Tag: work

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Mavka
The Forest Song
(Mavka.
Lisova Pisnya,
Мавка.
Лісова пісня)

Directors – Oleh Malamuzh, Oleksandra Ruban – 2022 – Ukraine – Cert. PG – 99m

Ukrainian language dubbed version with English subtitles ****1/2

English language dubbed version ****

#Mavka

Can the love of a brave and essentially honest youth for Mavka the forest spirit succeed in the face of the enmity between humans and nature? – Ukrainian animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 28th

Long ago, events flared into a terrible winter war between the Guardian (voice in Ukrainian: Nazar Zadniprovskyi; in English: Marc Thompson) of the forest beyond the Dark Mountain and a sawmill owner who initially wanted to obtain one drop of the Source of Life to heal his sick daughter but then became greedy and brought an army to seize the rest of the Source of Life for himself. Seeing the terrible devastation wrought upon the forest in the conflict, the Guardian decreed that no human should ever again set foot in the forest.

Many years later, as young forest spirit Mavka (voice in Ukrainian: Natalka Denysenko; in English: Laurie Hymes) awakens from her winter sleep to spread the new life of Spring, in the nearby village where flautist Lucas (voice in Ukrainian: Artem Pyvovarov; in English: Eddy Lee) is performing with fellow musicians, the late sawmill owner’s daughter Kilina (voice in Ukrainian: Olena Kravets; in English: Sarah Natochenny) returns promising well paid work.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The End Of Sex

Director – Sean Garrity – 2022 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 87m

***1/2

A married couple’s attempts to rekindle their sex life while their kids are away for a week go horribly wrong – out on digital from Monday, July 3rd

Packing their two young daughters off in the school bus to Winter Camp, Josh (Jonas Chernick) and Emma (Emily Hampshire) suddenly realise they have a week free to do…what? Drive to gymnastics and sit in the parents’ waiting area? Then it dawns on her: we don’t have to close the door. We can be as loud as we want. But while their parenting is generally successful, their sex life is much less so, with an attempt at coitus leading both of them to fake orgasm.

Sex seems to be in the air. Emily takes the opportunity of having extra time available to visit an art gallery with her best friend Wendy (Melanie Scrofano) for an exhibition which turns out to include black and white photographic print enlargements of testicles, where she runs into old art college friend Marlon (Gray Powell) who she fancies and who, it transpires, is not only the gallery owner but also fantasized about her back in their student days.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Reality

Director – Tina Satter – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 83m

*****

A young woman working in US security services is questioned in her home by two FBI interrogators who believe she’s leaked classified documents to The Intercept – out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, June 2nd

This film is based on a true story. That commonly used phrase can encompass everything from attempts at verisimilitude through to extreme misrepresentation. This film, however, is something different from most films bearing that legend.

The true story on which this film is based is an interview of a woman by two FBI agents. That organisation’s protocols dictate that such incidents, planned ahead of their execution, must be recorded in transcription form. So the film is not based on the incident so much as it is based on the official transcript of it. That includes not only the verbal words, but also pauses or gaps on the parts of those speaking them.

Writer-director Satter was hooked by the transcript and has already turned it into the critically acclaimed Broadway play Is This A Room. Theatre and cinema, while they often share certain elements, are essentially two different media; a successful play has an immediate attraction to movie producers who believe its proven theatrical track record will sell cinema tickets, yet the cinema is littered with stagebound adaptation of plays which worked far better on stage than screen.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Reality

Interrogating the text

Reality
Directed by Tina Satter
Certificate 12a, 83 minutes
Released 2 June

A film named after not, as you might imagine, a state of truth, but a young woman, the main protagonist Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney). She works in a US security facility, translating documents from Farsi to English. The room in which she works separates its workers into cubicles with dual computer screens and workstations. TVs on the wall constantly play Fox News.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction. This is not one of those ‘based on a true story’ movies; it actually is a true story in that the dialogue (along with the pauses within it) is lifted from the FBI transcript of the real life interrogation of the real life Reality Winner.

So, the actors take the words, pauses and so forth, and… [Read the rest in Reform magazine]

Reality is out in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, June 2nd.

Read my review at Reform magazine.

Read my alternative review for this site.

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Blind Willow,
Sleeping Woman
(Saules Aveugles,
Femme Endormie)

Director – Pierre Földes – 2022 – France, Canada, Luxembourg, The Netherlands – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

Three characters experience the aftermath of the 2011 Tokyo earthquake in a story based on six Haruki Murakami short stories – animated feature is out to rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th

This is an animated feature based on six Haruki Murakami short stories which comes not, as you might expect, from Japan, but rather from one of the few other countries that can reasonably be said to have an animation industry: France. Writer-director Pierre Földes, whose father Peter is an award-winning animator, further confounds expectations by making a film of six Murakami short stories… [Read the full review at All The Anime…]

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is out to rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th.

It was out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, March 31st.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Run

Tramps like us

Run
Directed by Scott Graham
Certificate 15, 77 minutes
Released 13 March 2020

Now on BBC iPlayer until early November 2022, also on BFI Player subscription and iTunes. Review first published in Reform, March 2020.

Finnie (Mark Stanley) hates his job in a fish factory in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire. He and his wife Katie (Amy Manson) have Springsteen’s legend ‘Born to Run’ tattooed on his chest and her ankle, but as he says to her: ‘We never did run very far, did we?’ This is a story about regret and longing, about not getting out, family and relationships.

Finnie’s older son Kid (Anders Hayward) has just got his girlfriend Kelly (Marli Siu) pregnant, isn’t talking to and has been dumped by her. Kid throws a wobbly at work, in the same plant as Finnie, and loses his job. When Katie gives Finnie the come on, he just wants to shower because he stinks of fish. Out of nowhere, he borrows Kid’s car keys and takes his son’s car out for a spot of illegal night time street racing, something he used to do when younger… Read the rest

Now on BBC iPlayer until early November 2022, also on BFI Player subscription and iTunes.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Far Shore
(Tooi Tokoro,
遠いところ)

Director – Masaaki Kudo – 2022 – Japan – 128m

****

An underage Okinawa bar hostess attempts to raise her small son while worsening circumstances conspire against her – world premiere in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) 2022 which runs from Friday, July 1st to Saturday, July 9th

A man in Okinawa club Night Babylon asks her age of a hostess: “you don’t seem very old”. It turns out the girls in question are under 18 (the legal age limit for working there; in Japan, it’s also illegal to consume alcohol under the age of 20). In fact, these girls are 17 and proud of the fact that in “wild Okinawa”, the hostesses in bars are so young. The hostesses in question are Aoi (Kotono Hanase) and her friend Mio (Yumemi Ishida), and when not working, they like to party hard, for instance to celebrate a friend’s birthday, which involves much drinking and dancing in a club. There don’t appear to be any men in their immediate peer group: they’re all women.

Once she returns home from her club night shift, Aoi calls in on her grandmother to pick up her two-year-old son Kengo (Tsuki Hasegawa).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Herself

Director – Phyllida Lloyd – 2020 – UK/Ireland – Cert. 15 – 97m

****

A woman leaves her abusive and violent husband and builds a new home for herself and her two young daughters – in UK cinemas from Friday, September 10th

Things come to a head in the marriage of Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson) and Sandra (Clare Dunne, also co-screenwriter) when he violently assaults her and stamps on her hand, an incident witnessed by their younger daughter Molly (Molly McCann). Sandra has trained her kids well for such a situation and the eldest Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) knows what to do, rushing to the local shopkeeper with a lunch box inside the lid of which is the family address to give to the Garda.

Like her mother before her, Sandra works as a cleaner to retired and physically disabled local doctor Peggy O’Toole (Harriet Walter). To make ends meet, Sandra also works in a local pub as a barmaid alongside Amy (Ericka Roe) who lives in a nearby squat. After separating from Gary, she and he have joint custody of the kids while the council put her and her kids up in temporary accommodation in a hotel room.

As it’s four years on the housing list to get a home, Sandra investigates other alternatives and, surreptitiously using Peggy’s internet, discovers that she could build a house for only slightly more than a year’s rent to the council.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Herself

A house of her own

Herself
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Certificate 15, 97 minutes
Released 10 September

Herself has a brutal opening in which Sandra (Clare Dunne), a mother of two girls in Dublin, is physically assaulted by her husband Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson), an incident witnessed by her youngest daughter, Molly (Molly McCann), while her eldest, Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara), races across the estate to the local shop to deliver a pre-written emergency message.

From here, it becomes a tale about a single mum’s struggle to find a decent home for her and her kids in the face of a social welfare system that can’t cope with either the level of need or any innovation through which people try to legitimately help themselves… [Read more]

Full review published in Reform.

See my alternative review of the film here.

Trailer:

Categories
Live Action Movies Shorts

Old Man
And A Dog
(老人與狗)

Director – Ryan Chan Hon-yan – 2019 – Hong Kong – Cert. N/C 15+ – 30m

*****

A security guard nearing the end of his life is given an ageing, dying dog by his grandson – online in the UK in the Fresh Wave short films strand of Focus Hong Kong 2021 Easter from Wednesday, March 31st to Tuesday, April 6th

When they’re in the hospital waiting for grandpa while he sees the doctor, Ka Chun (Karson Chan Ka Hei) asks his mum (Ivy Pang – Tracey, Li Jun, 2018), “how come grandpa doesn’t have a dog?” There follows a huge row between Ms. Chan and the medical staff when she learns they’re not operating on her father because he’s signed ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ papers. The boy, meanwhile, stands beside his grandpa’s bedside. His grandpa (Paul Carr) is on a ventilator.

The elder Mr. Chan visits the hospital on his own. The clock that’s fallen off the wall in the doctor’s office seems to presage his own demise. His boss (Toby Cheng) at the security firm tells him not to come in, he’s too ill. The firm will compensate him, so there are no financial issues.

Ka Chun visits grandpa at home – bringing with him a dog called (somewhat hilariously to English ears) Ah-fuk.… Read the rest