Tag: wives

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

2000 Meters to Andriivka

Director – Mstyslav Chernov – 2025 – Ukraine – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

A small Ukrainian Army unit advances through a narrow strip of war-scarred forest to recapture a village from the occupying Russians – documentary from the makers of 20 Days in Mariupol is out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, August 1st

Set in the 2023 Ukrainain offensive to take back land occupied by the Russians in the East of Ukraine, this covers the advance of a small, Ukrainian army unit, the 3rd Assault Brigade, on the country’s Russian-occupied village of Adriivka, located on the outskirts of the town of Bahkmut. Given that the latter is two hours away from Kharkiv, the hometown of director Mstyslav Chernov (20 Days in Mariupol, 2023), the location has a clear personal significance for him. He and his Associated Press colleague Alex Babenko take their camera with the unit on their mission.

The soldiers are all equipped with helmet cams, giving the filmmakers additional material to play with. Such technology is unimaginable as recently as 25 years ago. One might argue that war has changed little, that it’s still much the same, horrible phenomenon it always has been. The advent of the cam, however, means that an audience can watch the viewpoint of a war participant up close and personal.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Woman King

Director – Gina Prince-Bythewood – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 135m

****

The warrior women of Dahomey defend their people against capture by neighbouring nations for the white foreigners’ slave trade – plays 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

Outside of the Greek myth of the Amazons, we don’t really think of armies as being made up of women rather than men prior to the last few decades, yet historically this actually occurred in a West African country, the Kingdom of Dahomey (further info: National Geographic; wikipedia) between the middle of the seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries. These warrior women are the subject of this film which takes place in 1823.

A prologue shows a small unit of the women in action under their General Nansica (an unforgettable Viola Davis) as they attack and slaughter a unit of (male) soldiers from the neighbouring Oyo kingdom who have invaded one of their villages. These women are fearsome indeed and fly in the face of the representational norms of female or military.

After this compelling, action-packed opening, the narrative shifts to follow rebellious, young Dahomey girl Nawi (Thusu Mbedo) whose traditionalist father attempts to marry her off to an older man.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Son
Of The White Mare
(Fehérlófia)

Director – Marcell Jankovics – 1981 – Hungary – Cert. 12 – 86m

*****

The Hungarian animated epic Son Of The White Mare (1981) is one of the great, largely unknown treasures of animation, if not of cinema. Its late director Marcell Jankovics (1941-2021) made a number of shorts and commercials before his two features at the Pannoia Film Studio. Eureka!’s Blu-ray contains both features, as well as some of his most significant shorts. While Son Of The White Mare remains his indisputable masterpiece, the other films on the disc go a long way to explaining how he got there. [Read the full article at All The Anime]

See my longer review on this site

and my shorter review for Reform magazine.

Son Of The White Mare is out on Eureka! Video Blu-ray.

Trailer:

Festivals

2021

Annecy

Categories
Animation Art Features Movies

Son
Of The White Mare
(Fehérlófia)

Director – Marcell Jankovics – 1981 – Hungary – Cert. 12 – 86m

*****

Based on Hungarian folk legends, tells the story of three sons of the white mare who must free three princesses from their dragon husbands and restore the kingdom from chaos – from the Annecy 2021 Animation Festival in the Special Screenings – Annecy Classics section

This has a script sourced from Hungarian folk tales. While it’s very cinematic, the writing is similar to religious texts like the Bible or mythological stories like the Iliad where events are related in a paired down, straightforward way no matter how far removed from everyday experience they might be. Thus, there’s a prologue about three princes begging their father for their inheritance so they can marry, only for their foolish new brides to disobey the patriarch and explore all the castle’s locked doors until they unwittingly unleash a dragon and are sucked into its domain.

In the ensuing chaos, the only hope comes when the white mare births two sons then escapes into the woods pregnant with a third. She weans him for eight years until her milk makes him strong enough to uproot a tree. Drained of milk, she dies.… Read the rest

Categories
Books

Sam Peckinpah:
If They Move…
Kill ’em

David Weddle, Faber & Faber £11.99 Pbk.

*****

Published for the first time ever in Britain, Weddle’s tome is a compelling read whether one’s familiar with the movies of Sam Peckinpah (among them The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, The Getaway) or not. Like the man’s uncompromisingly violent movies, this lovingly penned sketch never soft soaps its subject. It’s as strong on roots and early upbringing as on final career years. The latter saw first booze and then (as the drug became increasingly available in Hollywood circles) cocaine addle Peckinpah’s ability to make coherent movies; ironically, the atrocious Convoy turned out his biggest box office hit.

Peckinpah’s numerous battles with the major Studios are documented in detail. Early efforts like Major Dundee is shown as a half-scripted mess that the director liked to cite untruthfully as ruined by the studio, but others like Noon Wine (a now destroyed ABC TV drama), his arguable masterpiece The Wild Bunch and late contender Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid are pulled from the wreckage and intelligently defended as great art. At the same time, Peckinpah’s often unfairly vicious treatment of technicians on the set and friends and family (including three wives) in life leave a nasty taste in the mouth.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Military Wives

Director – Peter Cattaneo– 2019 – UK – Cert.12A – 112m

**

Available on Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, July 6th.

Currently streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime and Curzon Home Cinema.

Twenty and a bit years after the hilarious British comedy The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) in which a group of unemployed male steelworkers reinvent themselves as a striptease act, director Cattaneo tries something similar with a group of soldiers’ wives on a British army base at the time of the Afghanistan War who, in order to deal with their isolation from their active service husbands, reinvent themselves as a ladies choir.

Where the men in the earlier film underwent a crisis of identity when they lost their jobs, the women here are by default defined by their absent husbands, waiting for the text messages that inform them their men are out of satellite contact until further notice or, worse, the knock on the door bringing news of their loved one’s death.

I review Military Wives for DMovies.org.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, July 6th.

Currently streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime and Curzon Home Cinema.