Tag: US

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Features Live Action Movies

Broken Arrow
(1996)

Director – John Woo – 1996 – US – Cert. 15 – 108m

***

Woo’s second US outing pits Christian Slater against nuclear stealth bomber co-pilot turned bad John Travolta in the Arizona desert – part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

The first project to see the light of day from WCG Entertainment, whose initials stand for Woo Chang Godsick. This triumvirate of names belongs to respectively the director of A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992), his longstanding Hong Kong producer Terence Chang, and former agent Christopher Godsick – whose William Morris client list had included Woo himself and the director’s onscreen alter-ego Chow Yun‑fat.

Like his earlier successful action blockbuster Speed (Jan de Bont, 1991), Graham Yost’s script was initially written for producer Mark Gordon. After Woo’s more modestly budgeted US debut Hard Target (1993) was followed by disappointing setbacks on other American projects; Yost’s screenplay was exactly the entry into the US blockbuster market Woo needed. While the resultant film may be ultimately less satisfying than Woo’s best work, it quickly established him as a top Hollywood A-list director.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Hard Target

Director – John Woo – 1993 – US – Cert. 18 – 100m (UK version), 86m (US version)

****

John Woo’s US debut is a New Orleans remake of The Most Dangerous Game with action star Jean-Claude Van Damme – part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

Essentially the first of two remakes of The Most Dangerous Game / The Hounds Of Zaroff (Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel, 1932, shot using the same cast, crew and jungle sets as King Kong, (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) – the second being Surviving The Game (Ernest R. Dickinson, 1994) – this updates the original’s remote island to the urban jungle of and countryside surrounding New Orleans, making its mad game hunter (Lance Henriksen taking on the role originally played by Leslie Banks) prey not on lost seafarers but unemployed down and outs on dry land.

In true New Right nineties spirit, the hunter of humans has now graduated from being merely a gratifying personal sport for deranged psychopaths to a lucrative business attracting high rolling, thrill-seeking clients who get to pull the trigger themselves.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Point Break
(1991)

Director – Kathryn Bigelow – 1991 – US – Cert. 15 – 122m

*****

A rookie FBI man goes undercover with a group of surfers, believing them to be a gang of bank robbers who disguise themselves as former US Presidents – milestone action movie is out in a 4K Restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, November 8th as part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK October-November 2024

At a cursory glance, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about Point Break, a crime movie about bank robbers, surfers and undercover cops, except perhaps the juxtaposition of surfers on the one hand with cops and robbers on the other except as a route into making a film about cops undercover. Certainly, that juxtaposition pervades the film, with fresh out of training school, undercover FBI man Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) coming up against accomplished surfer Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) and his new age-y philosophy of life, which is all about living in the moment and experiencing the biggest rush. Those two concepts happen to embody elements that could potentially make a great action film. Point Break does exactly that. Even though it’s a 35-year-old film, it feels as fresh today as it did on initial release.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Blitz
(2024)

Directed by Steve McQueen
Certificate 12a
120 minutes
Released 1 November

People just getting on with life in dire circumstances, doing what they have to do. A mother searches for her lost son. An 11-year-old embraces his black identity. Women work in munitions factories. Thieves take advantage of death and devastation to turn a profit. And, unexpectedly, a spiritually dark place produces an impassioned plea for the virtues of Christianity.

This is London during the Nazi bombings of the Second World War. Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, the Small Axe TV series) and his collaborators have done remarkable historical and visual research, so that the historical situation seeps into you. McQueen’s way in was a photograph of a young black boy, around whom he has woven a story of an evacuee jumping from the train to return to his mum.

In a remarkable performance, 11-year-old Elliot Heffernan plays the boy… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

Read my longer review on this site here.

Trailer:

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Features Live Action Movies

Yes, Madam!
(Huang Jia Shi Jie,
皇家师姐)

Director – Corey Yuen – 1985 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 93m

***1/2

Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock’s star debut, in which they play two plain-clothes, kickboxing Hong Kong cops – on Blu-ray from Monday, December 12th 2002 and now part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK from Monday, October 21st through November 2024

Michelle Yeoh, here credited as Michelle Kheng (in her early Hong Kong films she was often credited as Michelle Khan, and her birth nameis Yeoh Choo Kheng) plays Inspector Ng, a no-nonsense police officer who always gets her man (and, interestingly, all the criminals here are men), as illustrated in the opening scene when a flasher accosts her in a convenience store, and she promptly arrests him.

Her mentor Richard Nornen (Michael Harry, later seen in An Angel at my Table, Jane Campion, 1990) is visited in his hotel room by professional assassin Mr. Dik (Dick Wei) who shoots him point-blank through an apple in Nornen’s mouth in order to obtain a two-frame film clip of a legal contract for his gangster boss Tin Wai-keung (James Tien).… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

The Wild Robot

Director – Chris Sanders – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 102m

****1/2

A service robot shipwrecked on a desert island is imprinted as its mother on the mind of an orphaned gosling – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 18th following its screening in the London Film Festival

Waking up on an unknown beach with no idea as to how she got there, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voice: Lupita Nyong’o) is a Universal Dynamics service robot designed to complete any task assigned to her. Without any such task, she feels completely lost. She wanders around the island, populated only by animals, in search of her owner. Unable to understand all the noises the animals make communicating with each other, she has her translation circuits decode their meaning so that, soon, she is hearing them communicate in English.

She accidentally almost destroys a family of geese but managing to rescue a goose egg. She must protect the egg from the fox (voice: Pedro Pascal) who attempts to steal it to satisfy his hunger. Her robotic rationale for this is to question whether the egg is the fox’s property, A thought process that might make sense in a human environment but makes none at all in this animal one.… Read the rest

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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

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Animation Features Movies

The Iron Giant

Director – Brad Bird – 1999 – US – Cert. U – 88m

*****

1957. A giant robot falls out of the sky and is befriended by a young boy in Maine. However, the US government proves less sympathetic – animated feature is out in UK cinemas from Friday, December 17th, 1999

This has all the hallmarks of classic fifties sci-fi outings – giant monster, small American town, paranoid government agent, mobilised militia. For those demanding still more, it has a single working mum and a sympathetic beat sculptor, neither of whom would be out of place in a period Roger Corman cheapie.

But you shouldn’t pigeonhole The Iron Giant by genre because a further two factors mark it out as very different. Freely adapted from Ted Hughes’ marvellous children’s book The Iron Man but given a decidedly American spin by director Brad Bird (cartoon TV series The Simpsons, 2 eps, 1990-91; creator of Family Dog, 1993), this is without doubt the animated film of the year and arguably the film of the year period. We’ve grown so used to the Disney blockbuster model – cute characters (and merchandise), hit songs – that anything else (this employs neither device) comes as a shock.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Transformers One

Director – Josh Cooley – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 104m

***

The origin story of the hero and villain of the Transformers in a long-distant past on their home planet – animated prequel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 11th

In a city deep in the bowels of his planet, one of its Transformer residents, Orion Pax (voice: Chris Hemsworth), obsessed with learning all he can about the history of his people, breaches the security of an historical archive only to be chased by guards who find him as he starts reading. Like many others, Orion is a mining bot, and as such lacks the ability to transform that is possessed only by true Transformers. Trying to do the right thing even when it’s against regulations, he is often getting into trouble on his mining shift. His immediate superior Elita-1 (voice: Scarlett Johansson) consistently covers for him.

That doesn’t stop Orion Pax from breaking with tradition and getting himself and his friend D-16 (voice: Brian Tyree Henry) to participate in a Transformers race through the city, for participation in which, benevolent ruler Sentinel (voice: Jon Hamm) promises to reward them – although as it turns out, they are almost immediately sent to a deep level waste dump for stepping out of line.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Blitz
(2024)

Director – Steve McQueen – 2024 – UK, US – Cert. 12a – 120m

*****

As the Germans bomb London in WW2’s Blitz, a boy evacuated by his mother as per government instructions refuses to stay on the train and finds his way back to London – from the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player and then out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st

(This review is a piece of writing currently in progress. Please bookmark and return to this page to see the whole review in due course.)

A five-star review (and I’m unrepentant) for a film that’s less than perfect. It gets the five stars because of the incredible things it gets right.

Blitz promises two things: one, an immersive experience of the London Blitz, and two, the mother and son story of a woman sending her son out of London in the mass child evacuation and the child’s refusal to follow the plan, complicated with the racial tension of the child’s having a black father (who is absent) and a white mother.

Writing these lines, the film’s potential problem is evident; the immersive experience is probably a movie in itself, and this side of things is brilliantly realised without the need for narrative coherence.… Read the rest