Tag: restaurant

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Features Live Action Movies

Cottontail
(コットンテール)

Director – Patrick Dickinson – 2023 – UK, Japan – Cert. 12a – 94m

****

A Japanese widower comes to England to scatter his late wife’s ashes at Lake Windermere – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 14th

Kenzaburo (Lily Franky from Shoplifters, 2018; After the Storm, 2016; Like Father, Like Son, 2013, all Hirokazu Kore-eda), on occasion abbreviated to Ken, seems somehow lost as he wanders around Tokyo, looking out over a cityscape of roofs, travelling in passenger train carriages, wandering round a food market in search of octopus for he and his wife’s anniversary meal. 

He wistfully observes a live specimen in a tank. It’s not yet in season and the prices are ridiculous, so he shoplifts a packet, taking it to the restaurant where he and his wife Akiko had their first date all those years ago. She (Yuri Tsunematsu from Wife of a Spy, 2020; Before We Vanish, 2017, both Kiyoshi Kurosawa) comes in young as ever, as is he (Kosei Kudo), that pendant on her neck. He ignores the question from the present day chef (Hiroshi Okawa) as to how she’s doing.

Back at his flat, his panicking, besuited son Toshi (Ryo Nishikido) gets him ready for the funeral.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Old Fox
(Lao Hu Li,
老狐狸)

Director – Hsaio Ya-chuan – 2023 – Taiwan – Cert. – 112m

*****

In 1990, against the backdrop of burgeoning share prices, a young boy starts taking car rides from his father’s landlord – is Taiwan’s entry for 2025 Best International Feature – was out in US cinemas on Friday, January 18th 2024

11-year-old Jie (Bae Run-yin) lives with his widowed dad (Liu Kuan-ting), the Maitre d’ at a posh, local restaurant, in their small, cramped apartment above Li’s cafe. Every week, Miss Lin (Eugenie Liu), who the boy calls Miss Pretty, calls by to collect the rent, which both Li (Ban Tie-tsiang) and Jie’s dad regularly pay. Li plans to better himself, and his friend The Major (Kao Ying-hsuan) helps him out by investing cash in stocks and shares and earning Li massive returns.

Jie’s dad is involved in no such scheme, but Jie yearns for a bigger home and with his savings has told the boy they should be able to afford to buy their own place in about three years. But rapidly rising share prices, dragging property prices up along with them, kill his three-year dream.

His dad is a resourceful sort who sews all Jie’s clothes.… Read the rest

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Art Features Live Action Movies

Nobody Likes Me
(Nikdo Mne Nemá Rád)

Directors – Petr Kazda, Tomáš Weinreb – 2024 – Czechia, Slovakia, France – 105m
*****

The female gaze. An introvert woman finds love in an unlikely place where, it turns out, there are catches – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

A figure stands in interior darkness. Watching. She moves forward. She lies down on the bed. She sits up. She makes and eats a simple breakfast. She stands on a moving tram; the brown autumn leaves behind her. At her desk, wearing her military uniform, Sarah (Rebeka Poláková) details to the Commander his itinerary for the day, and fields requests from others for his attention. She seems content in her work.

One evening, Sarah sees a woman across the street in physical difficulty. Perhaps she should help but, frozen on the spot, she stares. The woman starts to throw up – presumably she’s had too much to drink. A man appears from nowhere and comes to the woman’s aid. Sarah can’t take her eyes off him. The female gaze. He looks back at her. She looks back at him.

She gets on well with her dad, a doctor, who she regularly visits at his surgery for health check-ups.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Substance

Director – Coralie Fargeat – 2024 – US – Cert. 18 – 140m

****1/2

An aging movie star takes a wonder treatment which splits her into her current self and a much younger version – in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 20th.

Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) hosts a network TV keep fit show, but she’s getting on in years – and so is her audience. The show’s producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) has decided that younger talent is needed in order to attract a younger audience, and gives her the elbow. By a quirk of fate or screenplay, a mailshot about something called The Substance arrives in her penthouse apartment. It’s some sort of beauty product, although the high-end design of the blurb doesn’t explain exactly what it is or what it does. There’s a phone number.

Elizabeth’s identity is bound up with the former show. She calls the number. She engages in conversation with the unseen voice on the other end of the phone. She decides to give The Substance a try. She is told to write down an address. Later, she is sent locker card key number 503 and instructed to collect her package from that address.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Deep Sea
(Shen Hai,
深海)

Director – Tian Xiaoping – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 112m

Subtitled ***1/2 / Dubbed **

A girl on a cruise, who never got over her mother leaving, falls overboard into fantastical worlds – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 7th

A red child’s coat with a hood lies abandoned on the sea bed. A girl’s feet stagger through a blizzard. She calls out for her mama. But her mama (voice: Ji Jing), a swirling mass of dark hair and eyes, is leaving. And now, the girl is lifted above the sea bottom (as we now realise this location to be) by what appears to be swirling red paint. She wakes, in her coat, on the bus. It was a dream.

Her stepmum (voice: Yang Ting) tells Shenxiu (voice: Wang Tingwen) not to mess around on the bus as she starts pulling faces at her little brother (voices: Dong Yi, Fang Taochen). She boards a big cruise ship, looking at texts from her absent mum, who is separated from her dad (voice: Teng Kuixing). Mum told her about the Hyjinx – if you made a wish on your birthday, it would come and make your wish come true.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Small Back Room

Directors – Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger – 1949 – UK – Cert. PG – 106m

*****

In London during World War Two, a back room boffin and bomb disposal man struggles with alcoholism – 4K restoration played at BFI Southbank on Tuesday, May 28th prior to release on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on Monday, June 3rd

This black and white, post-war era drama isn’t the first film that comes to mind when people think about Powell and Pressburger – it was made immediately after what today are regarded as three of their best colour features – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and their arguable masterpiece The Red Shoes (1948). And that was preceded by one of their finest black and white works, “i know where i’m going!” (1945).

In many ways, The Small Back Room couldn’t be more different. There’s a marvellous sense of whimsy about those films, even if the later ones are intense and savage in places. Like Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes – and, for that matter, Powell’s late solo masterpiece Peeping Tom (1960), an intensity lies at the heart of The Small Back Room.

Gone are the light, airy spaces of the earlier films, their sense of the outdoors expanse (and, in The Red Shoes, the expanded landscapes of the eponymous ballet sequence within the film).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Fall Guy
(2024)

Director – David Leitch – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 126m

*1/2

A stuntman, who retired from the movies are sustaining an injury on set, is hired to trace the vanished star of the movie being directed by his former camera operator and girlfriend – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, May 2nd

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a stunt double for big star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who allegedly does his own stunts. Retakes are common – for instance, if Colt is showing too much face, and it can be seen in the take that it’s him, not the star. Colt is fine with that – it’s just part of the business.

Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) is Tom’s regular producer and has managed his career so that his many bad habits never appear on the screen or where they can be seen by the public. He is currently the world’s most bankable action star.

Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) is a camera assistant. Colt and Jody are a couple, although they try not to make it obvious on the set.

Colt’s work requires all sorts of safety protocols be followed. On one occasion, someone behind the scenes messes up, and Colt falls from a great height and breaks his back. … Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Spy x Family
Code: White
(SPY x FAMILY
CODE: White)

All images © 2023 SPY x FAMILY The Movie Project © Tatsuya Endo/Shueisha

Directors – Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12A – 111m

*****

A spy and an assassin are married to each other, each unaware of the other’s secret career, while neither of them are aware their adopted daughter is a telepath who therefore knows everything they don’t – bonkers anime deploying cookery to prevent Armageddon (!) is out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

An opulent art deco ball. Couples dance. A man connives to be alone with a drunken woman so he can…photograph a file in an office desk. A woman driving a car rips off her face (in the manner of the characters in Mission: Impossible II, John Woo, 2000) to reveal… a man, the spy Loid (voice: Takuya Eguchi). Another woman, Yor (voice: Saori Hayama), is revealed as an assassin when she kills a man who sold industrial secrets. The spy and the assassin are married to one another in a pretend marriage which is a cover for their undercover operations, although neither knows the other is in the spy / assassination game. Their daughter Anya (voice: Atsumi Tanezaki) – adopted to make the bogus marriage look real – is a telepathic orphan who can read minds, so knows about the two secret identities of her ‘parents’.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Evil Does Not Exist
(Aku wa Sonzai Shinai,
悪は存在しない)

Director – Ryosuke Hamaguchi – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 106m

**

A small, unspoiled village community is visited by two representatives of a company planning to set up a glamping facility – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th

This starts and ends with a journey on foot through a forest with a viewpoint looking up at the branches of trees as quiet, meditative and arresting music by Eiko Ishibashi plays on the soundtrack.

A young girl of about eight (was it her viewpoint?) wanders through the woods.

A man chainsaws chopped tree trunks into small logs, then takes them near to his house to chop them for firewood. He puts several big, plastic cans in his car boot and drives out to a stream to fill them with water. Kazuo drops by to help the man load the filled bottles into his car. They hear gunshots, which the first man remarks he heard they were hunting in Kunihara.

At this point the first man Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) realises he’s forgotten to pick up his daughter from daycare, and drives over there to discover she’s given up waiting and walked home along. He finds her in the forest and gives Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), for that is her name, a piggyback home.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Drift

Director – Anthony Chen – 2023 – Singapore, UK, France, US – Cert. 15 – 93m

****

A Liberian woman and former London student from a privileged background has lost everything and lives on her wits in a Greek holiday resort until she makes a connection with a tour guide – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

A T-shirt-clad back sits on the beach, facing away from us, looking out to a calm, blue sky and sea. A figure of indeterminate gender at this point. In an isolated, unpopulated landscape. However, as this young black woman (Cynthia Erivo) starts to make her way around the place, elements of both are gradually revealed to us. She travels on a bus with white tourists to a small, sleepy town where Greek lettering on the shop signs gives us some idea of where we are. Later, she takes the return journey and is back on the beach. She washes her underwear (she appears to only have the one pair) and T-shirt in the sea, letting them dry in the sun while she shelters in a cave. She momentarily panics at the sight of a coastguard vessel before realising it’s merely a small fishing skiff.… Read the rest