Tag: violence

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Features Live Action Movies

A Moment
Of Romance
(Tin Joek
Yau Ching,
天若有情)

Director – Benny Chan – 1990 – Hong Kong – Cert.18 – 92m

***1/2

When a biker and gang member on the lam from a jewel heist takes a well-to-do girl hostage then falls for her, their romance is doomed – out on Radiance Blu-ray from Monday, August 21st 2023 following its screening in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) 2021

Gang member Wah (Andy Lau) is the archetypal bad boy who, in the opening sequence, speeds through a narrow gap between two lorries and wilfully breaks a wing mirror on a stationary police vehicle as he rides past. Director Chan keeps up the mayhem with a sequence of two competing lorries on a makeshift racing circuit, each with a pretty girl standing on top – until one of them crashes into a stationery car sending the falling girl through its windscreen and scattering the onlookers as the police approach.

Ascendant gang member Trumpet seems to have it in for Wah and puts him on getaway car duty for a jewel heist. Wah must improvise when cops happen by chance to turn up outside the building while the crime is in progress and during the ensuing pursuit by car, in which he gets the robbers successfully away from the scene, and on foot, his only way of escaping the cops is to take an innocent bystander hostage.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Master Gardener

Director – Paul Schrader – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

Order and chaos. A man works bringing horticultural order to his employer’s garden estate, but the disorder of his past threatens to catch up with him and wreak havoc upon it

Or. A man engaged in sexual relations with his female employer becomes involved with her grandniece, to whom his employer may one day leave her inheritance

Or. A man orders his employer’s garden estate until she ejects him for sleeping with her grandniece, leaving the pair to survive in the tough world beyond – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th

This appears to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it concerns a man (the central character, the eponymous master gardener) imposing order, but he is a man coming from chaos and at some point that chaos may undo what he has achieved there. On the other, it concerns two women – one his monied, controlling, matriarchal employer, the other her grandniece, from the wrong side of the tracks, who the employer wants to learn the business. The man is initially the lover of the first and, later, becomes the lover of the second, for which the first fires him.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Sisu
(Sisu)

Director – Jalmari Helander – 2022 – Finland – Cert. 15 – 91m

****

A gold miner taking time out from WW2 must get past a Nazi unit in the Lapland wilderness in order to deposit his gold at the bank – entertaining but violent gorefest is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th

1944. Lapland. A man (Jorma Tommila from director Helander’s Big Game, 2014; Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, 2010) has withdrawn from the war to search for gold in the wilderness. The retreating German army, meanwhile, is pursuing a ‘scorched earth’ policy, destroying everything in its path. The man digs. He finds a rich seam of gold. He fills his saddlebags. Now all he has to do is get them to the nearest bank in the nearest town.

He sets off with his horse and his dog. Between him and his destination is a Nazi unit with a ruthless, sadistic commander (Aksel Hennie from The Middle Man, Bent Hamer, 2021, The Martian, Ridley Scott, 2015; Pioneer, Erik Skjoldbjærg, 2013; Headhunters, Morten Tyldum, 2011), a tank and two lorries carrying German infantry and Finnish women prisoners respectively.

All this takes place in a world where everyone, Finns and Germans, speak English.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lust, Caution
(Se, Jie,
色, 戒)

Director – Ang Lee – 2007 – China, Taiwan, US – Cert. 18 – 158m

*****

A Chinese student joins an assassination plot against a high-up Japanese collaborator, for which she must sleep with him – originally published in Third Way, to coincide with 4th January 2008 UK cinema release.

Some will consider this erotic espionage thriller a no-go area, while others will want to see it for its director. Mandarin Chinese language outing Lust, Caution is based on a short story which highly regarded Chinese author Eileen Chang spent decades honing. Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee (award winner for both Brokeback Mountain, 2005, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000) claims he hasn’t so much adapted Chang’s tale as, in collaboration with his cast, re-enacted it. Given her story concerns the activity of a troupe of actors, perhaps this isn’t so surprising.

Shanghai 1942. Mrs Mak, waiting for a rendezvous in a café, is not who she appears. She recalls how in China 1938 she was shy Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) who as a university student got involved with a drama group to encourage patriotism under Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom). Acting before an enraptured audience, she realises she has found her métier.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lakelands

Director – Robert Higgins, Patrick McGivney – 2022 – Ireland – Cert. 15 – 100m

****

The health of an amateur player of Irish football suffers after he gets badly beaten up one night, forcing him to withdraw from playing – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 5th

Football. Violence. This is a film that soft-soaps neither, yet it has no interest whatever in any justice / revenge plot resolution, opting instead for a very different approach.

It’s actually quite a gentle, downplayed affair focusing on the after effects of violence on a person’s life. It’s a rare foray into the landscape of masculine sensibilities, in a far more thoughtful and considered way than is usual in the cinema. For a start, it’s framed by farming, with protagonist Cian (Éanna Hardwicke) working on his dad’s farm caring for livestock, mucking out cowsheds, driving in fence posts and so forth, a slow, seasonal pace of life. And then his involvement in football (in this case, Irish football, which isn’t something this reviewer has seen much of on the screen, or, indeed, anywhere) is presented as a driving passion in marked contrast to the farming; you get the impression of a full, worthwhile existence, punctuated by nights out drinking with fellow players in the local town’s pubs and clubs.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lakelands

A time for reflection

Lakelands

Directed by Robert Higgins, Patrick McGivney

Certificate 15, 100 minutes

Released 05 May

We plan our lives, or not, and they proceed, and everything’s hunky dory. Or sometimes things come out of nowhere and throw us for six. And then, no matter how seemingly impossible, we have to deal with those things. As part of the whole deal of being human.

A small, Irish town. Cian (Éanna Hardwicke) is a young man in his early twenties who works on his dad’s farm. He also plays Irish football, which like many team sports demands a level of dedication, and often goes out with mates to pubs and clubs. One night, at a club, he gets into an argument with a stranger over a girl. It’s not really anything of significance; boys, as they say, will be boys.

What happens next is a whole other deal, though… [Read the rest at Reform magazine.]

Read my alternative, less religious review on this site.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Evil Dead Rise

Director – Lee Cronin – 2022 – New Zealand, Ireland – Cert. 18 – 97m

****

When the Necoromicon is opened in a tower block, demons bloodily attack and possess members of an all-female nuclear family who try to fight them off – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 21st

One of two films about living in a high rise released this week.

The first bookend: the sound of a fly buzzing around the auditorium, is if to state that this is a film about technique. Almost immediately, a POV shot travelling rapidly along a river then a lake recalls The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1979). If you know the original, you’ll feel like you’re in good hands. The camera homes in on the characters as they interact with one another (a girl trying to relax on the pier, a boy goofing around nearby) and you get a strong idea of who they are. The acting is surprisingly good. Which means that, when people start being possessed by demons (which they do pretty quickly), you have a sense of what’s been lost, what’s been taken away. Pretty swiftly, you have to emotionally let the possessed go and get on the side of those still alive trying to survive the possessed demons.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Renfield

Director – Chris McKay – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 93m

**

Guided by American self-help industry ideas of escaping toxic relationships with narcissists, Dracula‘s servant Renfield wants out of his relationship with his master – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 14th

Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has had enough of working for his boss, Count Dracula (Nic Cage) who gives him the ability to manifest great power from eating insects in exchange for his tending to Dracula’s every need, the main item on which list is a supply of fresh, virtuous humans on who to feast. As here portrayed, Renfield is an honourable Englishman who has changed the rules: he goes out and brings back a never ending supply of one sort or another of less than virtuous people for the Count. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really fit the bill.

Enter pampered gangster boy Tedward Lobo (Ben Schwartz) who, whilst trying to find the people who double-crossed him in a drugs deal, stumbles on the Prince of Darkness and, impressed, resolves to introduce the vampire to his ruthless crime boss mother Bellafrancesca Lobo (casting coup Shohreh Aghdashloo) to help him in his newly-formed goal of world domination.

Meanwhile, traffic cop Rebecca (Awkwafina), the only cop not on the take in the corrupt local precinct, otherwise bought to a man by the Lobos, is determined to get the evidence to put the crime family behind bars.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

EO
(IO)

Director – Jerzy Skolimowski – 2022 – Poland – Cert. 15 – 88m

*****

Forced to leave his home in the circus, a donkey undergoes a series of adventures – on BFI Player as a Subscription Exclusive along with three other Skolimowski titles on Monday, April 3rd, following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, February 3rd

After an absence of some seven years from the cinema, Skolimowski has chosen to make a movie with an animal as its central character rather than a human being. EO is a donkey (played by some six donkeys over different parts of the film) who undergoes a series of adventures as things happen around him. He starts out as a performer in a circus with a girl called Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), who takes good care of him and treats him with genuine affection.

Life is good. But then he finds himself co-opted by (and Kasandra arguing with) another circus person Wasyl (Maciej Stepniak) who uses a whip on him to get him to drive a cart of rubbish to the local tip. These two episodes set the tone for what is to follow: while all the humans here use the animal for their own ends, some treat him with kindness while others don’t, rather using him as a means to an end without any sense of his being a conscious creature.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

King:
A Filmed Record…
Montgomery
To Memphis

Directors – Sidney Lumet, Joseph L. Mankiewicz – 1969 – US – 181m

*****

Not-for profit documentary charts the career of non-violent, civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King and the role he played in that movement – plays at a free screening 6 for 6.30 start at Union Chapel, Islington on Wednesday, March 29th

An attempt to document the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King from 1955 to 1968. If you had any doubt as to the subject matter, it goes straight in with a pro-Black Power activist (not Dr. King) making a speech to an enthusiastic black audience. Then it cuts to Dr. King, talking about power – but not the power of the Molotov Cocktail. “But,” he says, “we DO have a power. As old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth and as modern as the techniques of… Gandhi.”

Dr. King was a great orator, and removing his words, cutting them down (in an attempt to distil their essence) and posting them in this verbal review loses much of the qualities seen in footage of the great man speaking, his presence, his phrasing, the way he uses pauses and so on. He must have been incredible to watch in the flesh as an orator, and while it’s true that seeing his oration captured on film is, inevitably, not the same as the experience of watching him live, the footage of him speaking is both astonishing and compelling.… Read the rest