Tag: remorse

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Mo Papa
(Mo Papa)

Director – Eeva Mägi – 2025 – Estonia – 88m

*****

A young ex-con imprisoned as a teenager for killing his younger brother tries to make his way in present-day Tallinn – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

I am wary of unscripted feature films. There is a reason why most narrative movies are made working from scripts; actors have lines to speak, to help them get a handle on their characters. Technicians have an idea of what they are realising on the screen or the soundtrack for a director. Without a script, most attempts at making a film are liable to founder. And quite probably result in an indulgent, unwatchable movie.

Mo Papa, according to the Festival’s blurb, was unscripted. On the one hand, I fear the worst. On the other, after three years of watching Critics’ Picks at Tallinn, I know the standard to be generally high, and duff films are happily all too rare. Would Mo Papa turn out to be one of those rare blips?

It’s also an Estonian movie, and because this is an Estonian festival, in a sense that ups the ante. So I’m really hoping it’s going to be good.… Read the rest

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Kontinental ’25 (Kontinental ’25)

Director – Radu Jude – 2025 – Romania – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

Although operating within the bounds of the law, a bailiff is smitten with guilt and remorse for the effect of her job on a ‘client’– out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

Carrying large bags, he scavenges at the bases of tree trunks in the woodlands, swearing profusely when his foot goes a foot in to the stream when he tries to fill his water bottle. In a bizarre nod to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) – or more likely those briefly seen in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), he rests beside a dimetrodon sculpture then smokes a cigarette by a dilophosaurus. He rides a ski lift, passes a father and small son on their bikes on a footbridge, downs his packed lunch with vodka on a river bridge. He hangs around cafes asking for either work or five lei. He says “fuck you” after the woman offering him an early Sunday morning cleaning job has left. He gets hassled by a robot dog. He returns to his boiler room home.

While he sleeps, the bailiff Mrs Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) knocks on his door, gendarmes in tow, to evict him, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu).… Read the rest

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The Count of Monte Cristo
(Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)
(2024)

Directors – Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte – 2024 – France – Cert. 12a – 173m

*****

An innocent Frenchman framed and imprisoned as a Napoleonic partisan escapes to impose justice on his false accusers – new Dumas adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 30th

There have been numerous adaptions of The Count of Monte Cristo for the screen, not to mention radio and other media, over the years; this latest one is directed by the screenwriters of The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady (both Martin Bourboulon, 2023), who clearly have a strong feel for Alexandre Dumas’ works.

Much of what’s here is familiar: shortly after the fall of Napoleon, on the day of his wedding to sweetheart Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier from The New Girlfriend, François Ozon, 2014), ship’s crew member Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney from Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is arrested for Bonapartism, falsely accused by another crew member Danglars (Patrick Mille from the two 2023 Three Musketeers movies and Love Crime, Alain Corneau, 2010). Neither the crown prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) nor Dantès’ friend Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon from Jumbo, Zoé Wittock, 2020) refute these allegations, although both know them to be untrue, since both have their own reasons for doing so: the prosecutor because Dantès could unwittingly ruin him, Fernand because he too is in love with and wishes to marry Mercédès.… Read the rest

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A Fugitive From The Past
(Kiga Kaikyo,
飢餓海峡)

Director – Tomu Uchida – 1965 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 183m

*****

Voted third in Kinema Junpo magazine’s 1999 list of the greatest Japanese film of all time, Tomu Uchida’s A Fugitive From The Past (1965) is the pinnacle of a directorial career that also includes Bloody Spear At Mount Fuji (1955) and The Mad Fox (1962). In the poll, it was beaten by Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) at number one and Mikio Naruse’s Floating Clouds (1955) at number two, For the record, the fourth title was Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) while the fifth was Yuzo Kawashima’s Bakumatsu Taiyoden / The Legend Of The Sun-Tribe From The Bakumatsu Era (1957). While four of those titles were made in the mid-fifties, often considered the golden age of classical Japanese cinema, Fugitive dates from the mid-sixties, allowing it to look at Japan’s post-war period from a greater distance.

Uchida’s film, which spans the decade 1947-57, covers a colossal amount of subjects in its first 50 minutes…

[Read the full review at All The Anime.]

A Fugitive From The Past is released on Arrow Blu-ray.

Trailer: