Tag: trauma

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Savages
(Sauvages)

Director – Claude Barras – 2024 – Switzerland – Cert. PG – 87m

French with English subtitles.

*****

An indigenous pre-teenage girl stands up to loggers destroyingthe local rainforest – stop-frame animated feature from the director of My Life as a Courgette is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

From its opening moments in darkness following unsettling creature noises suggesting a jungle forest, followed by jungle forest establishing shots – a frog jumping across a river via a series of stones, a snake slithering around a tree, a baby orangutan (non-verbal voice: soundtrack composer and co-sound editor Charles de Ville) swinging on a branch – it’s clear that this has high ambitions indeed. All the above would be one thing to execute in live action – a few location natural history shots… possibly library footage. In model – or stop-motion – animation, you need to physically build everything in terms of miniature model sets, so to achieve such images is a major undertaking.

Having already set the production bar high, this then pushes it up further with the rasping sound of a chainsaw, as the tree heights on which the baby orangutan and its mother (voice: de Ville again), who has just rescued the infant from the attentions of the deadly snake, are resting suddenly topples into a camp of workers who are going about their allotted task of destroying the creature’s natural habitat.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Dangerous Animals

Director – Sean Byrne – 2025 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 98m

*****

A free-spirited girl surfer must outwit the shark tour operator who has kidnapped her and whose idea of looking after customers is feeding them to the sharks – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 6th

Greg (Liam Greinke) invites Brit backpacker Heather (Ella Newton) to join him on a shark swim. So, off they go to Tucker (Jai Courtney), who runs shark-seeing tours using his boat. As in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), you go in the cage, the cage goes in the water, the sharks are outside the cage. Heather has second thoughts, but the couple go for it, which turns out to be an amazing experience. You won’t believe what happens next. Greg certainly doesn’t. (Be advised: some online trailers give the game away. Thankfully, Vertigo’s teaser trailer, below, doesn’t.)

Free-spirited surfer Zephyr (Hessie Harrison) lives out of her van and one night indulges in passion there with yuppie Moses (Josh Heuston) parked outside his house, swiftly driving off afterwards before he has had a chance to take their relationship further, which is a pity from his point of view since he feels some sort of deeper connection.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Before We Vanish
(Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha,
散歩する侵略者,
lit. Strolling Invaders)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2017 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 129m

***

Three humans claiming to be aliens steal ideas from people’s heads as they prepare for their race’s forthcoming invasion – from LEAFF, the London East Asia Film Festival 2017

This review is of a first viewing of this film. It really doesn’t happen often, but I can imagine liking this film more second time round. It’s a very strange movie.

Hands take a goldfish from a group in a white bathtub and transfer it into a metal pan. A sailor suited schoolgirl carries the fish in a bag to another house. Inside the latter, on its floor, the fish struggles to breathe as it lies on the ground out of water.

Spattered with blood, the girl (Yuri Tsunematsu) walks happily along the middle of a busy road. As she strolls without a care, swerving to avoid her, a lorry crashes headlong into an oncoming car.

Elsewhere, something is wrong with Shinji Kase (Ryuhei Matsuda from The Raid 2, Gareth Evans, 2014). His behaviour alarms his wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa from Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015, and playing in LEAFF this Saturday 28/10).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Small Things Like These

Director – Tim Mielants – 2024 – Ireland – Cert. 12a – 98m

*****

A coal delivery man is troubled by the recurring sight of a deeply traumatised young woman at one of his regular customers, a convent – out to buy on Digital on Monday, January 20th, and on Blu-ray & DVD and to rent on Digital on Monday, February 3rd

Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) runs a company delivering coal to customers in and around Wexford, Ireland. It’s tough, backbreaking work, as is evident from the sight of his assistants loading up his truck, one bag of coal loaded onto the back by two men. He’s happy with his men, who do a good job. Doing his rounds as driver and delivery man (locked-off camera looking out from the driver’s cab) he carries one sack at a time himself. Finishing up delivering to the local convent, where he’s required to leave the coal bags behind the door in the designated coal house, he witnesses a scene where a young woman clearly doesn’t want to be in the care of the head sister.

He comes home. As is his wont, he furiously scrubs the coal black off his hands, producing a pool of blackened water in the bathroom sink.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Blood
The Last Vampire
(2000)

Director – Hiroyuki Kitakubo – 2000 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 48m

****

Part English, Part Japanese with English Subtitles, Widescreen (1.85)

REG 2 DVD / PAL VHS review from Starburst (UK Edition), 2001.

The animation weighs in at a mere 46 minutes on home video formats, although on both you also get an informative, 20 minute Making Of documentary which goes into a lot of fascinating detail about the project’s innovative production processes via interviews with most of the animation staff involved.

Set largely on an American Air Base in Japan in 1966’s early stages of the Vietnam War, Blood’s tale cleverly employs both American English for the US military and Japanese (here subtitled in English) for the indigenous population. Sometimes, of course, the Japanese speak English to Americans and on one occasion, an American schoolgirl is told by Japanese heroine Saya (voice: Youki Kudoh from Heaven’s Burning, Craig Lahiff, 1997; Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch, 1989; Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985; The Crazy Family, Sogo Ishii, 1984) to back off in American English after attempting to greet Saya in the Japanese tongue.

Language wise, there’s therefore no need for a separate track, but the DVD includes two sound mixes of which the 5.1 scores hands down since every implement dropping to a stone floor or every bullet flying into a wall springs to life in the 5.1 mix, but sounds comparatively flat in the stereo.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Moor
(Mavr)

Director – Adilkhan Yerzhanov – 2024 – Kazakhstan, France – 83m

***

A mercenary known by the codename ‘Moor’ returns from the war to the big city to rescue his younger brother’s wife and son from her husband’s debts – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Found by the authorities, who apprehend him by a perimeter fence and remove his bag of home-made weaponry which includes a wooden bow and arrows and a knife carved from bone, which he will get back and make use of later in the plot, Moor is processed alongside wounded and traumatised veterans. He speaks few words and is in complete control of his faculties. The chief of police, who talks in a confident, jokey manner and insists on addressing him as Bro, feels more like a gangster than a cop, wearing a snakeskin jacket not unlike the hero of Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990) and often accompanied by a small entourage who read as gangsters rather than cops, even though the group occasionally expands to contain officers with the word POLICE on the back of their jackets.

He explains that Moor’s younger brother Houdini has disappeared, leaving behind him not only a mountain of debt but also a wife and small son.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mother’s Kingdom
(Uhm-mah-ui
Wahng-gook,
엄마의 왕국)

Director – Lee Sang-hak – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

A Christian mother, her ‘Christian book’ author son, and her local pastor brother-in-law are haunted by traumas from their collective past – suspense thriller from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

—

I don’t often preface a film review with a piece of verbal, religious text, but in this exceptional case, the following Old Testament quote may be pertinent, particularly the phrase in bold:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

– Exodus 34:6–7

—

Ji-wook (Han Ki-jang) lives with his mother Kyung-hee (Nam Kee-ae), and although he’s earning a respectable living working from home as a writer of self-help motivational books, in many ways he seems deeply unqualified to be peddling such advice to a wider public.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Guest
(301호 모텔 살인사건)

Director – Yeon Je-gwang – 2023 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 18 – 77m

***

An out-of-the-way motel, with numerous hidden cameras covertly recording the unwitting guests, becomes the site of multiple killings – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

There’s an idea that the widespread presence of security cameras make the world a safer place, because things can be seen rather than hidden; equally, however, things can be recorded, turned into product and sold for profit. The Guest takes place in a familiar world of roads and car journeys and motels in the middle of nowhere at which the traveller can take a break. And all of it seems to be covered by security cameras.

That applies to the roads, where the cams are there for traffic enforcement (and, perhaps more pertinently, traffic tax raising or penalty charging) purposes. Why they are there, for good or ill, isn’t really discussed here. But their ubiquitous presence is inescapably noted.

It also applies in the seedy motel at the centre of this horror / drama / suspense / thriller. The loan shark Deuk-chan (Hyun Bong-sik) who owns the place employs two young staff members Min-cheol (Lee Joo-seung) and Young-gyu (Han Min) to run the place in a day-to-day basis both of whom are indebted to him and therefore have little choice other than to do whatever he asks, however unreasonable.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Alien
Romulus

Director – Fede Alvarez – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A group of young people escape from a planet housing a repressive, corporate mining colony in search of something better … only to find something worse… – latest SF horror franchise entry is out on digital on Friday, October 18th following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The Alien franchise, after quite literally bursting onto cinema screens with Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), then having lost its way somewhat on Alien3 (David Fincher, 1992), picked up again somewhat on Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 1979), and now settled title-wise into the sensible enough format of Alien: Ship’s Name, delivers a new entry made by a writer-director, Fede Alvarez, who understands the franchise enough to both put in everything required of it and throw in some innovative ideas without compromising its essence.

The first 20 or so minutes, arguably the best thing here, could equally easily have opened a science fiction epic unrelated to the franchise. A young woman Rain (the terrific Cailee Spaeny from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) is trapped on a planet where the sun is permanently hidden owing to pollution caused by the corporation’s mining operation.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Director – Martin Rosen – 1978 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

When a young rabbit visionary foresees doom for those who remain, some of the rabbits leave their warren in search of a safer home, encountering many life-threatening perils along the way – new 4K restoration of animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th, following its World Premiere in the London Film Festival on Saturday, October 12th

LFF: Sat 12 Oct 12:20 World Premiere, Tues 15 Oct 12:15,
both BFI Southbank NFT1.

This opens with a mythological segment involving a powerful God, represented as the sun, and rabbitkind, specifically the archetypal rabbit El-ahrairah. It’s drawn and painted in an arresting, non-naturalistic style involving coloured lines animated against a white background to create the impression of moving, primitive drawings, due in large part to uncredited director John Hubley, whose vision for the film was at odds with that of producer Martin Rosen. The latter ended up firing the former as he wanted something grittier and less lightweight.

It’s arguable this has worked to the film’s advantage: the fable sequence works as otherworldly rabbit mythology, suggesting a race of intelligent creatures capable of constructing creation myths about their species much as human beings do.… Read the rest