Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Odyssey
(2025)

Director – Gerard Johnson – 2025 – UK – Cert. 18 – 110m

****

A ruthless London estate agent with mounting debts finds herself at the mercy of criminal backers – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 7th

This starts off no holds barred with protagonist Natasha (Polly Maberly from Muscle, Gerard Johnson, 2019) having a tooth removed at the dentist’s, then having her card declined as she attempts to pay the £950 bill, going out of the front door after the third failed payment attempt. Throughout what follows, she will consistently receive phone messages about the outstanding amount and ignore them, although you suspect they are slowly eating away at her soul along with most of the other influences in her life. Somehow the incident seems to define her character: a driven, self-made woman – or, more accurately, a self-making one who never quite got there and lives beyond her means to maintain the illusion.

Natasha runs a tight office with right-hand woman Safi (Kellie Shirley), tech guy Spike (Charley Palmer Rothwell) developing a game-changing app for her, and promising new girl learning the ropes Dylan (Jasmine Blackborow). But Natasha is the person in charge of everything, the place where the buck stops, and despite their undoubted talents the other three seem scarcely to matter: it’s all about Natasha as she struggles to see through a hostile takeover, or, as she frames it, merger.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Your Name
(Kimi No Na Wa,
君の名は)

Director – Makoto Shinkai – 2016 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 106m

*****

Do you know what it feels like for a girl? Urban teenage boy and countryside girl repeatedly swap bodies overnight, as fate draws them together through a meteor strike – Makoto Shinkai’s breakout animation returns to cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, March 29th, ahead of the release of Shinkai’s new film Suzume on April 14th

In a spectacular and bravura single take, vertical panning shot, a meteor descends from the heavens through the clouds towards the small lakeside town of Itomori. Then, another time, another place: on a train in Tokyo a teenage girl spots a boy and their eyes meet but there’s no time to exchange names. She knows him but he has no idea who she is. As she gets off the train, he asks her… “Your Name?”

Thereafter, Tokyo boy Taki wakes up some days Mitsuha’s body, and the other way round… [Read the rest at DMovies.org]

Your Name returns to cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, March 29th, ahead of Shinkai’s Suzume on April 14th.

Originally reviewed for UK 2017 IMAX release.

Trailer (Blu-ray release):