Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Hope
(Hopeu,
호프)

Hope (Hopeu, 호프)

Director – Na Hong-jin – 2026 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 160m

*****

A cop and various groups of hunters track then confront a monster wreaking havoc in a small town and the woodlands nearby – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 25th

Patrolling local cop Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min from Deliver Us From Evil, Hong Won-chan, 2020; The Wailing, Na Hong-jin, 2016; New World, Park Hoon-jung, 2013; Shiri, Kang Je-Gyu, 1999) and his second cousin Sung-ki (Zo In-sung from Escape From Mogadishu, Ryu Seung-wan, 2021; A Dirty Carnival, Yoo Ha, 2006) arrive at the scene of a tragedy where four men are waiting. Further down the road, initially in the distance and later seen in close up like so much in this film, lies the slaughtered bull, huge slashes on its flank.

The slashes are too big to have been made by a bear. One of the men suggests it’s the tiger that comes down from Siberia every few years. The men head to the woods where the tiger has been spotted. The cop’s route takes him into a nearby town of Hope Harbor, where huge holes in shop fronts suggest the presence of a creature much bigger than a tiger.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Palimpsest
The story of a name
(隱蹟之書：重寫自我)

Palimpsest: The story of a name (隱蹟之書：重寫自我)

Director – Mary Stephen – 2025 – France – Cert. – 108m

*****

Exploring her family history, Hong Kong-born Mary Stephen delves into the mystery behind her surname being British rather than Chinese – plays at the Barbican as is the opening film of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues

The director narrates her film in the first person, talking about the fact of her father’s name being Henry Stephen on his birth certificate, while her mother retained her Chinese name on the document. Mary Stephen herself was born in Hong Kong in 1953, the same year as Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in Britain. Archive images of Hong Kong from that year show a strange dislocation, with images of the new English monarch jostling side by side with Chinese words on buildings. A British built clock tower looks strangely out of place.

She worked for years with celebrated New Wave director Eric Rohmer as his editor. His name, too, was a palimpsest.

Her father died and was buried in Canada in 1979, alongside her mother. When the family first moved there, she was a teenager.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Heart of the Beast

Heart of the Beast

Director – David Ayer – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 100m

*****

A heart attack and his plane’s crash landing force a pilot and his dog to cross the Alaskan wilderness on foot – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, September 23rd

In a framing device that opens and closes the narrative, a woman (Anna Lambe) is driving her car along a road in Alaska in the middle of nowhere. She is forced to stop by a dog standing facing towards her in the middle of the road. As if it were trying to tell her something…

Some days earlier, retired, special forces soldier James Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his former combat dog Odin are travelling around Alaska by Cessna seaplane. They land on an unspoiled lake. Odin has a prosthetic leg. They pitch tent on the beach, then go exploring in the nearby woods where they are surprised to run across another human being.

There shouldn’t be anyone else around these parts, and the suspicious James reverts to combat mode, deploying his gun in readiness. However, the stranger (J.K. Simmons) turns out to be friendly, simply another person enjoying the solitude of the place, who tells them he’s pitched his own tent next to theirs.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Babystar
(Babystar)

Babystar (Babystar)

Director – Joscha Bongard – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 12a – 98m

*****

A social media influencer family suffers upset when the teenage daughter discovers her parents plan a second child – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 25th

Parents and teenagers. Fraught at the best of times. More so than most for 16-year old Luca (Maja Bons) whose social media influencer mother Stella (Bea Brocks) and father Chris (Liliom Lewald) have exploited their family life on various social media channels and done very well out of it financially. Materially, the family has it all – a stylish house with a swimming pool and all and any goods they could possibly want. This applies to Luca too, but where her mother climbed up to this high social position from poverty, Luca has lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous ever since she was born. She has never known anything else. And as well as the family’s our_bright_life online channel, she herself has her own channel.

As if this situation wasn’t already a potential powder keg waiting to blow sky high in her teenage years, her parents drop a bombshell on her. How would she like a new brother or sister?… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Deadline
(自殺通告)
(2025)

Deadline (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 – plays as part of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues

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
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Boorman
and the Devil

Boorman and the Devil

Director – David Kittredge – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 112m

*****

How director John Boorman’s sequel (or not) to The Exorcist became one of the biggest Hollywood flops of all time – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 25th

This quite understandably takes a while to get around to its subject, talking both about where Hollywood found itself in the 1960s and looking at Boorman’s directorial career before settling on the production that nearly destroyed his career. Once it gets there though, a considerable amount of time is allotted to a production which starts to sound like one of the most amazing spectacles ever filmed. Yet this comes alongside a feeling that, on the most fundamental level, something is going to go or perhaps has already gone horribly wrong before the director has even signed on.

By the early 1960s, Hollywood was making big budget epics like Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963) or The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964). When such movies started to fail at the box office, it turned to younger directors in the hope that they might understand what audiences wanted. The result was movies like Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) or The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967).… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Shaun the Sheep
The Beast
of Mossy Bottom

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

Directors – Steve Cox, Matthew Walker – 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 80m

*****

When the sheep’s pumpkin patch is damaged, Shaun invents a regenerative potion, which the farmer later uses as hair restorer by mistake… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th

As Halloween approaches iin Mossy Bottom, the farmer (non-verbal voice: John Sparkes) would like nothing more than to invite the lady vet (non-verbal voice: Nina Sosanya) to the Halloween Hoedown, for which his two tickets have just arrived in the post. When she turns up to give injections to the sheep, who are hiding ineffectively in the barn, he keeps getting prevented from asking her by being draged around the farm by Bitzer his dog (non-verbal voice: also John Sparkes). It later turns out she too has two tickets and plans to invite him, but is similarly prevented by various incidents.

Meanwhile, unearthly apparitions – mysterious eyes appearing on a signpost – are revealed as Shaun (non-verbal voice: Justin Fletcher) and fellow sheep having put up a false background of the rural view behind the sign, to keep the farmer’s prying eyes away from their prized, secret Halloween pumpkin patch.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Whisper of the Heart
(Mimi o Sumaseba,
耳をすませば,
lit. If You Listen Closely)

Whisper of the Heart

(Mimi o Sumaseba, 耳をすませば, lit. If You Listen Closely)

Director – Yoshifumi Kondo – 1995 – Japan – Cert. U – 111m

*****

A bookish high school student falls for a boy who makes violins – out in IMAX cinemas in 4K on Wednesday, September 16th and regular cinemas from Friday, September 18th in the UK and Ireland

The John Denver song Country Roads, Take Me Home, sung by Olivia Newton-John, might not seem at first glance to have anything much to do with Japanese culture. Yet it provides a foundational starting point for this extraordinary Studio, Ghibli movie which is essentially a girl meets boy story.

High school student Shizuku (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Yoko Honna; 2006 Disney dub: Brittany Snow) lives at home with her parents (voices/1995 Japanese dub: Shigeru Moroi, Takashi Tachibana; 2006 Disney dub: Jean Smart, James SIkking) and her elder sister Shiho (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Yori Yamashita; 2006 Disney dub: Courtney Thorne-Smith), a university student. Shizuku is in the habit of taking American song lyrics and translating them into Japanese for her girl classmates’ informal singing group.

Thus, she has written a translation of the song Country Roads, Take Me Home which she doesn’t think is very good.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

De Gaulle
Part 2
Liberté
(La Bataille de Gaulle
J’écris ton Nom)

De Gaulle: Part 2 – Liberté

(La Bataille de Gaulle: J’écris ton Nom)

Director – Antonin Baudry – 2025 – France – Cert. 15 – 160m

*****

Second part of a two-part movie continues the story of De Gaulle up to and including the Liberation of Paris in 1944 – out in UK cinemas on out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th

Somewhat surprisingly, the second part of Baudry’s epic doesn’t begin where its predecessor left off, but instead jumps forward to 1943. with exiled French General De Gaulle (Simon Abkarian) in London both sticking to his guns and an increasingly isolated figure on the international stage. Polish plumber turned assistant Blazej (Karim Leklou) carries on offering him encouragement.

Still, De Gaulle continues to inspire the Free French forces in North Africa, with General LeClerc (Nils Schneider) taking on a German tank division at Ksar Ghilane with only infantry and the odd anti-tank gun. Impossible odds, but as with the first part’s Bir Hakeim siege story, the Free French’s selfless actions, vowing never to surrender and fight ‘til the last man, help the Allied war effort a great deal.

In Lyon, France and separated from her boyfriend, Livia (Anamaria Vartolomei) works for the Resistance, who face a major political challenge: to unite the various different groups that want to stand against the Vichy government and the Nazis, but don’t necessarily share the same aims in terms of any post-war settlement.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Bad Apples

Bad Apples

Director – Jonatan Etzler – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

***

A teacher deals with a disruptive student by kidnapping him and locking him in her basement – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th

A school trip to an apple processing factory goes badly wrong when a trainer shoe appears among the apples on the system of conveyor belts. While the other children tour the factory premises in a comparatively orderly manner under their teacher Miss Spencer (Saoirse Ronan), loner Danny (Eddie Waller) stands at the railing with one trainer missing.

The setting is Somerset. Not that you’d know. A whole potential Somerset metaphor about apples and bad apples and brewing sits in waiting, but that either never occurred to screenwriter Jess O’Kane when adapting the film from the Swedish source, the novel by De Oönskade / The Undesirables by Rasmus Lindgren (2020), or it got abandoned in an early draft. Or perhaps the director Etzler threw it out during shooting. A pity either way, because that idea has real potential.

Back at school, Miss Spencer is hauled over the coals by her superior Sylvia (Rakie Ayola).

At home, Maria Spencer plays video games – her refuge from her job.… Read the rest