Tag: re-enactment

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

We’re Nothing
at All
(Ngo Mun
Bat Si Sam Mo,
我們不是什麼)

Director – Herman Yau – 2026 – China, Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 128m

*****

A seasoned forensics expert pieces together the story behind a bus bombing as the lives and motives of those responsible is revealed in interweaving serial flashbacks – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 29th

A police procedural but not exactly a thriller. This starts off with an unforgettable sequence as, below us, a bus silently weaves its way through streets. And then, without warning, explodes. You’d be forgiven for thinking that, after this bravura opening, you’re in for yet another Hong Kong cops and robbers action movie. And yet, while this is undeniably a police procedural, and contains enough gore and grisly bits to earn it a BBFC 18 certificate, it’s far from your standard HK action outing. Given that Herman Yau’s previous work has included a thriller about a cannibal serial killer The Eight Immortals Restaurant – the Untold Story aka Bunman – the Untold Story (1993) and cops and robbers bomber thriller Shock Wave (2017), this is something of a surprise.

Rather, it’s a drama. If you will, a police forensics drama. The matter of fact, real time nature of the opening sequence introduces no characters whatsoever.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Our Land

Director – Orban Wallace – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

***

An exploration as to why the English people only have the ‘right to roam’ over some eight per cent of their countryside – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 8th, with previews Tuesday, May 5th, Wednesday May 6th

This sets out its stall with a bold move: an arresting animated sequence by May Kindred Boothby in the style of woodcut prints accompanies a brief, verbal historical overview by Robert MacFarlane (the nature and geography writer whose book of the same name was recently turned into the documentary Underland, Rob Petit, 2025) of English land ownership. It goes back to the 1066 Norman invasion by William the Conqueror who declared land the property of the Crown (!) and then doled that land out to the barons that had helped him become King of England. Prior to this, any English person had the right to go anywhere within the countryside.

What follows after that visually inventive and historically informative introduction admirably manages to avoid one of the common pitfalls that far too often beset documentaries whose subject is one specific issue. Namely, presenting one point of view as the irrefutable final word on the matter.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Isabella Tree, as played by Rhiannon Neads

Director – David Allen – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 75m

*****

How Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell closed down their failing farm and instead let nature run wild to regenerate the land’s depleted biodiversity – inspiring documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s. They kept it going for some 17 years. However, by the late 1990s, they were in debt to the tune of one and a half million pounds. Realising that agro-chemical pesticides and contemporary industrial farming practices were destroying the topsoil necessary for biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, the couple then took the bold decision to stop farming and, with a little initial, minor tinkering, set about rewilding the land (i.e. letting nature take its course) and, hopefully, repair the damage done. They faced considerable opposition from the local farming community for the first five years or so. Then things began to happen which brought public opinion onto their side. In 2018, Isabella Tree wrote a book about the whole experience: Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm.

This documentary feature adaptation of Isabella’s eponymous 2018 book about their experience was shot during the pandemic and uses actors to portray the couple’s younger selves, so seamlessly cast that you actually don’t notice.… Read the rest