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Features Live Action Movies

A Better Tomorrow
(Yingxiong Bense,
英雄本色)

Director – John Woo – 1986 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 94m

*****

The seminal gangster movie that crystallised John Woo’s now-trademark style of brotherhood, bullets and blood and catapultedChow Yun Fat to Oriental, big screen stardom – back out in UK cinemas in a 4K Restoration on Friday, June 26th

After a decade directing comedies and kung fu movies (many for Golden Harvest), Woo’s last two films had been box office flops when producer Tsui Hark gave him the opportunity to make A Better Tomorrow, loosely based at least in plot and character terms on the gritty The Story of a Discharged Prisoner / Yingxiong Bense (Kong Lung, 1967).

Hong Kong’s cinema owners had no problems with two of the three proposed leading men – Ti Lung (from Drunken Master II, Liu Chia-Liang, 1994; Shaolin Temple, Chang Cheh, Wu Ma, 1976) had achieved great success in director Chang Cheh’s martial arts epics at Shaw Brothers (Woo had worked as assistant to Chang early in his career) and Leslie Cheung (from Happy Together, Wong Kar-wai, 1997; Once a Thief, John Woo, 1991; A Chinese Ghost Story, Tsui Hark, 1987) was a successful singer – but Tsui and Woo had to fight hard for third lead Chow Yun Fat, a big TV star lacking any box office clout.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Being Towards Death
(10 Jian Gan Si Dui,
10间敢死队,
lit. 10 Fearless Squad)

Director – Sicheng Chen – 2026 – China – Cert. 12a – 120m

**

The terminally ill patients thrown together in hospital Ward 10 decide to adopt a positive attitude towards both life and death – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 5th

This has one of those weird Oriental movie titles that doesn’t translate that easily into Western languages, the number 10 referring to the ward for terminally ill patients in a particular hospital and the rest meaning a sort of optimistic equivalent of a suicide squad, but less a military type do or die operation than a determination to live in the inevitable face of inescapable, imminent death. The translators have settled on a term borrowed from philosopher Martin Heidegger which probably works better in German than in English, in which language it feels incredibly clunky. It refers to the act of living authentically in the face of death, which is very much what this movie is about. Somewhere in the middle of the narrative, Ward 10’s occupants, who feel increasingly like a close-knit family, name themselves (in the English subtitled version) the Ward 10 Fearless Squad, which would perhaps have been a better title.

Director Sicheng Chen (Detective Chinatown 3, 2021; Detective Chinatown, 2015) opens with that old cliché, the man about to jump off the top of a building.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Eagles of the Republic
(نسور الجمهورية)

Director – Tarik Saleh – 2025 – Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland – Cert. 15 – 129m

****

A top Egyptian movie star finds himself working on a big budget, high concept, state-sponsored propaganda movie – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 22nd

The opening three scenes… The credits run over a montage of Egyptian movie posters. A group of men outdoors in the Egyptian sun listen attentively to radio commentary of a horse race. One of the men lights his lady passenger’s cigarette from his own as their car speeds towards the horizon of what could well be Monument Valley.. “cut” …but is a movie set with back projection. His assistant tells him has son has called three times – it’s the boy’s birthday, so the actor has his assistant buy his son an expensive watch. Not the greatest of fathers. The kissing couple on the side of the outside studio wall proclaims him to be Pharoah of the Screen George Fahmy (Fares Fares from Cairo Conspiracy, Tarik Saleh, 2022; Westworld, TV series, 2018; The Nile Hilton Incident, Tarik Saleh, 2017; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Gareth Edwards, 2016; Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes, Mikkel Nørgaard, 2013; Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) and her Rula Haddad (Cherien Dabis, director of Only Murders in the Building, 6 episodes, 2021-23).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Kim Novak’s Vertigo

Director – Alexandre O. Philippe – 2025 – UK – Cert. uncertificated – 76m

*****

An essential addition to the canon of work surrounding and helping audiences to understand the power of one of the cinema’s greatest works– out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 3rd

The opening black and white scene features actress Kim Novak, probably shot in the 1950s, as if through a peephole. This recalls Norman and his peephole in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). Novak here seems to know she is being watched, looks directly at the camera, then rolls her head so her eyes go into the darkness of shadow. Then, colour footage of present day, images that could be out of Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945): a gate opening, a passage along a country roadway, a wooden memorial to someone. All this accompanied by the voice of Kim Novak, now in her twilight years, talking about her life on the soundtrack – her present difficulty in getting breath, how awful it must be to gasp for breath prior to dying.

All this has a Hitchcock connection. Novak is familiar to us from her twin roles in Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), the favourite film of director Philippe (and also, as it happens, of this critic) who specialises in documentaries about movies and made the definitive documentary about Psycho’s shower scene 78/52 (2017).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Street Wanderers
(Los Caminantes
de la Calle)

Director – Juan Martin Hsu – 2025 – Argentina, Peru – 90m

*****

Argentinian cops and robbers procedural is set largely in the world of Mendoza’s immigrant Chinese community – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

2010. Mendoza, Argentina. The family-run, Chinese restaurant of Dageng (Kon Yam Pin) receives telephone threats for protection money. When they don’t pay up within 24 hours, a motorbike with two riders pulls up on at their door which opens onto the main street and fires four shots. So Dageng’s son (Willy Kon Chin Yi) delivers a rucksack containing $50 000 to the gang. But later, the riders complain there was only $30 000 and demand another $20 000.

Lots of similarly threatening phone calls overlap on the soundtrack as we see numerous yellow cables plugged into a telecoms hub, recalling similar motifs in movies as diverse as Three Colours Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994) and Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953).

The prosecutor’s office is monitoring phone calls, but faces challenges. One such is that the calls are in Cantonese so require an interpreter to turn them into intelligible Spanish. Another is illustrated when the current interpreter quits, terrified what might happen to her family if word about the nature of her work gets out.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Silent Virgin
(La Virgen Silenciosa)

Director – Xavi Sala – 2025 – Mexico – 127m

*****

A legal secretary frustrated in her job embarks on a relationship with another woman, but her possessive mother does not approve – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This certainly knows how to grab your attention at the start. An icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) hangs on the wall. On the bed, a grown woman pleasures herself until… The earth moves! Everything is shaking, and she quickly recovers her composure as her middle-aged mother runs in to get her out of the house as the earthquake alarm goes off.

After, they eat at the meal table, and her mother (Mercedes Hernández from New Order, Michel Franco, 2020) asks Vale (“Va-lay”; Zamira Franco also from New Order), who she’ll later address as Valeria, to pick up prescriptions while she’s out and makes sure she doesn’t forget her packed lunch. Then it’s train, bus and the walk past colourful stalls to work. Vale’s office with about half a dozen or so people seems to be piled high with paperwork. They are dealing with the cases of people being arrested.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Relay

Director – David Mackenzie – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 112m

*****

A corporate whistleblower who has changed her mind hires a fixer to give her the leverage she needs to safely vanish and start a new life, only it doesn’t work out like that – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

Sometimes companies do bad things, and when you think they couldn’t do any worse, they set out to coerce or intimidate former employees attempting to expose them. How widespread this is in real life is anyone’s guess, but it makes for great copy and feeds into paranoid left wing ideas about the immorality of corporate capitalism. Don’t get me wrong: just because you’re paranoid, as the saying goes, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

To illustrate the point, this narrative opens with Hoffman (Matthew Mayer from Bringing Out The Dead, Martin Scorsese, 1999; Dogma, Kevin Smith, 1999, reissued in cinemas next week (Friday, November 7th); and Funny Pages, Owen Kline, 2022) entering a near empty New York restaurant to surrender a set of incriminating documents to McVie (Victor Garber from Family Law, TV series 2021-2025; Argo, Ben Affleck, 2012; Alias, TV series, 2001-6), safe in the knowledge that another copy of said documents will be mailed to an appropriate recipient should McVie not co-operate and ensure Hoffman’s safety.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Ballerina
(2025)

Director – Len Wiseman – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 125m

*****

A young, female assassin seeks out the man behind the organisation that killed her father – John Wick franchise spin-off is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 6th

While the Bond movie No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021) divided viewers, there seemed to be a widespread consensus that Ana de Armas’ scene as a kickboxing 007 sidekick was something special, crying out for her to be given her own action film. In the interim, the actress’ high profile career has burgeoned – her portrait of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2002) proved that she can act just as well as she can do stunt action.

Meanwhile, writer Shay Hatten’s spec screenplay about a ballerina bent on revenge found its way to John Wick franchise originator and director Chad Stahelski, who thought it might fit into John Wick’s world. As they worked out exactly where that might be, Hatten was put to work on the scripts for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023). It was eventually decided that the events in Ballerina would take place at the same time as those in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and an early scene has John Wick (Keanu Reeves) passing on a staircase in the Ruska Roma Ballet School in New York.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

All We Imagine as Light

Director – Payal Kapadia – 2024 – France, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

The lives, loves and challenges of three women working in a hospital in Mumbai – on UK Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) from Monday, March 3rd, on BFI Player from Monday, February 17th, and on iTunes and Amazon Prime from Monday, March 17th

Mumbai. Opening with serial, engrossing tracking shots showing first men working throwing goods onto lorries, then men in traffic riding in the open boot of a car, then people riding on the urban rail system, all to the accompaniment of soundtrack vox pops of men and women talking about their lives and how the city helps you forget, All We Imagine as Light is, among other things, a paean to the city of Mumbai.

On a typical working day in the hospital, Nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti from Girls Will Be Girls, Shuchi Talati, 2024) explains to a doctor why an old lady refuses to take her pills (she’s seeing visions of the torso of her late husband) and opts out of going out to see the latest action blockbuster featuring dreamy male stars with her fellow nurses. She talks about helping with free legal advice to kitchen worker Pavarty (Chhaya Kadam from Sister Midnight, Karan Kandhari, 2024; Laapataa Ladies, Kiran Rao, 2023; Bombay Rose, Gitanjali Rao, 2019) who is having problems with intimidation by thugs to move out of her home.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Chang’an
(Chang’an San Wan Li,
长安三万里,
lit. 3 000 Miles from Chang’an)

Directors – Xie Junwei, Zou Jing – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 168m

****

General Gao Shi of the Tang dynasty recounts his life, his struggle to become a poet and his friendship with Li Bai, a more renowned poet – animated epic is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 28th

Set roughly halfway through the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.), this lengthy, animated epic starts off like an historical war movie in the vein of the live action Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008, 2009) but swiftly morphs into something else entirely as this initial narrative about the capture and interrogation of an enemy soldier turns into a frame story – which is rather more than that, popping up repeatedly throughout the narrative with the frame story’s resolution taking centre stage towards the end of the proceedings. Even this is deceptive; while military strategy and conflict is covered, the narrative is far less interested in that than in the overall life of main protagonist and minor poet Gao Shi, his meetings and friendship through the years with secondary character and major poet Li Bai, and the wider poetry of the period.

Believing himself about to be punished for the failure of his well planned and fought military campaign against the Tubos (the Tibetans, their ethnic identity never clarified within the film itself – at least, not in the English subtitles, presumably because the film is aimed at a Chinese audience who would already know this ethnic, historical; background), the ageing General Gao Shi (voice: Wu Junquan) falls neck first on his spear before receiving the Emperor’s emissary who wants to question him, it turns out, about not his military campaign but, rather, Li Bai.… Read the rest