punters Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Daniel Minahan – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A husband’s dreams are undermined in 1950s America by the separate lives and desires of his secretly racetrack-gambling wife and his reappearing, disappearing drifter-gambler brother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 5th

Lee Walker (Will Poulter from Warfare, Alex Garland, 2025; Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow, 2017; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Michael Apted, 2010; Son of Rambow, Garth Jennings, 2007) returns home to the US from the Korean War to his adored wife Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones from Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung, 2024; Where the Crawdads Sing, Olivia Newman, 2022) who lives in the isolated house she inherited from her mother in the calm prairie lands up North. Their relationship is deeply carnal. And yet, something changes in that relationship dynamic the night Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi from Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro, 2025; Priscilla, Sofia Coppola, 2023; Saltburn, Emerald Fennell, 2023) turns up, and she is instantly attracted to him. Of course, that can’t be, because she is with Lee.

Part of the attraction is that Julius, a drifter who turns up unannounced, is also an inveterate card sharp and gambler.… Read the rest

The Isle
(Seom,
섬)

Director – Kim Ki-duk – 2000 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 89m

***

Review originally published in What’s On In London to coincide with the film’s UK theatrical release.

Latest UK release from Korean maverick director Kim Ki-duk (Bad Guy; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring) has a unique setting: an isolated lake upon which float small chalets on rafts available for hire by punters. The proceedings never leave these immediate surroundings, which include the shack with a jetty on the shore – from which proprietress Hee-Jin (Im Suh Jung) hires out the chalets and sometimes her body – and a mysterious isle in the lake’s centre.

She embarks upon a relationship with life-weary punter and ex-cop Hyun-shik (Kim Yoo-suk), bringing unexpected changes to them both.

This is not a film for the faint-hearted, containing as it does some pretty unsettling imagery involving physical sexual activity and fish hooks, even if much of this is suggested rather than shown.

What we’re seeing here has been slightly pruned at the request of the UK censor the BBFC, notably of scenes involving the slicing off of a live fish’s sides before the camera which have been removed on grounds of animal cruelty.… Read the rest