Tag: underworld

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Features Live Action Movies

Odyssey
(2025)

Director – Gerard Johnson – 2025 – UK – Cert. 18 – 110m

****

A ruthless London estate agent with mounting debts finds herself at the mercy of criminal backers – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 7th

This starts off no holds barred with protagonist Natasha (Polly Maberly from Muscle, Gerard Johnson, 2019) having a tooth removed at the dentist’s, then having her card declined as she attempts to pay the £950 bill, going out of the front door after the third failed payment attempt. Throughout what follows, she will consistently receive phone messages about the outstanding amount and ignore them, although you suspect they are slowly eating away at her soul along with most of the other influences in her life. Somehow the incident seems to define her character: a driven, self-made woman – or, more accurately, a self-making one who never quite got there and lives beyond her means to maintain the illusion.

Natasha runs a tight office with right-hand woman Safi (Kellie Shirley), tech guy Spike (Charley Palmer Rothwell) developing a game-changing app for her, and promising new girl learning the ropes Dylan (Jasmine Blackborow). But Natasha is the person in charge of everything, the place where the buck stops, and despite their undoubted talents the other three seem scarcely to matter: it’s all about Natasha as she struggles to see through a hostile takeover, or, as she frames it, merger.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

Directors – Tim Burton, Mike Johnson – 2005 – US – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

When his arranged marriage preparations go badly wrong, a young man inadvertently marries a dead woman from the underworld – stop-frame animated marvel is out on 4K Ultra HD and Digital, and in UK cinemas on Friday, October 10th

It is a grey world, and everything must go… according to plan. For there is to be a rehearsal today for a marriage that will take place tomorrow. The son of nouveau riche couple the Van Dorts (voices: Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse) is to wed the daughter of penniless aristocrats Lord and Lady Everglot (voices: Joanna Lumley, Albert Finney). The bridegroom Victor (voice: Johnny Depp) has yet to meet his bride Victoria (voice: Emily Watson) and, left in the vast Everglot vestibule, the young man plays the piano. The tune floats up the stairs and is heard by Victoria who is drawn to it and its performer. She descends the stairs to listen and, against the odds, the pair fall in love.

Three hours into the marriage rehearsal, presided over by Pastor Galswells (voice: Christopher Lee) and poor Victor can’t seem to get his lines right.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

***1/2

The hyperactive ghost from the afterlife returns, along with a number of characters from the original – sequel to the 1988 film is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 6th

When the original Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) came out, no-one had quite worked out what Tim Burton was about, and the film was arresting, shocking, completely out there, utterly bonkers and like nothing anyone had ever seen. It’s difficult to know exactly what one could do to achieve that same effect in a sequel, or whether one should even try that approach. In the interim, Burton has had a lengthy and successful Hollywood career, arguably the system’s resident maverick director. When he’s good he’s very good; when he’s not, you wait for the next one and it’s usually an improvement.

In the event, perhaps inevitably, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t have the same shock of the new as its predecessor, but it’s similarly out there and bonkers and recognisably a sequel. It takes a while to get going – the first hour lumbers along with flashes of brilliance, such as a memorable, 3D-animated passenger aircraft crash at sea sequence, but the final third or so (from the point where one of the characters is lured in to the afterlife by another who turns out to be a ghost) is much more effective.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

No Trees in the Street

Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1959 – UK – Cert. 12 – 96m

****

An essentially honest young woman living in her parents’ East End slum fails to stop her impetuous younger brother from becoming involved in the criminal underworld – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital

Framed by a contemporary story of plain clothes policeman Frank (Ronald Howard) trying to talk sense into a knife-carrying teenager (David Hemmings), this takes place in the East End street where the latter lives some 20 years previously. The name has changed: back then, Somerset Street was known as Kennedy Street. The policeman, who is local, has always worked this beat. 20 years ago, he was trying to prevent another young man from drifting into a life of crime.

That other young man is Tommy (Melvyn Hayes), who lives with his father, mother and older sister Hetty (Sylvia Syms) in fairly basic accommodation. It’s a poor area and honest work is hard to come by. Both brother and sister would like to find a way out, into a better life. Both have less than honest ways of doing so, in the form of local ‘businessman’ Wilkie (Herbert Lom).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Orphée

Director – Jean Cocteau – 1950 – France – Cert. PG – 112m

*****

Acquitted by mirrors! Rereleased two thirds of a century on, Cocteau’s reimagining of the Greek legend of Orpheus remains as magical as ever – out in the UK on Friday, October 19th, 2018

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was a self-styled ‘poet’, a versatile, avant-garde French artist who worked across a number of different media – novels, visual art, design, theatre, cinema as well as poetry. 1950’s Orphée is one of his most celebrated films. And rightly so.

Famed poet Orphée (Jean Marais) is going through a bad creative patch when newcomer rival Cégeste (Edouard Dermithe) is killed by two speeding, leather-clad motorcycle riders. Orphée becomes obsessed with messages transmitted over the radio of the car belonging to Cégeste’s patron the Princess (Maria Casarès) which seem to him better than any lines he’s written recently.

So obsessed with these broadcasts does Orphée become that he fails to pay enough attention to his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa) who becomes increasingly restless. Every night as he sleeps, the Princess – who a voiceover (read by Jean Cocteau himself) informs us is actually Orphée’s death – visits his room through his wardrobe mirror to watch over him.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Get Carter
(1971)

Director – Mike Hodges – 1971 – UK – Cert. 18 – 111m

*****

A London gangster takes the train to Newcastle to find out who killed his brother… and why… in a defining film for both Michael Caine and British cinema – back out in cinemas on Friday, May 27th

Fifty years old, Hodges’ first feature has aged well in the main. Viewed today, this gangster film has a lot going for it. It reduces London to seedy, windowless rooms where men watch pornographic slide shows or their unfaithful wives service their lovers’ sexual fantasies over long distance phone calls. After the opening London to Newcastle train journey to the strains of Roy Budd’s memorable score, It quickly settles into its Newcastle milieu of pub interiors, terraced houses, rented rooms, back to back streets, pedestrians, cars, harbours and ferries. It has a memorable finale in which one man pursues another across a beach to a coal heap.

There’s a background about prostitution which turns out to be highly significant to the plot, with histories of men luring girls into pornographic movies. Few of the women (Britt Ekland, Rosemary Dunham, Petra Markham) seem happy – they are sex objects to service the men, or prostitutes, or victims of male trickery.… Read the rest