, July 7th.

Trailer: