Tag: school authorities

Brides

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 26 September 2025
No Comments on Brides
Sticky post

Director – Nadia Fall – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 93m

***

Two radicalised British, teenage girls run away from home intending to become brides for Islamic State – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 26th

When they meet at the local school, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar) strike up an unlikely friendship. In a way, they’re like chalk and cheese – Doe is the quiet one, always observing, while Muna is brash, loud and outgoing. Both come from Muslim backgrounds, and both feel alienated from their classmates, their school and wider British culture. Muna sticks up for herself against school bullies, and effectively gets vilified by the school authorities, and as a result her father, for doing so.

So, without their parents’ permission, they fly off to Turkey to meet up with a man who has groomed them online as brides for Islamic State. When their contact never shows up at the airport, they resolve to find their own way into Syria. As well as following their journey, the narrative frequently lapses into often confusing flashbacks about their home and school lives. And infuriatingly, it never explores how they fare when their their rose-tinted idealism collides with the harsh reality of becoming jihadist brides.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Weapons

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2025
No Comments on Weapons
Sticky post

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

Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 February 2025
No Comments on Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)
Sticky post

Director – Peter Weir – 1975 – Australia – Cert. 12a – 107m

*****

A group of teenage schoolgirls supervised by two teachers go on a picnic beside an isolated volcanic outcrop: three of them never return – Valentine’s Day previews on Friday & Saturday, February 14th & 15th, then is out in UK cinemas from Friday, February 21st

Two locations sear themselves into your brain when watching Picnic at Hanging Rock, whether for the first time or the umpteenth. One is the obvious one – the eponymous, towering rock formation in Victoria, Australia, at once an inescapable presence in a landscape and an invitation to come into its labyrinth and explore. The other is Appleyard College, a turn of the (nineteenth into twentieth) century boarding school for young ladies, shot in the real life 1870s-built, Georgian mansion Martindale Hall. They are two very different worlds, one natural, wild, and inexplicable, the other buttoned down and socially stratified.

The picnic, which takes place on St. Valentine’s Day, 1900, only seems to take the first third of the film’s running length. Two teachers, Miss Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray from The Last Wave, Peter Weir, 1977) and the French mistress Mlle de Poitiers (Helen Morse) are in charge of around a dozen teenage girls, all dressed very prim and properly.… Read the rest

Tags 1900, Anne Lambert, Australia, boarding school, brook, buttoned down, Christine Schuler, disappear, Dominic Guard, down to earth, doze, enigma, fee-paying school, fellow students, finance, foul play, gardener, Gheorghe Zamfir, go exploring, Helen Morse, hot weather, inexplicable, isolation, Jane Vallis, John Jarrett, Karen Robson, labyrinth, location, maid Jacki Weaver, mansion, Margaret Nelson, Martindale Hall, missing, mystery, natural, orphan, out in the heat, outcrop: Valentine’s Day, panpipe, perfect day, permission, Peter Weir, picnic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, police, prim and proper, primal, principal, Rachel Roberts, remove shoes and stockings, rock formation, Russel Boyd, school authorities, schoolgirls, search, secrets, sex, socially stratified, St. Valentine’s Day 1900, student attendance, supervision, teachers, teenage, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, trees, turn of the century, unpaid fees, vanish, Victoria, Vivean Gray, volcanic, well-off, wild, working class, young ladies

Features Live Action Movies

Kidnapped
(Rapito)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 April 2024
No Comments on Kidnapped
(Rapito)
Sticky post

Director – Marco Bellocchio – 2023 – Italy, France, Germany – Cert. 12a – 135m

*****

A boy is forcibly taken from his Jewish family by the Pope to be raised as a Catholic priest because he has been baptised into the Catholic faith – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Italy, the mid-nineteenth century. The Papal States will have disappeared by 1870 as Italy moves towards unification. In the meantime, they are still under the administrative control of the incumbent pope, Pius IX.

Bologna, 1852. A maid sees off a soldier in the night following a romantic tryst. The soldier is neither here nor there; the maid, Anna Morisi (Aurore Camatti) will play a significant part in what follows. The life of a nine-child Jewish family is about to be disrupted forever.

The home of the very ordinary Mortalo family, who are Jewish: father Momolo (Fausto Russo Alesi), mother Marianna (Barbara Ronchi) and their nine children. The parents are deeply religious and raise their offspring accordingly, teaching them, among other things, to recite the Shema prayer every night before they go to sleep. One night in 1858, they are visited by the authorities under Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) who have come to take away one of their children under Papist law.… Read the rest

Tags 1852, 1858, 1870, abduction, antisemitism, atheism, Aurore Camatti, baptised, Barbara Ronchi, boarding school, Bologna, Catholic, Catholic boarding school, Catholic Church, Catholic faith, Catholic ritual., Catholic services, Catholicism, church, Church authorities, conversion, dormitory, Enea Sala, ethnicity, Fabrizio Gifuni, faith, family, Fausto Russo Alesi, hate, heritage, Italian unification, Jesus Christ crucified, Jew, Jewish, Jewish family Pope, Judaism, kidnapped, Latin, Leonardo Maltese, lie, Limbo, liturgies, maid, Marco Bellocchio, Mezusah, Mortalo, nails, nineteenth century, ordination, Paolo Pierobon, Papal States, papist, Papist law, pharmacist, Pius IX, power structure, priest, protest, raised, religious artefact, religious conversion to Catholicism, ritual, ritual of baptism, Roman Catholic, Rome, salvation, Samuele Teneggi, school authorities, Shema prayer, statue, taken, Unification of Italy, upbringing, vision

Features Live Action Movies

Kidnapped

One God, two families

Kidnapped
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Certificate 12a, 135 minutes
Released 26 April

This Italian drama, based on true events, is set when the papacy was both the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the state authority in parts of Italy, a situation that would change with Italian unification in the 1870s and the instigation of a secular, country-wide system of government. There would be implications for the separation of church and state.

In 1858, six-year-old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortalo (Enea Sala) was removed from his family by the papist authorities following his Catholic baptism (how he was baptised emerges later) and taken to a school run directly by Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon) to educate such ‘Christians’ in the faith and turn them into priests.

The Church’s theological rationale behind this appalling action… [read the rest at Reform]

[Read my longer review on this site]

Tags 1852, 1858, 1870, abduction, antisemitism, atheism, baptised, Barbara Ronchi, boarding school, Catholic, Catholic boarding school, Catholic Church, Catholic faith, Catholic ritual., Catholic services, Catholicism, church, Church authorities, conversion, dormitory, Enea Sala, ethnicity, faith, family, Fausto Russo Alesi, hate, heritage, Italian unification, Jesus Christ crucified, Jew, Jewish, Jewish family Pope, Judaism, kidnapped, Latin, Leonardo Maltese, lie, Limbo, liturgies, maid, Marco Bellocchio, Mezusah, Mortalo, nails, nineteenth century, ordination, Paolo Pierobon, Papal States, papist, Papist law, pharmacist, Pius IX, power structure, priest, protest, raised, religious artefact, religious conversion to Catholicism, ritual, ritual of baptism, Roman Catholic, Rome, salvation, school authorities, taken, Unification of Italy, upbringing