roundabout Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

The Shadow’s Edge
(捕风追影,
Bu Feng Zhui Ying)

Director – Larry Yang – 2025 – China – Cert. 15 – 141m

****1/2

To hunt a criminal mastermind adept at eluding their surveillance systems, Macau cops bring back an old surveillance man whose expertise predates contemporary technology– Jackie Chan cops and robbers movie pairs him with acting legend Tony Leung Ka Fai – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 3rd

This remake of Eye in the Sky (Yau Nai-Hoi, 2007), already remade in South Korea as Cold Eyes (Kim Byung-seo, Jo Ui-Seok, 2013), introduces the idea that modern technology has its limitations, so it’s sometimes better to resort to older methods of doing things which are less reliant on the new technology.

Macau, 2025, and the police are monitoring four young men in a car using the Surveillance and Pursuit All System (SPAIS – possibly something got lost here in translation) and cleverly manage to get a fleet of patrol cars to box the car in at a roundabout. The only problem is, while HQ can see the trapped car on their real time monitors, the cops on the ground can see that there’s no car there.

Then, a daring bank vault raid to steal the pass code for a crypto currency account throws a pursuing cop into disarray when, following a spectacular fight with a cop in a lift, the perps paraglide off the top of the building to make their bold escape.… Read the rest

Pachyderm
(Pachyderme)

Director – Stéphanie Clément – 2022 – France – 11m

*****

A nine-year-old struggles with the trauma that befalls her at her grandpa’s – nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2024 Academy Awards, VoD details below review

She’s nine (voice-over: Christa Theret), and in the Summer she goes to stay with granny and grandpa. She plays on a swing, missing mum and dad, she watches a cabbage white butterfly in the garden. The house is tidy, ordered, perhaps obsessively so. It smells of polish; the kitchen smells of bleach. Tomorrow, grandpa will take her to the lake, where he likes to fish. To get to her bedroom, she must pass the big, intimidating horn mounted at the top of the stairs, a hunting trophy from a pachyderm. In her room, she can see eyes watching her from the wood grain of the ceiling timbers. She doesn’t sleep by counting sheep; she kills monsters. As the floorboards creak outside her door, she hides in the wallpaper, in the flowers, in sleep. After all, as grandma says, what could happen?

Before the trip, she accidentally pricks a finger on one of grandpa’s fishing hooks – lures, as they call them – but grandpa kisses the cut better with the kiss that heals all things.… Read the rest