Categories
Animation Features Movies

Tad and the Magic Lamp
(Tadeo Jones
y la Lámpara Maravillosa)

Tad and the Magic Lamp
(Tadeo Jones y la Lámpara Maravillosa)

Director – Enrique Gato – 2026 – Spain – Cert. U – 94m

***1/2

In search of Aladdin’s lamp with a powerful villain in hot pursuit, Tad and his companions are transported back in time to (the) Mummy’s ancient, South American civilization – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 23rd

Gato’s fourth instalment of the Tad the Lost Explorer franchise starts off in London with Tad pursuing a baby through the clockwork mechanisms of Big Ben, a sequence which recalls the climactic sequence of Disney’s Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Dave Michener, Juhn Musker, 1986). It turns out that the baby is his and partner Sara’s, and that Tad is engaged in parenting chores while she is out and about with the Egyptian princess researching the magic lamp reputed to belong to Aladdin and rumoured to be in a room in Buckingham Palace unbeknownst to its royal occupants and accessible via a secret passage.

Entry to the secret passage is though a secret door in a pub, which can only be opened with a special dart which Sara tracks down in a Notting Hill antique shop.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Possible Love
(Ganeunghan Sarang,
가능한 사랑)

Possible Love (L to R) Jeon Do-yeon as Mi-ok, Sul Kyung-gu as Ho-seok, Cho Yeo-jeong as Ye-ji in Possible Love Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

Possible Love (Ganeunghan Sarang, 가능한 사랑)

Director – Lee Chang Dong – 2026 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 164m

*****

A filmmaker working on a documentary about workers who’ve been laid off from their companies invites a worker’s wife and her husband to stay at her and her husband’s lavish coastal home – plays the London Film Festival (LFF) Sunday, 11th, Wednesday 14th, Sunday 18th October, then out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 23rd, the London Korean Film Festival on Tuesday, 3rd November, and is on Netflix from Friday, November 6th

The family of laid-off manual worker Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu from A Normal Family, Hur Jin-ho, 2023; Memoir of a Murderer, Won Shin-yeon, 2017; Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang Dong, 1999), his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon from Beasts Clawing at Straws, Kim Yong-hoon, 2020; The Housemaid, Im Sang-soo, 2010) and their young son Cheol (Ha Lim) attend the funeral of one of Ho-seok’s fellow laid-off workmates. The reticent Ho-seok plans to stay in the car, but then goes in to the ceremony some time after the rest of his family and stays for the wake where, against what he’s promised his wife, he drinks, and as he starts to lose it, the pair get into an argument in public.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Dance Features Movies

Ana, en Passant
(Ana, en Passant)

Ana, en Passant (Ana, en Passant)

Director – Fernanda Salgado – 2026 – Brazil, Portugal, France – Cert. tbc – 90m

*****

A woman from Paris travels to Belo Horizonte, Brazil where she hopes to unearth something of her family history – from the BFI London Film Festival 2026 which runs from Wednesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 18th in cinemas and on BFI Player

This opens with a profusion of images and a child’s voice asking: “mummy, what is a map?” The images are moving images treated in painterly ways, animated postcard-like holiday snaps putting themselves into order, flashes of memory as if printed on an unusual under-texture. Then an image of a baby scanned in the womb. More images – fish in the ocean, talk by the little girl of whether fish follow maps too – then we settle into the film proper.

Which is to say that, rather than the film’s form constantly shifting, it suddenly settles into a more formal, less abstract, fixed form of 2D animation as Ana (voice: Jéssica Pierina) – the little girl asking the questions earlier, perhaps? – leaves the Paris Metro with its familiar Hector Guimard art deco, wrought iron entrance, wanders satisfyingly along the bank of the Seine and finally enters her apartment, where she tidies broken pieces of china off the floor, binning them.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Arrietty
(US: The Secret World
of Arrietty)
(Karigurashi no Arietti,
借りぐらしのアリエッティ,
lit. Arrietty the Borrower)

Arrietty

(US: The Secret World of Arrietty)

(Karigurashi no Arietti,

借りぐらしのアリエッティ,

lit. Arrietty the Borrower)

Director – Hiromasa Yonebayashi – 2010 – Japan – Cert. U – 94m

*****

A teenage girl under a foot high is found by a kindly boy with a heart condition who has come to his aunt’s home on the city’s outskirts to convalesce – back out in a 4K remaster in UK IMAX cinemas on Wednesday, October 14th, then in regular UK cinemas on Friday, October 16th through Sunday, October 18th

His Aunt Sadako (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Keiko Takashita; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Phillida Law) drives (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Ryonosuke Kamiki; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Tom Holland) to the house on the city’s outskirts he is visiting. On arrival, he sees a crow having a spat with the cat, which in turn is taking an interest in a group of plants in which he spots a teenage girl less than a foot high. After he’s been called inside the house, the girl, Arrietty (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Mirai Shida; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Saoirse Ronan) escapes the cat through the grille into the basement, where she outruns grasshoppers to enter her family’s cosy, miniature cottage accessible by a small flight of steps.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Borrowers
(1997)

The Borrowers – Peter Hewitt – 1997 – UK – Cert. U – 89m

****

A slimy lawyer sets about evicting the human occupants and the ‘little people’ from a property – opened in UK cinemas on Friday, December 5th 1997

Take Mary Norton’s Borrowers, tiny people who live under the floorboards and borrow household items only as and when they need them, throw in underrated British director Peter Hewitt (much beloved by critics for his wonderfully stupid Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, 1991) and you have The Borrowers. Aimed equally unashamedly at both children and the American market, this deftly services both constituencies without alienating the rest of us – which is no mean feat.

The plot is a tried and true Hollywood formula – slimy lawyer wants to evict family who own house, so the occupants (and therefore the Borrowers too) must move on. The likeable John Goodman is on hand to play the lawyer (both he and the audience have a lot of fun here) aided by Mark Williams’ Exterminator Jeff, the pest control man Goodman hires to flush vermin (i.e. the little people) out from under the floorboards.

This all takes place in what appears from the outside an unnamed American city, with central skyscrapers, but with numerous locations (house interior, sewer pipes, milk bottling factory) looking suspiciously British.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Case 137

Case 137 (Dossier 137)

Director – Dominik Moll – 2025 – France – Cert. 12a – 116m

*****

A member of the internal police watchdog department investigates a complaint of police violence in the 2018 Yellow Jackets riots – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 16th

Who watches the watchmen? Who polices the police? It’s a question with great relevance to today’s societies, including our own in the UK. In the US, the Police have the Internal Affairs. In France, the police have a branch called the IGPN (L’inspection générale de la police nationale / The General Inspectorate of the National Police). So if members of the public accuse the police of bad or criminal behaviour, they have a department set up to investigate that. An internal department, not an external body.

IGPN inspector Stéphanie Bertrand (Léa Drucker from Mars Express, Jérémie Périn, 2023; Two of Us, Filippo Meneghetti, 2019; The Blue Room, Matthieu Amalric, 2014) is working on allegations of police misconduct during the Yellow Jackets protests of 2018. She tries to be scrupulously fair in questioning an officer who threw stones at rioters, later defending him to superiors as being in a situation that put him under intense psychological pressure.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Whalefall

Whalefall

Director – Brian Duffield – 2026 – US – Cert. 15 – 106m

The abusive father drama (about half an hour) ***

The whale scenes (most of the film) *****

A man’s memories of his emotionally abusive father help him to survive when he is swallowed by a whale – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 16th

This is very much a film of two elements. On the one hand, it’s about a bereaved man coming to terms with his memories of his recently deceased, abusive father. On the other hand, it is the spectacle, indeed, the experience, of a man being swallowed by a sperm whale. The whole thing, based on a novel by Daniel Krauss, is set in a coastal town and, mostly, in the nearby ocean.

In the opening 10 minutes, Mitt Gardiner (Josh Brolin from Dune & sequels, 2026, 2024, 2021, Sicario, 2015, all Denis Villeneuve; No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007), an experienced diver losing his fight against a rare cancer named mesothelioma, steps off the side of a boat into the ocean and is never seen again. (Except in flashback.) Before jumping into the water, he seals a number of letters and puts them in a box on the deck.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Deadline
(Tzu Sha Tung Kao,
自殺通告)
(2025)

Deadline (Tzu Sha Tung Kao, 自殺通告) (2025)

Director – Kiwi Chow – 2025 – Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK – Cert. 15 tbc – 118m

****

A secondary school focused on maximising exam results is upset by pending suicide and use of performance-enhancing drugs – out in UK cinemas from Friday, October 16th

The students of En-Shan Secondary School, clad in distinctive uniforms of purple shirt with militaristic shoulder boards and dark grey tie, perform aggressive workout moves as they chant their school litany extolling hard work leading to success. Principal Kung (Anthony Wong Chau Sang from Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak,2002; Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; My Name Ain’t Suzie, Angie Chen, 1985 – this latter showing in this year’s HKFF) encourages them in the idea that present suffering leads to later success.

The ubiquitous iSmart system contains a database of vocabulary the students must master to game the exam system; its latest 2.3 iteration uses eye-tracking software to record how much time the pupil is taking in direct eye contact with the teacher. It makes the surveillance technology of Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024) sound amateurish by comparison, even if, overall, Deadline is the more satisfying viewing experience.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Forgotten Island

Forgotten Island

Directors – Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado – 2026 – US – Cert. PG – 98m

***

Two young, Filipino women, best friends since childhood, are transported back to the mythical land of the ancestors of one of them – out in cinemas worldwide on Friday, October 16th

The Philippines. (You’re supposed to know this is the location, but if the film explained it anywhere, apart from stating the setting is outside the US, I missed it.) New girl in class Jo (voice: H.E.R.) is doing a show and tell about the island of Natali, which her grandmother claims to have visited as a child, complete with terrifying descriptions of the Manananggal, the bat-winged demon which can split in two – lower half and upper half.

The teacher sends her to the principal for presenting falsehoods as real. Jo is soon joined by the more intellectual Raissa (voice: Lisa Soberano) who stands up for Jo after Jo has been sent out of the classroom. They bond outside the principal’s office, vowing to be best friends and to find the island of Natali together. Raissa is put off by Jo’s producing a knife to make them blood sisters, but it turns out she only wants to cut her a bracelet.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Ken Russell’s
The Devils

Ken Russell’s The Devils

Director – Ken Russell – 1971 – UK – Cert. 18 – 114m

*****

Restored. Remastered. Uncensored. Ken Russell’s notorious masterpiece finally reaches the big screen as he originally intended it to be seen – from the BFI London Film Festival 2026 which runs from Wednesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 18th in cinemas and on BFI Player, a new 35mm film print previews at BFI Southbank from Friday, October 23rd to Thursday 29th, and the film is out in UK and Ireland cinemas Friday, October 30th

NSFW.

To anyone who has seen the version of The Devils released theatrically in the UK with an X certificate in 1971, and put out on DVD by the BFI about ten years ago, watching this new version has about it the sensation of tasting forbidden fruit. (If you’ve never seen that version, all I can say is, start with this one: this is the version that Russell intended.) It’s perhaps instructive to look at what has changed, in other words those scenes which were considered by the BBFC and / or distributor Warner Bros. too shocking for inclusion back in the day.

Writing about the X certificate version on its DVD release, I noted that the four areas in which the film didn’t hold back were sex, religion, politics and torture.… Read the rest