Tag: tree

Wild Foxes
(La Danse des Renards)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date May 1 2026
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(La Danse des Renards)
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Director – Valéry Carnoy – 2026 – Belgium, France – Cert. 15 – 91m ***1/2 A promising young school boxer’s mindset changes following an accident which damages his arm – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 1st This starts off with the camera darting nimbly around a boxing ring in a gym in which two […]

Features Live Action Movies

The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date June 13 2024
1 Comment on The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2009 – Austria, Germany – Cert. 15 – 144m ***** Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 13/11/2009. Plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025. Haneke’s first period drama for […]

Tags 1910s, 1913, 1914, abduction, accidents, agriculture, aired in public, Austria, baby. window left open, baron, black and white, bring down, building burns, Burghart Klaussner, cane, child abuse, children, chils abduction, Christian Friedel, closed door, community, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, corporal punishment, corruption, crime, cruelty, death, declaration of war, deduction, dirty laundry, doctor, Ernst Jacobi, factory, factory floorboards, facts, fallen world, farm labourer, Germany, half-truths, hearsay, horse and cart, ineffectual, injury, insidious, Josef Bierbichler, killed, kitchen, labourers, landowning class, Leonie Benesch, malevolence, Michael Haneke, midwife, Midwinter, misinterpretation, mortality, motive, nanny, narrator, Northern Germany, organised religion, outsider, pastor, picnic, powerlessness, professional class, Protestant, punishment, pure intentions, puzzle, Rainer Bock, riddle, riding, social class, social hierarchy, steward, Susanne Lothar, teacher, town, tree, Ulrich Tukur, underpinning, Ursina Lardi, village, widowed, wife, wire, working class

Features Live Action Movies

Bambi:
a Tale of Life in the Woods
(Bambi,
l’histoire d’une Vie
dans les Bois)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 15 2025
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a Tale of Life in the Woods
(Bambi,
l’histoire d’une Vie
dans les Bois)
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Director – Michel Fessler – 2024 – France – Cert. PG – 78m ***** The woods. A faun is born, looked after by its mother, and learns to fend for itself – remarkable live action adaptation of Bambi, shot with real live animals, is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 15th It’s inevitable that […]

Tags adaptation, adder, ancestor, animal cinematography, Animal Contact, animation, Austrian, Autumn, Bambi: a Tale of Life in the Woods, bereavement, birth, born, caught, chopped woodpile, damaged ankle, Disney, dog, dog collar, eagle, English language version, escape, exposed, fathers and children, fathers and sons, faun, fear of water, Felix Salten, fend for itself, field mouse, France, guardian angel, herd of deer, human, human danger, insects, lake, loss of the mother, mothers and children, mothers and sons, Muriel Bec, narrator, natural world, novel, quasi-documentary, rabbit, rabbit hole, raccoon, rain, raven, real live animals, restorative properties, seasons, snake, snare, spring, summer, trap, tree, vegetation, weaned, white dappling, Winter, wolf, woodland, woods

Animation Features Movies

Savages
(Sauvages)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 1 2025
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(Sauvages)
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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 […]

Tags 11-year-old, 3D animation, ancestors, animation, animator, Babette De Coster, baby, backing of the authorities, Benoît Poelvoorde, Borneo, bulldozer, capitalism, chainsaw, Charles de Ville, child-eating monster, children struggling to cope, Claude Barras, compromise, contemporary life, cousin, darkness, digitally immersive environment, economics of deforestation, embarrassment, environment, environmental theme, fathers and children, film activities, financial gain, followed by jungle, forest, frog, grandfather, grandfathers and children, habitat destruction, hands-on physicality, harvest fruit, heritage, incoming call, indigenous, infant, jungle forest, learned survival skills, loggers, loss of a parent, loss of the mother, Martin Verset, maternal instincts, miniature, model, model animation, model sets, modern technology, monster in the forest, mother’s death, mothers and children, myth making, native, natural habitat, natural outdoors world, nuclear family, orangutan, orphan, ostracise, Oxbridge graduate, palm oil extraction, peer group, Penan, perceived societal norm, Pierre-Isaïe Duc, police, pre-teenage, puppets blink, rainforest, rampage, rasping, resistance, ringtone, rucksack, Sauvages, savage, Savages, school, single-parent families, smartphone battery died, smartphone obsession, smelly boy, snake, spoken language, stop-frame, stop-motion, struggling to cope, swinging on a branch, Switzerland, trauma, tree, tropic, true to his roots, venomous snake, viral video

Features Live Action Movies

The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date February 7 2025
No Comments on The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)
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Director – Mohammad Rasoulof – 2024 – Iran, Germany, France – Cert. 15 – 167m ***** An Iranian state functionary, married with two teenage daughters, is promoted to the position of judge at the same time as the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupt… And then, his gun goes missing at home… – out on Blu-ray […]

Tags 2022, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2024-25, Academy Awards 2025, Amineh Arani, authorities, beaten, behave, best behaviour, bestie, career and promotion, case files, cat and mouse, cells, college, corridor, death sentence, drawer, family night out, family row, France, Germany, germination, home, hometown, husbands and wives, imprisonment, incarceration, interrogator city and country, Iran, Islam, Islamist, judge, keep women down, labyrinth, life cycle, Mahsa Rostami, Missagh Zareh, missing gun, Mohammad Rasoulof, mother, Niousha Akhshi, non-conformism, Oscar, Oscar nominations, Oscars, Oscars 2024-25, Oscars 2025, overwork, parents and children, parents and daughters, parents and teenagers, patriarchy, pistol, promotion, protests, radical and conservative, regime, repression, rooftop, roots, rubber stamp, scrupulous, Setareh Maleki, sisters, social climber, social divide, Soheila Golestani, state functionary, status quo, strangulation, strict Islamic dress codes, teenage angst, Tehran, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, totalitarian, tower, tree, Women Life Freedom, workload, wound

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 […]

Features Live Action Movies

Starve Acre

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date September 4 2024
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Director – Daniel Kokotajlo – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 98m *** As a couple become mired in grief following the death of their son, their behaviour turns increasingly obsessive, erratic and violent – terrifying and unsettling folk horror is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 6th and on Blu-ray, DVD and […]

Tags Andrew Michael Hurley, animatronics, archaeological dig, archaeologist, Arthur Shaw, asthma, behaviour, blood, children’s health, countryside, couple, Daniel Kokotajlo, death, doctor, elderly, Erin Richards, family, folk horror, fresh air, garden, grief, hare, health, house, instinct, Matt Smith, medium, Melanie Kilburn, memory, mired, Morfydd Clark, mothers and children, mysterious figure, mystery, neighbour, novel, obsession, parents and children, parents and sons, reanimate, remains, Robert Emms, Roger Barclay, rural and urban, Sean Gilder, séance, search, sink, sisters, spiritual mire, spiritualism, spiritualist medium, stabbing, substitute child, tales, tragedy, tree, UK, unearths, village, violence, Yorkshire

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Heart
of an Oak
(Le Chêne)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date July 12 2024
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of an Oak
(Le Chêne)
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Directors – Laurent Charbonnier, Michel Seydoux – 2022 – France – Cert. U – 80m **** The life of an oak tree, and the community of animal life which surrounds it, through the four seasons of a year – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th and then on Digital Download from Monday, August […]

Animation Features Movies

My Neighbour Totoro
(Tonari no Totoro,
となりのトトロ)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date July 30 2024
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(Tonari no Totoro,
となりのトトロ)
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Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1988 – Japan – Cert. U – 86m ***** Two young girls, whose mother is hospitalised, move to the country with their dad, where they encounter a friendly tree spirit – one of the greatest movies ever made, animated or otherwise, is back out in UK and Ireland cinemas on […]

Tags 2D animation, animation, belly, bus stop, camphor tree, catbus, Chika Sakamoto, child psychology, corn on the cob, country, creature, creature feature, D animation, Dakota Fanning, dream, Elle Fanning, exploring, family dynamics, fathers and daughters, Frank Welker, friendship, girls, grandson, Hayao Miyazaki, Hitoshi Tagaki, hospitalised, Japan, Joe Hisaishi, King of the Forest, Lea Salonga, miracle, mnothers and daughters, multiple legs, My Neighbour Totoro, Naoki Tatsuta, new house, Noriko Hidaka, outdoors, parents and children, passage, Pat Carroll, Paul Butcher, rabbit hole, ritual dance, roar, school, seeds, shelter, Shigesato Itoi, siblings, sisters, sleeping, sprouting, Studio Ghibli, Sumi Shimamoto, Tanie Kitabayashi, thunderstorm, Tim Daly, Toshiyuki Amagasa, Totoro, tree, tree roots, tree spirit, tunnel, undergrowth, waiting

Features Live Action Movies

Twister

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date July 16 2024
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Director – Jan de Bont – 1996 – US – Cert. PG – 108m Film ** Special Effects (the twisters themselves) ***** 1996 review for long defunct website London Calling Internet A twister, as lovers of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) will know, is a tornado that snatches up objects in its path […]

Tags Bill Paxton, cars, Cary Elwes, cow, farmhouse, Helen Hunt, house, Jami Gertz, Jan de Bont, mayhem, oil tanker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, special effects, tornado, tree, twister, US, weather