Tag: rifle

Weapons

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2025
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Director – Zach Cregger – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 128m

****

One night, all but one of the children in one class in the town school disappear into the dark, leaving the townsfolk baffled as to what happened to them… – Fortean-sounding mystery is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 8th

One night at 2.17am, the 17 other kids in Alex’s class got up out of their beds, went downstairs, opened their front doors, and ran out into the night. As a child relates the incident, we observe it in flashback. The kids run with arms half outstretched at an angle, as if playing at being aeroplanes in the school playground. If you’ve seen the film’s poster, this strange angle of the arms is also apparent. As it also is in the film’s trailer, which starts with this flashback. But what is in the mind of these kids? Where are they going? To what purpose?

For that matter, why the title Weapons? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that you’ll know the answer once you’ve seen the film.

Thus begins one of the most intriguing cinematic mysteries of recent years. To unpack his prologue, writer-director Cregger opts for an astute, six-part, character-based structure.… Read the rest

Tags 17, 2.17am, addresses the meeting, Alden Erhenreich, Amy Madigan, angry, angry mob, assault, Austin Abrams, baffled, banging on her door, bar, beaten up, Benedict Wong, booze, break and enter, breaking and entering, builder, bully, business, car chase, catch, caught, character study, chase sequence, checking car doors, children, class, class teacher, classmate, Clayton Farris, confused, covered with newspaper, criminal, cutlery, dash cam, daughter of the boss, disappear, disappeared, domesticity, door paint, dream, drifter, drug addict, enigma, evening, family home, fantasy, father-in-law, fence goods, file a complaint, follow, Fortean, gang of kids, Gary Christopher, graffiti, Great Aunt, home, hordes of children, horror, human quarry, Information, interpersonal drama, into the dark, intrigue, Jennifer Garner, Josh Brolin, June Diane Raphael, kids’ rucksack, lipstick, liquor store, living room, low life, lucrative haul, Luke Speakman, missing children, missing kids, motionless people, mystery, newspaper, next fix, night, nightmare, obsession, offender, on foot, parents, parked cars, patrol, patrol car, perp, perpetrator, persons outside the house, plot the trajectory, point of view, police chief, police station, property, prying eyes, pursuing cop, pursuit, puzzle, queers his pitch, red herring, red paint, relationship, relentless, reward, reward money, rifle, rime? science fiction, school, school authorities, school. class, sci-fi, security video, sex, SF, small talk, small town, spokesman, spouse, street, swarming, Toby Huss, unperturbed, US, ushered out, vanish, Weapons, windows, witch, youth, Zach Cregger

Features Live Action Movies

Queer

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 December 2024
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Director – Luca Guadagnino – 2024 – Italy, US – Cert. 18 – 135m

*****

A journey through the gay fleshpots of Mexico City leading, through illness, to a deeper jungle wherein can be found a drug that will enhance telepathy – challenging William Burroughs adaptation with Daniel Craig & Lesley Manville is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 13th

Bookended with a prologue and an episode, this is a narrative split into three separate sections or chapters. In the first, set in Mexico City, fortysomething Bill Lee (Daniel Craig) spends his days and nights drinking in bars like Ship Ahoy frequented by (mostly younger male) US ex-pats. He talks with friends such as Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman), he watches newcomers, he attempts, sometimes successfully, to pick some up. He is taken with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), and the pair embark on an intense physical relationship. Lee persuades Eugene to accompany him to South America, with no stipulation other than Eugene “be nice” to him a couple of times a week.

In the second, on the trip Bill goes down with a nasty case of the chills. In the third, following his eventual recovery, he asks around about a drug called Yaga he understands can facilitate telepathy, the pair trekking deep into the jungle to find biologist Dr.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

The Marines
Who Never Returned
(Doraoji
Anneun Haebyong,
돌아오지 않는 해병)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 28 October 2024
No Comments on The Marines
Who Never Returned
(Doraoji
Anneun Haebyong,
돌아오지 않는 해병)
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Director – Lee Man-hee – 1963 – South Korea – 110m

***1/2

A small unit of Korean soldiers pushing North in the Korean War adopt an orphaned girl as a mascot before being all but wiped out – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

This opens impressively with what looks like stock footage of armoured cars and infantry coming up a beach. Soldiers race across open ground to a safe shooting position, briefly going back a couple of dozen or so feet to drag two of their wounded comrades forward into comparative safety.

They move on to a derelict, war-torn town. Burning buildings, half-collapsed sections of walls (one of which partially topples as they wait momentarily beside it). One soldier advances across a patch of open ground, gun in hands, grenade at the ready, watched by his expectant comrades from their positions of cover. Time seems to stand still. Eventually he lobs the grenade and the others move up behind him. He drops into a ditch. Ahead of him, a civilian woman comes onto the waste ground with her small daughter.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Things Will Be Different

Director – Michael Felker – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 102m

****

A brother and sister go through a portal into the past, are trapped there by an unseen adversary, and must wait for a mysterious visitor – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

This movie is different. It’s about philosophical ideas. It would work very well as a piece of writing (a short story? a novella?), it would work as a radio drama, and – yes – it works very well as a movie. Because what’s compelling about it is not what you see with your eyes or hear with your ears, it’s the implications of it all, the stuff that goes through your head as you’re watching the movie. Welcome to the Cinema of Ideas.

Early one bright and sunny Summer morning, Sidney (Riley Dandy) enters the diner where her brother Joseph (Adam David Thompson), who she’s not seen for a while, is having breakfast. She has the rifle. He has the two bags with the money. As arranged, they go through the woods, across the high cornfields towards the house. There are people in the woods, which are supposed to be deserted. She is concerned.… Read the rest