Categories
Animation Features Movies

The First
Slam Dunk

All images: © I.T. PLANNING, INC. © 2022 THE FIRST SLAM DUNK Film Partners

Director – Takehiko Inoue – 2022 – Japan – Cert. 12a tbc – 124m

*****

A high school basketball team sets out to defeat the seemingly unstoppable league champions – on 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition, Steelbook, Blu-ray, and DVD on 24th March

The coastal town of Shohoku. 11-year-old Ryota Miyagi (voice: Miyuri Shimabukuro) lives in the shadow of his 14-year-old, elder brother and school basketball star Sota (voice: Gakuto Kajiwara). One evening, Sota takes his younger sibling out for a practice at the local court, playing as hard as he can to push Ryota, which makes the youngster want to push himself harder still. Sota then alienates Ryota by going on a fishing trip with his peer group rather than respond to Ryota’s demand to extend their practice session. When his elder brother is tragically killed at sea, Ryota must both step into both the role of man of the house and prove himself in the school basketball team.

By the time Ryota is 17 (voice: Shugo Nakamura), he is one of the players on the Shohoku school basketball team which itself faces challenges: specifically, if it is to win the national championships, it must defeat the the seemingly unstoppable reigning champions the Sannoh school basketball club and their star player Masashi Kawata (voice: Mitsuaki Kanuka), Ryota’s opposite number (both wear their team’s no.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Flow
(Straume)
(2024)

Director – Gints Zilbalodis – 2024 – Belgium, France, Latvia – Cert. U – 84m

*****

A cat must survive rising water levels as they engulf both the countryside and cities – remarkable, dialogue-free, computer animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st, 2025

Like his earlier Away (2019), reissued here last week, Zilbalodis’ new CG animated movie features creatures who don’t speak as well as an incredible music score. The central character is a cat, and you’d be forgiven, after years of animated films about cats in which they talk, for expecting the same, but Zilbalodis isn’t interested in anthropomorphised talking animals. He’s clearly interested in animals, and in characters, but the cat here has been derived from watching and studying real life cats and their behaviour in the real world. There’s a long history of this in drawn animation, typified by the classic Disney films, where it was all about what you could achieve with a paper and pencil, studying from life, making drawings of characters move.

These days, the medium has moved on, and unless one is being purist and working with pencil and paper for the sake of making drawn animation the way it was made roughly a century ago (and there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with doing that), you would use computers as Zilbalodis does.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

When Autumn Falls
(Quand Vient l’Automne;
US: When Fall is Coming)

Director – François Ozon – 2024 – France – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

A grandmother’s cooking accidentally poisons her daughter, who survives… in the ensuing emotional turmoil, past truths are revealed, which have devastating effects… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

Michelle (Hélène Vincent) lives alone in rural Burgundy. She goes to church. She goes out picking mushrooms with her old friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Bolasko), who attempts to stop her picking the poisonous ones. At home, Michelle double-checks the mushrooms against photos and blurb in her mushroom reference book. She cooks the mushrooms. She gets a phone call telling her her guests are on the way. She is surprised that the driver is using Laurant’s car.

Her daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) arrives in the car with grandson Lucas (Galan Erlos) in tow. He is looking forward to spending the Summer with his gran. Valérie, however, is constantly angry, blaming her mum for everything, occasionally making remarks about “what you did”. She is clearly upset by something in their past history, although it’s unclear as to exactly what. Although grandmother has given daughter her former Paris apartment, Valérie also seems keen that Michelle sign over the current house to her under a scheme that would exempt Valérie from paying tax on it.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Disney’s Snow White
(2025)

(Live action remake of animated feature, so filed under animation, among other categories.)

Director – Marc Webb – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 119m

***1/2

Disney’s new Snow White redoes the first animated feature, with its eponymous heroine, wicked queen and dwarfs, as live action – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

There are a very small number of watershed films after which cinema is never been quite the same again. One of them is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937), the first ever animated feature film, widely considered a folly until it became a huge success and helped fuel the rise of the Hollywood Studio that still bears its founder Walt Disney’s name today. Before that film, no-one made animated features. After that film, Disney regularly made animated features of a consistently high standard, and his name became synonymous with animation for the three decades until his death in 1966.

Yet, the film isn’t good simply because it was the first animated feature – it’s good for a whole host of other reasons, namely excellence in storytelling, character, visuals, and songs, elements which would similarly underscore his Studio’s output during the remainder of Disney’s lifetime.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Ne Zha 2
(Nezha:
Mo Tong Nao Hai,
lit. Nezha:
The Demon Child
Churns the Sea,
哪吒之魔童闹海)

Director – Yang Yu aka Jiaozi – 2025 – China – Cert. 12a – 143m

***1/2

Two supernatural, child warriors battle a plethora of marmots, dragons and immortals – action-packed, animated, spectacular, Chinese box office juggernaut is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 21st

All but destroyed by the events in Ne Zha (Yang Yu, 2019), supernatural, child warriors Ne Zha (voice: Lu Yanting) and his companion Ao Bing (voice: Han Mo) are reconstituted thanks to the giant lotus of deity Taiyi Zhenren (voice: Zhang Jiaming). Their new bodies, however, are unstable.

Mistakenly believing Ao Bing dead, his father Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East Sea (one of four dragon monarchs for each of the seas of the four compass points who live in a vast underground cavern) gives demon Shen Gongbao (voice: Yang Wei) a severed dragon’s claw capable of ripping the sky, and sends him off to the town of Chentang Pass to slash the heavens and cause them to leak lava upon it. A fiery battle ensues.

Meanwhile, after a series of adventures elsewhere including a fight with a hoard of marmots, Ne Zha goes to help heavenly immortal Wuliang (voice: Wang Deshun) as he traps Shen’s forces in a giant cauldron at what is left of Chengtang Pass.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Documentary Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Dawn of Impressionism
Paris 1874

Director – Ali Ray – 2025 – UK – Cert. U – 91m

*****

The origins of Impressionism are revealed via the 1874, anti-art-establishment exhibition which birthed what is today the world’s favourite art movement – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, March 18th

At the present time, the best known school of painting in the history of art must surely be Impressionism. To both open this latest Exhibition on Screen outing and promote the film on its posters, the filmmakers head to arguably the most iconic Impressionist painting of them all, Claude Monet’s Impression: Sunrise (1872), pictured above. To reinforce the point, a brief art auction sequence shows one of his paintings fetching astronomical prices.

Exhibition on Screen’s excellent, history of art documentary series entries are often built around one or more specific art exhibitions, and this one uses two as its foundation. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris held Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism from March 26th until July 14th 2024, after which the exhibition travelled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC to appear under the slightly different moniker Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment from September 8th 2024 until January 19th 2025. Alas, this is not one of those cases where your appetite will be whetted to go and see a current or upcoming exhibition, because both shows have already been and gone.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

All We Imagine as Light

Director – Payal Kapadia – 2024 – France, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

The lives, loves and challenges of three women working in a hospital in Mumbai – on UK Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) from Monday, March 3rd, on BFI Player from Monday, February 17th, and on iTunes and Amazon Prime from Monday, March 17th

Mumbai. Opening with serial, engrossing tracking shots showing first men working throwing goods onto lorries, then men in traffic riding in the open boot of a car, then people riding on the urban rail system, all to the accompaniment of soundtrack vox pops of men and women talking about their lives and how the city helps you forget, All We Imagine as Light is, among other things, a paean to the city of Mumbai.

On a typical working day in the hospital, Nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti from Girls Will Be Girls, Shuchi Talati, 2024) explains to a doctor why an old lady refuses to take her pills (she’s seeing visions of the torso of her late husband) and opts out of going out to see the latest action blockbuster featuring dreamy male stars with her fellow nurses. She talks about helping with free legal advice to kitchen worker Pavarty (Chhaya Kadam from Sister Midnight, Karan Kandhari, 2024; Laapataa Ladies, Kiran Rao, 2023; Bombay Rose, Gitanjali Rao, 2019) who is having problems with intimidation by thugs to move out of her home.… Read the rest

Categories
Live Action Movies Shorts

Afternoon Clouds

Director – Payal Kapadia – 2017 – India – 13m

*****

An old woman, her home and her cat interact in the former’s coastal flat – Kapadia’s first short evidences a sensibility which will inform her debut feature All We Imagine as Light – on the UK Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) of All We Imagine as Light, released Monday, March 3rd

A room with two windows looking out on the sea. The constant sound of its roar, the net curtains stir in the breeze. An elderly woman (Usha Naik) holds a bowl of milk as she calls out for, “Koshu”. Elsewhere in the house, a younger woman (Trimala Adhikari) sits, dozing, on a bench, until she hears the older woman calling her name, “Malti”. She opens her eyes.

The older and younger women stand in a room, staring, the elder explaining to the younger that the plant will last two days. As the ginger cat Koshu feeds contentedly, the younger woman Malti limps back to her room. Preparing food in the kitchen, the younger tells the older that three chillis are too much for her. The older protests.

The conversation turns to the older’s medication, the next life, and why not get a plant that lasts longer, asks the younger.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Away

Director – Gints Zilbalodis – 2019 – Latvia – Cert. U – 75m
****1/2
From the director of Oscar winner Flow (2024), his debut animated feature Away is exclusively back in these cinemas from Friday, March 14th

A boy hangs from a tree by a parachute in a wilderness. He wakes. A strange, towering black / grey figure approaches, shining as if metallic or viscous like a solidified, smooth, crude oil or tar. It picks him up. He is in a dark tunnel, light at one end. He goes the other way, is out of the giant’s clutches, runs. It slowly turns and lumbers after him. There are occasional, giant, semicircular hoops in his path. He goes through them, eventually entering a grotto, through which fully circular hoop the giant can’t follow. Welcome to the strange, dreamlike world of Away.

Beyond an abandoned motorbike, in the middle of the grotto, is a lake bordered with orange trees and the ocean. The boy feeds, bathes and makes the acquaintance of a shy, little yellow bird. Finding a key and a map in a rucksack, the boy learns that the semicircular hoops mark a route to a harbour. His bike will furnish him the means to get there.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

The Lab

Director – Izzy Livesey – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 3m

****1/2

In her secluded laboratory, an obsessive woman scientist develops a powerful serum which leads to unexpected consequences – animated short accompanies the reissue of Away, back in UK cinemas from Friday, March 14th

This plays around with that old horror movie trope, the mad scientist, making that figure into a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat. The pleasures to be had here come not so much from what happens – although the twist at the end, when you see it, is likely to surprise you – as they do in the expression of its happening. What impresses are the designs of the characters (both of them!), the look of the sets, the use of lighting to create atmosphere, and – once you get into the area of kinetics, the fact that this is a moving picture – the choreography and flow of the piece. (I use the world flow deliberately, since it perfectly describes Gint Zalbalodis’ two, wordless animated features to date. The current, animated short accompanies the reissue this week of the first of those, Away (2019). Zalbalodis’ second feature is the deservedly Oscar-winning Flow (2024), out in cinemas here next week on Friday, March 21st.)… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Sister Midnight

Director – Karan Kandhari – 2024 – UK, Sweden, India – Cert. 15 – 110m

***1/2

A young woman in an arranged marriage discovers herself to be a creature of the night… and one of the undead – genre-bender is in UK cinemas on Friday, March 14th

A young woman travels cross-country by train, face veiled by beaded hangings, to join the arranged marriage husband she has (presumably) never met in their new, urban home. Uma (Radikha Apte) and Gopal (Ashok Pathak best known here from The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, John Madden, 2015) don’t seem to know what to do with each other. Certainly not any sort of sexual congress as they unveil sitting beside one another for the first time. As the tale proceeds, sleeping with him comes to consist of curling up on her own on the other side of the bed from him. Later, her sleeping patterns will start to shift…

Theirs is a pretty basic home – a room with a mattress and a door out onto the bustling, main street outside. Her husband has a job, so goes out in the morning and comes back in the evening, although sometimes he goes out drinking after work and comes back later.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Black Bag

Director – Steven Soderbergh – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 93m

*

A spy is tasked with finding and eliminating a mole from a list of five suspects – one of whom is his wife… out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 14th

London-based George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) meets with a fellow operative, who informs him the organisation has been compromised. To sort this out, and find and eliminate the mole, the operative has produced a list of five suspects. One of which is George’s wife, Kathryn St. Jean, because she ticks all the suspect boxes. Neglecting to tell Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) that she is one of the names on the list, George enlists her help in concocting a plan to identify the suspect. In the spy business, relationships inevitably involve not telling things to one another and not asking about them either.

Thus, the couple invite four colleagues – Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) and psychiatrist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) – round to their lavish London flat for dinner, where each of the four are surprised to discover three more guests than they anticipated. At the dinner table, George commences his plan by having his guests play a game.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mickey 17

Director – Bong Joon Ho – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 134m

*****

Contracted to have his fleshly body reprinted, and his memory restored every time he dies, the expendable Mickey is assigned to a ship run by a right-wing power couple who plan to colonise a distant planet – science fiction adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 7th

The snow has given way beneath his feet. Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has plummeted through several layers of ice and now lies helpless on a subterranean ice shelf. His best friend Timo (Stephen Yuen) comes to rescue him. Sorry. To retrieve mickey’s his gun, but leave Mickey himself there to die. Because, after all, it’s easier to reboot Mickey and upload his memories. His friend can’t but help to ask, “Mickey, what’s it like? To die?”

Left alone in the planet’s underground ice caves, where he’s already seen a fellow crew member attacked by cow-sized, insect-mammals for which will later be named “creepers”, Mickey 17 expects to be digested alive by the alien life forms. Of course he does – that’s what happens in movies about alien life on other planets. However, the script has some surprises in store, and the creepers, who are set to play a much bigger role in the story, don’t so much play the role of unfriendly monster as that of the misunderstood race of indigenous outsiders in relation to invading, would-be colonisers.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Giants of La Mancha
(Argentina: Gigantes;
Germany: Das Geheimnis
von La Mancha;
Spain: Los Exploradores;
US: Storm Crashers)

Director – Gonzalo Gutiérrez – 2024 – Argentina, Germany, Spain – Cert. U – 88m

***1/2

The young, present day descendants of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza must save La Mancha from a villainous property developer – animated children’s adventure is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 7th

(UK cinemas are showing the English language version: further voice credits are given for Spanish and German language versions, where available.)

Alfonso (voice: English: Micke Alejandro Morena Lamprea; Spanish: Patricio Lago; German: Julian Jansson) the great, great, great, great, great-grandson of Don Quixote, lives with his parents in the small Spanish village of La Mancha which is under threat of terrible storms that the occupants attribute to climate change. Like his ancestor, Alfonso misreads things, such as an impending storm which he believes to be a storm monster.

He and his dad Dan Quixote (voice: English: Bradley Krupsaw), who alone among all the characters here speaks in rhyming couplets, and his mum (voice: English: Jennifer Moule; Spanish: Carla Petersen) are both idealists, to the extent that Dan is the one person in the village who has refused to sign his home over to besuited property developer Mr. Carrasco (voice: English: Thomas Harris), whose snake oil salesman charms seem to have convinced all the other villagers to sell up and move out to his development “with children in mind” of Carascoland, towards which they are currently heading in their cars en masse, despite Alfonso’s hurtling around on his bicycle warning everybody of the storm monster heading in their direction.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Detective Conan
The Million-Dollar Pentagram
(Meitantei Konan
Hyakuman Doru
no Michishirube,
名探偵コナン
100万ドルの五稜星)

Director – Chika Nagaoka – 2024 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 111m

****

Spin-off from a hugely populardetective mystery manga and anime franchise – and Japan’s biggest box office success of 2024 – impresses on the level of eye-candy provided you don’t attempt to follow the overly convoluted plot – out on UK digital from Monday, March 3rd 2025

Japanese property Detective Conan is huge, running as a serialised manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday for 30 years, and turned into an anime series two years after that. By 2024, the manga has been collected into over a hundred volumes, while the franchise has spawn both animated and live action features among other things. The current film is the 27th animated feature, and at the time of writing is the biggest film at this year’s Japanese box office.

It may not be a good place to start with the franchise. Unlike Spy x Family Code: White (Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri, 2023), which does a surprisingly effective job at getting the newcomer up to speed on a well-established anime franchise, Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram doesn’t bother to explain its characters and their complex network of relationships, so you may find yourself completely lost before it starts throwing its increasingly convoluted plot developments at the viewer (as it does almost immediately with disorienting speed).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Conversation

R.I.P. Gene Hackman (1930-2025)

Director – Francis Ford Coppola – 1974 – US – Cert. 12a – 113m

*****

A surveillance expert records a conversation between two people, then worries about turning the recording over to his corporate client as contracted – 50th anniversary 4K Restoration is out on UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, July 15th, 2024

There’s nothing else quite like The Conversation in cinema.

Union Square, San Francisco. People milling around. Among them, a couple (Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams) having a conversation. Also in the square, a man in a plastic mac (Gene Hackman). And another man (Michael Higgins) following them around, holding a bag. And, at two separate windows above the square, two long range microphones.

The first man, Harry, enters a nearby van, inside which is his recording assistant Stan (John Cazale). He’s shortly followed by the other man, Paul, who believes the couple spotted him trailing them.

Harry pays a nighttime visit to his girlfriend Amy (Teri Garr). She wants him to spill his secrets. He claims he has none. He leaves, with her telling him not to bother to come back.

He goes to work in his office, situated at one end of the floor in an otherwise deserted warehouse.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

When Autumn Falls
(Quand Vient l’Automne;
US: When Fall is Coming)

Forgiveness for the past

When Autumn Falls

Directed by François Ozon

Certificate 15, 102 minutes

Released 21 March

Reviewed in Reform magazine, March 2025.

Judge not lest ye be judged, we are told. At the start of this latest drama from François Ozon, an ever-reliable director who rarely repeats himself, a devoted, eightysomething grandmother Michelle (Hélène Vincent) accidentally gives her fortysomething daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) food poisoning when she picks and cooks mushrooms.

Once out of hospital, the daughter, unable to forgive her mum, takes the disappointed grandson Lucas (Galan Erlos) – who was to have spent the Summer holidays in the country with his beloved granny – back home to Paris.

The daughter’s reaction isn’t really about the food, though…

[Read the rest at Reform.]

[Read my longer review on this site.]

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Chang’an
(Chang’an San Wan Li,
长安三万里,
lit. 3 000 Miles from Chang’an)

Directors – Xie Junwei, Zou Jing – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 168m

****

General Gao Shi of the Tang dynasty recounts his life, his struggle to become a poet and his friendship with Li Bai, a more renowned poet – animated epic is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 28th

Set roughly halfway through the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.), this lengthy, animated epic starts off like an historical war movie in the vein of the live action Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008, 2009) but swiftly morphs into something else entirely as this initial narrative about the capture and interrogation of an enemy soldier turns into a frame story – which is rather more than that, popping up repeatedly throughout the narrative with the frame story’s resolution taking centre stage towards the end of the proceedings. Even this is deceptive; while military strategy and conflict is covered, the narrative is far less interested in that than in the overall life of main protagonist and minor poet Gao Shi, his meetings and friendship through the years with secondary character and major poet Li Bai, and the wider poetry of the period.

Believing himself about to be punished for the failure of his well planned and fought military campaign against the Tubos (the Tibetans, their ethnic identity never clarified within the film itself – at least, not in the English subtitles, presumably because the film is aimed at a Chinese audience who would already know this ethnic, historical; background), the ageing General Gao Shi (voice: Wu Junquan) falls neck first on his spear before receiving the Emperor’s emissary who wants to question him, it turns out, about not his military campaign but, rather, Li Bai.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Director’s Cut,
4K Restoration)

Director – Peter Weir – 1975 – Australia – Cert. 12a – 107m

*****

A group of teenage schoolgirls supervised by two teachers go on a picnic beside an isolated volcanic outcrop: three of them never return – Valentine’s Day previews on Friday & Saturday, February 14th & 15th, then is out in UK cinemas from Friday, February 21st

Two locations sear themselves into your brain when watching Picnic at Hanging Rock, whether for the first time or the umpteenth. One is the obvious one – the eponymous, towering rock formation in Victoria, Australia, at once an inescapable presence in a landscape and an invitation to come into its labyrinth and explore. The other is Appleyard College, a turn of the (nineteenth into twentieth) century boarding school for young ladies, shot in the real life 1870s-built, Georgian mansion Martindale Hall. They are two very different worlds, one natural, wild, and inexplicable, the other buttoned down and socially stratified.

The picnic, which takes place on St. Valentine’s Day, 1900, only seems to take the first third of the film’s running length. Two teachers, Miss Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray from The Last Wave, Peter Weir, 1977) and the French mistress Mlle de Poitiers (Helen Morse) are in charge of around a dozen teenage girls, all dressed very prim and properly.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

I’m Still Here
(Ainda Estou Aqui)

Director – Walter Salles – 2024 – Brazil – Cert. 15 – 137m

****

When a family man is disappeared by Brazil’s military dictatorship, his wife must fight for justice while raising their family of five children alone – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 21st

1971. The middle of Brazil’s 1964-85 military dictatorship. Former government commissioner Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a trained civil; engineer, lives with his family in Rio de Janeiro where he is designing the new family home he plans to build. The purchased plot of land, in view of the Christ the Redeemer monument, is staked out, and he has made little models of what the whole thing will look like, captured along with his partying family on Super-8 film by his home-movie-camera-wielding, eldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage). Said eldest daughter (he has four of them plus one young son) is about to go to college. Taking the lead from his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres), who is concerned that their daughter’s likely involvement in radical student politics will get her in trouble with the dictatorship, Rubens sets her up with an old family friend to study abroad in London.

With reports on the TV news of various diplomats being kidnapped by paramilitaries, who want to exchange them for political prisoners, in a worrying taste of events to come, Veroca is travelling and filming her Super-8 as a passenger in a friend’s car wherein weed is being smoked, when they hit a military roadblock in a road tunnel.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Monkey
(2025)

Director – Osgood Perkins – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 98m

****

An automaton monkey found by two twins causes horrific deaths to people around them – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 21st

This sets its tone early on with a framing story in which a junk store owner is asked by mild-mannered, bespectacled protagonist Hal (Theo James, who also plays his twin brother Bill) to take a clockwork monkey off his hands, insisting that the object, whatever it might be, is not a toy. The store owner is sceptical. More fool him, because he is about to undergo one of many sudden, gruesome and unexpected deaths of which the film offers a gorehound’s smorgasboard.

Other notable characters include their mum Lois (Tatania Maslany from Woman in Gold, Simon Curtis, 2015; Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg, 2007), Hal’s estranged son Petey (Colin O’Brien from Wonka, Paul King, 2023) and Petey’s stepfather Ted (Elijah Wood from The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, 2001-3).

This Stephen King adaptation comes from the school of horror films which are, basically, an excuse for staging a series of sudden, gruesome and unexpected deaths. Inventiveness is high on the menu, provided you accept that killing multiple people in unique and spectacular ways can be said to be inventive.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Memoir of a Snail

Director – Adam Elliot – 2024 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young woman recounts her life story to her newly freed pet snail after her best friend dies – stop-frame animation marvel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 14th

Following a bravura title sequence which consists of a camera moving around (a scale model set of) detritus from a life, everything from soap on a rope to snail poison, with various objects bearing upon themselves various credits for the film, a young woman has tears in her eyes as her bedridden friend Pinky (voice: Jacki Weaver from Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell, 2012; Animal Kingdom, David Michod, 2010; Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir, 1975) breathes her last, briefly coming back to life to utter the legend, “potatoes”. But what can this word mean?

Taking her pet snail Sylvia (the name is painted on the back of the creature’s shell) out of a glass jar and setting her free to cross Pinky’s garden in the course of her subsequent narrative, the woman remembers her childhood down to the smallest detail, and starts to recount it to the liberated gastropod. She was born prematurely as Grace Prudence Pudel (voice: Sarah Snook from Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle, 2015; Predestination, The Spierig Brothers, 2014), shortly followed by her twin brother Gilbert (voice: Kodi Smit-McPhee from Maria, Pablo Larraín, 2024; The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion, 2021; The Congress, Ari Folman, 2013; ParaNorman, Chris Butler, Sam Fell, 2012).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Cottontail
(コットンテール)

Director – Patrick Dickinson – 2023 – UK, Japan – Cert. 12a – 94m

****

A Japanese widower comes to England to scatter his late wife’s ashes at Lake Windermere – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 14th

Kenzaburo (Lily Franky from Shoplifters, 2018; After the Storm, 2016; Like Father, Like Son, 2013, all Hirokazu Kore-eda), on occasion abbreviated to Ken, seems somehow lost as he wanders around Tokyo, looking out over a cityscape of roofs, travelling in passenger train carriages, wandering round a food market in search of octopus for he and his wife’s anniversary meal. 

He wistfully observes a live specimen in a tank. It’s not yet in season and the prices are ridiculous, so he shoplifts a packet, taking it to the restaurant where he and his wife Akiko had their first date all those years ago. She (Yuri Tsunematsu from Wife of a Spy, 2020; Before We Vanish, 2017, both Kiyoshi Kurosawa) comes in young as ever, as is he (Kosei Kudo), that pendant on her neck. He ignores the question from the present day chef (Hiroshi Okawa) as to how she’s doing.

Back at his flat, his panicking, besuited son Toshi (Ryo Nishikido) gets him ready for the funeral.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Bridget Jones
Mad about the Boy

Director – Michael Morris – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 124m

*****

Following the death of her husband, Bridget must carry on raising her kids even as she restarts her career and attempts to find love, sex and romance once again – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, February 13th

The character of Bridget Jones first burst onto cinema screens in Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) in what turned out to be a hugely successful adaptation of a hugely successful publishing phenomenon. The book spawned three more volumes, and the film spawned adaptations of them. For reasons best known to the producers, they skipped the third published book Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy to film the fourth one, Bridget Jones’ Baby, as the third movie.

The reason may be that Mad about the Boy is set following the death of the heroine’s beloved husband, a top human rights lawyer, making her not the single woman of the first film, but a widow navigating not just life, with all its ups and downs, but grief, which doesn’t sound like a great premise for a comedy. The script, co-written like its three predecessors by author Helen Felding, doesn’t shirk this difficult subject either.… Read the rest

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Qualia
(Qualia,
クオリア)

Director – Ryo Ushimaru – 2023 – Japan – 96m

*****

A bizarre drama plays out among a group of people running a chicken farm – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025 which runs from Friday, 7th February to Monday, 31st March

Wheelchair-bound Satomi (Maya Kudamatsu) likes to hunt. So sister-in-law Yuko (Kokone Sasaki) takes her out game shooting. Yuko is a people pleaser: she likes to help. Disability nothwithstanding, Satomi is the type that likes to order people around. She has Yuko wrapped around her little finger to the extent that she can get Yuko to phone the air con repair man on his annual leave, insist he come and fix the system while he’s on holiday and even absolve Satomi of any involvement during the phone call. Yuko is, to say the least, compliant, while Satomi is a bully.

Yuko’s small holding, battery chicken farmer husband Ryosuke (Kenta Kiguchi) delivers freshly laid eggs to the egg station every morning, where he pretends not to know his mistress Saki (Ruka Ishikawa), instead confining their relationship to a hidden away hotel room later in the day. Here, she shows him her positive pregnancy test.… Read the rest

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The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)

Director – Mohammad Rasoulof – 2024 – Iran, Germany, France – Cert. 15 – 167m

*****

An Iranian state functionary, married with two teenage daughters, is promoted to the position of judge at the same time as the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupt… And then, his gun goes missing at home… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 7th

A film so extraordinarily brilliant that it is almost impossible to conceive.

An opening intertitle explains the remarkable life cycle of a tree which grows on one of the southern Iranian islands. Its seeds fall onto the branches of other trees through bird droppings. The seeds then germinate, and their roots move towards the ground. When the roots reach the ground, the sacred fig tree stands on its own feet and its branches strangle the host tree.

2022. The tireless and diligent work of state functionary Iman (Missagh Zareh) has finally been rewarded; he is to be appointed a judge. In a repressive regime like Iran, that’s not a job looked upon favourably by most of the population, so his work gives him a pistol just in case he should need to defend himself or his family. At home, in the Tehran apartment where he lives with his family, he keeps the weapon in a drawer.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

September 5

Director – Tim Fehlbaum – 2024 – US, Germany – Cert. 15 – 95m

****1/2

A dramatisation of the events of September 5, 1972 when broadcast TV sports journalists found themselves covering the terrorist kidnapping of Israeli athletes in the Olympic village – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, February 6th

There have been movies about the terrorist incident at the 1972 Olympics before: the documentary One Day in September (Kevin McDonald, 1999) and the drama about its aftermath Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005). Like the latter, September 5 is a drama. What marks it out as different, however, is that it tells the story from the point of view of broadcast journalists working out of a studio.

In this respect, its feeling for capturing the processes of live US network television renders it not entirely dissimilar to recent release Saturday Night (Jason Reitman, 2024), yet in many ways, it couldn’t be more different. Saturday Night is about the birth of a legendary US comedy show; September 5 starts in an arguably similar area of entertainment (live sports coverage) before swiftly moving into the wider, more problematic area of live broadcast news coverage. The coverage of the incident around which September 5 is based forever changed the face of broadcast television media.… Read the rest

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Bring Them Down

Director – Chris Andrews – 2024 – Ireland – Cert. 15 – 105m

**

A feud between two neighbouring, Irish sheep farmers is made worse by toxic masculinity on both sides– out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, February 7th

Two women in a car are being driven down an isolated country road. The older one, Peggy (Susan Lynch), is in the passenger seat talking to the unseen driver about why she’s finally leaving his father. The younger one Catherine (Nora-Jane Noone) sits horrified in the back seat as the driver reacts to the conversation by going faster and faster. The older one repeatedly and with increasing urgency shouts at the driver, “Mikey, slow down.” Eventually, there is a crash. Catherine’s face is disfigured. Peggy doesn’t survive.

The car crash opening is hardly new to the movies, gracing films as diverse as thrillers Dead Calm (Philip Noyce, 1989) and The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005), and children’s drama Fly Away Home (Carroll Ballard, 1996). The scene is used differently here, with the crash caused by wilfully bad driving, in turn caused by the driver’s emotional immaturity, which signals the intention of the piece, most of the narrative of which takes place some years later.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies Music

The Colors Within
Kimi no Iro,
きみの色,
lit. Your Color)

Director – Naoko Yamada – 2024 – Japan – Cert. PG – 101m

*****

A Catholic schoolgirl with synaesthesia inadvertently forms a rock band who find themselves playing a gig at her school – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 31st

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

That’s the Serenity Prayer, and it opens this remarkable story of a schoolgirl in a boarding school as she prays it to a statue of Mary in the school chapel. A scene of her as a small girl attending the dance class, and scenes of her seeing other pupils in the corridor, are rendered in vivid, blinding colour where bright white light constantly threatens to engulf the pastel shades in which the girl sees. For more on synaesthesia, see A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (Mark Cousins, 2024).

If you were to land in the middle of this film with no context, for a frame, or a scene (drawn animation parlance for a single shot), you could be forgiven for thinking there was something wrong with the print, or the colour balance. I am immediately reminded of the reviewer who said of Black Narcissus (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1947) that the film was so visually perfect that it could be shown out of focus and upside down and the audience would still be enraptured by its kinetic abstract colour properties.… Read the rest

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Hard Truths

Director – Mike Leigh – 2024 – UK – Cert. 12a – 97m

*****

A woman with a chip on her shoulder makes her own and her extended family’s lives a misery, as she does with everyone with whom she comes into contact – expertly crafted slice of Brit Misery Porn is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 31st

While her plumber husband Curtley (David Webber) and his assistant Virgil (Jonathan Livingstone) are out all day working, which seems to consist of removing plumbing fixtures and fittings from unoccupied houses, Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) stays at home berating their 22-year-old, videogame-playing son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) for being unemployed and lacking in ambition.

It’s as if the world has it in for Pansy, and she takes it out on anything and everything. Without realising what she is doing, she turns the family home into a place of misery, making her son and husband’s lives a living hell through no fault of their own.

She couldn’t be more different from her sassy and outgoing sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin), who despite being abandoned by her husband has made a go of life, passing on her ‘can do’ spirit to her two moderately successful daughters Kayla (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown).… Read the rest

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Saturday Night

Director – Jason Reitman – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 109m

***

A journey through the behind the scenes chaos of the 90 minutes prior to the broadcast of NBC’s first ever Saturday Night Live show – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 31st

In the mid-1970s, US TV network NBC made a monumental change to its scheduled programming. For the best part of a decade, it had broadcast reruns of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on Saturdays and Sundays, and wanted something new which would capture the 19-34-year-old audience demographic, developing a replacement show with young, independent producer Lorne Michaels, the first episode of which was broadcast live on October 11, 1975. The show, which is still running on NBC today, became something of an institution in the US, kickstarting the careers of numerous comedy stars and writers who would go on to achieve considerable success in US film and TV.

Saturday Night is an attempt to put on the screen the chaos of that first night’s preparation, in which no-one quite knows if the show’s broadcast is going to go ahead, or whether the network will flip a switch and play the Carson rerun tape it has lined up in case Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) can’t get his show together.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Old Fox
(Lao Hu Li,
老狐狸)

Director – Hsaio Ya-chuan – 2023 – Taiwan – Cert. – 112m

*****

In 1990, against the backdrop of burgeoning share prices, a young boy starts taking car rides from his father’s landlord – is Taiwan’s entry for 2025 Best International Feature – was out in US cinemas on Friday, January 18th 2024

11-year-old Jie (Bae Run-yin) lives with his widowed dad (Liu Kuan-ting), the Maitre d’ at a posh, local restaurant, in their small, cramped apartment above Li’s cafe. Every week, Miss Lin (Eugenie Liu), who the boy calls Miss Pretty, calls by to collect the rent, which both Li (Ban Tie-tsiang) and Jie’s dad regularly pay. Li plans to better himself, and his friend The Major (Kao Ying-hsuan) helps him out by investing cash in stocks and shares and earning Li massive returns.

Jie’s dad is involved in no such scheme, but Jie yearns for a bigger home and with his savings has told the boy they should be able to afford to buy their own place in about three years. But rapidly rising share prices, dragging property prices up along with them, kill his three-year dream.

His dad is a resourceful sort who sews all Jie’s clothes.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eno

Director – Gary Hustwit – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 83m

**** (on this occasion)

Musician, artist and activist Brian Eno has been at the cutting edge of creativity for 50 years, and this generative, AI-programmed film plays in a different version every time it is shown – 24-hour online screening event 5pm GMT on Friday, January 24th 2025, ticket info below review

–

Disclaimer: This film is being touted as a film that’s different every time it screens: thus, I need to declare that I saw the version shown to press in London on 03.07.2024 (which was prepared as a file for viewing on 26.04.2024). Things included in that version might or might not be in the one you see. So, in a sense, you have to take this review with a pinch of salt. The version I saw ran 83 minutes. Officially, it’s supposed to be 90, so that exact running length may vary too. Or not. I really don’t know.

—

Brian Eno hasn’t made the film himself, yet clearly he’s the perfect subject for it. He talks about “accidentally” getting involved with Roxy Music after being asked by band member Andy Mackay to help them record (as in, do the work required to record them at a recording studio) some pieces and realising that recording and performing with the band would help him pursue his interest in exploring emerging new technologies and their creative possibilities.… Read the rest

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Small Things Like These

Director – Tim Mielants – 2024 – Ireland – Cert. 12a – 98m

*****

A coal delivery man is troubled by the recurring sight of a deeply traumatised young woman at one of his regular customers, a convent – out to buy on Digital on Monday, January 20th, and on Blu-ray & DVD and to rent on Digital on Monday, February 3rd

Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) runs a company delivering coal to customers in and around Wexford, Ireland. It’s tough, backbreaking work, as is evident from the sight of his assistants loading up his truck, one bag of coal loaded onto the back by two men. He’s happy with his men, who do a good job. Doing his rounds as driver and delivery man (locked-off camera looking out from the driver’s cab) he carries one sack at a time himself. Finishing up delivering to the local convent, where he’s required to leave the coal bags behind the door in the designated coal house, he witnesses a scene where a young woman clearly doesn’t want to be in the care of the head sister.

He comes home. As is his wont, he furiously scrubs the coal black off his hands, producing a pool of blackened water in the bathroom sink.… Read the rest

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A Complete Unknown

Director – James Mangold – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 141m

*****

A feature narrative recreation of Bob Dylan’s career in New York up to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival gig where he switched acoustic guitar for electric – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 17th

1961. Carrying his acoustic guitar, complete unknown Bobby Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arrives in New York trying to find the hospital where legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie is being treated for terminal illness. After some false starts, Bobby finds the place, with Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) sitting by Woody (Scoot McNairy) at his bedside. Pete welcomes him, and Woody, who can barely speak, indicates he would like to have the young man play one of his own compositions. Bobby obliges. Both men are impressed. Sensing the youth has nowhere to stay, Pete invites him to stay at his house with his Japanese-American wife Toshi (Eriko Hatsune) and their two daughters. 

Pete, who recognises in Bob a powerful talent and a new, artistic voice, is deeply committed to both political activism and folk music as a vehicle for social change. One of the organisers of the annual Newport Folk Festival, he takes the young Dylan under his wing and helps him get gigs.… Read the rest

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The Girl
with the Needle
(Pigen med Nålen)

Director – Magnus Van Horn – 2024 – Denmark, Sweden, Poland – Cert. 15 – 123m

*****

A young Copenhagen woman’s attempts to escape poverty following the Great War lead her into a dark nightmare – Denmark’s entry for Best International Feature is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, January 10th

In the darkness, faces writhing, superimposed on other faces. Katherine (Vic Carmen Sonne from Godland, 2022; Holiday, Isabella Eklöf, 2018), behind on the rent for her room by 14 months, is evicted. She works at a rag trade factory as a seamstress, where the owner Peter (Besir Zeciri) wants to be able to help her but cannot grant her widow’s supplement without proof of death of her husband, who has gone missing in the war. She manages to find herself cheaper lodgings. Sensing something more behind Peter’s kindness and an offer of a shoulder to rest on, Katherine has sex with him in an alley in broad daylight.

One day, her husband Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup) returns from the war, his face heavily disfigured. She takes him in but, unable to cope with his recurring nightmares, soon throws him out. Something similar is soon visited on her; Peter agrees to marry her, but when his mother (Benedikte Hansen from Borgen, TV series, 2010) explains that her son can do as he wants, but not with her money or her estate, he changes his mind (this, incidentally, is the same plot that drives Anora, Sean Baker, 2024).… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies (and more, excluding re-releases) 2024

The Old Man and the Land

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2024, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/24 and 31/12/24. Prior to 2020, I’d never included online releases (well, maybe the odd one or two as a special case) but that year saw the film distribution business turned upside down by COVID-19. The movie business is still changing, and the dust hasn’t yet settled.

This version excludes re-releases (My Neighbour Totoro and Seven Samurai would top everything here). In addition to re-releases, this version also excludes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2024. For that even longer list, click here.

Beyond the first 25 titles, there may be numerous errors (missing links to reviews where I wrote one, year of release, country, and maybe more). All this will be fixed in time, but I wanted to get something online in the holidays.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more, excluding re-releases) 2024

Please click on titles to see reviews.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2024

The Old Man and the Land

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2024, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add / sort.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/24 and 31/12/24.

This version includes re-releases, but those aren’t numbered. It’s hard to imagine movies improving on Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro or Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

In addition to re-releases, this version also includes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2024.

The star ratings may occasionally differ from the star rating I gave a particular film at the time of review.

Beyond the first 25 numbered titles, there may be numerous errors (missing links to reviews where I wrote one, year of release, country, and maybe more). All this will be fixed in time, but I wanted to get something online.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2024

Please click on titles to see reviews. (Links yet to be added.)

The numbering will mostly be added later when I’ve watched more of the outstanding 2024 titles, and they have stopped moving around.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Nosferatu
(2024)

Director – Robert Eggers – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 132m

*****

Unaware a woman has unwittingly summoned Count Orloc, her husband is sent to the latter’s castle in Transylvania – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, January 1st 2025

The German expressionist silent film Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) has been described as setting the cinematic template for the horror film. Broadly speaking, it’s an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, with names changed for the purposes either of connecting to the German audience or avoiding copyright issues. While there have been numerous Dracula movie adaptations and spin-offs over the years, remakes of the 1922 film are comparatively few and far between; prior to the current film, Werner Herzog notably made Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Eggers is a great admirer of the 1922 film, and originally planned to remake it after The Witch (2015). It’s not hard to see why. His films have about them a terrible sense of dread, of dire events about to occur. Like F.W. Murnau, he is a great visual stylist (although the silent film industry of the 1920s was very different to the far more sophisticated sector of today). The film has had time to marinate in his head for the best part of a decade, which has probably done the project no harm at all.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Spirited Away
(Sen
to Chihiro
no Kamikakushi,
千と千尋の神隠し)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2001 – Japan – Cert. PG – 125m

****1/2

(A shorter version of this review was originally published in Third Way for UK release date 12/09/2002. At which point, hardly anyone in the UK outside of anime fandom knew who Miyazaki was.)

In director Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, a ten-year-old girl must survive a bathhouse run by demons after her parents are turned into pigs – back in UK cinemas from Thursday, December 26th 2024

To discover the films of Hayao Miyazaki – and those of his company Studio Ghibli (pronounced “Jib-Lee”) – is like suddenly being exposed to those of Disney without prior knowledge of their sheer number or quality. In Miyazaki’s native Japan, Spirited Away shattered box office records to succeed Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) as the most lucrative movie of all time. In the US, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature while making only modest inroads into the marketplace. Britain, however, is not the US, and it may well fare better here than it did there.

Previous Miyazaki outings have covered children’s experience of the countryside (My Neighbour Totoro, 1988; one of this writer’s favourite films of all time), a young girl’s learning to find her way in the world (Kiki’s Delivery Service, 1989) and conflicting loyalties among pilots in interwar Europe (Porco Rosso, 1992).… Read the rest

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Wallace & Gromit
Vengeance Most Fowl

Directors – Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 79m

*****

Feathers McGraw returns to wreak havoc with Wallace’s latest invention, robotic garden smart gnomes – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, December 18th 2024, on the BBC on Christmas Day, and on Netflix from Friday, January 3rd 2025

Opening with the capture, some years ago, of notorious master criminal Feathers McGraw (voice: none) for the attempted theft of the blue diamond, foiled by simple Lancastrian inventor Wallace (voice: Ben Whitehead, doing an amazing job replacing the late Peter Sallis) and his smart pet dog Gromit (voice: none), this second feature sees Wallace inventing furiously, making next to no money and the household bills pile up.

However, all that is about to change with Wallace’s latest gadget, Norbot the Smart Gnome (voice: Reece Shearsmith) who, voice-instructed by his inventor to make Gromit’s carefully tended garden “neat and tidy”, chops down most of the put-upon pooch’s cherished, colourful flowerbeds to replace them with something resembling a Brutalist version of the Gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

This impresses the neighbours and passing tradesman, causing Wallace – a lightbulb sign from a stationery van (hilariously parked behind him) above his head – to realise that he has a potential business startup here.… Read the rest

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12.12: The Day
(Seour-ui Bom,
서울의 봄,
lit. Seoul Spring)

Director – Kim Sung Soo – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 141m

*****

In 1980, one Major General attempts to stop another from successfully orchestrating a military coup in South Korea – historical drama is South Korea’s entry for 2025 Best International Feature

In the aftermath of the assassination of President Park in 1979, an event portrayed in The Man Standing Next (Woo Min-ho, 2020), Chief of Staff Jeong (Lee Sung-min) promotes Major General Lee (Jung Woo-sung) to head of the Capital Garrison Command “because you’re not motivated by greed” and charges him with the job of defending Seoul. His concern is another Major General, Director of Joint Investigation Chun (Hwang Jung-min), who has access to the country’s surveillance services and is a member of the secret society Hanahoo which is rife within the military. Chun is already behaving like a king, and Jeong is worried what he might be planning.

And well he should be, because Chun is figuratively and literally empire-building, planning a coup d’etat and working out who is loyal to him (and will carry out his commands) and who isn’t. As far as he is concerned, Jeong is the enemy, and although the latter has been cleared of any involvement in the assassination, his presence at the scene of the assassination is enough to justify arrest and further interrogation.… Read the rest

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Queer

Director – Luca Guadagnino – 2024 – Italy, US – Cert. 18 – 135m

*****

A journey through the gay fleshpots of Mexico City leading, through illness, to a deeper jungle wherein can be found a drug that will enhance telepathy – challenging William Burroughs adaptation with Daniel Craig & Lesley Manville is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 13th

Bookended with a prologue and an episode, this is a narrative split into three separate sections or chapters. In the first, set in Mexico City, fortysomething Bill Lee (Daniel Craig) spends his days and nights drinking in bars like Ship Ahoy frequented by (mostly younger male) US ex-pats. He talks with friends such as Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman), he watches newcomers, he attempts, sometimes successfully, to pick some up. He is taken with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), and the pair embark on an intense physical relationship. Lee persuades Eugene to accompany him to South America, with no stipulation other than Eugene “be nice” to him a couple of times a week.

In the second, on the trip Bill goes down with a nasty case of the chills. In the third, following his eventual recovery, he asks around about a drug called Yaga he understands can facilitate telepathy, the pair trekking deep into the jungle to find biologist Dr.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

The Lord
of the Rings:
The War
of the Rohirrim

Director – Kenji Kamiyama – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 134m

****

A story of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, set around 200 years before The Lord of the Rings – English language anime is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 13th

This narrative is based on one of the appendices in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, (although checking my copy of the 1979 Unwin paperback edition, it’s not there, so it’s unclear when this appendix first appeared). The Kingdom of Rohan and the Battle of Helm’s Deep are familiar from Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy, as is the character of Éowyn (voice: Miranda Otto, reprising her role) who serves here as a narrator, the tale taking place around 200 years before the events in LOTR.

Wulf (voice: Elijah Tamati) and Hèra (voice: Bea Dooley) are childhood friends, sweethearts even. She is something of a tomboy, riding out of the small fiefdom – from where her father Helm Hammerhand (voice: Brian Cox) rules his Kingdom of Rohan – to feed a giant eagle, or engage in friendly, hand-to-hand, sword and shield combat with Wulf, at which task she bests him.… Read the rest

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Interstella 5555
The 5tory
of the
5ecret 5tar 5ystem

Director – Leiji Matsumoto – 2003 – Japan – Cert. PG – 68m

**

Back in UK cinemas from Thursday, December 12th 2024

Review from What’s On in London, December 2003.

Admirers of legendary anime series Capitaine Albator / Captain Harlock, 1978), electronic band Daft Punk sought out designer and source manga artist Leiji Matsumoto (anime series Space Cruiser Yamato 1974-5, 1978-9, 1980-81, dubbed into English as Starblazers, 1979-84; The Cockpit, 1993-4) to put together images to accompany their latest project. Their resultant collaboration is the unwieldily titled Interstella 5555: The 5tory Of The 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. Perfectly acceptable as a DVD release (it originally came out as such in December 2003), it doesn’t really cut it on the big screen.

5555 is basically an overlong pop promo: images put to music with no sound effects. A narrative of sorts has an evil rock manager kidnap musicians from another planet, wipe their minds clean and develop them into a huge commercial success in Earth’s music industry.

However, the script (such as it is) is very loosely constructed. Instead, what drives its 68 minutes is Daft Punk’s music upon which, almost as an afterthought, are hung Matsumoto’s images.… Read the rest

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Rumours
(2024)

Director – Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson – 2024 – Germany, Canada – Cert. 15 – 109m

****1/2

The G7 leaders meet at a summit only to find themselves trapped in the woods following an apocalyptic event – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 6th

Every so often, the leaders of the world’s leading liberal democracies – the G7 – gather for summits to deal with the impending global crisis. On this occasion, it’s a bright, sunshiny day. Prior to getting down to business, they are toured through some local woods and shown the remains of one of the Bog People in a deep pit, their corpses perfectly preserved, apart from their bones which have disappeared, thanks to the properties of the bog land environment in which they were buried thousands of years ago. One corpse which they are shown has had his penis cut off and hung ornamentally round his neck. British PM Cardosa Dewindt (Nicky Amuka-Bird) is understandably somewhat taken aback by this.

The seven have their picture taken by the side of the pit, posing with spades. Then it’s on to the gazebo in a large clearing to sit down and discuss the matter in hand.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla Minus One
(Gojira -1.0,
ゴジラ -1.0)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – out on 4K, Blu-ray & DVD from Monday, December 2nd

World War Two, Pacific theatre. Unwilling Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) feigns engine trouble and lands on an island for aircraft maintenance, where he is grounded. While there, he notices deep sea fish curiously floating on the surface of the surrounding ocean: they presage the arrival of a huge monster, named Godzilla by the locals. With Koichi failing to fire his 20mm aircraft guns at the creature to kill it, almost everyone else on the small island is killed. (Whether his guns would have had any effect in halting the creature’s advance is debatable. They probably wouldn’t have had any effect whatsoever.) The only other survivor, who had previously congratulated Koichi for a near impossible landing on a tiny runway, blames him for the multiple deaths because he didn’t pull the trigger.

In 1945, in the ruins of post-war Tokyo, Shikishima is accused by a survivor – a woman whose children have died – of being a disgrace.… Read the rest

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Rumours
(2024)

Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson
Certificate 15
109 minutes
Released 6 December

Jesus spoke of ‘wars and rumours of wars’, and told us to give our leaders their due. He also spoke of the End of the Age. In our post-Christian 21st century, half the world supposedly runs under democracy, government by the people. Capitalism is driving corporate and individual financial greed towards burning up the planet – or at least its human population – through climate change. It does not look good.

The leaders of the G7 nations, the seven richest nations on the planet, meet regularly to try and hammer out statements to help the world deal with this impending crisis. There is a widespread feeling among their citizens that the resulting diplomatic agreements achieve nothing, and disaster inevitably looms.

Read the rest at Reform magazine.

Read my longer, alternative review for this site.

Trailer:

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Goryeojang
(고려장)

Director – Kim Ki-young – 1963 – South Korea – 89m

2019 Korean Film Archive (KOFA) Restoration (two reels missing)

****

Goryeojang is the concept of taking your elders up a mountain when they reach 70 so that they can face death – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank – from the London Korean Film Festival 2019

Over fifty years old, Goryeojang is sadly available as only a print with two reels (three and six) missing. The LKFF screened the version where the missing scenes are explained by a brief series of intertitles so that the rest of the film can make sense. It’s a tough film to pigeonhole. A description like period drama, which genre it absolutely fits, proves woefully inadequate. To a Western viewer, it plays out like a classic fairy tale, with archetypal characters and considerable amounts of cruelty. The art direction is light years away from any sort of social realism with its rural sets obviously artificially constructed in a studio, recalling (to name but one obvious example) The Singing Ringing Tree (Francesco Stefani, 1957), especially for all those British people who saw that latter film in black and white on BBC children’s television in the 1960s.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Moana 2

Directors – David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller – 2024 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

*** 1/2

The desire to connect with the people who must surely live beyond the known horizons of her world drives Moana on a new seafaring adventure – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Set three years after Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), this features the eponymous Polynesian heroine (voiced once again by Auli’i Cravalho) not as a 16-year-old but as a 19-year-old. She has now become a wayfinder and the leader of her island people. Weirdly, perhaps, for a leader, she likes nothing better than going off into the middle of the island, accompanied by her two Disney-obligatory small animal friends Pua the pig and HeiHei the dim-witted cockerel (voice, or at least cockerel noises: Alan Tudyk), climbing to its highest point and blowing a shell in the hope that someone out in the world beyond the one she knows might respond. She wants to reach out and connect with other islander populations. Alas, she gets little more than Heihei blowing a shell a few yards away.

Following a vision in which she is visited by Tautai Vasa (voice: Gerald Faitala Ramsey), a wayfinder from a distant generation who sent out to sea and never came back, Moana and her small crew set sail for the lost island of Motufetu.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Contestant

Director – Clair Titley – 2023 – UK – Cert.12a – 90m

*****

How a man’s incarceration in a room, broadcast on TV, became a media sensation in Japan– out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Before The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), which would be released later the same year, a couple of years before Big Brother and the start of the UK’s reality TV phenomenon, a Japanese TV show breaks new boundaries. A man is put in a room where he had to earn a million yen in prizes from magazine competitions before being released. The facilities are basic – there is a sink unit and a gas ring, but no cooking utensils. The whole situation is filmed by two cameras. The man in the room, Nasubi, knows it is being filmed, but has been told by the producer that most of it will be thrown away. He is completely unaware that this setup is being edited into a weekly, six-minute TV spot and going out on the weekly, magazine format, endurance TV show Denpa Shonen.

The Denpa Shonen show is the brainchild of TV producer Tsuchiya, who for this segment auditions a dozen or so male hopefuls and chooses one of them, Nasubi, by lottery.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Shorts

Film Festivals

Take Care of my Cat plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema

Click the links below for coverage of:

2024

Echoes in Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema (Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024, BFI Southbank, London)

Clapham International Film Festival (CIFF, although IMHO they ought to change it to CLIFF)

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF)

Art of Action (Monday, October 21st until the end of November 2024, BFI Southbank, London)

London Korean Film Festival (LKFF)

London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF)

BFI London Film Festival (LFF)

Annecy

Japan Film Festival Ireland

Glasgow Film Festival

Japan Foundation (JPF) Touring Film Programme

2023

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF)

London Korean Film Festival (LKFF)

London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF)

Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger

BFI London Film Festival (LFF)

Annecy

Focus Hong Kong

Japan Foundation (JPF) Touring Film Programme

2022

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF)

London Korean Film Festival (LKFF)

London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF)

BFI London Film Festival (LFF)

Annecy

Focus Hong Kong Making Waves

BFI Anime 2022

Japan Foundation (JPF) Touring Film Programme

Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF)

Focus Hong Kong Chinese New Year

2021

BFI Japan 2021

MUBI New South Korean Cinema season

London Korean Film Festival (LKFF)

London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF)

BFI London Film Festival (LFF)

Scotland Loves Anime

Annecy

Japan Foundation (JPF) Touring Film Programme

Or click any of these tags:

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Features Live Action Movies

Shoulders

Director – Jamie Flatters – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 101m

* or *****, depending how I’m feeling at the time

A group of soldiers armed with sticks instead of guns fight a war against an unseen enemy on open ground near some woodlands – opens the Clapham International Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, November 27th to Saturday, November 30th.

With a title that sounds like a mis-pronounciation of ‘Soldiers’, Shoulders is a pretty strange experience. Photographed, ***** SPOILER ALERT ***** apart from a couple of shots in colour ***** SPOILER ALERT ENDS *****, in at once stark and ravishing black and white, it features a visually partially diverse cast some of whom are instantly recognisable and some of whom it’s easy to confuse with one another. There is (I believe) a script, although any narrative coherence is largely lost under what feels like multiple layers of improvisation. And yet… Somehow, the whole thing coheres, at least up to a point, by virtue of its own peculiar internal logic and succeeds almost entirely on its energy and that of its various collaborators, director, cast, and crew. I’m not even sure that that logic can be adequately expressed in words.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Snow Leopard
(Xue Bao,
雪豹)

Director – Pema Tseden – 2023 – Tibet – Cert. 15 – 109m

*****

A monk invites a filmmaker friend to a remote farm in the Tibetan mountain region where a snow leopard trapped in a sheep pen has killed nine sheep – the late Pema Tseden’s final completed film is out in UK cinemas from Friday, November 22nd

Film maker Dradul (Genden Phuntsok) has been informed by his friend Nyima the Snow Leopard Monk (Tseten Tashi) of an incident and so sets out for the region of the Tibetan Mountains with a small crew in his car. Following roads in the freezing wilderness, the car arrives at a remote farm which consists basically of a stone farmhouse and a sheep pen where the Snow Leopard Monk awaits them, along with the old farmer and his family.

The sheep pen has been breached by a snow leopard, a rare animal that’s a protected species in Tibet, and the old farmer’s adult son Jinpa (Jinpa) is furious that it has killed nine sheep. Confronted with the camera, he argues vociferously that man must live with the snow leopard, and that a small number of kills would be acceptable, but an amount as large as nine is most definitely not okay.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Face/Off

Director – John Woo – 1997 – US – Cert. 18 – 138m

*****

John Woo’s third US film, his strongest to date, has FBI agent John Travolta switching faces with villain Nic Cage – 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

When screenwriters Mike Werb and Michael Colleary collaborated on original screenplay Face/Off, they had in mind such classic films as post-war gangster tale White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949)and identity change outing Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966). Only after completing an initial draft did Colleary see a John Woo movie – The Killer (1989) – at which point he immediately knew the pair had found the perfect director for their material.

This was clearly reciprocal – if Woo had already astounded Hong Kong audiences with A Better Tomorrow (1986) and crossed over internationally with The Killer and Hard Boiled (1992), he had yet to win comparable critical acclaim in America, even though his modest budget American debut Hard Target (1993) had had its admirers and his first blockbusting actioner Broken Arrow (1996) had impressed Hollywood with its box office.

These films both felt like the work of a director for hire not an auteur, and while Woo, like numerous Hollywood immigrants before him, could probably have continued in similar vein, the Face/Off script contained exactly the elements the director needed to take up in Hollywood where he’d left off in Hong Kong.… Read the rest

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Broken Arrow
(1996)

Director – John Woo – 1996 – US – Cert. 15 – 108m

***

Woo’s second US outing pits Christian Slater against nuclear stealth bomber co-pilot turned bad John Travolta in the Arizona desert – 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

The first project to see the light of day from WCG Entertainment, whose initials stand for Woo Chang Godsick. This triumvirate of names belongs to respectively the director of A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992), his longstanding Hong Kong producer Terence Chang, and former agent Christopher Godsick – whose William Morris client list had included Woo himself and the director’s onscreen alter-ego Chow Yun‑fat.

Like his earlier successful action blockbuster Speed (Jan de Bont, 1991), Graham Yost’s script was initially written for producer Mark Gordon. After Woo’s more modestly budgeted US debut Hard Target (1993) was followed by disappointing setbacks on other American projects; Yost’s screenplay was exactly the entry into the US blockbuster market Woo needed. While the resultant film may be ultimately less satisfying than Woo’s best work, it quickly established him as a top Hollywood A-list director.… Read the rest

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Hard Target

Director – John Woo – 1993 – US – Cert. 18 – 100m (UK version), 86m (US version)

****

John Woo’s US debut is a New Orleans remake of The Most Dangerous Game with action star Jean-Claude Van Damme – 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

Essentially the first of two remakes of The Most Dangerous Game / The Hounds Of Zaroff (Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel, 1932, shot using the same cast, crew and jungle sets as King Kong, (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) – the second being Surviving The Game (Ernest R. Dickinson, 1994) – this updates the original’s remote island to the urban jungle of and countryside surrounding New Orleans, making its mad game hunter (Lance Henriksen taking on the role originally played by Leslie Banks) prey not on lost seafarers but unemployed down and outs on dry land.

In true New Right nineties spirit, the hunter of humans has now graduated from being merely a gratifying personal sport for deranged psychopaths to a lucrative business attracting high rolling, thrill-seeking clients who get to pull the trigger themselves.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Tallinn Critics’ Picks selection: Searching for vanishing corpses and disappeared people

I, the Song - Critics' Picks Best Director

Jeremy Clarke looks back at this year’s Critics’ Picks and finds some unsettling, recurring themes

Let’s Talk about the Weather

This PÖFF is going to be remembered by those of us at DMovies as the year when the weather we left behind us in the UK was colder and more wintry than the weather in Tallinn, where the average seemed to be between five and minus one degrees, very mild for this time of year. I’m checking the weather forecast over there as I write from the UK, to see that it is warmer still this week, and up to seven degrees tomorrow. Global warming is real, people.

The warmer weather had a strange effect on the festival’s annual tram party – basically, you are marshalled around and ushered onto a tram in subzero conditions, and then on the tram you drink lots of vodka to warm up. On this year, no subzero conditions as it was much warmer, so the vodka didn’t need to be consumed in massive quantities in quite the same way, so I stuck mostly to the alternative, very pleasant, local alcoholic beverage and consumed a ridiculous amount of gherkins (the only food on offer but one to which I’m extremely partial).… Read the rest

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I, the Song

Director – Dechen Roder – 2024 – Bhutan, Norway, Italy, France – 112m

*****

A woman fired from her teacher’s job for appearing in an online sex video she claims is of someone else sets out to find her doppelgänger and clear her name – winner of Best Director in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This starts off deceptively with singing children’s voices, cutting into accompanying images of a school play with the children costumed as various types of flowers. The camera moves slowly to the back of the school hall where watching teacher Nima (Tandin Bidha) is told she is urgently needed in the office of the principal (Kezang Dorjee aka Kazee), where she finds herself being fired because of the video, now widely seen online, in which she appears. She protests that the person in the video isn’t her, but the principal says he can’t have her seen on school premises with so many parents about today.

She phones her boyfriend Penjor (Dorji Wangdi), who is in the middle of a gig hosting traditional Bhutanese folk plays. She goes to see him. His reaction is, “so, I’m not the only person who thinks it’s you.”… Read the rest

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Art Features Live Action Movies

Nobody Likes Me
(Nikdo Mne Nemá Rád)

Directors – Petr Kazda, Tomáš Weinreb – 2024 – Czechia, Slovakia, France – 105m
*****

The female gaze. An introvert woman finds love in an unlikely place where, it turns out, there are catches – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

A figure stands in interior darkness. Watching. She moves forward. She lies down on the bed. She sits up. She makes and eats a simple breakfast. She stands on a moving tram; the brown autumn leaves behind her. At her desk, wearing her military uniform, Sarah (Rebeka Poláková) details to the Commander his itinerary for the day, and fields requests from others for his attention. She seems content in her work.

One evening, Sarah sees a woman across the street in physical difficulty. Perhaps she should help but, frozen on the spot, she stares. The woman starts to throw up – presumably she’s had too much to drink. A man appears from nowhere and comes to the woman’s aid. Sarah can’t take her eyes off him. The female gaze. He looks back at her. She looks back at him.

She gets on well with her dad, a doctor, who she regularly visits at his surgery for health check-ups.… Read the rest

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The Body
(2024)
(Il Corpo)

Director – Vincenzo Alfieri – 2024 – Italy – 115m

*****

The body of a rich industrialist’s wife vanishes from the morgue after her death – stylish giallo premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

An unashamed genre piece, The Body is a giallo – an Italian crime and murder mystery named after the yellow book covers of their literary equivalents. While it absolutely fits into that very specific Italian genre, it’s actually the fourth remake of Spanish murder mystery The Body (Oriol Paulo, 2012) following remakes in India (twice, as Game, A.M.R. Ramesh, 2016 and The Body, Jeethu Joseph, 2019) and South Korea (The Vanished, Lee Chang-hee, 2018).

The current version juxtaposes stock elements from gialli and popular fiction with some highly original ideas which may or may not have been used in the earlier versions as yet unseen by this writer. The stock elements include: the womaniser suspected of murdering his wife, the hard-bitten inspector investigating the case, the man who has married into wealth, and the university professor having an affair with a student. The highly original ideas: a man running out in front of a car, a corpse disappearing from a morgue, and a married woman who is also a practical joker.… Read the rest

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Dreaming of Lions
(Sonhar com Leões)

Director – Paolo Marinou-Blanco – 2024 – Portugal, Brazil, Spain – 85m

****

A woman diagnosed with terminal cancer signs up with a corporate programme allegedly aimed at helping people in her situation to humanely end their own lives – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

“Chemo never worked. So I decided to beat the fucker to the punch.” Thus says Gilda (Denise Fraga) at the start of this tale about voluntary euthanasia. Gilda has cancer and a year and a half left to live. She exasperates her husband when he hilariously stumbles into the bathroom as she’s trying to shoot herself in the head, both of them winding up in hospital as a result.

She is determined to kill herself. If she does nothing, the condition will take its course and the end of the process won’t be pleasant. In the hospital, she picks up a leaflet of a company which might provide some help for those considering voluntary euthanasia. So Gildagoes for an interview with Joy Transition International and finds herself facing a panel of three: Isa (Joana Rebeiro), Eva (Sandra Faleiro), and Bruno (Alexander Tuji Nam).

Isa has her mouth fixed in a somewhat ingratiating, permanently lipstick-painted smile.… Read the rest

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Streets of Glória
(Ruas da Glória)

Director – Felipe Sholl – 2024 – Brazil – 103m

****

A man mourning his late grandmother but estranged from the rest of his family embarks on a gay relationship with an escort – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Gabriel (Caio Macedo) arrives in Rio de Janeiro with his late grandmother’s ashes in a box. He is not short of money, and rents a hotel room. He wanders around during the day talking to his grandmother, who he clearly misses a great deal. At night, he finds a club named Glória, fronted by an area with tables where style queen Monica (Diva Menner) hangs out with her small entourage of friends. She explains she is the owner. Further inside is the dance floor where he spots Adriano (Alejandro Claveaux) and attempts but fails to pick him up, instead spending the night with another man.

However, a spark has been lit, and the next night Gabriel is more successful. He and Adriano embark on a passionate relationship. Adriano is an escort, and shows Gabriel the park benches where escorts pick up clients; he takes servicing his male clients in his stride, occasionally persuading the hesitant Gabriel to join him in a paying threesome.… Read the rest

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The Brothers Kitaura
(Kitaurakyodai)

Director – Masaki Tsujino – 2024 – Japan – 94m

***1/2

A 40-year-old living at home accidentally kills his father, then enlists the help of his brother to dispose of the body – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Morning. 40-year-old Sato wakes up, surrounded by bagged-up piles of manga, used food packaging and drink cans. The used food packaging squelches as he stretches into it. He is a slob. Meanwhile, his better-dressed, retired and widowed art teacher father is out teaching watercolour painting to a lady of a similar age to himself. They sit on the bank overlooking a picturesque river scene and seem to be enjoying both the act of painting and each other’s company.

Sato finds the note his father left him, and orders takeaway food to feed himself accordingly. Then, to satisfy more carnal appetites, he also orders a call-girl from Bang Club Tokyo, who arrives as promised in a matter of minutes, sitting for a relaxing smoke (which we see) before servicing her client (which we don’t).

The father isn’t just enjoying his lady student’s company. He appears to be teaching her and her alone for a number of consecutive days, and would like to formalise the relationship into something more.… Read the rest

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Johatsu
(Johatsu)

Directors – Lina Lužytė, Nerijus Milerius – 2024 – Lithuania – 83m

***

A woman who checks bodies entering a morgue investigates one that she is convinced has been registered under a false name – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The concept of Johatsu or ‘vanished people’ – which is never explained here, merely name-checked in the title – originated in Japan, where it refers to people who vanish from their everyday lives without a trace. One way to achieve that goal would be to fake your own death, which is exactly what Lina (Zygimante Elena Jakstaite) believes she has stumbled upon someone doing as this opens.

Lina works as an orderly in a morgue. When the fresh corpse of a man supposedly blown up in an explosion on a ship is identified as her husband by his widow, Lina becomes convinced that the woman is lying, and that the body is that of someone else entirely. Which begs the question, what happened to the real husband?

First off, Lina takes it upon herself to visit and question the supposed dead man’s wife. Talking to the woman, she discovers that before the body turned up, the husband had already been ‘missing’ for around three years.… Read the rest

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Moor
(Mavr)

Director – Adilkhan Yerzhanov – 2024 – Kazakhstan, France – 83m

***

A mercenary known by the codename ‘Moor’ returns from the war to the big city to rescue his younger brother’s wife and son from her husband’s debts – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Found by the authorities, who apprehend him by a perimeter fence and remove his bag of home-made weaponry which includes a wooden bow and arrows and a knife carved from bone, which he will get back and make use of later in the plot, Moor is processed alongside wounded and traumatised veterans. He speaks few words and is in complete control of his faculties. The chief of police, who talks in a confident, jokey manner and insists on addressing him as Bro, feels more like a gangster than a cop, wearing a snakeskin jacket not unlike the hero of Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990) and often accompanied by a small entourage who read as gangsters rather than cops, even though the group occasionally expands to contain officers with the word POLICE on the back of their jackets.

He explains that Moor’s younger brother Houdini has disappeared, leaving behind him not only a mountain of debt but also a wife and small son.… Read the rest

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Fishgirl
(Alucina)

Fishgirl - Critics' Picks Special Mention

Director – Javier Cutrona – 2024 – Ecuador – 105m

**

Enter the surreal world of a young woman beset by bizarre visions who believes herself followed and protected by a giant fish – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Fairly early on, in a tender, conversational, post-coital scene, her boyfriend José (Lucas Ortiz) draws an additional face on the side of that of Camila (Jessica Barahona). Visually this suggests Cubism, in which a subject’s faces would be painted from different angles simultaneously, but the dialogue between the two swiftly moves on to the subject of a god with two faces possessing the ability to look into the past and the future. (This sounds like the Roman god Janus, but if anyone name-checked him here, I must have missed it.).

The motif is echoed later when her landlord Edmundo (Pablo Aguirre), who runs (owns?) the hotel where she rents a room, is attending to the doll’s house of their rooms and maquettes of all the hotel’s residents he has made. For the maquette of Camila, he grafts an extra face onto the side of hers so that she has two. And towards the end, a shot of Camila cinematographically superimposes a second face on her, a very neat visual trick.… Read the rest

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Hani
(Hani)

Director – Hou Dasheng – 2024 – Canada – 73m

*

In a remote, Southern Chinese mountain village, a 14-year-old needs the money for the dowry to buy his 12-year-old sweetheart as a wife – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Credited on the Festival’s website as a Canadian production in the Burmese and Chinese languages, this is a Chinese-made film not sanctioned by the Chinese authorities dealing with subject matter which the filmmakers fear would not be passed by the Chinese censor. The caption review suggests that a number of the film’s cast and crew have used pseudonyms to avoid prosecution. The narrative takes place in the mountainous, Southern region of China close to the border with Myanmar, where people are known by their Burmese names, but occasionally refer to other people by their Chinese names. You get the feeling that this area of China has been largely forgotten by the distant Beijing authorities.

The central characters are young teenagers or pre-teenagers, Hani (14; Gao Xiaokang) and his friend Apao (Qian Long), who seems to be frequently seeking advice from others on his mobile phone, and Hani’s longtime sweetheart Pushiha (12; Pu Juan).… Read the rest

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Tallinn Critics’ Picks selection: so good it’s almost impossible to beat

Nobody Likes Me

Goldfinger said: “Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago. ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.'” – Jeremy Clarke anticipates his third visit to Tallinn to cover the third year of its Critics’ Picks strand

When you see a film, or visit a film festival, you inevitably have expectations. The bar is at a certain level. The first time I went to POFF, I didn’t really know what to expect, except that our editor Victor Fraga spoke highly of it, which obviously boded well. Once there, I found the festival extremely friendly, perhaps due to its size (it’s the smallest of the A-list festivals), and a place where filmmakers, critics and other industry types happily mingle (that doesn’t happen in the larger festivals, I understand, and it doesn’t happen at most festivals I’ve had the pleasure of attending. Yet, it has happened in Tallinn on the two occasions I’ve visited, which is a real joy. Being a natural worrier, I fear that Tallinn may abandon this virtue at some point. Yet, so far, it hasn’t, and long may it continue in that vein).

Back to the level of the bar. The first year I went, 2022, the Critics’ Picks films were of a good standard overall – there was one I disliked and a couple that I thought particularly excellent (Dito Tsintsadze’s Roxy and Çigdem Sezgin’s Suna).… Read the rest

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The Last Dance
(Po Dei Juk,
破·地獄)

Director – Anselm Chan – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12a – 130m

****

A failed, professional wedding planner joins a Taoist funeral director as a partner in his company as various crises come to a head in the latter’s family – engaging drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 15th

There have been movies about undertakers and funeral parlours before, but never one quite like this. Whether or not one is at a stage in life where one has had much experience of bereavement, at some point, each one of us is going to die – and, before that, in all likelihood, have to deal with our nearest and dearest dying and, by extension, undertakers and funeral directors in whatever culture we happen to live. Consequently, there is a universal fascination with such matters.

Hong Kong has a very specific cultural take on this phenomenon in its Taoist priests and rituals. While these have over the years supplied the basis for much beloved and fantastical Hong Kong action or horror fare such as Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983) or the Mr. Vampire films (1985 onwards), no-one has ever tried to build a contemporary, generational family drama around the Hong Kong funeral business, at least, not so far as I’m aware.… Read the rest

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Take Care of My Cat
(Go-yang-i-leul
Boo-tak-hae,
고양이를 부탁해)

Director – Hong Eun-won – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. PG – 112m

****

A cat passes between a group of twentysomething girls as each one finds they can no longer look after it – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

(2024 explanatory note: This was, I believe, the first South Korean film to get a UK theatrical release. It was certainly the first one I ever reviewed, for What’s On in London back in 2002. Soon after this, Metro-Tartan film distributors would release a good deal of horror / thriller / action movies in cinemas and on DVD under their Asia Extreme brand, but it would be a long time before the UK saw the theatrical release of another South Korean film outside of those genres. What follows below is the What’s On in London review from 2002.)

Two areas of the world currently make its most interesting films. One is Iran and surrounding area, which has been fairly well represented in terms of UK releases. The other is South Korea, largely and criminally neglected by UK distributors.… Read the rest

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The Tenants
(Se-ip-ja,
세입자)

Director – Yoon Eun-Kyung – 2023 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 12 – 90m

*****

In a black & white, futuristic Seoul, a tenant who sublets his rental apartment to prevent his eviction finds out that this approach has its drawbacks – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runsin cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

An alluring image turns out to be merely an image on a wall, an artifice rather than the paradise we at first assume it to be. This is an image many filmmakers have used to open their movies and, depending on what they’ve seen over the years, it will conjure different films for different viewers. For this viewer, it conjures what I consider one of the funniest films of recent decades, Quick Change (Howard Franklin, Bill Murray, 1990) where the image is revealed as a tawdry New York subway train ad above a clown who will shortly proceed to rob a bank.

The Tenants may not be a comedy, but it shares with that film a sense of urban malaise, a feeling of being trapped in a grim metropolis where everything about the place conspires to prevent the protagonists leaving.… Read the rest

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Alienoid
Return to the Future
(Oegye+in 2bu,
외계+인 2부)

Director – Choi Dong-hoon – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert.12 – 122m

*****

In Part Two of the double feature, aliens once again incarcerate prisoners in human brains and travel through time between present day and fourteenth century Korea; mayhem ensues – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

Second part of Alienoid, director Choi’s to-die-for mash-up of fourteenth century historical mayhem and twenty-first century alien invasion action delivers more of the same, opening with a brief summation of the previous movie. In Korean, the movies are helpfully called Part One and Part Two, and the second is the last one, so rather than finishing on an unexpected, irritating “to be continued” note, the second one does bring the whole thing to a conclusion, and a satisfying conclusion at that.

The whole thing is effectively a five-hour movie split into two parts, although like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001-3), each movie is paced so that it works as an experience in itself. That said, no-one I know wants to sit down and watch the second of three movies on its own, and what Alienoid really needs is for both parts to be shown close together or in a double bill, as happens all the time with all-nighter reruns of the three-part LOTR and as the BFI’s Art of Action Season recently did with the two-part historical war epic Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008-9).… Read the rest

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Alienoid
(Oegye+in 1bu,
외계+인)

Director – Choi Dong-hoon – 2022 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 12 – 142m

*****

In Part One of a proposed double feature, aliens incarcerate prisoners in human brains and time travel between present day and fourteenth century Korea and mayhem ensues – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2022;

Part Two Alienoid: Return to the Future plays in LKFF 2024

The first film of a two-part adventure, which would be more sensibly released as Alienoid – Part One (which may already be the case in some territories), this revolves around multiple protagonists in two separate timelines divided by six or seven centuries. In the fourteenth century, Guard, who morphs between true robot and fake human appearances not unlike the T-1000 of Terminator 2 Judgement Day (James Cameron, 1991), and his even more confusing companion Thunder, who is sometimes a car, sometimes a flying pod and sometimes any number of human manifestations (both / all played by Kim Woo-bin), fail to save a woman from dying after an alien escapes incarceration within her brain, however Thunder rescues the woman’s baby.

The pair travel forward in time to raise Lee Ahn (Choi Yu-ri) in the twenty-first century where she sees what she’s not supposed to: the impregnation process whereby alien prisoners are incarcerated in human brains, a memory wiped immediately afterwards from the humans used for this purpose, meaning people wander around not knowing there are aliens trapped inside their heads.… Read the rest

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Twilight of the Warriors
Walled in
(Jiu Long Cheng
Zhai·Wei Cheng,
九龙城寨之围城)

Director – Soi Cheang – 2023 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 126m

*****

A refugee steals money from a Hong Kong triad then hides out in Kowloon Walled City, a place as dangerous as the triads pursuing him – out on Zavvi-exclusive Limited 4K UHD + Blu-ray Special Edition from Monday, November 11th

Never entered by those outside, an uneasy peace has reigned in Kowloon Walled City a.k.a. the City of Darkness since Cyclone defeated ‘Dragon Head’ Liu and his warlord partner Jim. It’s Hong Kong in the 1980s, when refugees were flooding into the territory. In a nightclub where women dance to Cantopop, one such refugee (Raymond Lam) wins a fist fight competition then is conned by gang boss (Sammo Hung) into paying for a shoddily made fake ID card, which he refuses to accept when he calls to collect it two weeks later. Leaving the ensuing argument, he snatches a bag from the villain’s drug warehouse and runs hell for leather into the Walled City, where the gangsters won’t follow.

Inside, he discovers to his horror that he’s snatched not a bag of banknotes as he supposed but a bag of drugs. Trying to sell it, he finds himself fighting local gangsters, who don’t want him selling drugs on their turf.… Read the rest

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Mother’s Kingdom
(Uhm-mah-ui
Wahng-gook,
엄마의 왕국)

Director – Lee Sang-hak – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

A Christian mother, her ‘Christian book’ author son, and her local pastor brother-in-law are haunted by traumas from their collective past – suspense thriller from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

—

I don’t often preface a film review with a piece of verbal, religious text, but in this exceptional case, the following Old Testament quote may be pertinent, particularly the phrase in bold:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

– Exodus 34:6–7

—

Ji-wook (Han Ki-jang) lives with his mother Kyung-hee (Nam Kee-ae), and although he’s earning a respectable living working from home as a writer of self-help motivational books, in many ways he seems deeply unqualified to be peddling such advice to a wider public.… Read the rest

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Point Break
(1991)

Director – Kathryn Bigelow – 1991 – US – Cert. 15 – 122m

*****

A rookie FBI man goes undercover with a group of surfers, believing them to be a gang of bank robbers who disguise themselves as former US Presidents – milestone action movie is out in a 4K Restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, November 8th 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

At a cursory glance, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about Point Break, a crime movie about bank robbers, surfers and undercover cops, except perhaps the juxtaposition of surfers on the one hand with cops and robbers on the other except as a route into making a film about cops undercover. Certainly, that juxtaposition pervades the film, with fresh out of training school, undercover FBI man Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) coming up against accomplished surfer Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) and his new age-y philosophy of life, which is all about living in the moment and experiencing the biggest rush. Those two concepts happen to embody elements that could potentially make a great action film. Point Break does exactly that. Even though it’s a 35-year-old film, it feels as fresh today as it did on initial release.… Read the rest

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The Guest
(301호 모텔 살인사건)

Director – Yeon Je-gwang – 2023 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 18 – 77m

***

An out-of-the-way motel, with numerous hidden cameras covertly recording the unwitting guests, becomes the site of multiple killings – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

There’s an idea that the widespread presence of security cameras make the world a safer place, because things can be seen rather than hidden; equally, however, things can be recorded, turned into product and sold for profit. The Guest takes place in a familiar world of roads and car journeys and motels in the middle of nowhere at which the traveller can take a break. And all of it seems to be covered by security cameras.

That applies to the roads, where the cams are there for traffic enforcement (and, perhaps more pertinently, traffic tax raising or penalty charging) purposes. Why they are there, for good or ill, isn’t really discussed here. But their ubiquitous presence is inescapably noted.

It also applies in the seedy motel at the centre of this horror / drama / suspense / thriller. The loan shark Deuk-chan (Hyun Bong-sik) who owns the place employs two young staff members Min-cheol (Lee Joo-seung) and Young-gyu (Han Min) to run the place in a day-to-day basis both of whom are indebted to him and therefore have little choice other than to do whatever he asks, however unreasonable.… Read the rest

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Exhibition on Screen
Van Gogh
Poets & Lovers

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

*****

Fascinating journey through Van Gogh’s two plus years in Arles and Saint-Rémy in the South of France through his paintings of 1888-90 (collected in the current National Gallery exhibition) and readings from his letters – out in UK cinemas from Wednesday, November 6th

This is the latest offering in Exhibition on Screen’s excellent series of films about art, which usually tie in with some current, recent or upcoming art exhibition. In this case, the tie-in is with the National Gallery’s current offering Van Gogh – Poets & Lovers, and on one level the film follows EoS’ tried and tested template of shooting footage of the exhibition and paintings along with interviews with exhibition curators (in this instance, Cornelia Homburg and Christopher Riopelle) and assorted artists, critics or other biographers.

It also incorporates footage of actor Jamie de Courcey playing Vincent van Gogh – more as shots from moving visual tableaux than anything else (a form of filmic illustration, if you will) – the actor isn’t required to speak dialogue – to break up the whole and make it more manageable by the viewer.

Vincent van Gogh who, as Homburg notes early on, had within 25 years of his death become the best known artist in the world, is something of a gift to anyone making a film about him.… Read the rest

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Handsome Guys
(Haenseomgaijeu,
핸섬가이즈)

Director – Nam Dong-hyub – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 15 – 102m

****

A comedy of errors in horror genre clothing, features a house in which accidents keep occurring, and a demonic goat – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

Half-brothers Kang Jae-pil (Lee Sung-min from this year’s South Korean Oscar entry 12.12: The Day, Kim Sung-su, 2023; The Man Standing Next, Woo Min-ho, 2020), Park Sang-goo (Lee Hee-jun from The Man Standing Next; 1987: When That Day Comes, 2017) and their dog Bong-gu have come to a rural area with the intent of buying their dream home, unaware that a demon was banished to hell in its basement two generations ago by British priest Father Baker (Jamie Horan) and can only be banished back there, should it arise from the grave, by one of those present at the time of the banishment.

A group of students runs into the half-brothers in a supermarket, the former drawing all the wrong conclusions from the latter’s unkempt appearance and shopping trolley of heavy-duty carpentry kit, snap judgements somewhat thrown by the undeniable cuteness of Bong-gu the dog, sitting in the front of their trolley.… Read the rest

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Shiri
(Swiri,
쉬리)

Director – Kang Je-Gyu – 1999 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 125m

****

South Korean intelligence men track a North Korean sniper who has gone to Earth – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

This South Korean box office success story is a hard-boiled action movie, an Asian cross between Die Hard John McTiernan, 1988) and Nikita (Luc Besson, 1990) which could probably have been made in no other country. The North Korean villains in recent Bond outing Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002) seem saintly by comparison with the brainwashed, gun-toting mercenaries here, one of whom – deadly female sniper Hee (Kim Yun-jin) – goes to Earth following a series of assassinations of South Korean government officials.

But when some years later, Southern intelligence men Ryu (Han Suk-kyu) and Lee (Song Kang-ho) prove unable to prevent several likely targets from being killed by notorious Northern terrorist Park (Choi Min‑sik), the vanished Hee is their primary suspect for pulling the trigger.

Made in 1999, it originally concerned a slightly post-millennial future, which aspect has been lost with the film taking some four years to reach these shores.… Read the rest

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Red Cliff
(Chì Bì,
赤壁);
Red Cliff II
(Chì Bì
Jue Zhan Tian Xia,
赤壁（下）)

Director – John Woo – 2008, 2009 – China, Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 139m + 135m

*****

As a warlord seeks to crush opposition in Southern China, its two kingdoms join forces to defeat him, with the deciding battle taking place at Red Cliff – 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

China, 208 A.D., around the end of the Han Dynasty. With the puppet Emperor more interested in talking to birds than the nitty-gritty of ruling his kingdom, his Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) talks him into a commission to subdue the rival Southern warlords Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen).

After a battle against the former’s forces in which his a loyal soldier is unable to prevent Liu’s wife getting killed but manages to get their baby to safety by strapping it on his back prior to single-handed combat, Liu’s advisor Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) sets out to persuade Sun Qian to join them in an alliance against the aggressor.

Despite unanimous opposition from his ministers, who would prefer to surrender to keep the peace, Sun agrees to fight along with his frontline commander Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and, because she insists on joining them, his tomboy sister the Princess Sun Shangxian (Zhao Wei).… Read the rest

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Blitz
(2024)

Directed by Steve McQueen
Certificate 12a
120 minutes
Released 1 November

People just getting on with life in dire circumstances, doing what they have to do. A mother searches for her lost son. An 11-year-old embraces his black identity. Women work in munitions factories. Thieves take advantage of death and devastation to turn a profit. And, unexpectedly, a spiritually dark place produces an impassioned plea for the virtues of Christianity.

This is London during the Nazi bombings of the Second World War. Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, the Small Axe TV series) and his collaborators have done remarkable historical and visual research, so that the historical situation seeps into you. McQueen’s way in was a photograph of a young black boy, around whom he has woven a story of an evacuee jumping from the train to return to his mum.

In a remarkable performance, 11-year-old Elliot Heffernan plays the boy… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

Read my longer review on this site here.

Trailer:

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Godzilla Minus One
/ Minus Color
(Gojira-1.0 / C,
ゴジラ -1.0 / C)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – now in black & white – out in UK cinemas from Friday, November 1st

Something happens when you watch this / Minus Color version of Gozilla Minus One, which director Yamazaki has gone through cut by cut and personally overseen. You are watching a 2023 movie, yet you feel as if you’re watching a 1954 one. Because the film is about Japan, World War Two and its immediate aftermath, the film seems to play better in black and white.

World War Two, Pacific theatre. Unwilling Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) feigns engine trouble and lands on an island for aircraft maintenance, where he is grounded. While there, he notices deep sea fish curiously floating on the surface of the surrounding ocean: they presage the arrival of a huge monster, named Godzilla by the locals. With Koichi failing to fire his 20mm aircraft guns at the creature to kill it, almost everyone else on the small island is killed.… Read the rest

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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

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Aimless Bullet
(Obaltan,
오발탄)

Director – Yu Hyun-mok – 1961 – South Korea – 110m

****

Former soldiers and others struggle with the effects of post-war economic depression in the newly constituted South Korea – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Made and released in the brief period of about a year between the collapse of one dictatorship and the rise of another, and the temporary relaxation of state censorship that accompanied it in South Korea, Aimless Bullet deals with the struggle to survive in that country amidst economic collapse. Men including demobbed soldiers and officers struggle to find work, others lucky enough to have jobs struggle to support their extended networks of loved ones while women drift into prostitution – or, if they’re really lucky, become movie stars.

It opens with crippled, former officer Gyeong-sik, constantly asking Sgt. Park and other drinking buddies not to call him “The Commander”, making a scene in a bar and smashing a glass door. Wandering through the streets at night alone afterwards, he’s accosted by former girlfriend Song Myeong-suk (Seo Ae-ja) who desperately wants him to fulfil his promise and marry her, but he won’t because as a cripple he feel an incomplete man.… Read the rest

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Save the Green Planet!
(Jigureul Jikyeora!,
지구를 지켜라!)

Director – Jang Joon-Hwan – 2003 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 118m

*****

NSFW

Convinced that a corporate boss is an alien who killed his mother, a man takes him prisoner and tortures him to find out his race’s plans for planet Earth – plays alongside Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Lee Byong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) is convinced that corporate CEO Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-shik) is not only responsible for the death of his mother but also is an alien spy set to communicate with his extra-terrestrial superiors at the next full moon in seven days time. So, aided by girlfriend Sooni (Hwang Jung-min), Lee kidnaps Kang and brings him back to his underground workshop beneath his hilltop home near which he keeps bees in hives. Lee wants to hear the truth from Kang’s own lips, and is prepared to torture him to get it.

CEO Kang is clearly not a nice guy – he is obviously raking in the money, yet we watch him driven home drunk by a valet who he shamelessly short changes on his fare.… Read the rest

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Mist
(Angae,
안개)

Director – Kim Soo-yong – 1967 – South Korea – 78m

****

A married man leaves Seoul to visit his dull hometown for a few days, where he embarks on a brief affair with a music teacher from the local school – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Yun Gi-jun (Shin Seong-il from The Barefooted Young, Kim Ki-duk, 1964) is bored with his job. He sits at his desk in a huge office looking at the paperwork, seeing it crawling with insects. But when others enter the office, they don’t see any of that, so it’s clearly all in his head. In many ways, that sets the scene for the mood of this heavily introspective piece which makes much use of voice over and flashback, as Gi-jun takes time out in his hometown of Mujin, for which he claims not to feel much affection but which is nevertheless full of personal history and memories for him.

We see him at home with his wife as she straightens his tie, and later as she brings her rich father over to the house.… Read the rest

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The Marines
Who Never Returned
(Doraoji
Anneun Haebyong,
돌아오지 않는 해병)

Director – Lee Man-hee – 1963 – South Korea – 110m

***1/2

A small unit of Korean soldiers pushing North in the Korean War adopt an orphaned girl as a mascot before being all but wiped out – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

This opens impressively with what looks like stock footage of armoured cars and infantry coming up a beach. Soldiers race across open ground to a safe shooting position, briefly going back a couple of dozen or so feet to drag two of their wounded comrades forward into comparative safety.

They move on to a derelict, war-torn town. Burning buildings, half-collapsed sections of walls (one of which partially topples as they wait momentarily beside it). One soldier advances across a patch of open ground, gun in hands, grenade at the ready, watched by his expectant comrades from their positions of cover. Time seems to stand still. Eventually he lobs the grenade and the others move up behind him. He drops into a ditch. Ahead of him, a civilian woman comes onto the waste ground with her small daughter.… Read the rest

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Nowhere to Hide
(Injeong Sajeong
Bol Geot Eobtda,
인정사정 볼 것 없다)

Director – Lee Myung-se – 1999 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 100m, 113m

***1/2

A cop determinedly pursues a gangland killer in a city where, since he committed the murder for which he is bing hunted, it always appears to be heavily raining – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Effectively a four-hander – an impulsive detective, his partner on the force, a ruthless killer gangster and his long-suffering girlfriend. Like a slobbish, South Korean version of Chow Yun-fat without the charm, Park Joong-Hung is the Oriental action movie homage-named Inspector Woo, who before the titles have rolled has pursued a black-clad gang into an underground train for a machete fight, shot in stylish, bleached black and white for no apparent reason.

The ground is covered in Autumn leaves, recalling The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970). The downtown location of public stairway 40 Steps has a schoolgirl look up and see it begin to rain, the torrential downpour continuing for the two months and more of the remainder of the narrative. A man leaves his car to ascend the steps; halfway up, he approaches another man (Song Young-chang) and kills him, even as the victim stretches out his hand in a futile attempt to keep his murderer’s knife at bay.… Read the rest

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Stuntman
(Mou Tai Do,
武替道)

Directors – Albert & Herbart Leung – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 114m

****

20 years after a stuntman on his team was hospitalisedwhen a stunt went wrong, an action choreographer takes on his first stunt job since the tragic incident – plays in Competition at the 2024 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 23rd to Sunday, November 3rd

This opens with a terrific cops and robbers fight in a shopping mall at the top of an escalator bearing remarkable resemblance to (and just as exciting as) the one towards the end of Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985). However, while this might be an obvious homage to that film specifically and 1980s Hong Kong action cinema generally, it’s far from a mere attempt to retread the same ground: we suddenly cut from the cops and robbers scenario to reveal a film crew of that period shooting an action movie.

There is a particularly dangerous stunt coming up. A (stunt)man must jump off a bridge onto a lorry as it passes below, with a car immediately behind. (Again, this is remarkably similar to the stunt in Police Story II (Jackie Chan, 1988) where Chan leaps off a balcony onto a lorry passing in the street.)… Read the rest

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Terminator 2
Judgement Day

Director – James Cameron – 1991 – US – Cert. 15 – 127m

*****

A second Terminator is sent from the future to kill the future leader of the war against the machines – 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

In the 1984 original, a Terminator robot (Arnold Schwarznegger) is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother-to-be of the leader of the war in the future against the machines, who are exterminating humanity.

This sequel sees a more advanced T-1000 robot (Robert Patrick) sent back in time to kill Sarah’s now-ten-year-old son John (Ed Furlong). Another Terminator (Schwarzengger) is also running around in the present (i.e. 1991).

Sarah’s recurring nightmare pictures the coming apocalypse when the machines unleash nuclear missiles on humanity. That aside, this is basically an essay on mothers and sons – and fathers and sons – wrapped up in the best chase movie you’ve ever seen.

What makes the film work is the mother and son element. Sarah is a believer in Terminators, the coming war against the machines, and humanity’s fightback in a world where such beliefs are dismissed as delusions.… Read the rest

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Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Directed by Martin Rosen
Certificate PG
92 minutes
Released 25 October

Reviewed for Reform magazine.

Now fully restored in a new 4K restoration, this 1978 tale of rabbits on the run proved that an animated film need be neither made by Disney nor sugar-coated for children. Watership Down, although a children’s film, came from the producer of the Oscar-winning DH Lawrence adaptation Women in Love (1969), Martin Rosen. He ended up directing it too.

A prologue details the relationship between the creator-god Frith – represented as the sun – and rabbitkind. As with most creation myths outside the Judeo-Christian, there’s quite a bit of sex and violence. The rabbits breed furiously; hitherto non-carnivorous animals are given teeth to keep the rabbit numbers down. The rabbits are given powerful hind legs to outrun their predators.

Having established rabbits as intelligent creatures possessing a mythology and a world view, the main story… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

[Read my alternative, longer review for this site.]

Trailer:

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Rebellious

Director – Alex Tsitsilin – 2023 – UK, Cyprus – Cert. PG – 94m

***

Her true love must rescue the princess before three rival princes after a dragon abducts her on behalf of an evil wizard – fairy tale animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th

A dad reads his small daughter a bedtime story, a fairytale about a kingdom where an evil dragon carries off innocent princesses, sometimes as they are about to be married. I’d never stand for that, intones young Mina (voice: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld), who is herself a princess, and her father a king (voice: David Wills).

Jump forward to her as a young woman hanging out with architecture graduate boyfriend Ronan (voice: Dan Edwards), despite the fact that her more traditional father thinks she ought to marry a foreign prince for political reasons. As Ronan points out, he can handle all the design stuff like strategy, construction and weaponry while she is better at hands on combat, so they make a good pair to rule the kingdom.

There are three princely candidates in the offing: strong but brutish Eastern European Rogdai (voice: Matt Giroveanu), vain Indian ladies’ man Kezabor (voice: Pete Zarustica), and overeating, obese, Oriental Fa Chan (voice: Brian Kim) who is in thrall to his Mommy Dearest (voice: Jennifer Sun Bell).… Read the rest

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Yes, Madam!
(Huang Jia Shi Jie,
皇家师姐)

Director – Corey Yuen – 1985 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 93m

***1/2

Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock’s star debut, in which they play two plain-clothes, kickboxing Hong Kong cops – on Blu-ray from Monday, December 12th 2002 and now part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK from Monday, October 21st through November 2024

Michelle Yeoh, here credited as Michelle Kheng (in her early Hong Kong films she was often credited as Michelle Khan, and her birth nameis Yeoh Choo Kheng) plays Inspector Ng, a no-nonsense police officer who always gets her man (and, interestingly, all the criminals here are men), as illustrated in the opening scene when a flasher accosts her in a convenience store, and she promptly arrests him.

Her mentor Richard Nornen (Michael Harry, later seen in An Angel at my Table, Jane Campion, 1990) is visited in his hotel room by professional assassin Mr. Dik (Dick Wei) who shoots him point-blank through an apple in Nornen’s mouth in order to obtain a two-frame film clip of a legal contract for his gangster boss Tin Wai-keung (James Tien).… Read the rest

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Seven Samurai
(Shichinin
no Samurai,
七人の侍)

Director – Akira Kurosawa – 1954 – Japan – Cert. PG – 207m 207m + 5m intermission – Oscar nominated

Seven samurai must defend a poor village of farmers from bandits in one of the greatest action movies ever made – – both released in cinemas in a brand-new, 70th anniversary, 4k restoration from Thursday, September 26th; and currently streaming on BFI Player alongside other Kurosawa films together with a much wider selection of Japanese movies; the film is also part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK from Monday, October 21st through November 2024

Seven Samurai opens with a group of horsemen on a horizon. Notwithstanding the Japanese titles on the screen, you could be watching a Hollywood Western. Although what follows is a tale of samurai, bandits and farmers, it’s so close to ideas in a Western that Hollywood replaced sword with guns and retooled it as the hugely successful The Magnificent Seven (1960).

event_49554_original

The plot concerns a small farming village threatened by bandits, who attack at harvest time and take all the crops. The farmers find a group of samurai prepared to defend them against the bandits in return for food and lodging.… Read the rest

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Starve Acre

Director – Daniel Kokotajlo – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 98m

***

As a couple become mired in grief following the death of their son, their behaviour turns increasingly obsessive, erratic and violent – terrifying and unsettling folk horror is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 6th and on Blu-ray, DVD and BFI Player from Monday, October 21st

Thinking the fresh air of the countryside will benefit their son’s health, the family of Richard (Matt Smith), Juliette (Morfydd Clark), and their young son Owen (Arthur Shaw) move from their urban home to the wilds of the Yorkshire countryside and the house, named Starve Acre, in which Richard grew up. Owen doesn’t respond too well to the new environment. An unfortunate incident occurs offscreen at a village event, in which an animal gets stabbed in the eye and Owen’s clothing is stained with blood.

His understandably concerned parents take him to Dr. Monk (Roger Barclay) for advice. It isn’t immediately obvious as to what exactly is wrong, and the situation is set to worsen for the couple.

In Richard’s opinion, it doesn’t help that their hardened, elderly neighbour Gordon (Sean Gilder) visits quite often to fill the boy’s head with tales of a mysterious Jack Grey.… Read the rest

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The Crime is Mine
(Mon Crime)

Director – François Ozon – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

Two young women, an actress and a lawyer, take advantage of casting couch sex abuse of the former to boost both of their fledgeling careers – sharp period comedy with more to it underneath the surface is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 25th

A swimming pool. A lavish, art deco mansion. Out of a door staggers a clearly distressed, young blonde woman. Leaving the estate, she walks down the street, bumping into people. The setting and her clothes indicate the 1930s.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged M. Pistole (Franck de Lapersonne) calls on young brunette tenant Pauline (Rebecca Marder) to demand 3 000 Fr for five months’ back rent. A qualified lawyer, she manages to negotiate 48 hours’ respite on the grounds that a hotshot producer wants to put her flatmate Madeleine in his new play, and money will follow once the contract is signed. However, once Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz from Only The Animals, Dominik Moll, 2019) comes in to spill her tale of woe – in a manner closer to screwball comedy than rape or crime drama – it rapidly becomes obvious that the situation has changed.… Read the rest

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A Sudden Glimpse
to Deeper Things

Director – Mark Cousins – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 88m

*****

A look at Scots artist and painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who had synaesthesia – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 18th

I am someone who frequents art galleries, yet I have to confess that before seeing this film, I had never heard of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Cousins starts his film off assuming we know nothing about her.

He starts with images. Who is this old woman on a verandah with palm trees in the background? Or peering down at rocky ground wearing an all-weather coat?

In later years, she frequently wore a necklace she had made resembling, in Cousins’ words, Concorde with droplets.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, a woman to whom all men were attracted (“she’d have flirted with you”, a woman who knew her tells Marc) was fascinated by order and disorder. Her arresting 1967 abstract painting Pilgrimage consists of Vermillion squares on brown, jostling as if in a procession across the picture surface.

Her father (and here Cousins cuts in the moving image of Joseph Cotten giving his “if you rip the sides off houses you’ll find swine” speech from Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock, 1943) never wanted her to be an artist.… Read the rest

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The Wild Robot

Director – Chris Sanders – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 102m

****1/2

A service robot shipwrecked on a desert island is imprinted as its mother on the mind of an orphaned gosling – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 18th following its screening in the London Film Festival

Waking up on an unknown beach with no idea as to how she got there, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voice: Lupita Nyong’o) is a Universal Dynamics service robot designed to complete any task assigned to her. Without any such task, she feels completely lost. She wanders around the island, populated only by animals, in search of her owner. Unable to understand all the noises the animals make communicating with each other, she has her translation circuits decode their meaning so that, soon, she is hearing them communicate in English.

She accidentally almost destroys a family of geese but managing to rescue a goose egg. She must protect the egg from the fox (voice: Pedro Pascal) who attempts to steal it to satisfy his hunger. Her robotic rationale for this is to question whether the egg is the fox’s property, A thought process that might make sense in a human environment but makes none at all in this animal one.… Read the rest

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Alien
Romulus

Director – Fede Alvarez – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A group of young people escape from a planet housing a repressive, corporate mining colony in search of something better … only to find something worse… – latest SF horror franchise entry is out on digital on Friday, October 18th following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The Alien franchise, after quite literally bursting onto cinema screens with Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), then having lost its way somewhat on Alien3 (David Fincher, 1992), picked up again somewhat on Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 1979), and now settled title-wise into the sensible enough format of Alien: Ship’s Name, delivers a new entry made by a writer-director, Fede Alvarez, who understands the franchise enough to both put in everything required of it and throw in some innovative ideas without compromising its essence.

The first 20 or so minutes, arguably the best thing here, could equally easily have opened a science fiction epic unrelated to the franchise. A young woman Rain (the terrific Cailee Spaeny from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) is trapped on a planet where the sun is permanently hidden owing to pollution caused by the corporation’s mining operation.… Read the rest

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Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Director – Martin Rosen – 1978 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

When a young rabbit visionary foresees doom for those who remain, some of the rabbits leave their warren in search of a safer home, encountering many life-threatening perils along the way – new 4K restoration of animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th, following its World Premiere in the London Film Festival on Saturday, October 12th

LFF: Sat 12 Oct 12:20 World Premiere, Tues 15 Oct 12:15,
both BFI Southbank NFT1.

This opens with a mythological segment involving a powerful God, represented as the sun, and rabbitkind, specifically the archetypal rabbit El-ahrairah. It’s drawn and painted in an arresting, non-naturalistic style involving coloured lines animated against a white background to create the impression of moving, primitive drawings, due in large part to uncredited director John Hubley, whose vision for the film was at odds with that of producer Martin Rosen. The latter ended up firing the former as he wanted something grittier and less lightweight.

It’s arguable this has worked to the film’s advantage: the fable sequence works as otherworldly rabbit mythology, suggesting a race of intelligent creatures capable of constructing creation myths about their species much as human beings do.… Read the rest

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Timestalker

Director – Alice Lowe – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

*****

A reincarnated woman falls for the same man in different, historical time periods – hilarious romantic comedy of errors is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 11th

Agnes (Alice Lowe) is a woman falling madly in love. Sadly, the object of her affection Alex (Aneurin Barnard from Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) isn’t really interested. And her attempts at forming relationships seem to always end badly. Although not in the way you might expect – for instance, with her head being lopped off. Yet all is not lost: in the world of the Karmic cycle: you die one day only to be reborn in another time the next. However, Agnes seems destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, consistently falling for Alex the wrong man in each of her different lives at different times in history.

The whole thing plays out like a series of repeated cycles by the same characters in different generations. In that sense, it’s not entirely unlike The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2023), a serious art house science fiction costume drama mashup. Timestalker isn’t necessarily in the same league as that film, but then again, The Beast isn’t a comedy and Timestalker is really, really funny.… Read the rest

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Transformers One

Director – Josh Cooley – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 104m

***

The origin story of the hero and villain of the Transformers in a long-distant past on their home planet – animated prequel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 11th

In a city deep in the bowels of his planet, one of its Transformer residents, Orion Pax (voice: Chris Hemsworth), obsessed with learning all he can about the history of his people, breaches the security of an historical archive only to be chased by guards who find him as he starts reading. Like many others, Orion is a mining bot, and as such lacks the ability to transform that is possessed only by true Transformers. Trying to do the right thing even when it’s against regulations, he is often getting into trouble on his mining shift. His immediate superior Elita-1 (voice: Scarlett Johansson) consistently covers for him.

That doesn’t stop Orion Pax from breaking with tradition and getting himself and his friend D-16 (voice: Brian Tyree Henry) to participate in a Transformers race through the city, for participation in which, benevolent ruler Sentinel (voice: Jon Hamm) promises to reward them – although as it turns out, they are almost immediately sent to a deep level waste dump for stepping out of line.… Read the rest

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Blitz
(2024)

Director – Steve McQueen – 2024 – UK, US – Cert. 12a – 120m

*****

As the Germans bomb London in WW2’s Blitz, a boy evacuated by his mother as per government instructions refuses to stay on the train and finds his way back to London – from the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player and then out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st

(This review is a piece of writing currently in progress. Please bookmark and return to this page to see the whole review in due course.)

A five-star review (and I’m unrepentant) for a film that’s less than perfect. It gets the five stars because of the incredible things it gets right.

Blitz promises two things: one, an immersive experience of the London Blitz, and two, the mother and son story of a woman sending her son out of London in the mass child evacuation and the child’s refusal to follow the plan, complicated with the racial tension of the child’s having a black father (who is absent) and a white mother.

Writing these lines, the film’s potential problem is evident; the immersive experience is probably a movie in itself, and this side of things is brilliantly realised without the need for narrative coherence.… Read the rest

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Air America

Director – Roger Spottiswoode – 1990 – US – Cert. 15 – 113m

*

Reviewed in What’s On in London, January 1991.

Released on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on Monday, 7th October, 2024.

One of the most accurate ways to judge whether or not a movie is worth seeing is to look at the credits. Air America‘s director is Roger Spottiswoode, whose career has spanned such diverse movies as the gripping political thriller Under Fire (1983) and the tedious Tom Hanks and dog cop buddy movie for children Turner & Hooch (1989).

Spottiswoode has Mel Gibson heading his cast, but it isn’t a great help with a script as dire as this. Worse, Gibson these days is getting more comedy roles, and he simply isn’t as good in these as he was in more serious parts earlier in his career. Here, he plays a pilot of Air America, the secret, CIA-owned airline network which flies covert missions and goods around the Far East.

This might well have been another Under Fire, but as it stands, I’m afraid, the resemblance to Turner & Hooch is more evident. Like that film, this bores rather than entertains, lumbering along without any overall sense of structure or direction.… Read the rest

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Enter The Dragon

Director – Robert Clouse – 2018 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 94m (cut)

£6.99, Dist Warner Screen Classics

***

Reviewed on VHS for Manga Mania sometime in the late 1990s.

Now over twenty years old, this 1973 offering holds up pretty well as an average HK martial arts movie and remains a milestone in terms of Western involvement in the HK film industry. The plot, which owes more than a little to Ian Fleming’s Dr.No, has Bruce Lee sent to the island home of despot Han, a trafficker in opium and young women who has disgraced Lee’s temple and killed Lee’s sister. Han doesn’t allow guns on his island and recruits fighting talent by putting on martial arts contests with intent to employ the best entrants (an idea reworked later with supernatural trimmings in Mortal Kombat, Paul W.S. Anderson, 1995) – among them the unknown Jim Kelly (sporting embarrassing period afro) and the young John Saxon.

Much of the proceedings are taken up with one on one contest fights, with numerous yellow or white clad extras clapping politely after every blow or kick. The stunts remain impressive, but this current release isn’t in widescreen (unless you count titles, credits, and two fight scenes duplicated in widescreen at the start of the tape) with the result that essential parts of the fight sequences (e.g.… Read the rest

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Joker
Folie à Deux

Director – Todd Phillips – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 138m

****1/2

Get Happy… Get Ready for the Judgement Day! Prison movie, courtroom drama, musical… the new Joker movie is something of a wild card – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

The big surprise about this sequel to Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019), if indeed it is a sequel rather than another standalone film reimagining the same character, is not one but two big surprises. In no order of anything… One, it is a courtroom drama. Two, it is a musical. This is extraordinary. Less of a surprise is that, like its predecessor, it is also a character study. More of a surprise is that it completely breaks the mould as to what a comic book superhero – or, in this case, supervillain – movie might be.

Warner Bros. / DC appear to have unearthed a unique asset. DC Comics have a long tradition of alternate histories, something capitalised on in their Elseworlds imprint which have, for example, recast Batman on different occasions in as diverse roles as an historic American Civil War participant and a vampire. Thinking about such volumes in terms of the movies, such shifts of context as a musical built around a character like Joker makes perfect sense.… Read the rest

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Things Will Be Different

Director – Michael Felker – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 102m

****

A brother and sister go through a portal into the past, are trapped there by an unseen adversary, and must wait for a mysterious visitor – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

This movie is different. It’s about philosophical ideas. It would work very well as a piece of writing (a short story? a novella?), it would work as a radio drama, and – yes – it works very well as a movie. Because what’s compelling about it is not what you see with your eyes or hear with your ears, it’s the implications of it all, the stuff that goes through your head as you’re watching the movie. Welcome to the Cinema of Ideas.

Early one bright and sunny Summer morning, Sidney (Riley Dandy) enters the diner where her brother Joseph (Adam David Thompson), who she’s not seen for a while, is having breakfast. She has the rifle. He has the two bags with the money. As arranged, they go through the woods, across the high cornfields towards the house. There are people in the woods, which are supposed to be deserted. She is concerned.… Read the rest

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Harder Than The Rock
The Cimarons Story

Director – Mark Warmington – 2024 – UK – Cert. 12a – 100m

****

The story of Cimarons, the first British reggae band, who were formed in 1967 – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, October 3rd

As teenagers, they came from sun-soaked Jamaica to the UK to be confronted with a climate that was “rain, dull and gray.” In the 1960s, one of the areas that Jamaican immigrants came to in London was Harlesden, in Brent, and it was at Harlesden Methodist Church Youth Club in 1967 where Losely Guichy (guitar), Franklin Dunn (bass), Maurice Ellis (drums), and Carl Levi (organ) first met up and started playing music together, a site today commemorated with a blue plaque. They went through s number of singers over the years, notably Winston Reedy between 1974 and 1983.

By 1968 they were gigging as Cimarons. A performance at Paddington’s Q Club saw an A&R rep from Trojan Records in attendance, which led to a recording contract, their first album appearing in 1974, recorded in part as the Jamaican studio of the legendary Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Before that, they worked mainly as session musicians, appearing uncredited on numerous singles by black British reggae artists. The film isn’t particularly clear on the matter, but it’s mentioned that they lacked management and got hardly any royalties out of all this.… Read the rest

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The Battle for Laikipia

Directors – Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi – 2024 – US, Kenya, Greece – Cert. 12a – 94m

**

Disagreements in Kenya between indigenous, pastoralist herdsmen and white immigrant farmers come to a head during a severe drought exacerbated by climate change – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 4th

Shot mostly between 2017 and 2019 – so before the COVID pandemic – this is a brave attempt to relate two opposing and seemingly irreconcilable sides to a specific conflict.

Laikipia is a large, wildlife conservation area of Kenya, and the film was made some 60 or so years after Kenyan independence.

On the one hand, indigenous Kenyan tribesmen have been grazing their herds of goats and cattle on the land, simply wandering around and letting the animals graze at any suitable pasture they find. There is no concept of land ownership, except the unspoken idea that this is their country and this is therefore their land, which seems reasonable enough.

On the other hand, the early part of the twentieth century saw white British settlers awarded large areas of land to set up farms on the more profitable, Western capitalist business model. These people have now lived in the country and run their farms as enclosed ranches for some four generations.… Read the rest

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Dragonkeeper
(Gardiana de Dragones)

Director – Li Jianping, Salvador Simó – 2023 – Spain, China – Cert. PG – 98m

****

Faced by powerful forces of empire and a ruthless traitor, a girl must accompany an old dragon to ensure the survival of its egg – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 27th

Ancient China. As revealed in a voice-over and an ancient, panoramic, wall-hanging scroll, the empire of the humans united with the dragons to successfully defeat necromancy. But then, the Emperor turned on the dragons, hunting them.

A long time after these events have occurred, a hard-nosed trader Master Lan (voice in the English language version: Tony Jayawardena) and his wallas are receiving some goods at a trading post when they stumble upon an abandoned baby girl. One of the wallas notices strange, blue-lit rocks floating near the baby. The group take the girl back across mountain ranges and vast plains to their small town.

Around eight years later, Ping (voice: Mayalinee Griffith) is living in that town, in the care of an old lady Lao Ma (voice: Sarah Lam), and feeding her pet rat Hua Hua (non-dialogue voice: Jonathan David Mellors) who lives in a hole in a storehouse and often goes with her in her jacket or any container or bag she might be carrying.… Read the rest

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Hellboy
The Crooked Man

Director – Brian Taylor – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 99m

**1/2

Hellboy must confront a dark labyrinth of hills, the Crooked Man who tricks people out of their souls, and some unresolved family matter from his own past– latest franchise reboot is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

1959. Hellboy (Jack Kesy), his assistant Jo (Adeline Rudolph) and an FBI man are transporting a deadly spider in a boxcar across the Appalachians to a lab where Jo can subject it to further study when the creature goes berserk, busts out of its crate, precipitating a terrible struggle in which the FBI man is killed and their boxcar is thrown down a steep embankment. They have arrived in a place where, we later learn in dialogue, a network of mining tunnels acts like veins to the living creature that is the hills, and the authorities have built a church atop the hills in the exact place where a portal used to connect a world of demonic forces with our own world.

The area is frequently visited by the Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale), who carries with him numerous coins, each one representing a soul he has tricked into selling him- or herself to the Devil.… Read the rest

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The Young Taoism Fighter
(Ying Yang Qi Bin,
阴阳奇兵)

Director – Chen Chi-Hwa – 1986 – Taiwan – Cert. 15 – 84m

***1/2

A lazy martial arts student experimenting with magic finds himself helping a girl warrior against a sorcerer and his master – on Blu-ray from Monday, September 23rd

At the Taoist martial arts training school Ying Yang Hall, two students are wont to skip rigorous training to hang out with the drunken sorceror in the

It’s probably a mistake to attempt to describe this in terms of its plot, because while it borrows lots of staple generic ideas from all over the place, it frequently abandons one to go off and develop another. It’s ostensibly a story about students from a martial arts school confronted by an evil sorcerer, but it’s nothing like as coherent as, say, the Mr. Vampire films. In fact, it’s just an excuse to throw together fight scenes, special effects and knockabout humour, all of which, against the odds, somehow cohere into some sort of whole to prove spectacularly entertaining.

Two slacker students bunk off to hang out with a drunken master in the kitchen, in the course of which he momentarily sets one of them on fire while the other one pulls a live snake from his trousers, and prepares it as a culinary delicacy.… Read the rest

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The Old Man
and the Land

Director – Nicholas Parish – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

As he works on the land, an aging farmer hears his two adult children argue about the future of the family farm – plays UK cinemas from Friday, September 20th 2024, with previews from Monday, September 16th following its premiere in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, where it was the best film out of a superb lot

Movies. You think everything’s been done, then along comes something you’ve never seen before. Or, in this case, seen or heard before.

The Old Man in question is an English farmer (Roger Marten) whose family have worked the land for generations. He’s getting on in years, so won’t be around forever. His wife died a while ago, so he’s now running the farm on his own. He has two children who have long since grown up and left home: a son (voice: Rory Kinnear) and a daughter (voice: Emily Beecham), and the big question is, when he dies, will they take over – or will they get rid of the farm?

In recent years, the UK has produced a number of rural movies that stand in stark contrast to the urban- (often London-) based films produced.… Read the rest

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The Substance

Director – Coralie Fargeat – 2024 – US – Cert. 18 – 140m

****1/2

Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) hosts a network TV keep fit show, but she’s getting on in years – and so is her audience. The show’s producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) has decided that younger talent is needed in order to attract a younger audience, and gives her the elbow. By a quirk of fate or screenplay, a mailshot about something called The Substance arrives in her penthouse apartment. It’s some sort of beauty product, although the high-end design of the blurb doesn’t explain exactly what it is or what it does. There’s a phone number.

Elizabeth’s identity is bound up with the former show. She calls the number. She engages in conversation with the unseen voice on the other end of the phone. She decides to give The Substance a try. She is told to write down an address. Later, she is sent locker card key number 503 and instructed to collect her package from that address. It turns out to be a derelict entrance with a shutter that only opens part way to about a yard in height, meaning you have to duck under it.… Read the rest

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The Goldman Case
(Le Procès Goldman)

Director – Cédric Kahn – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 115m

****

An acerbic, left-wing revolutionary in the dock protests his innocence on counts of murder he claims he did not commit – true life, courtroom drama is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 20th

Before this courtroom drama, which is based on an actual trial in 1975 concerning incidents in 1969 and 1970, gets fully under way, and after a brief title card explaining that left wing Jew Pierre Goldman (Arieh Worthalter from Girl, Lukas Dhont, 2018) was imprisoned on four counts of robbery, but insists that he’s not guilty of causing the two deaths in the pharmacy incident, and that a retrial is pending, two of his defence lawyers meet in an office to discuss his decision to drop one of them, M. Kiejman (Arthur Harari from Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet, 2023; Onoda: 10, 000 Nights in the Jungle, Arthur Harari, 2021), something neither of the defence lawyers want. Clearly, M. Goldman is a difficult client.

After people arrive in a courtroom thronging with photographers, Goldman is led into the dock, and is immediately met with shouts of “Goldman, innocent” from his supporters.… Read the rest

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Cyborg
A Documentary

Director – Carey Born – 2023 – Germany, Spain, UK – Cert. 12a – 87m

***1/2

Cyborg artist Neil Harbisson, unable to see in colour, has had an antenna implanted in his head to hear colours instead – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 20th

This opens with a title sequence of weird, psychedelic images of what appears to be moving coloured liquids forming strange, never to be repeated natural patterns. If that implies a striking visual sensibility, that’s deceptive, since this documentary follows a fairly straightforward structure of following people around with cameras and talking to them as it introduces us to cyber artist Neil Harbisson and his artist partner Moon Ribas.

Neil stands out from other people because he has an antenna protruding from the back of his head to dangle in front of his forehead. He was born with the unusual condition of achromatism, which means that he sees not in colour but in monochrome. (Less severe, more common forms of colour blindness include the inability to differentiate between green and red.) This came to light in his childhood when the family got a new colour TV, and he and his sister would watch cartoons. At this point, the film throws in a clip of the children’s sci-fi cartoon series Robotrix (John Gibbs, Terry Lennon, 1985).… Read the rest

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Pharaoh
(Faraon)

Director – Jerzy Kawalerowicz – 1966 – Poland – Cert. 12 – 152m

*****

The reformist zeal of a youthful heir to the Ancient Egyptian throne confronts the immovable conservative tradition of the priesthood of the god Osiris – on Blu-ray from Monday, September 16th

There is nothing else in cinema quite like Pharaoh. That was my impression watching it, and although in such instances you always wonder if there are films of which you’re unaware that lie in a similar vein, this impression is confirmed by watching the Blu-ray’s excellent, 70 minute-odd afterword by critic, curator and scholar Michal Oleszczyk, which contextualises the film by detailing (1) the source novel by Boleslaw Prus, (2) its place in director Kawalerowicz’s wider body of work, which also includes Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) and (3) its significance in both 1960s international film culture and wider Polish history.

This disc extra isn’t meant to be watched until after the film has been viewed, not least because it contains a number of spoilers, so I’ll say no more about it in this review except to say that it’s an excellent and worthwhile extra that will add much to the viewer’s appreciation of the film.… Read the rest

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The Critic

Director – Anand Tucker – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 101m

The first four fifths of The Critic *****

The final fifth of The Critic *

In the 1930s, a London theatre critic, a flamboyant homosexual known for destroying careers with his acerbic prose, finds his job under threat from his newspaper’s new proprietor – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

This originally played in the Toronto Film Festival in a 95m version, only to be acquired for UK release on the proviso that an ‘unsatisfactory’ ending be changed by way of reshoots involving the director, the screenwriter (Patrick Marber), and key cast members. So this current cinema release is the version with the ending changed, and this writer found that new ending less than satisfactory. Which is a pity, because up to about the last twenty minutes, the film impresses.

Now, one could construct a review narrative which says that the original ending must have worked better, and the film has been ruined by its UK distributor. It’s possible that that is indeed the case. However, not having seen that first cut, it is equally possible that the original ending had severe problems which this new version has attempted to fix, even if that doesn’t seem to have entirely worked, and that this new version is an improvement.… Read the rest

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My Favourite Cake
(Keyke Mahboobe Man,
کیک محبوب من)

Directors – Maryam Mogadam, Behtash Sanaeeha – 2024 – Iran, France, Sweden, Germany – Cert. 12a – 97m

****1/2

An old woman living alone in Iran takes a shine to a taxi driver after learning he has no romantic attachments – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

Mahin (Lily Farhadpour), 70, likes to lie in. Every morning, she’s woken by her mobile phone and her friend Pouran’s distinctive Vivaldi Four Seasons ringtone. She waters her small courtyard garden, she goes to the market to buy vegetables, she gets a lift home. She talks to her daughter and grandkids on a videolink – her daughter has long since left Iran. In the evening, she has friends round for a meal, including the hypochondriac Pouran who insists on talking about her recent colonoscopy (of which she’s brought along a disc with a video).

The next day, she gets a cab to a hotel to visit a coffee shop inside its premises, where she is confounded by a menu consisting of a QR code. She visits a park and asks a man there, where do people exercise? It seems they tend to come earlier in the morning than she gets up.… Read the rest

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Lee

Director – Ellen Kuras – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 116m

****

Former fashion model Lee Miller, played by producer Kate Winslet, reinvents herself as a war photographer for London Vogue at the start of World War Two – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s all too easy to assume (as per the ‘auteur’ theory espoused by the French ‘Cahiers du Cinema’ critics of the 1950s) that films are the works of directors. If one had to pick a single creative force behind this film, however, it would be the person who put it all together as producer before any director or writer were involved as collaborators.

That producer was the actress Kate Winslet who wanted to make a film about Vogue model turned photographer Lee Miller. Winslet doesn’t look much like the tall statuesque beauty that Lee Miller was in her younger days, and it didn’t occur to her to portray Lee Miller herself until some way into the process of putting the film together.

To direct the film, Winslet has chosen former cinematographer Ellen Kuras, an appropriate choice since Kuras has worked on documentaries shooting such musicians as David Byrne, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Neil Young, lensed narrative features on the such diverse cultural figures as Jane Goodall and Andy Warhol, and worked with unique film director Michel Gondry.… Read the rest

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Boonie Bears Time Twist
(Xiong Chu Mo
Ni Zhuan Shi Kong,
熊出沒·逆轉時空)

Director – Lin Huida – 2024 – China – Cert. PG – 105m

***1/2

The Boonie Bears’ friend Vick is tricked into giving up his memories of the bears in exchange for working at an office job far away in the city – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 13th

Although it works perfectly well as a standalone film, Time Twist is an odd place to start for anyone new to China’s long-running Boonie Bears franchise because the Boonie Bears are here relegated to secondary character status in a story about their friend Vick (once again voiced in the English language version by Paul ‘Maxx’ Rinehart). Here he’s introduced as ‘the logger’ who first fell in and became friends with the Bears (in what those already familiar with the franchise will know as their Pine Tree Mountain forest / national park home) before becoming, as a slogan hand-stamped on the image puts it, a ‘Certified Loser’.

He boards the bus to nearby Shen City, after momentarily looking wistfully at a flier on a telegraph pole reading ‘Lumberjacks / Hiring’. There, he picks up a job as an intern in an office, where his computer keyboard skills and overall ingenuity get his ‘intern’ tag replaced by one for ‘engineer’.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Reawakening

Director – Virginia Gilbert – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

***

When a couple’s daughter returns after a decade’s long absence, the husband starts to suspect she is not really their daughter – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s been ten years since their daughter Clare left home at 14. Not a day has gone by for her parents John (Jared Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) when they haven’t thought about her. The couple are in touch with the police and give periodic press conferences which have, so far, yielded nothing in the way of results.

Yet John, a self-employed electrician, has never given up hope. On the streets, he looks out for his daughter in the hope that he might one day see her again. And then, one day, he sees her sitting at then getting up from a table outside a café. He runs towards her, nearly getting hit by a car in the process, then follows her only to lose her down a turning.

Every morning at the primary school where she teaches, his wife Mary re-pins the poster of their missing daughter over the top of other bits of posters pinned on top of it to ensure that it can be clearly seen.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies Music

The Island

Director – Anca Damian – 2021 – Romania, France, Belgium – 84m

*****

A reimagining of the Robinson Crusoe story with Robinson as a doctor on an island where Friday is the only survivor of a refugee ship – plays with the accompaniment of the Bălănescu Ensemble at BFI Southbank on Friday, September 6th 2024 – from the Annecy 2022 Animation Festival in the Official Competition section

The story of Robinson Crusoe, the man shipwrecked on a desert island befriended by a native he calls Friday, is here turned on its head by director Damian (Marona’s Fantastic Tale, 2019) bringing to life a clever script using an inventive mixture of 2D and CG animation techniques. Robinson (voiced by musician Alexander Bălănescu, who composed the music and songs with Ada Milea) is a Westerner, a well-off doctor who spends most of his time lounging around on an island with an i-Pad. He might be a shipwreck survivor, at least metaphorically. He sings about dreaming of shopping when hungry, and after a while we wonder if he’s simply disillusioned with the Western materialist way of life.

He finds himself in the company of Friday (Lucian Ionescu), sole survivor of a refugee boat who treats the doctor as his saviour.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Firebrand

Director – Karim Ainouz – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 121m

*****

Henry VIII’s sixth wife Katherine Parr must navigate the increasingly treacherous waters between her desire for religious tolerance and Henry’s more authoritarian take on Christianity – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 6th

With her husband Henry VIII away fighting wars abroad, the Queen – Henry’s sixth wife Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander) – has been declared Regent. Yet, for all the power, at least temporarily, entrusted to her, she cannot go anywhere outside the castle without male guards. On the pretext of visiting a religious shrine to which only women can be admitted, she (and her loyal ladies in waiting) slip off to a forest glade where her old friend Anne Askew (Erin Doherty) is preaching on the fact that the Bible has recently been translated into English and therefore made available to the common people in their own language for the present time. “Where will it all end?”, Anne asks her small, gathered audience.

Where indeed? Katherine may be a reformer at heart, but she is also staunchly royalist and believes in the King both as an institution and Henry himself specifically.

And then Henry (Jude Law) comes back from the wars, bringing her time as Regent to an end.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

***1/2

The hyperactive ghost from the afterlife returns, along with a number of characters from the original – sequel to the 1988 film is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 6th

When the original Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) came out, no-one had quite worked out what Tim Burton was about, and the film was arresting, shocking, completely out there, utterly bonkers and like nothing anyone had ever seen. It’s difficult to know exactly what one could do to achieve that same effect in a sequel, or whether one should even try that approach. In the interim, Burton has had a lengthy and successful Hollywood career, arguably the system’s resident maverick director. When he’s good he’s very good; when he’s not, you wait for the next one and it’s usually an improvement.

In the event, perhaps inevitably, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t have the same shock of the new as its predecessor, but it’s similarly out there and bonkers and recognisably a sequel. It takes a while to get going – the first hour lumbers along with flashes of brilliance, such as a memorable, 3D-animated passenger aircraft crash at sea sequence, but the final third or so (from the point where one of the characters is lured in to the afterlife by another who turns out to be a ghost) is much more effective.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 1988 – US – Cert. 15 – 92m

***1/2

A recently deceased couple hire a bio-exorcist to rid their former house of its new, yuppie occupants – review originally published in Samhain, 1988

Whilst its opening shot recalls the aerial opening of The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) segueying into that of The Witches Of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), this film has been described as a reworking of Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) (!) from the ghost’s point of view. The plot concerns a couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who die and then find that their house – which they have to live in as ghosts – is bought by an horrific collection of yuppie trendies.

The couple try to carry on as normal, picking up the occasional useful tip from a weighty tome entitled ‘The Handbook for the Recently Deceased’ (or diseased, as they first pronounce it!) and despite warnings from their afterlife caseworker Juno (played by veteran Hollywood actress Sylvia Sidney) they decide to employ the self-styled bio-exorcist Beetlegeuse (Michael Keaton) to frighten off the new occupants.

The single most memorable image of Beetlejuice is that of a desert landscape peopled by sea monster-like worms, reminiscent of nothing so much as a surrealist version of Frank Herbert’s Dune.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Firebrand

Directed by Karim Ainouz
Certificate 15
121 minutes
Released 6 September

Reviewed for Reform magazine.

History. The Tudors. King Henry VIII wanted a male heir to the throne. His first wife failed to deliver, so he divorced her. When the Pope excommunicated him, Henry set up the new, Protestant, Church of England. He kept marrying new wives who ended up, as a popular rhyme puts it, ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’.

The wife who died, Jane Seymour, gave Henry his desired son – however, Edward (Patrick Buckley) later dies at age 15. The wife who survived, Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), is the subject of this movie, which deals with the later period of Henry’s sixth marriage… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

[Read my longer, alternative review on this site.]

Firebrand is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 6th.

Trailer:

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Features Live Action Movies

Hard Miles

Director – R.J. Daniel Hanna – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 108m

****1/2

A youth facility social worker takes a group of troubled young men on a transformative team bicycle ride – out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, September 2nd

Day-to-day life is one thing after another for Colorado medium-security correction school staff member Greg Townsend (Matthew Modine). He is in court defending, failing to get the court to see one of his charges as a human being rather than someone who committed an offence. Leaving, he finds someone has stolen his bicycle (it later gets found by the police, having sustained only minor damage). He is fielding calls from his prison-incarcerated brother about their father, who is in a care home and may not have much longer to live, and with whom Greg has not had contact for years. He is at the school, pulling boys apart as they attack each other for the most trivial remark.

However, not everything is about work and family responsibility. Greg is a cycling enthusiast, and is looking forward to taking his booked holiday of a week or more off cycling 1 000 (well, 762) miles to the Grand Canyon. Except that his boss Skip (Leslie David Baker) wants him to fill in that week, which Greg isn’t going to do.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

A Greyhound
of a Girl

Director – Enzo d’Alò – 2023 – Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, UK, Latvia, Estonia, Germany – Cert. U – 88m

****1/2

A young, cookery-obsessed girl with a fear of dogs must come to terms with the fact that her beloved granny is dying – animated feature is out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, August 26th

Ireland. Faced with an unsympathetic interview panel for the Ballymaloe Cooking School when she unwisely makes a tatty tart with bananas, young girl Mary (voice: Mia O’Connor) finds she has an ally in her granny (voice: Rosaleen Linehan) who gives the judges a friendly talking to when they reject her granddaughter. The girl can always come back next time. She and granny are driving home on a minor coastal road and granny is refusing to talk about her own childhood – apparently there was an incident involving a dog and a well – when granny swerves to avoid a dog and dents the car. Mary doesn’t like dogs, although she’s a caring child who stopped granny accidentally running over a hedgehog earlier.

Granny has been coughing all day. With the news that Mary’s bestie Ava (voice: Amelie Metacalf) is soon be leaving as her dad has got a job in England, it’s not a great time for the young girl, and it gets worse, when she discovers her gran has a fever and her mum calls an ambulance.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Count of Monte Cristo
(Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)
(2024)

Directors – Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte – 2024 – France – Cert. 12a – 173m

*****

An innocent Frenchman framed and imprisoned as a Napoleonic partisan escapes to impose justice on his false accusers – new Dumas adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 30th

There have been numerous adaptions of The Count of Monte Cristo for the screen, not to mention radio and other media, over the years; this latest one is directed by the screenwriters of The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady (both Martin Bourboulon, 2023), who clearly have a strong feel for Alexandre Dumas’ works.

Much of what’s here is familiar: shortly after the fall of Napoleon, on the day of his wedding to sweetheart Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier from The New Girlfriend, François Ozon, 2014), ship’s crew member Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney from Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is arrested for Bonapartism, falsely accused by another crew member Danglars (Patrick Mille from the two 2023 Three Musketeers movies and Love Crime, Alain Corneau, 2010). Neither the crown prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) nor Dantès’ friend Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon from Jumbo, Zoé Wittock, 2020) refute these allegations, although both know them to be untrue, since both have their own reasons for doing so: the prosecutor because Dantès could unwittingly ruin him, Fernand because he too is in love with and wishes to marry Mercédès.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Black Dog
(Gou Zhen,
狗阵)

Director – Guan Hu – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 106m

***1/2

An ex-con returns to his home town, which is infested with wild dogs, and befriends a stray – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 30th

Looking down from the edge of a slope towards Gobi Desert scrubland. In the distance, a coach moving along a road. Suddenly, a large pack of wild dogs come out of nowhere and charge down the slope. The startled bus topples over. The dogs are gone, the driver is getting everyone out of the bus. A man complains that his money, his life savings, have gone. He needs that money. Who has taken it? They are about ten miles from Chixia. One of those on the bus is Lang’s son. The police are called, they arrive and help get the bus back upright. Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), as required, shows an officer his parole ID. Lang walks behind the slow moving bus as the police escort the coach to Chixia.

As an announcement warns of a black dog seen around the town that may well be carrying rabies, Lang is strip searched at the station while the other passengers wait to be interviewed.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

No Trees in the Street

Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1959 – UK – Cert. 12 – 96m

****

An essentially honest young woman living in her parents’ East End slum fails to stop her impetuous younger brother from becoming involved in the criminal underworld – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital

Framed by a contemporary story of plain clothes policeman Frank (Ronald Howard) trying to talk sense into a knife-carrying teenager (David Hemmings), this takes place in the East End street where the latter lives some 20 years previously. The name has changed: back then, Somerset Street was known as Kennedy Street. The policeman, who is local, has always worked this beat. 20 years ago, he was trying to prevent another young man from drifting into a life of crime.

That other young man is Tommy (Melvyn Hayes), who lives with his father, mother and older sister Hetty (Sylvia Syms) in fairly basic accommodation. It’s a poor area and honest work is hard to come by. Both brother and sister would like to find a way out, into a better life. Both have less than honest ways of doing so, in the form of local ‘businessman’ Wilkie (Herbert Lom).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Weak and the Wicked

Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1954 – UK – Cert. 12 – 88m

***1/2

A woman spends 12 months in prison after being convicted of fraud – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital in August, 2024

Jean (Glynis Johns) is marched from her cell and up the stairs into the courtroom to hear the judge’s verdict. She gets 12 months for fraud, and is sent to HM Prison Blackdown. Her crime is detailed in flashback – she has a gambling problem, which costs her her doctor boyfriend Michael Hale (John Gregson) who walks out on her. She pays for chips at a casino with a cheque, for which she hadn’t the funds in the bank. In this office, the owner Mr. Seymour (Edwin Styles) tells her he has his own way of dealing with debts, as she’ll shortly find out.

Her friend Pam (Ursula Howells) gets her a job in a clothing store, but it turns out Pam is actually working for Mr. Seymour and steals a family heirloom from Jean’s handbag the first chance she gets. Jean claims the insurance money only for two policemen to arrest her the day the money comes through, going into her home and finding a pawn ticket for the allegedly stolen item tucked into the back of a mirror.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Sasquatch Sunset

Director – David & Nathan Zellner – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 88m

****

As recreated by actors wearing primate suits, a family of Sasquatches are photographed in the wild over the course of a year – on Blu-ray and Digital from Monday, August 26th, packed with more than three hours of UK exclusive special features

In the US and Canada, the Bigfoot or Sasquatch is a staple of American folklore; a primate alleged to live in various American woodlands habitats, an assertion supported by such dubious artefacts as the Patterson-Gimlin film, amateur footage of a Bigfoot female walking through a forest. It’s far from conclusive, and could well be a man in an ape suit.

There is, however, no doubt whatsoever that the four Sasquatches in Sasquatch Sunset are human beings wearing ape suits. The film doesn’t try to pass itself off as anything other than actors playing a family of the creatures, and uses no narration voice-over to tell the audience what to think. Rather, it follows its creatures through a year of their existence in the wild, from Spring through Winter. It isn’t attempting to prove the existence of these creatures one way or the other; rather, it’s an attempt to imagine what they might look like and how they might behave if they were (or are) real.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Cadejo Blanco

Director – Justin Lerner – 2023 – Guatemala, US, Mexico – Cert. 15 – 125m

*****

A young woman infiltrates a drugs gang in order to find out what happened to her elder sister, who never came back from a night out – out in UK cinemas on and on demand Friday, August 23rd

This opens with a deceptively simple sequence of two young women getting ready to go out for an evening. The older one, who apparently goes out a lot, and we’ll later learn is called Bea (newcomer Pamela Martínez), is pressurising the younger one Sarita (Karen Martínez from The Golden Dream, Diego Quemada-Diez, 2014), who has never been out to a club before. They might be flatmates, but as the scene plays out, it emerges that they are sisters. Bea helps Sarita dress up.

While this may sound banal, it’s shot in a long take, and there’s something utterly compelling about it. Perhaps it’s the script, which appears to do everything it needs to with no flab or wastage. Perhaps it’s the casting: you absolutely come to believe these two are sisters (as far as I can tell, despite having the same surname and looking quite similar, the two actresses are not real life sisters).… Read the rest

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Animation Art Features Movies

Kubo
and the Two Strings

Director – Travis Knight – 2016 – US – Cert. PG – 101m

*****

The following review originally appeared in Funimation UK; republished to coincide with the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by a stop-frame animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

A Hollywood film inspired by the Far East.

Western cinema in general and animation in particular has long held an interest in all things Oriental. Every so often, a film made in the West pays homage to one aspect or another of Eastern culture. The animated fantasy Kubo and the Two Strings is the latest entry in this curious Western sub-genre. It’s a dark fairytale about the quest of a boy named Kubo for his late father’s long-lost suit of armour to protect himself from the evil spirits of his grandfather and two aunts.

The company behind the production are US stop-frame outfit Laika who previously made Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls. All three like Kubo are dark visions far removed from the upbeat fare that constitutes much contemporary Hollywood animation.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Coraline (3D)

Director – Henry Selick – 2009 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

UK release date 08/05/2009

Originally reviewed for Third Way in 2009; republished to coincide with not only the 15th anniversary cinema reissue of the film on Thursday, 15th August 2024, but also the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by a stop-frame animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

Selick has successfully positioned himself as Hollywood’s stop-frame puppet animation film-maker (as distinct from plasticine animation film-makers Nick Park and Aardman). His The Nightmare Before Christmas suggested leanings towards horror and the macabre; Coraline goes further in the sense that one’s immediate reaction after viewing was to question whether this was a film suitable for children (on reflection this may be a grown-up reaction and kids may in fact love the film, in much the same way that as a child I enjoyed hiding behind the sofa during the scary bits of Dr. Who.) The source material is an acclaimed children’s book by Neil Gaiman. Anyway, you have been warned.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Exhibitions Movies

LAIKA
FRAME x FRAME

Pic: Toby Lewis Thomas, courtesy LAIKA and BFI

*****

Exhibition shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by the Stop Motion animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

In the best part of two decades, US-based Laika Studios – named after the first dog in space – has carved itself a niche as arguably the foremost producer of stop-motion animation puppet films. That’s distinctly different from the other leading company in the stop-motion field, UK-based Aardman Animations, who specialise in plasticine animation. The difference is that plasticine is a malleable substance that can be reworked and remodelled one frame at a time, whereas although puppets can be moved a frame at a time, they can’t be remodelled.

Laika have consistently (and deservedly, in this writer’s opinion) picked up Oscar nominations for each of their five features, a remarkable achievement that speaks of the high quality of their work. Their five features (with a sixth forthcoming) are:

  • Coraline (2009): A young girl is lured into a darker, parallel world.
  • Paranorman (2012): A boy who can speak with the dead, ostracised by his local community, must save his town from dark forces by righting centuries-old wrongs.
… Read the rest
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Features Live Action Movies

Kneecap

Director – Rich Peppiat – 2023 – Ireland, UK – Cert. 18 – 105m

****

A fictionalised origin story about an Irish language rap band as a music teacher teams up with two younger men to turn their confrontational, anti-British poetry into Irish rap music – provocative sex-, drugs-, and violence-laced music biopic is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

NSFW

Kneecap are an Irish-speaking rap band who came together on the eve of the 2017 Irish language march in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This drama about them, whatever else it might be and whatever other accusations can be levelled against it, certainly never plays it safe.

That’s obvious from the get-go, when the voice-over by one of the band members explains and shows how all movies abut Northern Ireland start – with footage of terrorist explosions during ‘the troubles’. The film then proceeds to have its cake and eat it, having started in exactly that manner, by starting again with the story of one of its members as a child being baptised in a wood at night and attracting RUC helicopter searchlights for their pains.

It moves pretty swiftly on to show the two fully grown lads in the band as party animals, consuming alcohol and drugs and dealing the latter, for instance giving it away free at early gigs to attract an audience, and engendering a hostile attitude to the Peelers (as they refer to the British police).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Widow Clicquot

Director – Thomas Napper – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

****

A nineteenth century French widow innovates in the male-dominated world of champagne production – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

In the early nineteenth century, Veuve Clicquot established itself as something of an innovation in the world of champagne. You would imagine that if anyone were to make a period picture about it, it would be the French, but as may well be guessed from the English language translation title here, this is a British production using English actors speaking English.

There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that, but given that France has a sizeable movie industry which, among other things, often makes period costume dramas, watching a film about an historical period in that country in English feels decidedly odd. Perhaps if there were more of an epic sense of scale (think: Napoleon, Ridley Scott, 2023) it might feel less so. The screenplay is based on a book by North American writer Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Perhaps it’s explained with greater clarity in the book, but the film assumes a familiarity on the part of the audience with the ins and outs of the Napoleonic Wars, which take place in the backdrop of the film and on the edge of the narrative, affecting it from a distance, as it were.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Noah’s Ark
(Arca de Noé)

Directors – Alois di Leo, Sergio Machado – 2024 – Brazil, India – Cert. U – 96m

**

Two musical performing mice attempt to board Noah’s Ark, where a despotic lion and his thuggish entourage attempt to lord it over the other animals in a singing contest –animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 23rd

Two mice – Tommy (voice: Marcelo Adnet) who sings and his accompanist pal Vini (voice: Rodrigo Santoro) who plays a four-string guitar – appear to be at the pinnacle of success, but when the lights go down, they are revealed to be playing the empty bar of Mrs Ferret (voice: Rachel Butera), from which they’re unceremoniously ejected.

On the lam, one of them overhears an old man in the desert wilderness remonstrating with a voice in the sky at its wits end – “I tried my best, it says, but what’s a God to do?” – and being instructed as per the Biblical myth to build an ark and fill it with male and female members of each animal species. “How do I tell the animals?”, asks the bewildered Noah (voice: Ian James Corlett), for it is he. “Well,” says God (voice: Luis Bermudez) in a rare moment of wit uncharacteristic of the screenplay overall, “I can get the invitations out.”… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Hollywoodgate

Director – Ibrahim Nash’at – 2023 – US, Germany – Cert. 12a – 89m

****

A Western documentary shot with the approval of the Taliban showing the eponymous air base in which the Americans abandoned large stocks of military hardware – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

An extraordinary exercise in both journalism and historical, socio-political filmmaking. A few days after the US military pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, fearless, former journalist Nash’at entered the country as, to all intents and purposes, a one-man film crew. At first, it was a fruitless exercise, but then he somehow managed to get in with a soldier about to be deployed on a big airport.

Negotiating with Afghanistan’s airforce to be allowed to shoot documentary footage, Nash’at secured himself permission to follow and shoot not just the lieutenant, M.J. Mukhtar, but also the new head of the airforce, Mawlawi Mansour, with the proviso that anything Nash’at was told not to film, he was not to film and anytime he was ordered to stop filming, he had to stop filming. Refusal to do either would have meant big trouble. He played along, shooting whatever he could without breaking the air force head’s trust, knowing that the Taliban would have no control whatsoever over the footage when he left the country to edit what he’d shot.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Only the River Flows
(He Bian de Cuo Wu,
河边的错误,
lit. Mistake (or Mistakes)
By the River)

Director – Wei Shujun – 2023 – China – Cert. 15 – 101m

**

A cop must solve a complex murder mystery his chief believes to be an open and shut case – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

A small boy with a toy gun plays cops and robbers in a deserted building, He opens doors like the protagonist of a Hollywood cop movie, looking for an armed criminal. And then he opens the door at the end of the corridor to reveal… a drop. The edge of a half demolished building, a building site with diggers.

This bravura opening is the high point of a film that combines a number of disparate elements in an attempt to construct a gritty police procedural murder mystery. However, it gets rather too caught up in many of these elements, and they swamp the narrative, which becomes incredibly tough to follow as a result. (This reviewer went back a second time to see if he liked it more on second viewing. He didn’t.)

A police chief (Tianlai Hou), who is also a keen table tennis player, encourages his force to get their merit recommendations in. This offers a fascinating glimpse into Communist China’s concept of community – you point out those who are making a useful contribution so that they can be rewarded.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Ozi
Voice of the Forest

Director – Tim Harper – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 87m

**

An orangutan girl becomes a social media influencer to stop corporate exploitation of palm oil after her forest habitat is burned in a forest fire – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The fate of orangutans in countries such as Borneo is dire in the sense that, to facilitate the extraction of palm oil, rainforests are being cleared and burned (in some cases leading to forest fires removing further areas of rainforest). The problem is that the rainforest is the habitat of the orangutan, and they are being left with their natural home severely depleted. It’s a disaster for this species and needs addressing urgently.

Enter this film, which laudably seeks to place that idea in front of family audiences.

Don’t get too excited, though, because having set out to raise consciousness, it attempts to do so with a script that’s overly simplistic and laughable. It starts off well enough, with carefree, small orangutan girl Ozi (voice: Amandla Stenberg) leaping from branch to branch, pulling old orangutan’s tails to knock them off their branches and being rescued from falling into the expectantly gaping jaws of a hungry crocodile by her watchful dad (voice: Djimon Hounsou).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Heart
of an Oak
(Le Chêne)

Directors – Laurent Charbonnier, Michel Seydoux – 2022 – France – Cert. U – 80m

****

The life of an oak tree, and the community of animal life which surrounds it, through the four seasons of a year – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th and then on Digital Download from Monday, August 12th

This French movie is narrated almost entirely in sounds and images: no voiceover narration, no voices added to the animals.

A Pedunculate Oak tree, born in 1810 according to the (subtitled) caption at the end, sits on the edge of a large lake. The opening shots move towards and onto the tree and its branches, introducing us to the wide variety of wildlife present. Acorns hang in abundance, Acorn Weevils buzz and make their way through furrows in the bark, a Eurasian Jay looks at them quizzically, a Eurasian Red Squirrel runs around branches near its nest, and a Great Spotted Woodpecker prepares to do its thing.

I’m cheating slightly here: there are no titles to identify which creatures are which until the list at the end, at which point I made extensive notes. That doesn’t matter as you’re watching, though, as it’s pretty easy to follow the continuity.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

My Neighbour Totoro
(Tonari no Totoro,
となりのトトロ)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1988 – Japan – Cert. U – 86m

*****

Two young girls, whose mother is hospitalised, move to the country with their dad, where they encounter a friendly tree spirit – one of the greatest movies ever made, animated or otherwise, is back out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

There’s something about rewatching and reviewing a favourite film you’ve watched numerous times because it’s coming out again in the cinema. And so it is that I dug out my Japanese release DVD (containing those all important, on/offable English subtitles), from those far off days when those seemingly few of us who knew about extraordinarily talented filmmaker Miyazaki thought none of his films would ever see a UK release, and rewatched his wonderful film for the umpteenth time.

The deceptively simple storyline involves two girls, Satsuki (10 – Japanese voice: Noriko Hidaka; English voice: Dakota Fanning) and Mei (5 – Japanese voice: Chika Sakamoto, English voice: Elle Fanning) who move with their father (Japanese voice: Shigesato Itoi, English voice: Tim Daly) to the countryside to be near the hospital which is looking after their mother (Japanese voice: Sumi Shimamoto, English voice: Lea Salonga).… Read the rest

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Sky Peals

Director – Moin Hussain – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 91m

****

When his estranged father dies after leaving him an answering machine message, a motorway service station employee starts to question the identity of his father and, by extension, of himself – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Adam (Faraz Ayub) receives an answerphone message from his father Hassan (Jeff Mirza) who he’s not seen for years; his father hasn’t much time left, is currently near Adam’s home and wants to meet up and talk. Like the answerphone message left by her soon-to-be deceased husband for the heroine of After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020) – is a British subgenre emerging here with Muslims and bereavement? – the recording plays on Adam’s mind at his workplace, the Sky Peals motorway service station, where he does the night shift preparing burgers in the kitchen and keeps himself pretty much to himself. He complains to his superior that the system isn’t working and customers aren’t getting served their orders, but the old manager has left, and the new one doesn’t start ’til Monday. Meanwhile, people aren’t getting their orders.

The police find a dead body in a car in the service station car park.… Read the rest

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Duchess

Director – Neil Marshall – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 113m

**1/2

A low life, female criminal falls for a gangster diamond smuggler, then attempts to take back control after a rival gang ousts him – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th and on digital DL from Monday, August 12th

From an opening where a too good to be true sex bomb lures a man into a room then violently assaults his exposed (albeit not to the camera) genitals, revealing herself in a voice-over to be Scarlett (Charlotte Kirk, also a co-screenwriter, who worked in the same capacities on director Marshall’s The Lair, 2022, and The Reckoning, 2020), London-born and bred, and her victim Nacho, who “totally has it coming” from her friend Danny Oswald (Sean Pertwee). After a struggle, we “have to go back a bit” via a series of fast-reverse images.

Thus, this is one of those movies with a framing device which starts in the middle of the film, goes back to the beginning of the story and then at some point arrives at the opening scene before proceeding to tell the rest of the story. Which points out its major flaw: just before that opening frame story scene in the middle of the film comes a scene which completely changes what the film is, from a woman criminal’s romantic involvement with a gangster who gets to know his world to a woman wronged revenge thriller.… Read the rest

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Borderlands

Director – Eli Roth – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 102m

*

A ragtag collective of misfits must outwit their pursuers on a hostile planet– videogame adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Intergalactic bounty hunter Lilith (an orange-haired Cate Blanchett) is hired by the universe’s most powerful industrialist Atlas (Edgar

Ramírez) to find his missing teenage daughter Tiny Tina, last seen on Lilith’s home planet Pandora, famed for an ancient civilisation of the Eridians and their much sought after vault which can only be opened by a member of that race. The planet is a renowned hell-hole, and while Lilith knows her way around there, she has no intention of going back.

Atlas, however, makes her an offer she can’t refuse, so it is that Lilith finds her way to Pandora where she is soon united with Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) who turns out to have a love of using children’s cuddly toys as explosive missiles. Tina is accompanied by a soldier on the lam (Kevin Hart) and a sympathetic if none-too-bright muscleman (Florian Munteanu). Her entourage soon expands to include an irritating motormouth robot (voice: Jack Black) programmed by an unknown client to protect Tina and a cynical scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis).… Read the rest

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Hundreds
of Beavers

Director – Mike Cheslik – 2022 – US – Cert. 12 – 108m

***1/2

A ruined drinks purveyor reduced to hunting beavers (played by actors in onesies) attempts to kill the amount required to buy a trader’s daughter’s hand in marriage – visually astonishing slapstick comedy is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Tuesday, July 9th and on Blu-ray from Monday, August 5th

Opening with what is essentially a music video extolling the bibulous virtues of the booming, farm home of Jean Kayak’s Acme Applejack, this shows a simplistic caricature of a prosperous nineteenth century business when the wooden supports of one of Kayak’s gigantic barrels of beverage is nibbled by a beaver causing it to roll down a hill on which it’s situated into his house at the bottom of the hill, causing it to burn down his hillside apple orchard.

Leaving aside such questions as, why store the huge barrel on top of a hill above your house? – the answer, so it can roll down a hill, catch fire and burn down your orchard to get the plot going, proving less than satisfactory – this leaves the ruined Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) homeless in midwinter and forced to survive by hunting animals.… Read the rest

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DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)

Director – Sean Wang – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young, Taiwanese-American teenager must deal with issues of ethnicity, family and love in 2008, when social media has become a significant element of growing up – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

2008. California. Summer. 13-year-old Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang), who prefers to go by the nickname Wang Wang, is rebelling. Mandarin is spoken at home by Nai Nai (‘grandma’; Chang Li Hua) and mum (Joan Chen), but that doesn’t stop mega-sweary English language shouting contests at the supper table between Wang Wang and elder sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) who is due to attend UCSD later in the year. When she’s out, Wang Wang hangs out in her room and posts as her on her Facebook (about which, amazingly, she never comes back to him). In the bathroom, he pees into her moisturising cream (leading to her threatening to period him in the mouth if he ever does it again).

Outside the house, he hangs out with his peers Farhad Mahmood (Raul DIal) and Jimmy Kim aka SOUP (Aaron Chang). Egged on by them in the manner of pubescents everywhere, he attempts to hang out with Madi (Mahaela Park), the girl he fancies.… Read the rest

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Kensuke’s Kingdom

Directors – Neil Boyle, Kirk Hendry – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 85m

***1/2

A British boy and his dog are stranded on a desert island alongside a Japanese man looking after a colony of apes – animated adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

With his parents having lost their jobs, Michael (voice: Aaron McGregor) is sailing round the world with his family. They are somewhere in the Pacific. Mum (voice: Sally Hawkins) is the skipper, with dad (voice: Cillian Murphy), Michael’s elder sister Becky (voice: Raffey Cassidy) and Michael himself as crew. He is homesick, missing his dog Stella. Well, not missing her, actually, because he’s secretly smuggled her on board and has her holed up in the cupboard at the front of the deck. Which is why the ship’s supplies appear to be dwindling – he is sneaking her food out of them.

Michael is the misfit of the crew; you sense that the other three family members are enjoying the experience of the trip, but he’d rather be back at home. Mum and dad try to make him feel better – mum ordering him about as skipper but giving him time with her as “mum” to talk about anything that might be bothering him.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Mountain Queen:
The Summits
of Lhakpa Sherpa

Director – Lucy Walker – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 103m

***1/2

A Sherpa woman climbs Everest ten times and escapes an abusive marriage to one of her fellow climbers – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 26th and on Netflix from Wednesday, July 31st

Amazing what you can learn from documentary movies. From this one, I learned that all of Nepal’s Sherpa people have the same surname: Sherpa. One of them, a woman named Lhakpa Sherpa, had always wanted to climb Mount Everest. A series of meetings led her to the Nepalese Prime Minister, who, impressed with her determination, put her in charge of a year 2000 expedition to conquer the summit. Unfortunately, she was not the greatest of leaders, preferring to go on ahead at her own pace. Many of her fellow climbers gave up or returned to camp, but she kept going and became the first woman to both make it to the Summit and return alive.

Bitten by the Everest-scaling bug, she went back on her own the following year and did it again. This time, she went with a Romanian climber named Gheorghe Dijmărescu, who she had met the previous year. A romance ensued, and she went back with him to Connecticut and had a child by him before the couple married in 2002.… Read the rest

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Love Hotel
(Rabu Hoteru,
ラブホテル)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1985 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 88m

***1/2

After violently taking out the stress of yakuza business debts on a call-girl, a man finds her two years later and attempts to rekindle a relationship – roman porno is out on UK Blu-ray on, Monday, July 22nd

NSFW.

Tokyo. Muraki (Minori Terada) phones Milky Way from room 301, all dark suit and shades, obviously a gangster, to be is told a girl, Yumi, will be with him in 10 minutes. Only, a flashback reveals him as the owner of a publishing office, his stairwell to his small office premises blocked by a yakuza, another of whose number, he discovers on entering, is forcibly having sex with Muraki’s wife (Kiriko Shimizu) while two further fellow yakuza look on approvingly. Later, he considers throwing himself out of the third storey window of his unfurnished office with “for rent” signs, but swats a fly and thinks better of jumping.

When Yumi (Noriko Hayami) arrives at 301, her initial euphoria at Y100 000 for two hours is dispelled when Muraki unexpectedly slaps handcuffs on her, pulls a knife, slashes at the bedsheets and her clothing to undress her than violates her with a dildo, later cutting the skin between her breasts as she writhes orgasmically.… Read the rest

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Shayda

Director – Noora Niasari – 2023 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

An Iranian mother and her young daughter, holed up in a women’s refuge in Australia, live in fear of the girl’s estranged father who wants to take them both back to Iran – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

A woman is with a mum and her little girl in a shopping mall. The woman tells the little girl to remember the counters, because if daddy brings her here, she must find them and tell the security man nearby who she is. The girl’s mother reminds her that daddy said he’d take her on a plane. The woman tells the mother, she’s done the right thing.

Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi from Holy Spider, Ali Abassi, 2022) and her young daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) are separated from Shayda’s husband. The other woman is Joyce (Leah Purcell), who runs a woman’s refuge house catering for residents from a variety of ethnic groups. Shayda and Mona, for example, are Iranian. Shayda’s photo album tells the story of her life. In the mid-1980s, she graduated and got married in Iran; in the early 1990s, the couple moved to Brisbane, Australia.… Read the rest

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Twisters

Director – Lee Isaac Chung – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 117m

Film ***1/2

Special Effects (the twisters themselves) *****

A young woman attempts to compensate for failed “twister taming” which caused the tragic deaths of three of her friends, by further pursuing tornadoes – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, July 17th

In the very first moments, Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones from Where the Crawdads Sing, Olivia Newman, 2022) stands in a field of tall grass. It’s an image that could almost have come out of director Chung’s previous film, the intensely personal Oscar-winner Minari (2020). Almost, but not quite: apart from one briefly seen-child, this is not a film populated with Korean-Americans. It doesn’t attempt any kind of ethnic statement, but then, why should it? People either come to this because they saw Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996) and want a rerun or, if they’re younger, because they want the same thing that pulled audiences into the first film: mayhem caused by the awe-inspiring, unstoppable force of nature that is a tornado, aka a twister.

The title implies there are more than one, and there are indeed, but then, there were in the first film too.… Read the rest

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Twister

Director – Jan de Bont – 1996 – US – Cert. PG – 108m

Film **

Special Effects (the twisters themselves) *****

1996 review for long defunct website London Calling Internet

A twister, as lovers of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) will know, is a tornado that snatches up objects in its path into the air and then dumps them down again. The one that snatched Dorothy into the air was a cheap special effect in a wonderful film. The current movie, on the other hand, is the other way round: basically, it’s a rotten movie with awe-inspiring special effects. The cast here is not so much the workmanlike group of American actors playing uninspired characters as the incredible series of tornadoes which appear one after another, each seemingly darker and by inference more evil than its predecessor.

This may also be one of those rare movies that requires a big (cinema) screen, with all the resolution that a projected celluloid image can give these tornadoes, to really work its magic.

Approaching Twister with the usual criteria, it fails abysmally. The feeble plot, such as it is, concerns Bill Paxton and ex-wife Helen Hunt coming together, leaving the former’s wife-to-be Jami Gertz out in the cold.… Read the rest

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Janet Planet

Director – Annie Baker – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 113m

**

Over the Summer, an 11-year-old girl abandons her idealised view of her mother as the latter traverses a series of relationships – out in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday, July 19th

11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) isn’t enjoying summer camp. So much so, that she phones home from the payphone (it’s 1991) to ask her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) to come and get her. That sets us up for the rest of the film, in which Lacy shares her mother’s house over the remainder of the Summer. During this time, her mother embarks on a series of short-term relationships, with the body of the film split into three sections, one for each.

First up is war veteran Wayne (Will Patton), a damaged individual who is around long enough to briefly introduce Lacy to his own daughter Sequoia (Edie Moon Kearns). But then, before you’ve really got a handle on him, or his daughter, they’re gone from Janet’s life and so from Lacy’s.

Mother takes daughter to witness an open air performance by a bizarre theatre collective involving weird, archetypal, human-sized characters from homegrown hippie folklore (these scenes prove a high point in a largely uninspiring film).… Read the rest

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Shayda

Muslim limbo

Shayda
Directed by Noora Niasari
Certificate 15, 117 minutes
Released 19 July

An Iranian woman, Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi from Holy Spider, Ali Abassi, 2022), is staying with her young daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) in a woman’s refuge house in Brisbane run by Joyce (Leah Purcell). Shayda’s husband Hossain (Osamah Sami) came to Australia with her before they separated and has been granted visiting rights for Mona. Even though Hossain talks of taking Mona on a plane back to Iran, if Shayda wants full custody, Joyce recommends she allows Hossain the allotted time alone with his daughter in the local shopping mall.

Outside of these handovers, Shayda rarely leaves the women’s refuge… [Read the full review at Reform]

Read my longer review for this site – coming soon.

Trailer:

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Sting

Director – Kiah Roache-Turner – 2024 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 91m

***1/2

A girl traps a venomous spider and cares for it as a pet, but as she feeds it, it grows… and grows… and gets out… – onto UK Home Premiere on Monday, July 15th

Helga (Noni Hazlehurst) is hearing strange noises in her Brooklyn apartment. She doesn’t remember so good, however, helpfully pinned to the wall by the phone is her name and address. So when she phones Frank the pest exterminator (Jermaine Fowler), she can read those details to him. It’s probably a rat, he tells her. Soon he is at the door of the block, asking her to buzz him in. But inside the apartment, he realises this particular bug may be more than he bargained for.

Flash back to four days earlier. A hand-sized meteor plunges to Earth to crash through a window into a doll’s house in the same apartment block. It is a tiny pod not unlike the ones in Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979). It opens, hatching a small spider, which looks huge until we realise it’s in a small scale doll’s house, not outside in the apartment proper. The spider is found by Charlotte (Alyla Brown from Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, George Miller, 2024) who empties out her money jar, the one with the screw lid, to make a home for it, feeding it with the roaches that infest the apartment.… Read the rest

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Longlegs

Director – Oz Perkins – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 101m

*****

An FBI hunt for a serial killer becomes embroiled in occult and Satanic practices, and the past history of the FBI agent involved – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th

There’s a peculiar flashback, denoted by a 4:3 rounded-edge frame within the wider letterboxed image, at the start of Longlegs involving a young girl (Lauren Acala) who comes out of her family house and a mysterious, white-feminine-haired stranger (Nicolas Cage) who explains the mystery of his arrival with the phrase, “I’ve got my long legs on today”, an indelible apparition and images that conjure fairy tales and nightmares. Although Cage isn’t on the screen all that much, when he intermittently appears, he delivers one of his most arresting performances in years.

The protagonist, who is onscreen pretty much all the time, is FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) who, with her FBI partner, has been charged with the job of investigating serial killer Longlegs. When early on she accurately picks out a house where he’s hiding with apparent ease, her psychic abilities are revealed to the Bureau and her FBI boss Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), changing the course of the Bureau’s investigations.… Read the rest

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Sleep
(Jam, 잠)

Director – Jason Yu – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 95m

***1/2

A pregnant woman becomes convinced that her husband is possessed when he starts sleepwalking and otherwise behaving oddly in his sleep at night – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th

One night, a wife wakes up and looks at her husband. He’s sitting on the end of the bed and says, calmly, “someone’s inside”. She hears banging. She gets up, and we see she is pregnant. Fearing an intruder, she goes into the next room, household drill in hand. It’s the door to the verandah banging, wedged open with his flip-flop. She finds their dog, Pepper, a Pomeranian, hiding behind the box container with the laundry liquid. Returning to the bedroom, she sees him wearing one flip-flop.

Sleep is a horror thriller about both a sleep disorder and intermittent possession by a ghost. The wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) is a former film executive, the husband Hyun-Su (Lee Sun-kyun) a struggling actor in whose career she believes. On their wall, a wooden plaque proclaims, “Together, we can overcome anything”. Their new downstairs neighbour Min-jung (Kim Guk-hee), who moved in after the difficult old man who used to complain to the couple about the noise moved out, pops round to say hello and complain about the banging that’s been going on for the last week.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Agent
of Happiness

Directors – Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó – 2023 – Bhutan, Hungary – 94m

****

A civil servant travels around Bhutan assessing individual people’s happiness even as his personal life begs the questions whether he, himself, is truly happy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th

Judging by the opening montage of cloudy and hilly scenery here, Bhutan may not be the sunniest place on the planet, but it looks fabulously beautiful. In their house, a fortysomething man clips and files his mother’s fingernails. He puts on his uniform (which includes a traditional type of robe), says goodbye to her, and goes out to work. He has a job as one of 75 agents who travel the kingdom conducting surveys assessing people’s happiness. We will only lean his name fortysomething minutes into the film.

The surveys have 148 questions and nine categories. The King of Bhutan has instigated a Happiness Index, to measure Gross National Happiness (GNH), which serves as the basis of future policy to improve his subjects’ lot and make them as happy as they can be.

The agent and his colleague drive around in his car meeting people and asking them the questions. At the end of each interview, a chart overlays the image of the person (sometimes it’s more than one family member) showing marks from one to ten for each category, plus another mark for their overall Happiness Level.… Read the rest

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Riddle of Fire

Director – Weston Razooli – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

****

Two siblings and their friend get caught up in a quest through the great hills and woods of Wyoming on their bikes to find a speckled egg so they can bake the boys’ sick mother a blueberry pie – out on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, July 8th

Wyoming. Young siblings Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie A’Dale (Skyler Peters) along with their slightly older friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro) break into the Otomo warehouse to steal a videogame console so they can play on the TV during the Summer holidays. Alas, they’ve reckoned without the two boys’ mother (Danielle Hoetmer) password protecting the TV. She currently has the worst cold she has ever had and isn’t going to relent on the password for the foreseeable future – it’s a beautiful day, and she wants them outside enjoying themselves, not cooped up in the house – unless the kids go to the store and get her a blueberry pie, the one thing that would make her feel better.

So the three kids set out for the local store on their pushbikes, but on arrival find the place has run out of blueberry pies and the cook is off sick (perhaps there’s a bug going around).… Read the rest

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The Beast
(La Bête)
(2023)

Director – Bertrand Bonello – 2023 – France – Cert. 15 – 146m

*****

Required to expunge her emotions by the ruling AI of 2044, a woman with a sense of dread revisits her past lives in 1910 and 2014 and their incarnations of the love of her life – curious mix of art house movie and science fiction is out on MUBI from on Friday, July 12th

An actress (Léa Seydoux) against green screen rehearses a scene in a house – the director’s voice tells her where the stairs and other features are in relation to her position and marks on the floor. With these minimal visuals but with the addition of music and full sound effects, she works through the scene up to the point where she sees the terrifying shadow of the Beast on a wall and screams. Consciously or unconsciously, this echoes the screen test on the boat of Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) in King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) as she is required to scream at an unseen, gargantuan monster for the camera.

As in Kong, this scene anticipates one that will play out later in the film. However, Bonello plays it as a curious introduction to the whole, rather than part of the story proper.… Read the rest

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Kill

Director – Nikhil Nagesh Bhat – 2023 – India – Cert. 18 – 105m

***1/2

Trying to prevent the love of his life from becoming trapped in an arranged marriage, a commando finds himself on a train fighting a violent gang of bandits – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 5th

Commando Amrit (Lakshya aka Laksh Lalwani) returns from active duty for a clandestine meeting with his true love Tulika (Tanya Maniktala), who is being forcibly engaged to another man by her family. Her father owns the railway, and her family take her on board the sleeper train for New Delhi where her arranged marriage to her fiancé is to take place, unaware that also on board the train are a party of bandits who plan to rob all the passengers.

The bandits are equally unaware that also on board the train are Amrit and his friend and fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) who intend to remove Tulika and take her away from her family’s plans which threaten Amrit and Tulika’s love. Among the bandits, firebrand Fani (Raghav Juyal) has an unfortunate tendency to kill the wrong opponent or prisoner at the wrong time…

The boy / girl romance element is fairly syrupy and over the top, and features heavily in Amrit’s motivation, especially once Tulika and her beloved younger sister Aahna (Adrija Sinha) are taken prisoner.… Read the rest

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Hoard

Director – Luna Carmoon – 2023 – UK – Cert. – 126m

****

A young girl’s strange relationship with her rubbish-hoarding mother, cut short in childhood, leads to an equally bizarre bond in adult life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th, with previews from Friday, May 3rd and exclusively on MUBI from Friday, July 5th

When I first stumbled across the title of this film, and the image used to promote it of a young couple staring into what I took to be a circular hole, which, I realised after seeing the film, was in fact the outline of a communal bin of the type commonly found on an English housing estate, I guessed it was a thriller – two people stumble upon a hoard: a bag of money or otherwise valuable contents. A noun. However, after viewing, I now realise the title could equally well suggest an activity, a verb. To hoard. The act of hoarding. The state of being which is hoarding. The film isn’t really a thriller. To describe it as a drama might be closer to the mark, but that doesn’t prepare the viewer for how utterly strange and alien the experience of watching this is.… Read the rest

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A Quiet Place
Day One

Director – Michael Sarnoski – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

A terminally ill woman returns to the New York of her childhood as hostile aliens land and start wreaking havoc – franchise prequel is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 28th

Another attempt to duplicate the success of A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018), this time by showing us the first day of the alien invasion in New York City, the sort of thing that couldn’t be done on the small budget of the original. Which sounds like more of the same – and on one level, that’s exactly what this is (so admirers of the original – among whom I number myself – wanting more aliens who hunt by sound, and more terrifying games of hide and seek with them, should find themselves more than satisfied).

There’s a curious attempt by the Studio’s marketing department to offer the chance to find out “why the world went quiet”, which is a great idea but bears no relation whatsoever to this film. Once you know that the aliens hunt by sound, so you must keep quiet to survive – revealed in the original film – this new film offers no further explanation as to why the world went quiet.… Read the rest

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Eternal You

Directors – Hans Block, Moritz Reisewieke – 2024 – US – Cert. – 87m

*****

People deal with bereavement with the help of interactive versions of their deceased, loved ones recreated by AI – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 28th

In a rare visual shot in this mostly verbally based documentary, an aerial shot of a graveyard, with light creating lots of little blocks of shadow as it falls on the ranks of gravestones, resembles a slice of internal computer electronics. It’s a pertinent pictorial moment that stands out from almost everything else here.

“Is there some reason you wouldn’t believe me?,” a woman asks her boyfriend. “You died,” comes the sceptical reply. Joshua, from Ontario, Canada, had to endure the trauma of watching the life support machines that were keeping her alive being switched off. After she died, about two weeks short of high school graduation which she was expected to pass, he got the school to graduate her. He later explains this by written chat to her interactive AI.

Psychiatrist Sherry Turkle talks about the problems people face coping with grief in the modern world, where they often live on their own following the death of a partner and don’t have an extended network of family around them like they would have done in former times.… Read the rest

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Kinds of Kindness

Director – Yorgos Lanthimos – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 144m

***

A triptych of stories from rising star cult director Lanthimos performed by the same intimate, ensemble cast – baffling auteur exercise is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 28th

Beyond a description of its structure – three separate stories performed by the same ensemble cast directed by one of today’s more idiosyncratic directors – Kinds of Kindness is not an easy film to synopsize. If the term ‘kindness’ in the title is meant to relate to the stories, it’s not immediately obvious as to how that should be (unless kindness is being used in the sense of “type of category” as the stories seem to function, on one level at least, as exploration of categories of transgressive behaviour). In terms of actors giving performances, the film is a masterclass; in terms of technical achievement – camera, editing, sand so on – it’s top of the line stuff; yet, in terms of what the film is about, the point of it, why anyone would want to make this film, you may find yourself completely baffled.

The main cast comprises Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley with support from Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie and Hunter Schafer.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

The Glassworker
(Sheesha Gar,
شیشہ گ)

Director – Usman Riaz – 2024 – Pakistan, Spain – 98m

*****

The son of a pacifist glassblower learning his father’s trade falls for the violin-playing daughter of an army colonel in wartime – complex anti-war drama from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Contrechamps section, released in Pakistan on Friday, 26th July 2024

If you knew nothing about this animated film beforehand, you’d assume it to be Japanese. Love it or hate it, most animation made in Japan falls within very distinctive, stylistic, visual parameters. According to the press blurb, director Riaz is an admirer of Studio Ghibli directors Miyazaki and Takahata as well as more recent directors Mamoru Hosoda and Satoshi Kon. Visually, the film feels more like a Miyazaki than anything else, and of comparable quality too. Yet it’s also highly original, and Riaz, here directing his first feature after a number of shorts, clearly has his own voice.

It opens with a frame story about youthful glassblower Vincent Oliver (voice: Sacha Dhawan) who, with the help of his father, is preparing for the opening of his debut glassware exhibition. He rereads a letter from a girl which his father (voice: Art Malik) had told him years ago to destroy in their workshop’s furnace.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Diplodocus
(Smok Diplodok)

Director – Wojtek Wawszczyk – 2024 – Poland, Czechia – 84m

****

A young diplodocus must save the comic book in which he lives from being erased by the artist who created – from the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Annecy Presents section

Animation. A bookworm (English voice: Wayne Greyson; Polish voice: Tadeusz Baranowski) appears, a “respected devourer of picture stories”. His function is not exactly that of a Greek chorus, more like a comic interlude who occasionally wanders into the narrative as light relief, to leaven the whole. Not that this likeable romp, is any need of leavening, but it’s a nice touch which nicely sets the tone for the whole piece. It’s about characters in a comic book whose very existence is threatened by the originating artist’s run-in with his commercially driven but artistically clueless lady publisher.

Beyond a vast, bubbling, primeval swamp in a crater, an inventive and adventurous, male diplodocus child (English voice: Julian Wanderer; Polish voice: Mikołaj Wachowski), Diplodocus as the credits calls him, nicks snails off a frog to use as climbing suckers. A butterfly flies past. Diplodocus gets sent to his room by his essentially conservative parents (English voices: Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld, Marc Thompson; Polish voices: Monica Pikuła, Grzegorz Pawlak) for wanting a life of adventure.… Read the rest

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the G

Director – Karl R. Hearne – 2023 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 106m

*****

A 72-year-old conned out of her home and assets calls up someone from her past to exact revenge – gripping thriller is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 21st

After a brief opening in which two men complete the task of burying a third alive, this switches to a hospital appointment of Mrs. Hunter (Dale Dickey from Hell or High Water, David MacKenzie, 2016; Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik, 2010), 72 years old and gruffly describing herself as “socialite, retired”. She is accompanied by her grown-up granddaughter (Romane Denis), photogenic legs in tight shorts, and giving the middle finger to men who come on to her. The elder drives the younger home, deliberately missing the turn-off so they can spend more time together talking in the car.

Then Hunter returns to her condo to care for her bedridden partner Chip (Greg Ellwand from February, Oz Perkins, 2015), hit a bottle of vodka and perch precariously on a stepladder on her balcony to fix a dicky light. She is watched by a man from a car parked in the street. Next morning, there’s a knock at the door, and men including “your legal guardian Rivera” (Bruce Ramsay) and his assistant (Jonathan Koensgen) come into the apartment bearing a court order to move the couple to a facility.… Read the rest

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The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1984 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 105m

*****

After proudly moving into their first home as owner-occupiers, a family go berserk and destroy the building – out on Blu-ray on Monday, June 17th

This seemingly starts out as a conservative family drama. The family in question comprises father Katsukuni Kobayashi (Katsuya Kobayashi in his debut feature role), mother Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho who worked with directors Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura and Kaneto Shindo), elder teenage son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono from Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, both Takashi Miike; Electric Dragon, 80,000 V, Sogo Ishii, all 2001) and younger teenage daughter Erika (Youki Kudoh from Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985; Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch, 1989; Heaven’s Burning, Craig Lahiff, 1997). The Kobayashis move in to their first home as owner-occupiers which, although it’s a little on the small side, promises an idyllic existence. Father is the breadwinner with a nondescript office job, mother waters the plants and does the cooking and housework, the daughter wants to be an idol singer and the son is spending all his time studying for school and university in his room upstairs.… Read the rest

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Creation
Of The Gods
I:
Kingdom
Of Storms
(Feng Shen
Di Yi Bu:
Zhao Ge Feng Yun,
封神第一部
朝歌风云,
lit.
Investiture
Of The Gods
Part I:
Zhaoge Turmoil)

Director – Wuershan – 2023 – China – Cert. 15 – 148m

****

A king’s infatuation with a beautiful woman possessed by a vixen demon threatens to bring down a terrible curse upon his kingdom – first part of epic, period, mythological adventure trilogy is out on Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 24th

This first trilogy instalment of an adaptation of the Xu Zhonglin-attributed novel Investiture Of The Gods, written towards the end of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), deals with the downfall of the Shang dynasty (which existed well before a thousand years BC). While the tale may well contain elements of historical truth, it also mixes in supernatural deities and creatures to cover an awful lot of ground in its two and a half hours’ running length.

The novel is known by a number of titles in Chinese, one of which is Fengshen Bang, an artefact of which name turns up in this film as a sort of MacGuffin, here a mystical scroll endowing its owner with great power which at least one major character seeks to possess, others seek to help him do so and immortals want to make sure it gets into the right (i.e. righteous or deserving) hands rather than his.… Read the rest

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New Life

Director – John Rosman – 2023 – US – 85m

***1/2

Neither the widow nor the assassin pursuing her towards the Canadian border are quite what they seem – genre-bending thriller is out on digital in the UK

The sound of a distressed woman. Now we see her (Hayley Erin) – her head is bleeding as she walks. Away from – what? She makes it down the street in a very normal-looking, small town somewhere in Middle America, into her very ordinary, well-kept, no frills, suburban house. She washes the blood off her head, switches a hoodie for a sweater. Constantly checking around her, she sees the armed men in the hallway and exits through a window.

Another woman (Sonya Walger) puts down her handgun on the edge of a bathroom sink. She looks tired. The yellow post-it notes on her mirror read “I have unlimited opportunities to succeed” and “I am in the process of becoming the best version of myself”. She takes a pill from the ‘M’ compartment of a little circular dispenser marked in letters for days of the week. On her mobile, she hits Play on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, specifically the song Like a Rolling Stone.… Read the rest

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Next Sohee
(Da-eum So-hee,
다음 소희)

Director – July Jung – 2022 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 134m

*****

A schoolgirl on an internship is appallingly exploited by her employers, and a police detective is called in to investigate – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Here’s a film which presents a real problem for reviewers. Something monumental happens in the middle of the film which entirely changes it. It’s a little bit like the shift from the traumatic drama to the police manhunt in High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963) and a bit like the infamous shower scene in the middle of Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). And yet, the film is like neither of those classics in any other way (except, perhaps, the fact that it’s a remarkable film that will leave you with an indelible impression afterwards). Still, how much can a reviewer give away without ruining the film for audiences?

It’s very much a film of two halves. The first half centres around Sohee (Kim Se-eun), a star pupil at an average secondary school. She is obsessed with dancing, specifically the kind of dance moves associated with K-pop girl- and boy-bands. Among her friends are another former intern from her school who dropped out of her intern position and now spends her evenings getting paralytically drunk.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Isabella Tree, as played by Rhiannon Neads

Director – David Allen – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 75m

*****

How Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell closed down their failing farm and instead let nature run wild to regenerate the land’s depleted biodiversity – inspiring documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s. They kept it going for some 17 years. However, by the late 1990s, they were in debt to the tune of one and a half million pounds. Realising that agro-chemical pesticides and contemporary industrial farming practices were destroying the topsoil necessary for biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem, the couple then took the bold decision to stop farming and, with a little initial, minor tinkering, set about rewilding the land (i.e. letting nature take its course) and, hopefully, repair the damage done. They faced considerable opposition from the local farming community for the first five years or so. Then things began to happen which brought public opinion onto their side. In 2018, Isabella Tree wrote a book about the whole experience: Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm.

This documentary feature adaptation of Isabella’s eponymous 2018 book about their experience was shot during the pandemic and uses actors to portray the couple’s younger selves, so seamlessly cast that you actually don’t notice.… Read the rest

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Sorcery (Brujería)

Director – Christopher Murray – 2023 – Chile, Mexico, Germany – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When the father of an indigenous Christian convert is murdered by her German Christian employer’s dogs, her thirst for justice leads her to employ occult folk magic against his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

1881. Chiloé, the Northernmost island of an archipelago off the coast of Chile. Indigenous, 13-year-old Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) works as a maid for German immigrant Stefan (Sebastian Hülk from All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger, 2022; Little Joe, Jessica Hausner, 2019; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) who together with his wife (Annick Durán) runs a sheep farm. The couple have two young boys, Thorsten (Matías Bannister) and Franz (Iker Echevers). The family are Christians, and Rosa is a convert to that religion.

One day, Stefan’s sheep lie dead in his field, with woven garlands of vegetation round their necks. With tensions understandably high, Rosa’s father approaches Stefan holding a knife, and Stefan releases his two dogs upon him, killing the man. Rosa later places a makeshift cross of two sticks bound together on his basic grave, which she and Stefan’s family visit, Stefan’s wife pointing out that the man wasn’t a Christian.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

àma GLORIA

Director – Marie Amachoukeli – Co-Director (Animation) – Pierre Emmanuel-Lyet – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 84m

Live Action **** / Animation *****

After her beloved nanny returns to Cape Verde, six-year-old Cléo visits her for the Summer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, July 22nd

Six-year-old Cléo (six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini) in France, but is mostly cared for by her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). One day, Gloria gets a phone call informing her that her mum has died, so she has to return to her home island in Cape Verde. Cléo is distraught, and makes Gloria promise that they will see each other again.

Gloria makes arrangements for the little girl to spend the Summer with her on her island. She meets the family from whom Gloria was separated by being in France – the pregnant Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela), the alienated ten-year-old César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) and, in due course, Fernanda’s baby Santiago. Gloria spends some considerable amount of time mothering the newly-born Santiago, causing Cléo to experience extreme sibling rivalry for Gloria’s attentions. Eventually, these emotions come to a head in the little girl…

This is one of those sadly all too rare films which in the process of telling a story from a child’s point of view completely gets inside their head.… Read the rest

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Freud’s Last Session

Director – Matthew Brown – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 108m

****

Celebrated psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud is visited in the last month of his life, living in Britain, by young Oxford don and Christian apologist CS Lewis – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

September 1939. Chamberlain has issued his ultimatum to Hitler, and Britain waits to find out whether it will shortly be at war with Germany. Celebrated psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins), recently moved to Britain from Vienna to escape the Nazis, keeps turning the radio on and off in the hope of an update from the BBC. He is also expecting a visit from a young Oxford don, CS Lewis (Matthew Goode), “the Christian apologist”, with whose views he profoundly disagrees. 

Lewis has written books including a parody of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress called The Pilgrim’s Regress, which is mentioned here, and the first book in his science fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, which isn’t. He has however yet to either give his BBC broadcasts about the Christian faith, which will later form the basis of his most celebrated apologetic work Mere Christianity, or write his Narnia children’s fantasy novels.… Read the rest

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Perfect Days

Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany, Japan – Cert. PG – 123m

*****

A cleaner for The Tokyo Toilet Company takes great pleasure in his everyday routine – out on UK Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 10th

There is a pecking order in society. Right at the lowest level is anything to do with human waste. Nowhere is this more evident than towards the end of this film when his sister, who drives a large, impressive looking car and is making a rare visit to her sibling, asks, incredulously, “are you really cleaning toilets?”

In this remarkable film, Wenders turns this notion on its head. Welcome to the world of Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), employee of The Tokyo Toilet Company, who has been doing the job for five or six years and takes great pride in it. He is part of a two-person detail, however his young co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto) doesn’t share his enthusiasm, often arriving late for his shift and looking at his mobile phone on the job.

Hirayama drives a small van and has invested in various tools to help him carry out the job; Takashi rides a motor scooter. Hirayama takes great pleasure in his audio cassette collection (The Animals, Lou Reed, Patti Smith) which he listens to on his van’s cassette player driving to and from work.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Good Stewardship

Wilding

Directed by David Allen

Certificate PG, 75 minutes

Released 14 June

After they inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) kept it going for some 17 years until the late 1990s, when they were one and a half million pounds in debt. The agro-chemical pesticides and industrial farming practices that they and other UK farmers use were destroying the land. The pair decided to stop running the estate as a farm and to see if there was a way of repairing or regenerating the depleted land. [Read the rest at Reform magazine.]

[Read my longer, alternative review for this site.]

Trailer:

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Matrix

Directors – Larry and Andy Wachowski – 1999 – US – Cert.15 – 136 mins

*****

The Matrix combines tropes of Japanese animation with live action Hong Kong stunt choreography and groundbreaking ‘bullet time’ special effects.

25th Anniversary UK rerelease (4k remaster): Friday, June 8th, 2024;

UK release: June 11th 1999;

Article originally published in Manga Max, Number 8, July 1999.

—

1999. The Matrix is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E.

Technically, a matrix is a multidimensional array of locations, with each cell uniquely addressable. Contents not specified. Back in late April, when Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix was first screened for UK press, Warners’ line beneath the film’s title on the publicity flier ran, Blockbusting futuristic thriller with ground-breaking special effects. Perhaps it should have read, Blockbusting futuristic thriller with ground-breaking special effects and Hong Kong styled action. Or even, Blockbusting futuristic thriller with ground-breaking special effects and Hong Kong styled action reconceived in terms of anime. Okay, it’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s closer to the truth.

Ostensibly a megabudget Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon / Die Hard / Predator / Speed / Road House / Assassins) SF actioner well beyond the extremities of this magazine’s remit, directed by the Wachowski Brothers (writer‑directors of Bound, screenwriters for Assassins), The Matrix opens with an incredible sequence wherein Trinity (Carrie‑Anne Moss, who looks for all the world like a Westernised version of a Hong Kong starlet in cat burglar get up… Black Cat’s Jade Leung or Irma Vep’s Maggie Cheung, perhaps?)… Read the rest

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The Dead Don’t Hurt

Director – Viggo Mortensen – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 129m

***1/2

An independently-minded woman whose partner is away fighting a war struggles to survive in the Old West – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 7th

While there is much to admire in this Western, it suffers from unclear flashbacks and parallel editing. Both the trailer (below) and the UK press handouts circumvent this problem by describing a straightforward, chronological narrative (and a fascinating narrative at that). For anyone who doesn’t try to follow plot, this may not be a problem. For those who do, it most definitely is.

Two things happen at the start. One is a shoot out in which Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), a nasty bit of work with scant disregard for either decency or law and order, rides away into the evening after shooting various people inside and outside the town’s saloon, including the deputy sheriff. The town is apparently called Elk Flats, Nevada – something I gleaned not from the film (where, if that information is there, it’s easy to miss, and I missed it) but from the production notes.

This is indicative of a problem with the film overall: there are certain key bits of information it needs to tell the audience, which it fails to deliver in a clear, comprehensible way.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Deep Sea
(Shen Hai,
深海)

Director – Tian Xiaoping – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 112m

Subtitled ***1/2 / Dubbed **

A girl on a cruise, who never got over her mother leaving, falls overboard into fantastical worlds – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 7th

A red child’s coat with a hood lies abandoned on the sea bed. A girl’s feet stagger through a blizzard. She calls out for her mama. But her mama (voice: Ji Jing), a swirling mass of dark hair and eyes, is leaving. And now, the girl is lifted above the sea bottom (as we now realise this location to be) by what appears to be swirling red paint. She wakes, in her coat, on the bus. It was a dream.

Her stepmum (voice: Yang Ting) tells Shenxiu (voice: Wang Tingwen) not to mess around on the bus as she starts pulling faces at her little brother (voices: Dong Yi, Fang Taochen). She boards a big cruise ship, looking at texts from her absent mum, who is separated from her dad (voice: Teng Kuixing). Mum told her about the Hyjinx – if you made a wish on your birthday, it would come and make your wish come true.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
My National Gallery

Director – Phil Grabsky, Ali Ray – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 98m

*****

Employees, punters and celebrities choose their favourite painting in London’s National Gallery – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, June 4th

There have been documentary films about the UK’s National Gallery before, notably the wonderful, three-hour-long National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014), so, in a way, it’s a brave subject for the Exhibition on Screen people to take on. And yet, as a British production company making movies about art in art galleries, it was inevitable that they would tackle the subject sooner or later. Their version commences with a likeable enough establishing montage of what one might call ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘footfall’ – shots of various National Gallery employees at work opening the door, looking after various aspects of the art housed in the gallery and even putting out tasty-looking croissants in the cafeteria.

There are satisfying little touches throughout. A shot of The Feast Day of Saint Roch, Canaletto, with out of focus people passing in front of it, makes it feel like you’re really there in the scene depicted.

Alan Allison, security officer and gallery assistant (pictured on the front of the trailer, below) wears black clothing with a striking, patterned blue tie.… Read the rest

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The Small Back Room

Directors – Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger – 1949 – UK – Cert. PG – 106m

*****

In London during World War Two, a back room boffin and bomb disposal man struggles with alcoholism – 4K restoration played at BFI Southbank on Tuesday, May 28th prior to release on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on Monday, June 3rd

This black and white, post-war era drama isn’t the first film that comes to mind when people think about Powell and Pressburger – it was made immediately after what today are regarded as three of their best colour features – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and their arguable masterpiece The Red Shoes (1948). And that was preceded by one of their finest black and white works, “i know where i’m going!” (1945).

In many ways, The Small Back Room couldn’t be more different. There’s a marvellous sense of whimsy about those films, even if the later ones are intense and savage in places. Like Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes – and, for that matter, Powell’s late solo masterpiece Peeping Tom (1960), an intensity lies at the heart of The Small Back Room.

Gone are the light, airy spaces of the earlier films, their sense of the outdoors expanse (and, in The Red Shoes, the expanded landscapes of the eponymous ballet sequence within the film).… Read the rest

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Do Not Expect Too Much
from
the End of the World
(Nu Astepta Prea Mult
de la Sfârsitul Lumii)

Director – Radu Jude – 2023 – Romania, Croatia, France, Luxembourg – Cert. 18 – 163m

*****

The daily, working life of an overworked production assistant on a corporate film about victims of industrial accident – out on digital from Monday, June 3rd

Angela (Ilinka Manolache) wakes in her mess of an apartment. Another busy day of overwork. She drives to the homes of serial, prospective interviewees for the corporate film on which she is currently working as a production assistant to evaluate their suitability for the film and take mobile phone videos of them herself.

Whenever she gets a spare moment, she posts on TikTok using a filter that changes her head into that of a man, and under the name Bobita posts colourful and sweary, verbal rants about the British Royal family and other topics. Suffering from sleep deprivation, she dozes during the afternoon production meeting and keeps the radio on while driving to prevent sleeping at the wheel.

Towards the end of the day, she finds time for an in-car assignation with her lover, but that doesn’t last long as she has to go and pick up the production’s corporate commissioning marketing person Doris Goethe (Nina Hoss), direct descendant of the famous writer, from the airport.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Stopmotion

Director – Robert Morgan – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 93m

***1/2

The bereaved daughter of a stop-frame animator attempts to complete her late mother’s last film – out on Shudder UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand from Friday, May 31st

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: this is not what it says on the tin. Anyone expecting another Mad God (Phil Tippett, 1987-2021, and a long-standing Shudder favourite) or Junk Head (Takahide Hori, 2021) is going to be disappointed. This is not a stop-motion film; it’s a stop-motion / live action combination film, with the physical stop-motion component of the production forming maybe a tenth of the whole.

Unless, of course, you’re looking only at story or script. In which case, this film is all about stop-motion animation and obsession. But executed in live action. Because, after all, who would want to spend all their time moving a puppet a bit, then shooting a frame, then moving it a bit more, and taking another frame, and so on when you can shoot live action and capture a shot of whatever length on film? (The answer is, anyone who loves animation generally and stop-motion animation in particular.)… Read the rest

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The Beast
(La Bête)
(2023)

A Fatal Belief

The Beast
Directed by Bertrand Bonello
Certificate 15, 146 minutes
Released 31 May

As satisfying as it is infuriating, this French genre-bender is part science fiction, part period costume drama and part literary adaptation. It’s based on Henry James’ 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, in which a man refuses to marry the woman he loves to spare her from the attack he believes will be perpetrated upon him at some point by a horrible beast.

About a third is, as you might expect, a period costume drama, sumptuously shot on film. However, the co-writer and director Bonello introduces two more separate timelines set in 2014 and 2044 and shot on harsher digital technology for a more modern feel.

He also switches the gender roles round, so that… [Read the full review in Reform]

[Read my longer review on this site]

Trailer:

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Furiosa
A Mad Max Saga

Director – George Miller – 2024 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 148m

*****

Kidnapped by a biker gang she attacks, young Furiosa must make her way in the desert wasteland populated by despots, bikers, and gas truck drivers – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 124h

In the forest where fruit is plentiful near her home, young Furiosa (Alyla Browne, the lead in the upcoming Sting, LINK, Kiah Roache-Turner, 2023) spots a group of bikers who capture her as she tries to cut their bikes’ fuel lines. Her mother Mary Jabasa (Charlee Fraser) sets off across the desert in pursuit, stealing a bike from one of their number, only to be captured and crucified. Furiosa is taken to the biker’s despotic and nomadic leader Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), later escaping and falling in with gas truck driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). Furiosa becomes a young woman (Anya Taylor-Joy) who as Jack’s protégé learns everything he knows.

The desert economy, where gasoline is the most precious commodity, consists of a wasteland in which are situated three strongholds: Gas Town, The Citadel and The Bullet Farm.

This prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) was essentially written at the same time as that film as part of the process of understanding the backstory of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron).… Read the rest

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Luminous Woman
(Hikaru Onna,
光る女)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1987 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

A Hokkaido farmer comes to Tokyo in search of his vanished fiancée but finds a world he has not expected – on Blu-ray from Monday, Monday, May 20th

At a rubbish tip on the outskirts of Tokyo, a barefoot man (Takeiji Muto) in cheap trousers and top encounters a suave-looking sophisticate (Kei Suma) and a woman opera singer (Michiru Akiyoshi), the latter performing gracefully atop the rubbish heap. The woman is dependent on the sophisticate. The barefoot man has travelled from Hokkaido to find his fiancée Kuriko Sakura, who was supposed to return after studying accounting to help him run a farm.

The sophisticate knows someone of that name, and drives the barefoot man into the city. In his nightclub, he offers the outsider a deal – if he’ll fight the club’s pro-wrestler for ¥100 000, the other will tell him where to find Kuriko. However, she may not be the person he seeks. Out of her boss’ earshot, the woman warns the outsider that the wrestling may be to the death.

In the club she plays the piano while another woman sings opera and, on the circular dias bordered by a water pool, a challenger fights the incumbent wrestler and loses.… Read the rest

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The Goldfinger
(Jin Shouzhi,
金手指)

Director – Felix Chong – 2023 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 126m

*****

Director Felix Chong reunites his two Infernal Affairs stars for a lavish, if frequently incomprehensible, 1980s tale of cops and robbers, corruption and fraud – out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital in the UK on Monday, May 20th

The experience of watching The Goldfinger is a lot like watching the classic Hollywood private eye movie The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946). There, you know that the hero is investigating a string of murders, and the narrative is completely engrossing, even for the viewer watching the film for the umpteenth time, yet it’s also impenetrable and incomprehensible. And so it is with The Goldfinger, which is based not on a novel but on a real life financial scandal.

Real life Hong Kong conglomerate The Carrian Group, founded in 1977 by one George Tan, expanded rapidly and made huge profits until it was declared bankrupt in 1983. The whole operation turned out to be mired in fraud. In the film, set in the late 1970s / early 1980s, the central character Ching (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) is modelled on Tan, starting off penniless but wearing suits that look like a million dollars and blessed with an understanding of what’s required to gain people’s confidence, secure deals and make money.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Big Banana Feet

Director – Murray Grigor – 1976 – UK – Cert. 12 – 77m

****1/2

The camera follows comedian Billy Connolly to Dublin and Belfast for the final dates of his 1975 tour – 2K restoration is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th, and on BFI Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) and digital from Monday, May 20th

This played the Scala Cinema a few times back in the day. I always thought there must be a reason why, and now, with its release in a restored form by the BFI, I get to find out. I must admit to mixed feelings prior to viewing – I’m not someone who particularly enjoys stand-up comedy; indeed, watching videos of comedians doing their material onstage has been known to bore me to tears, even as it enthralls fans.

Although this has clips of Billy Connolly performing on stage – comic routines, songs with banjo and guitar – it’s essentially a fly-on-the-wall piece that captures his personality as he, with the help of his seemingly tireless road manager Billy Johnson, plays dates in Dublin and Belfast on the final leg of his 1975 tour. Watching it, you feel you get to know Connolly well, at least at the period of his career being filmed.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

IF

Director – John Krasinski – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 104m

****

A 12-year-old staying with her grandma in New York meets many imaginary friends forgotten by the adults who befriended them as children – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th

This follows the time-worn children’s story template of a child whose father in hospital and is worried that they might not ever come home. In this instance, the child’s fear is grounded in her previous experience of this happening to her mother, who went into hospital and never came out.

Thus, 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming) is sent to stay with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in New York while her single-parent dad (John Krasinski) goes to the hospital for what he assures Bea will be a routine operation. Dad is an inveterate practical joker of a gentle sort, performing impromptu song and dance routines with his treatment drip on a stand or staging a tableau of his escape out of the window via a rope made of knotted bedsheets. As you can probably tell, director Krasinski is clearly having a lot of fun playing this role, and fortunately for us that fun translates onto the screen. As a bonus, likeable child actor Alan Kim (Minari, Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) plays the patient in a nearby ward.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Catching Fire:
The Story of
Anita Pallenberg

Directors – Alexis Bloom, Svetlana Zill – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 113m

***1/2

The chaotic life of the archetypal rock chick, told through her own words and those of her children – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th

After her death in 2017, Anita Pallenberg’s two surviving children Marlon and Angela discovered a manuscript; she had written an autobiography. Marlon worked his way through it as part of his bereavement process and was so taken with the articulate text that he sought out producers to turn it into a film. (He is one of the film’s executive producers himself, while both directors are credited as among the producers). Numerous clips from an interview with him are used in this resultant documentary, along with excerpts from Anita’s manuscript voiced by an actress, along with interview footage with Angela and verbal audio from Rolling Stones band member Keith Richards, Anita’s partner for a decade and the father of her children.

Like many of the young generation who rose meteorically to cultural prominence in the swinging sixties, Anita Pallenberg was a war baby. Her first years were accompanied by the sound of falling bombs; as she puts it, she didn’t learn to walk, but to run.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Nightwatch
(Nattevagten)

Director – Ole Bornedal – 1994 – Denmark – Cert. 18 – 107m

*****

Strange goings-on take place in a morgue after a law student takes on the nightwatchman’s job – out on Shudder UK from Friday, May 17th

Two male students Jens (Kim Bodnia) and Martin (Nikolaj Coster Waldau) make a pact: they are to challenge one another to a series of outrageous acts, and the first one who fails to follow though must marry his girlfriend. One evening, they and respective girlfriends Kalinka (Sofie Gråbøl) and Lotte (Lotte Andersen) are in a bar when two louts appear and hassle the two women as they return from the ladies room. Martin challenges Jens to stand up to them, which he does and gets assaulted for his pains. Jens later challenges Martin to go with 17-year-old prostitute Joyce (Rikke Louise Andersson), an encounter Jens facilitates in a restaurant, pinning his own name on Martin as a cover. Their swapping of names will later prove highly significant.

To save some money for his and Kalinka’s future, Martin takes on a job as a nightwatchman in a morgue, an easy enough job provided you don’t mind being the only living person on the premises along with a batch of corpses, which often includes murder victims since a murderer is currently at large in the area.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Nightwatch:
Demons Are Forever
(Nattevagten –
Dæmoner Går i Arv)

Director – Ole Bornedal – 2023 – Denmark – 110m

****1/2

A law student’s daughter takes on his old morgue nightwatchman’s job to find out about the killer who traumatised her parents – out on Shudder UK from Friday, May 17th

WARNING: don’t watch this sequel until you’ve seen the original Nightwatch (1994). That’s easy enough to do, since both films are currently on Shudder.

SPOILER ALERT: if you’ve not (yet) seen the original, watch that before reading this review.

Almost thirty years on, Bornedal’s sequel is almost a retread of his original film. Almost, but not quite. Martin (Nikolaj Coster Waldau) has never totally got over his wife Kalinka’s suicide, caused by the fear of arrested killer Peter Wörmer. Several times a week, in scenes described but never shown, Martin visits the summerhouse where she hanged herself and talks to her. Martin’s friend Jens has long since disappeared to Thailand, while his girlfriend Lotte (played by a different actress, Vibeke Hastrup) still works as a vicar. Martin hasn’t heard from either of them in years.

Mental patient Bent (Casper Kjær Jensen) is a likewise incarcerated killer, a copycat. Later on, both he and Wörmer will escape their hospitals.

Martin lives with his med student daughter Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal, the director’s daughter who is terrific here) who wants to find out exactly what happened to her parents.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kingdom of the
Planet of the Apes

Director – Wes Ball – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 145m

*****

The fourth entry in the current franchise reboot takes place several generations after the previous three films when apes live in scattered communities and humans have lost the power of speech – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, May 9th

Noa (Owen Teague) has deep-seated feelings of failure. His father is the head of the Eagle Clan, a tribe of chimps who live in symbiosis with trained eagles, and Noa thinks nothing of scaling the highest local rock face to steal his own eagle egg for later bird rearing. He goes on such quests with his two loyal friends, the male Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and the female Soona (Lydia Peckham). He also values the wisdom of Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan with considerable knowledge of the generations-old teachings of Ceasar.

Noa spots a human girl (Freya Allan) sneaking around the village and environs. A short while later, all hell breaks loose as a cavalry of masked apes attack and burn the village. Noa resolves to leave the safety of the local valley and venture into the land beyond on horseback, accompanied by Raka. They soon realise the non-speaking girl is following on foot, and no sooner have they coax her into joining their quest than they run into first a herd of humans at a small forest pool, then the mounted masked gorillas from whom they must rescue the silent girl.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Made in England:
The Films of
Powell and Pressburger

Powell and Pressburger on the set of The Red Shoes

Director – David Hinton – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 129m

*****

Martin Scorsese talks about the seminal British filmmaking duo, and how they inspired his own movies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

As a child, Martin Scorsese suffered from asthma and would constantly find himself at home while other kids were outside playing. He often found himself sitting front of the black and white TV watching a show called Million Dollar Movie. This would show a movie a week, playing it several times, and it was at a time when US producers wouldn’t sell their movie rights to TV but British producers would. Consequently, he grew up watching black and white versions of old British movies.

The ones he particularly liked opened with an arrow hitting a target: “a production of the Archers. Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.” When this logo and these names appeared, Scorsese always knew he was in good hands. He watched these movies over and over again whenever they were shown, and learned much of his filmmaking craft from them. The first of these films to which he thrilled didn’t have this logo: it was the Alexander Korda production of The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) and parts of the film have the unmistakeable Powell visual stamp.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

La Chimera
(La Chimera)

Director – Alice Rohrwacher – 2023 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 133m

***

In an attempt to come to terms with his past, an ex-con returns to his home town, where he previously used to rob ancient artefacts from burial sites and graves – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to get in La Chimera, and after watching it, I was none the wiser. Arthur (Josh O’Connor) comes out of prison and gets the train back to Tuscany. He meets some girls on a train, and the profile of one of them reminds him of decorative Etruscan art. He has a run in with a sock salesman, who tells him he smells.

Getting off the train, he tries hard not to be picked up by an old mate, who wants to take him to see a bunch of friends. He’s been in prison for grave-robbing and doesn’t want to get back into that game. Instead, he returns to the house of his deceased (or at least presumed deceased|) girlfriend Beniamina, where her mother Flora (an unrecognisable Isabella Rossellini) refuses to believe that Beniamina has gone. While Flora welcomes him with open arms, and introduces him to her maid and singing pupil Italia (Carole Duarte), she’s happy to be there.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Black Mask
(Hak Hap,
黑俠)

Director – Daniel Lee – 1996 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 99m

*****

An experimentally created supersoldier without feelings revolts against his creators, even as they attempt to take control of Hong Kong’s drugs trade – on Blu-ray from Monday, April 22nd in the UK and Tuesday, April 23rd in the US and Canada

Removing the ability of human beings to feel produce an elite force of warriors known as the 701 Squad has gone horribly wrong, and the members of 701 are to be shut down. Their leader, adopting the name Tsui Chik (Jet Li), escapes to live undercover working in a library where he learns all he can by reading books. His unlucky in love co-worker Tracy (Karen Mok) is convinced by other staff members to date him.

However, Tsui is more interested in hanging out with his best friend, the policeman Inspector Shek (Lau Ching Wan) who is tracking the elimination of all the major Hong Kong drugs dealers. The reason, unbeknown to him, is that the other surviving members of the 701 Squad, under the leadership of the Commander (Patrick Lung), are trying to wipe out the gangs including the last surviving gang leader King Kau (Anthony Wong) and take control of the drugs trade themselves to gain financial security.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Fall Guy
(2024)

Director – David Leitch – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 126m

*1/2

A stuntman, who retired from the movies are sustaining an injury on set, is hired to trace the vanished star of the movie being directed by his former camera operator and girlfriend – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, May 2nd

Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is a stunt double for big star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who allegedly does his own stunts. Retakes are common – for instance, if Colt is showing too much face, and it can be seen in the take that it’s him, not the star. Colt is fine with that – it’s just part of the business.

Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) is Tom’s regular producer and has managed his career so that his many bad habits never appear on the screen or where they can be seen by the public. He is currently the world’s most bankable action star.

Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) is a camera assistant. Colt and Jody are a couple, although they try not to make it obvious on the set.

Colt’s work requires all sorts of safety protocols be followed. On one occasion, someone behind the scenes messes up, and Colt falls from a great height and breaks his back. … Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Love Lies Bleeding
(2024)

Director – Rose Glass – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 104m

****

A small town member of staff at a gym falls hard for a bodybuilding drifter, both unaware that each has baggage which will cause the other considerable grief – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 3rd

The 1980s. New Mexico. Night. Rising up from a crack in the Earth. Towards the stars. And looking out over the small town, over the Crater Gym. We follow a woman inside. (Who is she? We never find out.) Bodybuilders work out. As Lou (Kristen Stewart) works to unclog a lavatory blocked with something resembling small human body parts (!), she is hassled by Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) who appears to have been sexually close to her at some time, and possibly still is now only Lou doesn’t care.

Elsewhere in the night, a couple are having sex in a car. He (Dave Franco) is definitely enjoying it; she (Katy O’Brian), it’s hard to tell. She wants to know if she’ll get that job now. He says he’ll sort it. He warns her to be careful where she sleeps; this is a dangerous town. She finds a place at the side of a bridge; in the morning, it’s hot and sunny, she gets up and does her exercises using the edge of the bridge for pull-ups.… Read the rest

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Kidnapped
(Rapito)

Director – Marco Bellocchio – 2023 – Italy, France, Germany – Cert. 12a – 135m

*****

A boy is forcibly taken from his Jewish family by the Pope to be raised as a Catholic priest because he has been baptised into the Catholic faith – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Italy, the mid-nineteenth century. The Papal States will have disappeared by 1870 as Italy moves towards unification. In the meantime, they are still under the administrative control of the incumbent pope, Pius IX.

Bologna, 1852. A maid sees off a soldier in the night following a romantic tryst. The soldier is neither here nor there; the maid, Anna Morisi (Aurore Camatti) will play a significant part in what follows. The life of a nine-child Jewish family is about to be disrupted forever.

The home of the very ordinary Mortalo family, who are Jewish: father Momolo (Fausto Russo Alesi), mother Marianna (Barbara Ronchi) and their nine children. The parents are deeply religious and raise their offspring accordingly, teaching them, among other things, to recite the Shema prayer every night before they go to sleep. One night in 1858, they are visited by the authorities under Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) who have come to take away one of their children under Papist law.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Spy x Family
Code: White
(SPY x FAMILY
CODE: White)

All images © 2023 SPY x FAMILY The Movie Project © Tatsuya Endo/Shueisha

Directors – Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12A – 111m

*****

A spy and an assassin are married to each other, each unaware of the other’s secret career, while neither of them are aware their adopted daughter is a telepath who therefore knows everything they don’t – bonkers anime deploying cookery to prevent Armageddon (!) is out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

An opulent art deco ball. Couples dance. A man connives to be alone with a drunken woman so he can…photograph a file in an office desk. A woman driving a car rips off her face (in the manner of the characters in Mission: Impossible II, John Woo, 2000) to reveal… a man, the spy Loid (voice: Takuya Eguchi). Another woman, Yor (voice: Saori Hayama), is revealed as an assassin when she kills a man who sold industrial secrets. The spy and the assassin are married to one another in a pretend marriage which is a cover for their undercover operations, although neither knows the other is in the spy / assassination game. Their daughter Anya (voice: Atsumi Tanezaki) – adopted to make the bogus marriage look real – is a telepathic orphan who can read minds, so knows about the two secret identities of her ‘parents’.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Boy Kills World

Director – Moritz Mohr – 2023 – Germany, US, South Africa – Cert. 18 – 111m

***1/2

Relentless, non-stop action via a deaf-mute, orphaned kid, schooled in martial arts, returning to the city as a grown man to wreak vengeance on those who killed his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Elite family the Van Der Koys have taken control of the city and instigated an annual ceremony known as The Culling, a physical contest staged for television in a vast arena in which anyone who opposes the Van Der Koys and the way they run the place is killed. This was of little concern to Boy, who as a child (twins Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti from TV series Big Little Lies, 2017-19) grew up in a carefree existence eating Frosty Pops cereal every morning with his sister Mina (Quinn Copeland) and, the pair naively making insulting hand gestures at publicly displayed Van Der Koy statues during the day which gets their family onto the list of candidates for The Culling. And so his parents and sister are despatched in the ceremony, leaving Boy a traumatised deaf-mute.

All of the above comes out early on in a mixture of flashback and over-the-top interior monologue (hilariously voiced by H.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Max Beyond

Director – Hasraf Dullul – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 88m

****

Leon fails to rescue his adoptive brother Max from a corporate, experimental facility, so Max starts to move around the multiverse to find the world in which he succeeds – animated SF thriller is out on digital from Monday, April 22nd in the UK and Tuesday, April 23rd in the US

Facing very specific health challenges, eight-year-old Max (mo-cap/voice: Cade Tropeano) has been signed over to the Axion corporation and is living inside their high-tech, tower block complex where he is undergoing complicated, experimental, medical treatment under the supervision of Dr. Ava Johnson (mo-cap/voice: Jane Perry). Max’s elder brother Leon (mo-cap/voice: Dave Fennoy), a dishonourably discharged war veteran, is none too happy about this and, as protesters hold placards denouncing Axion outside the building, takes it upon himself to enter the premises, find his brother and rescue him from his oppressors, as he believes them to be.

Despite warnings from Dr. Ava over the intercom that there is no way out for Leon, he at first appears to be in control of the situation, a one-man army flooring all comers, but as his corporate security adversaries, culminating a sword-wielding man or robot (it’s never clear which) called The Sync, become increasingly impossible to defeat, it becomes clear that Ava’s predicted warning is accurate.… Read the rest

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Jeanne du Barry
(Jeanne du Barry)

Director – Maïwenn – 2023 – France – Cert. 15 – 117m

***1/2

A commoner works her way into the King of France’s affections and becomes a member of the aristocracy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

Born of the illicit union between a monk and a cook, the latter (Marianne Basler) taken in along with her daughter by the kindly M. Dumousseaux (Robin Renuchi) who ensures the child gets a decent education, Jeanne (Maïwenn) quickly realises her only viable career options are cooking, which she has no intention of pursuing, and harlotry. Before long, favoured client Compte Jean du Barry suggests to her that she should meet the King. To achieve this, she would need to become part of the King’s court for which a title is required, so she marries Jean in order to become the Countess du Barry and be presented to the King, Louis XV (Johnny Depp) .

Catching his majesty’s eye and favour, she is invited to his apartment, like many other women before or after her (although one suspects there were more before than after). Before meeting him alone, she is schooled in royal etiquette by the King’s trusted, right-hand man La Borde (Benjamin Lavernhe).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Fantastic Machine
(original title:
And the King Said,
What a Fantastic Machine)

Directors – Axel Danielson, Maximilien Van Aertryck – 2023 – Norway, Sweden, Denmark – Cert. 15 – 88m

****

An idiosyncratic history of moving image technology and its increasingly pervasive role in human society, from camera obscura to smartphones and social media – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

To understand what this movie is about, which I’m not sure I did going in, you have to understand its title. The fantastic machine in question is, in part, the camera. That might lead you to anticipate a history of photography, but that’s not quite what this is about. You’d be forgiven for believing that, though, for the first few minutes when we see a contemporary, on the street, walk-in exhibit of the camera obscura or pinhole camera, a natural optical phenomenon whereby light passes through a simple pinhole onto a surface or screen beyond to recreate an inverted image of where the light came from. As a visitor marvels of the resultant, real time moving image of people outside the exhibit walking around, “it’s upside down”. As a human guide to the exhibition explains, that’s how the human eye works. Our brains correct the upside down image so that appears the right way up.… Read the rest

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If Only I Could Hibernate
(Baavgai Bolohson)

Director – Zoljargal Purevdash – 2023 – Mongolia, France, Switzerland, Qatar – Cert. 12a– 96m

****

A gifted Mongolian boy is torn between providing for his siblings and pursuing his studies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

Teenager Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh) lives with his mum and his three younger siblings in the yurt district of Ulaanbaataar, Mongolia’s capital city, their father having long since disappeared. Mum (Ganchimeg Sandagdorj) is illiterate and struggles to find work, and there is much antagonism between her and Ulzii, who is going through the school system his mother never experienced and took money from his summer job to buy sneakers before giving the remainder to his mum, who needs it to buy coal for their yurt’s stove to keep the family warm in severe, subzero wintry conditions. Sometimes it’s all too much for their mum, who often gets drunk at night.

In class, Ulzii is the star pupil at physics, often completing complex equations using solutions his teacher wouldn’t expect from anyone less than two years older. His teacher (Batzorig Sukhbaatar), finding a prodigy on his hands, starts to coach him to do well in the National exams in order to win a free university scholarship to study physics, which the boy wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

Late nineteenth century society portrait painter John Singer Sargent was fascinated more by their clothing and the possibilities of paint than he was by the women he painted – documentary is out in UK cinemas for selected screenings from Tuesday, April 16th

Based on the exhibition first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) and now at Tate Britain, this opens with incidental music that conjures a contemporary dance floor, a soundtrack which provokes a strange tension with paintings hanging on walls and costumes displayed in glass cases as the camera moves through the physical spaces in which they are displayed. But then, the title suggests this might be a little different from Exhibition on Screen’s usual fare.

John Singer Sargent’s A Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer (A Lady In White), 1889-90, shows the energy and intensity of his portraiture. The brushstrokes are arresting and like nothing else being done at the time. The paintings might be perfect, but the people within them most definitely are not: Sargent captures their imperfections in a most compelling way. He looked deeply at people, and some of his sitters were afraid to sit for him because of what he might see.… Read the rest

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Civil War

Director – Alex Garland – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 109m

*****

Four journalists travel across the war-torn US to interview the President before he resigns or flees the country – out in both UK and US cinemas on Friday, April 12th

The US President (Nick Offerman) is rehearsing a speech, But he can’t seem to work out how to deliver the words.

Seasoned photojournalist Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) and journalist colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) are on the front line in the war-torn US. She is in the thick of it, taking photographs, when she spots a twentysomething woman Jessie Colin (CaIlee Spaeny from Priscilla, Sofia Coppola, 2023) doing the same thing, and gives the young woman her hi-vis jacket to help her chances of staying alive.

The girl is so preoccupied with taking pictures that she cradles the jacket in an arm while shooting images with her stills camera. Later, she runs into Lee in their hotel where all the journalists are staying, among them the grizzled veteran Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson from Dune, Denis Villeneuve, 2021) who, despite mobility issues which require him to walk with a cane, insists on being in the thick of it as far as possible.… Read the rest

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The Teachers’ Lounge
(Das Lehrerzimmer)

Director – Ilker Çatak – 2023 – Germany – Cert. 12a – 98m

**** 1/2

A new teacher at a school where petty thefts have been taking place for some time makes some bad decisions which put her in a very difficult place – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 12th

Schoolboy Lukas (Okar Mats Zickur) is being questioned about recent thefts in the school. Does he have any suspicions as to which of the pupils might be doing this? A girl sits beside him, a class representative, to make sure everything is being done properly. “You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to”, teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesh from September 5, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) assures him. Nevertheless, her male colleague pressurises the boy. First, he gives him a printed list of names with checkboxes and asks the child to tick any relevant boxes. When that doesn’t work, he goes down the list with his finger and asks the boy simply to nod at any suspicious name. He gets a nod.

Teaching in class, with a number of the kids stumped by the current algebra problem, star pupil Oskar Kuhn (Leonard Stettnisch) works through a proof on the blackboard, way in advance of the capabilities his age would suggest.… Read the rest

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Opponent
(Motståndaren)

Director – Milad Alami – 2023 – Sweden, Norway – Cert. 15 – 119m

***1/2

Two asylum seekers – an Iranian pro-wrestler and his pianist wife – are confronted with inhospitable Scandiniavian hotel accommodation and state bureaucracy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 12th.

An ominous pulsing, thumping soundtrack. Wearing training kit, an Iranian man runs until stopped in his tracks by the sight of men on the nearby road searching for someone. There is a man hiding from their sight behind a parked car. The first man goes down to the parked car and demands of him, why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?

Hoping it will help him be seen as contributing positively to the cultural life of Sweden, thus enhancing his and the family’s chances as being accepted into citizenship, Imam joins a local wrestling team. He is clearly glad to be once again participating in the sport that was his life back in Iran, but his wife is less than happy to see him taking it up again, especially since he sometimes comes back to the hotel with a bloodied nose. Imam befriends Thomas (Björn Elgerd) at the club, who invites him out to parties where Imam spends the night rather than going home to his wife.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Some recommendations
from
Ireland’s
Japanese Film Festival
2024

Mondays: See You 'This' Week!

Runs from 11-27 April 2024.

Please click links to read reviews.

Blue Giant

Director – Yuzura Tachikawa – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 120m

*****

Three 18-year-olds form a jazz band with the aim of playing at Tokyo’s top jazz club

Evil Does Not Exist

Director – Ryosuke Hamaguchi – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 106m

**

A small, unspoiled village community is visited by two representatives of a company planning to set up a glamping facility.

The First Slam Dunk

Director – Takehiko Inoue – 2022 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

A high school basketball team sets out to defeat the seemingly unstoppable league champions

Nominated for Technical Achievement in Sound Design at the London Critics Circle Film Awards 2024.

Lonely Castle In The Mirror

Director – Keiichi Hara – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 116m

*****

Seven children are sucked via mirrors in their homes into a mysterious castle perched high above a sea, presided over by a wolf queen, and prowled by a hungry wolf at night

Mondays: See You ‘This’ Week

Director – Ryo Takebayashi – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 82m

****

A comedy in which a group of office workers must find a way to escape the week-long time loop in which they find themselves trapped

Monster

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2023 – Japan – Cert.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Io Capitano
(Io Capitano)

Director – Matteo Garrone – 2023 – Italy – Cert. 12a – 121m

*****

Two teenage Senegalese boys set out on a journey to Europe and a better life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th

Garrone’s earlier features (Gomorrah, 2008; Tale of Tales, 2015; Dogman, 2018; Pinocchio, 2019) have a particular, muted look, making considerable use of browns and, to a lesser extent, greys or greyish colours. These were all films set in Garrone’s native Italy, featuring characters with an Italian perspective of one sort or another. This new film eschews all that and, while it’s recognisably the work of the same director, exhibits a completely different colour palette in accordance with its different location. It’s brighter and much less dingy.

The different look very much fits with the different intent. Garrone wanted to deal with migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, but portray the journey from the migrants’ perspective rather than that of their destination countries. So this starts with two teenage, Senegalese boys who want to run away to Europe and is made in various African dialects, with the main one spoken by the two boys being recognisable as French.… Read the rest

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Yannick
(Yannick)

Director – Quentin Dupieux – 2023 – France – Cert. – 67m

*****

An audience member, unhappy with the play currently being performed, hijacks it with a gun to write something more entertaining himself – on Mubi UK from Friday, April 5th

NSFW. Absolutely worth seeing.

A play, The Cuckold, is being performed at a two-thirds empty Paris theatre. In the play, the husband (Marmaï Pio from Daaaaaali!, Quentin Dupieux, 2023) had learned from his wife (Blanche Gardin from Smoking Causes Coughing, Quentin Dupieux, 2022) that she is seeing another man. Couldn’t she wait until the weekend to tell him?

Worse, the man is ill, having picked up some sort of stomach bug from Kenya. Finally, the man – Bruno (Sébastien Chassagne from Mars Express, Jérémie Périn, 2023; The Truth, Hirokzu Kore’eda, 2019; Eden, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2014) – comes back from the lavatory. The wife wants to leave with Bruno. The husband tries to talk him into staying. Perhaps a bite from the fridge? The wife doesn’t want him to open the fridge.

At this point, audience member Yannick (Raphaël Quenard from Jeanne du Barry, Maïwenn, 2023; Smoking Causes Coughing) stands up.… Read the rest

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Evil Does Not Exist
(Aku wa Sonzai Shinai,
悪は存在しない)

Director – Ryosuke Hamaguchi – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 106m

**

A small, unspoiled village community is visited by two representatives of a company planning to set up a glamping facility – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th

This starts and ends with a journey on foot through a forest with a viewpoint looking up at the branches of trees as quiet, meditative and arresting music by Eiko Ishibashi plays on the soundtrack.

A young girl of about eight (was it her viewpoint?) wanders through the woods.

A man chainsaws chopped tree trunks into small logs, then takes them near to his house to chop them for firewood. He puts several big, plastic cans in his car boot and drives out to a stream to fill them with water. Kazuo drops by to help the man load the filled bottles into his car. They hear gunshots, which the first man remarks he heard they were hunting in Kunihara.

At this point the first man Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) realises he’s forgotten to pick up his daughter from daycare, and drives over there to discover she’s given up waiting and walked home along. He finds her in the forest and gives Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), for that is her name, a piggyback home.… Read the rest

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Typhoon Club
(Taifu Kurabu,
台風クラブ)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1985 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 115m

*****

A group of teenagers is trapped inside their school by a typhoon – screenings around the UK and Ireland from Wednesday, April 3rd; also available on Blu-ray from Third Window Films

A film about teenagers which uses tropical weather conditions – in this instance, an approaching and then all-encompassing typhoon – as a catalyst for exploring character. Its bravura visual style engages from the get-go, with a shot looking across a swimming pool between two ropes of a lane with a child swimmer.

Thursday. A bunch of girls in bathing costumes including Yasuko (Tomoko Aizawa) lark about outside in what is obviously hot and humid weather – one runs through a shallow pool and turns on a water spray to catch the others as they follow, but soon their tomfoolery looks like it may have dire consequences as they all but drown the boy pool swimmer Akira (Toshiyuki Matsunaga). Fortunately, Kyoichi Mikami (Yuichi Mikami), who turns up with his friend Ken (Shigeru Benibayashi) in tow, is able to sort the situation out by administering artificial respiration.

Later, Akira and Mikami, with Ken smoking between the pair of them, hang out on a bamboo scaffolding structure discussing girls, including Yasuko’s lesbian activities with another girl.… Read the rest

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Hoarder on the Border
(Danshari Paradise,
断捨離パラダイス)

Director – Takayuki Kayano – 2022 – Japan – 101m

****

A failed pianist takes on a job at a cleaning company which specialises in decluttering houses filling up with rubbish – played UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Promising young pianist Ritsuke Shirotaka (Ryo Shinoda), whose mantelpiece is adorned with prizes he won in school, can’t carry on due to hand tremors. His girlfriend pushes him towards eking out a living giving piano lessons, but that isn’t enough to stop her abandoning him.

In need of gainful employment, he interviews for and gets a job at cleaning company Danshari Paradise. (Note: Danshari is a Japanese philosophy of decluttering, based on principles that have been around in that culture a long time.)

This is a whole new world to him, and he must learn on the job. The houses or flats that the company deals with are typically places where you can’t see the floor for items of clothing and packaging that have been discarded there.

On his first assignment with such a team, Ritsuke attempts to physically pull blockages from a kitchen sink, only for a female colleague to pull him aside and pour liquid down the plughole to clear it.… Read the rest

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Restore Point
(Bod Obnovy)

Director – Robert Hloz – 2023 – Czech Republic – Cert. 15 – 113m

*****

A detective investigates the murder of a couple, one of who helped create the technology for restoring people to life after they die – thought-provoking SF thriller is out UK on digital on Monday, April 1st

In essence this is a crime movie about corporate conspiracy and murder, but with a difference putting it into the real of science fiction – although given the speed at which current technological advances are taking place, it’s the sort of thing one can imagine being reality in a matter of years. It’s set in the not too distant future of Central Europe 2041, where technology has been developed to back up people to restore them to life should they die. This has been guaranteed by the State for anyone dying a violent, unnatural death following an increase in violent crime. This in turn is the result of growing social and economic inequality (an element not explored beyond an introductory intertitle on the screen).

This allows for fascinating plot variants to the crime genre. If someone is shot dead, they can be brought back to life within 48 hours – provided they have a backup and only so far as that backup is up-to-date.… Read the rest

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Concrete Utopia
(Konkeuriteu Yutopia,
콘크리트 유토피아)

Director – Eom Tae-hwa – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 130m

****1/2

A massive earthquake makes the residents of the sole Seoul apartment block still standing close their doors to survivors outside – out on UK digital platforms on Monday, April 1st

Concrete: a structural material made of aggregate, cement, and water. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) Harsh. Unyielding. Impenetrable. Opaque. Not alive. Commonly used in today’s world in the manufacture of buildings, and associated with Brutalist architecture.

Utopia: an ideal community whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) The English word derives from two Greek words, the compound meaning of which is nowhere. Hence, “seemingly”. Utopias tend to have some fatal flaw. If they didn’t, any story about them would lack dramatic conflict. Thus, the word carries within it a degree of irony.

The eponymous montage of these two words pits them against each other: an unyielding, dead physicality confronts the optimism of a better world. The title evokes JG Ballard’s novels Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975), the former about a stranded motorist struggling to survive on a spaghetti junction after a car accident, the latter about a newly built block of flats in which the residents descend through social breakdown towards a new order.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Disconnect Me

Director – Alex Lykos – 2023 – Australia – Cert. 12 – 87m

***1/2

A man attempts to live for 30 days without the use of his smartphone, tablet or computer – out on digital from Monday, April 1st

This documentary opens with an advisory to keep your phone handy during the screening, as you may be required to use it at some point. In the UK, it’s only available on digital platforms… but even so, that advisory marks it out as different from most films.

Lykos, who narrates his documentary, is old enough to have grown up without a smartphone or other digital devices, but kids today handle smartphones from a younger and younger age. What would happen, wonders Alex, if I disconnected myself for an entire month? His and his wife’s home contains their two smartphones, two tablets, and a TV. Learning that Alex wakes and checks his smartphone three or four times a night, Alex’s doctor wires him for a sleep test.

Like many of us, Alex finds himself spending an hour on social media and wondering, what just happened? He and others admit to feelings of envy when others post about good things in their lives. A near-tearful divorcee talks about it being hard seeing people having a good time with partner or family.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla x Kong
The New Empire

Director – Adam Wingard – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

*****

Godzilla must leave the surface world to team up with Kong in the subterranean Hollow Earth below to defeat a powerful enemy – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

The latest movie in the Toho / Warner Bros. Godzilla / Kong Monsterverse is globetrotting in scope, with scenes of monsters wreaking havoc in Rome and Rio; its central conceit is that Godzilla roams the surface of the Earth fighting off other monsters which humanity would be unable to see off alone, while Kong, reconceived as a similar size to Godzilla, lives in the subterranean paradise of Hollow Earth.

With one beast on the outer rim of the planet and the other in a world beneath its surface, there is no possibility one will run into the other, which fight would be devastating for mankind. To make sure the two monsters remain isolated from one another, the huge Monarch organisation monitors both constantly.

Yet a terrible force is on the ascendant in Hollow Earth, one that neither Kong nor Godzilla would be able to contain let alone defeat on their own. And so, to save humanity, they must join forces and fight it.… Read the rest

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Silver Haze

Director – Sacha Polak – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

A young nurse – who seeks closure and revenge from being burned in a fire as a child – falls into a romantic attachment which may lead her towards a sense of community – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

This is the second collaboration between writer-director Polak and performer Vicky Knight, who in real life as a small child was burned in a fire and whose flesh is marked by the physical scars of that trauma. In Dirty God (2019), their first film together, Knight delivered a bravura performance as the victim of an acid attack.

In addition to her being compelling on the screen in that film, Knight apparently enjoyed the whole process of making and promoting it, and Polak wanted to do a further film with her, writing a twenty-page fictional treatment and then leaping into a shoot without fully knowing what she was doing. Her backers misunderstood her to be making a documentary about Knight, yet this is a work of fiction, using created characters to explore the effect of Knight’s real life trauma. If the scars are clearly visible on Knight’s body, what draws you in is something altogether beyond that, the trauma playing out in her interior life.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Director – Neo Sora – 2023 – Japan – Cert. U – 103m

*****

Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto performs a final concert of his music in 2022, months before finally dying of cancer on March 28th, 2023 – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th, 2024

Released in the UK within a day of the anniversary of his passing, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final concert is an intimate affair, shot in a sound studio by his son Neo Sora in crisp, iconic black and white, the sound of his piano recorded with state-of-the-art equipment. Within months of this performance, cancer would have taken him from us. This is very different from concert films where the performer(s) is / are still alive. Much of Sakamoto’s music tends towards the melancholy, and watching this remarkable, musical testament, one is constantly reminded of the fact that he is no longer with us.

Caught by the camera, he is clearly aware that he doesn’t have that much time left. One of the pieces, he struggles to get right. “This is too hard”, he says, “I need a break.” Nevertheless, the camera and sound recording equipment proceed to capture him playing his 20 chosen compositions with all the considerable skill of the great player that he is / was.… Read the rest

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The Lavender Hill Mob

Director – Charles Crichton – 1951 – UK – Cert. U – 78m

*****

A Bank of England employee stumbles upon the perfect means to rob his employer of the gold bullion he transports there on a daily basis– classic Ealing comedy is back out in a new 4k restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

Holland (Alec Guinness) has a lowly job at the Bank of England supervising the transfer of recently minted bars of gold bullion to the bank’s secure vault by security van., He rides in the back and is forever asking the harried driver to check round the corner for suspected cars lying in wait to ambush the van. He is considered an honest nobody, an appearance he has cultivated for the best part of two decades. He has a mind to rob the van, if only he could work out how to smuggle the bullion out of the country.

Fate intervenes in the form of a newly arrived tenant at the downmarket Balmoral Guest House in Lavender Hill, where he lodges. Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) runs a business selling tourist tat, including lead models of the Eiffel Tour for selling at that Parisian monument. He melts the lead down on his London premises to cast it into the models.… Read the rest

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Drift

Director – Anthony Chen – 2023 – Singapore, UK, France, US – Cert. 15 – 93m

****

A Liberian woman and former London student from a privileged background has lost everything and lives on her wits in a Greek holiday resort until she makes a connection with a tour guide – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

A T-shirt-clad back sits on the beach, facing away from us, looking out to a calm, blue sky and sea. A figure of indeterminate gender at this point. In an isolated, unpopulated landscape. However, as this young black woman (Cynthia Erivo) starts to make her way around the place, elements of both are gradually revealed to us. She travels on a bus with white tourists to a small, sleepy town where Greek lettering on the shop signs gives us some idea of where we are. Later, she takes the return journey and is back on the beach. She washes her underwear (she appears to only have the one pair) and T-shirt in the sea, letting them dry in the sun while she shelters in a cave. She momentarily panics at the sight of a coastguard vessel before realising it’s merely a small fishing skiff.… Read the rest

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The Sweet East

Director – Sean Price Williams – 2023 – US – Cert. 18 – 104m

****

Dumping her boyfriend, a South Carolina high school student skips a class trip to Washington, DC and falls in with a series of outsiders living in their own isolated visions of America – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

Although this starts off with heroine Lilian (Talia Ryder from West Side Story, Stephen Spielberg, 2021) in bed with her boyfriend Troy (Jack Irv), and a lot of visible flesh, it’s not so much a sex scene as a scene in which two people talk about the ending of the movie they watched last night. Soon after, the pair and their classmates are piled into a coach, complete with tour guide, driving them to Washington, DC. When Troy and others lark around in hotel corridors, she doesn’t really feel part of what’s going on.

At a restaurant, she meets activist and body-piercing enthusiast Caleb (Earl Cave from True History of the Kelly Gang, Justin Kurzel, 2019, Days of the Bagnold Summer, Simon Bird, 2019), who without sexual intent shows her the piercings and metal studs encrusting his penis. Going with him and his fellow commune members to an activists’ event, she finds herself at an outdoor radicals’ fair where she meets Laurence (Simon Rex from Red Rocket, Sean Baker, 2021) to whom she gives her name as Annabelle and who kindly offers her a place to stay – his place in Delaware, no strings attached.… Read the rest

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The Shift

Director – Brock Heasley – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

***

A former hedge fund manager is separated from his wife when a mysterious stranger ‘shifts’ him into a parallel world devoid of hope – out on digital from Monday, March 25th and Blu-ray / DVD from Monday, April 1st following its release in cinemas in the UK on Friday, December 15th

A fully clothed, bloody-handed man unexpectedly finds himself in the middle of a lake, swims to shore and, in voice-over, introduces us to a flashback as to how he got there. Fearing for his job security in a stock market crash, Wall Street hedge fund manager Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha from Jurassic World Dominion, Colin Trevorrow, 2022; Mad Men TV series, 2007-9) hits a hotel bar where he is approached by Molly (Elizabeth Tabish from The Chosen TV series, 2019-2024) who was dared to get him to date her by her three drinking companions.

To both of their surprises the pair end up going on a date, and then, in a rapid fire montage, marrying and having a child, only to later lose the child and have their relationship slowly implode as a result. One day, everything falls finally apart: he (it’s about him, not her) has failed to pay some bills, misses an important early morning meeting at the office, and is hit by another car whilst driving home talking to her on the phone.… Read the rest

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Cape Fear
(1991)

Director – Martin Scorsese – 1991 – US – Cert. 18 – 128m

*****

A vicious ex-con seeks revenge on the family of the lawyer he sees responsible for his incarceration in prison – review from Strait – the Greenbelt Newspaper, March 1992.

Directed by Martin Scorsese with characteristic and frenetic energy, Cape Fear is his best movie in years. It ranks not so much alongside The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, file under embarrassing personal projects along with Until the End of the World, Wim Wenders, 1991) but rather as a companion piece to early collaborations with actor Robert De Niro like Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980).

Here, the actor is first glimpsed from behind as a muscled torso tattooed with the Scales of Justice and numerous biblical verses. It’s a foretaste of things to come.

While the original Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) had Robert Mitchum as ex-con Max Cady who terrorises the lawyer (and his wife and daughter) responsible for his prosecution, Scorsese’s remake borrows religious elements from another Mitchum-as-villain vehicle, Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), in which his character justifies his actions in fundamentalist Christian terminology.

De Niro’s Cady is specifically a self-designated vessel of judgement upon the lawyer and his kin.… Read the rest

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Ghostbusters
Frozen Empire

Director – Gil Kenan – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

****

Back in New York, running the family Ghostbusters business out of the old fire station, the Spenglers must thwart an evil entity who possesses the power to freeze things – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 22nd

This sequel to Ghostbusters Afterlife (Jason Reitman, 2021), written by the same three-man writing team of father and son Ivan and Jason Reitman and Ghostbusters geek Gil Kenan, picks up and runs with some of the strengths of its predecessor even as it dispenses with others. One thing it dumps is the previous entry’s completely out-there originality; instead, it follows the time-honoured principle of Hollywood movie sequels: go out and make the first movie again.

It’s basically a rehash of the original Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) with the younger generation of Spenglers standing in for the old, and with Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), Ray Stantz (Dan Ackroyd), Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) from the original helping the newer characters out. There is not, perhaps, as much of Bill Murray as one would like, and his heart doesn’t seem to be in it. Otherwise, though, fans of the franchise will probably be happy.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Robot Dreams

Director – Pablo Berger – 2023 – Spain – Cert. PG – 102m

*****

In need of a companion, Dog builds Robot – but then, disaster strikes – charming, dialogue-free 2D animation is out in UK cinemas Friday, 22nd March following its screenings in the 2023 London Film Festival

The 1980s. Brooklyn. The East Village. Bored with endless, cook from frozen macaroni cheese meals from the fridge and channel hopping or playing both parts of computerised table tennis against himself, Dog longs for a companion. To this end, he buys a DIY self-assembly kit from which he builds Robot. For a short period, the pair are inseparable, walking and eating hot dogs together in Central Park, but then disaster strikes after Robot swims in the sea when the pair visit the beach. When it’s time to go home, his battery power is depleted, and he can’t move.

So Dog has to leave incapacitated Robot there. He buys books on robots from the local bookstore to work out how to repair his friend. Alas, on arrival at the beach, he discovers it’s closed since yesterday was the last day of the Summer season. A less than sympathetic cop won’t listen to his entreaties and sends him packing; Dog later returns with bolt cutters and removed the chain and padlock preventing entry, but is apprehended by the unsympathetic policeman before he can rescue Robot.… Read the rest

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Immaculate

Director – Michael Mohan – 2023 – US – Cert. – 89m

***

A virginal, American, novice nun cloistered in an Italian convent finds herself mysteriously pregnant – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 22nd

A young nun attempts to flee a convent in the middle of the night, but before she can gate the gate open with a key on a large bunch is caught by mysterious nuns with red coverings over their faces, and finds herself buried alive in a coffin. This opening sequence doesn’t bode well for any new nun entering the convent such as the novice Sister Cecilia (Sydney Sweeney, also the film’s producer, from Reality, Tina Satter, 2023), a young woman from a parish in the US that closed down, forcing her to seek a position elsewhere, and who believes God wants her to enter this particular convent, which doubles as a care home for ageing nuns run by Father Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) and the incumbent Mother Superior (Dora Romano). The premises are built over a network of catacombs.

Before taking her vows on the day she arrives – of which she is told she could opt out beforehand if she doesn’t want to go through with them – Sister Cecilia is entrusted into the care of Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi), an embittered type who doesn’t feel anything like a woman who has given herself to the service of God.… Read the rest

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Full Time
(À Plein Temps)

Director – Eric Gravel – 2021 – France – Cert. 12a – 87m

*****

A single mum with two young kids struggles to hold her working life together in a Paris where the transport network in and out of the city is paralysed by strikes – on BBC iPlayer until end 2024 following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th 2023

The brief moment of calm at the start gives little indication of the relentless nature of what is to follow. Julie Roy (Laure Calamy) sleeps deeply, a figure at rest, as we watch parts of her face in close-ups. Suddenly, this tranquillity is shattered by the aural violation of the quiet by an alarm clock. As she gets the kids up, the radio blares out something about an increase in working hours and something else about the welfare state. The impression is of the microcosm of her life and the macrocosm of the wider world (France) in a state of crisis. She bundles her kids off to the child-minder’s and boards a pre-dawn train to Paris. The train is terminated because of an unwell passenger, so she has to switch to a bus to get to St. Lazare, and as she is trying to get to The Churchill, the luxury hotel where she works as a head chambermaid, she must fend off a mobile phone call about her mortgage repayments.… Read the rest

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Monster
(Kaibutsu,
怪物)

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 126m

****

The mother of a school pupil believes her son is being abused by his teacher, who in turn protests his own innocence, yet the truth is more complex – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 15th

A movie at once spellbinding and infuriating, as a seemingly straightforward narrative is retold from different points of view and shifts subtly as further details emerge. It’s not a film to see if you’re tired, as it requires considerable attention on the part of the audience.

It starts off with a child’s feet walking along a patch of wasteland at night, sirens in the distance and then a blazing urban building which his single-parent mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando from Godzilla Minus One, 2023; Shoplifters, 2018 and Love Exposure, 2008) summons her son Minato (Soya Kurokawa) out onto their flat’s balcony to watch. Overheard conversation later suggests that not only was there a hostess bar on the third floor of the burning building, but that Minato’s teacher Mr. Hori (Eita Nagayama from Toshiaki Toyoda’s 9 Souls, 2003 and Blue Spring, 2001) used to go there.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Lyricist Wannabe
(Tin4 Ci4 L,
填詞L,
lit. Lyrics Nerd / Dickhead)

Director – Norris Wong – 2023 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12a – 112m

****

A girl pursues her dream of becoming a Cantopop lyricist – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 15th

The movies are full of rags-to-riches stories in which someone dreams of becoming a star, works hard to achieve that, and it ultimately all comes true. While that can happen, because in real life there are clearly stars out there, in most cases it doesn’t. This film follows a similar path: a girl gives her all to achieve her chosen dream but ultimately doesn’t make it, which is probably a far more common occurrence than the one in which the aspirant succeeds.

Law Wing Sze (Chung Suet-Ying) is a student at a church school run by nuns. She doesn’t read music, but is obsessed by Cantopop and wants to write lyrics, spending much time rewriting lyrics of old Cantopop songs such as Infernal Affairs which she rewrites as Student Affairs. For this endeavour she is summoned to Sister Che’s office where the nun / teacher helpfully gives her a crit session and suggests she change certain words to more accurately express what she’s trying to say without unintended double entendres.… Read the rest

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All of Us Strangers

Director – Andrew Haigh – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 105m

*****

A gay Londoner travels by train to visit his parents in Sanderstead, following their deaths in a car crash when he was 12 years old – out on digital from Tuesday, March 12th

He (Andrew Scott) lives alone in a London tower block. Not only is he the single occupant of his flat, there’s almost no-one else in the building. When he goes outside for a breath of fresh air, he sees a guy in the window of one of the other apartments. Later, there’s a knock at his door. It’s the guy (Paul Mescal), who is slightly drunk, comes on strong and tries to get himself invited in. The visitor’s name is Harry. The occupant introduces himself as Adam, but doesn’t let Harry in.

By day, Adam writes screenplays. But he’s got stuck, so after perusing some personal effects, he takes the train to Sanderstead. There, he watches a boy in a window. He follows a man across an area of parkland. Coming out of a shop, the man spots him and asks him to come over. You think it might be a pickup – but no, it’s his dad (Jamie Bell).… Read the rest

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Padre Pio

Director – Abel Ferrara – 2022 – Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 104m

***1/2

Post-WW1, In San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, a Catholic mystic undergoes temptation while down in the village, armed landowners and military officers attempt to halt the rising tide of socialism – out on Blu-ray, DVD & DL from Monday, March 11th

Ferrara has long been something of an outsider, working with small budgets. This current offering is highly uneven, very strong and moving in places, betrayed by a lack of planning and resources in others. Perhaps its besetting sin (to use Christian religious parlance) is that it doesn’t deliver exactly what it sets out to: this is not exactly a portrait of early 20th Century, Catholic mystic Pio (Shia LaBeouf). The friar really only forms half of the film – arguably its weaker half – dealing only intermittently with his life from arrival in the impoverished Italian village of San Giovanni Rotondo in 1916 through to his visitation by Jesus and first manifestation of stigmata some years later.

The other half of the film, running in parallel to this, deals with the aftermath of World War One in that same village, as men return from the Front to be reunited with wives and mothers.… Read the rest

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Animation Movies Shorts

Pachyderm
(Pachyderme)

Director – Stéphanie Clément – 2022 – France – 11m

*****

A nine-year-old struggles with the trauma that befalls her at her grandpa’s – nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2024 Academy Awards, VoD details below review

She’s nine (voice-over: Christa Theret), and in the Summer she goes to stay with granny and grandpa. She plays on a swing, missing mum and dad, she watches a cabbage white butterfly in the garden. The house is tidy, ordered, perhaps obsessively so. It smells of polish; the kitchen smells of bleach. Tomorrow, grandpa will take her to the lake, where he likes to fish. To get to her bedroom, she must pass the big, intimidating horn mounted at the top of the stairs, a hunting trophy from a pachyderm. In her room, she can see eyes watching her from the wood grain of the ceiling timbers. She doesn’t sleep by counting sheep; she kills monsters. As the floorboards creak outside her door, she hides in the wallpaper, in the flowers, in sleep. After all, as grandma says, what could happen?

Before the trip, she accidentally pricks a finger on one of grandpa’s fishing hooks – lures, as they call them – but grandpa kisses the cut better with the kiss that heals all things.… Read the rest

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Letter to a Pig

Director – Tal Kantor – 2022 – France, Israel – 17m

*****

Under the watchful eye of an authoritarian teacher, as a class of bored teenagers listens to a visiting Holocaust survivor recount his experiences, one of their number daydreams about the pig with which the survivor shared a barn – nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2024 Academy Awards, VoD details below review

A figure (voice: Indra Maharik) with one shoe flees, running through a forest. “Nothing mattered”, says the old man sitting, his hands clasped together on the desk, in front of the schoolroom of bored Israeli teenagers. Haim (voice: Alexander Peleg) is recounting his experiences under the Nazi regime, but the teenagers would rather be somewhere else. Haim tells how he fled to a barn, where the pig there effectively saved his life. The severe teacher (voice: Ayelet Margalit) ejects one of them for remarking, “oink, oink”. Haim, recounting the past, talks about people capable of hate not deserving to live; he has clearly been unable to forgive those who acted on behalf of the Nazi regime.

Drifting off into a reverie, in her mind’s eye, one girl (voice: Moriyah Meerson) sees the SS send a pig to pursue the boy through the forest.… Read the rest

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Origin

Director – Ava DuVernay – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 135m

***

A US journalist researches a book reinterpreting US racist attitudes to black people through both the Nazi’s segregation of Jews and the Indian caste system’s treatment of Dalits – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 8th

This is based on both the 2020 nonfiction book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents and its author US journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson’s journey in writing that book. Highly effective in putting the first of those elements on the screen, the screenplay, credited to both DuVernay and Wilkerson, proves much more uneven in its attempts to do so with the second.

Wilkerson’s thesis looks at the US’ historic racist treatment of black people through the lens of a caste system. The term caste system derives from the Western European analysis of Indian society, and to a lesser extent other South Asian societies, in which certain designated groups are elevated above others to produce and maintain a social hierarchy. As portrayed here in the film, the book looks firstly at the US in these terms – a caste system favouring white people over blacks – then Nazi Germany – a caste system favouring Germans over Jews, a radical use of caste as an historical analytical tool I have never come across before – and finally India – a caste system putting the Dalits, the untouchables who traditionally clean latrines, at the bottom of the pile below everyone else.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

The Inventor

Directors – Jim Capobianco, Pierre-Luc Granjon – 2023 – US, France, Ireland – Cert. PG – 100m

****

Towards the end of his life, inventor Leonardo da Vinci goes to live in France under the patronage of the King – stop frame / drawn animation composite is out in the UK’s Vue cinemas on Friday, March 8th

Rome, Italy, 1516. Leonardo da Vinci (voice: Stephen Fry) happily shows off a giant optical system of magnifying glasses for observing the heavens to his assistant Francesco Melzi (voice: Angelino Sandri). Francesco retorts that Leonardo ought to be worried about the Pope who has spies everywhere (and sure enough, there are eyes watching from nearby peepholes). Leonardo’s other assistant, the hulking, mute Zoroastro sources corpses for him, on which the curious Leonardo performs dissections and studies what he finds through making drawings in his quest for find the animated spirit of man, a search which, in dreams and visions, often leads him into confrontation with a mysterious, gargantuan, dark-hooded figure.

The inventor is summoned to Pope Leo X (voice: Matt Berry) who wants to know, why can’t Leonardo just make pretty things? The arrival of a messenger whose helmet is half crushed by a cannonball leads Leo to suggest Leonardo fashion him machines of war.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The End We Start From

Director – Mahalia Belo – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 102m

***1/2

As parts of the UK are flooded and submerged by an ecological disaster, a woman births a baby she must then bring up – on Digital from Monday, March 4th following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, January 19th

On the one hand, this starts off with a woman (Jodie Comer) giving birth and then experiencing the process of being a new mother, with all the joys and stresses that entails. On the other, this shows the UK being overtaken and flooded by an eco-disaster, and how people respond to that situation both individually and en masse. The second scenario is reminiscent of any number of disaster and / or science fiction movies about flooding, apocalypse or dystopia (When Worlds Collide, Rudolph Maté, 1951; Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón, 2006; Waterworld, Kevin Reynolds, 1995): if you approach this movie expecting something like that, you’re going to be disappointed, because although that element is very much present in the film, it’s little more than the backdrop.

It plays more like a road movie, in which the heroine – the husband having dropped out of the narrative towards the end of the first reel – meets a series of people on her travels, each of whom offer their own individual insight into the state of things and how the new mother might move forward.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Dune Part Two

Director – Denis Villeneuve – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 166m

*****

Afallen dynastyfights back on a desert planet populated with giant sandworms– out in cinemas on Friday, March 1st

The second part of the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling novel Dune (1965) – the title Dune Part Two following the title Dune Part One on the print of the previous film – poses the filmmakers a greater adaptation challenge than the first in terms of the magnitude of, exactly what do you leave out to turn it into a strong, two and a half hours plus movie, and what do you keep in.

Villeneuve clearly doesn’t want to repeat himself, because he takes a very different approach adapting the second half of the book than he did for the first, which may or may not serve to make the two halves feel weirdly incongruent when viewed, as they surely will be, back to back. Indeed, it makes you wonder whether there exists a much longer cut of Dune Part Two or a much longer version of the screenplay – it all depends on whether the pruning took place at the scripting stage, the shooting stage, or the editing stage.… Read the rest

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Driving Mum
(Á Ferð Með Mömmu)

Director – Hilda Oddsson – 2023 – Iceland, Estonia – Cert. 12a – 112m

****1/2

After his mum dies, a man must honour her last wish by driving her to her final resting place… On the way, she talks to him… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 1st

The 1980s. Jón (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson) lives with his mother (Kristbjörg Kjeld) and his faithful dog Brezhnev in a remote part of rural Iceland. Days are spent sitting in the house knitting sweaters and listening to the radio – actually audio cassette recordings of the radio which run out in mid-sentence. These are periodically received in batches in boxes from a visiting trader in a boat in exchange for Jon and his mum’s home-knitted sweaters. Mum regrets never having been to Gullfoss, and Jon points out it’s unlikely to happen now. He is also a keen amateur photographer who operates his own darkroom. Rightly or wrongly, his mum worries about how he will survive after she’s gone.

One morning, he wakes to discover she has died in her sleep. He makes her corpse up as best he can, which leaves much to be desired, since her resultant look is somewhere between a clown and a zombie.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Lonely Castle
in the Mirror
(Kagami no Kojo,
かがみの孤城)

Director – Keiichi Hara – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 116m

*****

Seven children are sucked via mirrors in their homes into a mysterious castle perched high above a sea, presided over by a wolf queen, and prowled by a hungry wolf at night – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Teenager Kokoro Anzai (voice: Ami Touma) can’t face going to school. Her understanding mother (voice: Kumiko Aso) takes her instead to the Classroom of the Heart at an alternative school for a session with friendly teacher Mrs. Kitajima (voice: Aoi Miyazaki). This is to be Kokoro’s new school, but in the end, she can’t face going to that one either, so her mum phones her in as sick.

Moping in her bedroom, she is attracted to lights glowing around the tall mirror there before touching its surface which, like the mirrors in Orphée (Jean Cocteau, 1950) dissolve to allow her to pass through them into another world. On the other side, she finds herself in a castle perched high on a rock above a sea along with six other kids – tall Aki (voice: Sakura Kiryu), soccer player Rion (voice: Takumi Kitamura), computer geek Subaru (voice: Rihito Itagaki), piano player Fuka (voice: Naho Yokomizo), enigmatic Masamune (voice: Minami Takayama), and dumpy Ureshiro (voice: Yuki Kaji).… Read the rest

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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
Painting
the Modern Garden
– Monet to Matisse

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2016 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

***1/2

The relationship of Claude Monet’s late water lily paintings to the history of horticulture, along with a few other artists and their gardens – out in UK cinemas for one day only on Tuesday, February 27th

Originally made to coincide with the Royal Academy’s 2016 exhibition of the same name, this basically does what it says on the tin. With Exhibition on Screen’s excellent series of documentaries about art and artists receiving brief cinema outings in recent years, this entry from the back catalogue is given a big screen outing. While the exhibition has long since been and gone, French Impressionist painter Claude Monet is one of those figures from the history of art who is incredibly popular, especially the late garden or water lily paintings, so a documentary about those late paintings ought to be a fairly easy sell.

Those Monet works and the garden he built at his house in Giverny – rented from 1893, owned from 1900 thanks to a loan from his dealer – are very much the spiritual centre of the film, along with Monet’s skill as a horticulturalist, which is explored at quite some length.… Read the rest

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The Moon Thieves
(Dou Yeut Ze,
盜月者)

Director – Yuen Kim-wei – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 107m

**

A gang including a counterfeit watchmaker and an amateur safe cracker attempt to steal a watch worn by an astronaut on the 1969 moon landing – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 23rd

This heist movie is built around three members of hugely popular Cantopop boy band Mirror: Anson Lo, Edan Lui and Keung To. Vincent Ma (Lui) is a watchmaker who builds counterfeit (i.e. non-brand name) watches out of genuine parts. He takes great pride in his work and his watches are very reliable as a result. Yoh (Lo) desperately needs money to pay for the operation that will save the ailing eyesight of his mom Ms. Hong (Luna Shaw), so he signs up to work with the ruthless young crime boss heir known simply as Uncle (Keung) despite the fact that Yoh’s elder brother was previously killed by gangsters, so he ought to know better.

Uncle has enlisted Ma to look at three watches in Tokyo that might be worth stealing – he is to take them apart, examine their insides and confirm as to whether or not they are genuine.… Read the rest

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Klokkenluider

Director – Neil Maskell – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 84m

*****

A couple have seen something; two men are assigned to look after them as they wait in the middle of nowhere for a journalist to come and interview them – a subscription exclusive on BFI Player from Thursday, February 22nd

Mr. Appleby (Amit Shah) and Mrs. Appleby (Sura Dohnke) arrive at the house on the outskirts of a small village in Belgium they’ve booked for a party. Appleby is not their real surname, and nor will there be a party. He is what the Dutch call a ‘klokkenluider’ or bell ringer, slang in that language for whistleblower. He has approached a newspaper and is following instructions. They are at the house awaiting the arrival of a journalist to interview them.

Meanwhile, Brits Kevin (Tom Burke) and Ben (Roger Evans) are driving to meet them. They have guns in the boot. We don’t really see them at first. For the first few minutes, they are shown only in little details cropped or in shade so as to be almost unrecognisable – a fragment of a detail in a wing mirror here, a view beyond a car window part obscured by a reflection there – and they choose their words carefully so as not to give away anything more than they need to.… Read the rest

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Twilight Cinema Blues
(Ginpei-cho Cinema Blues,
銀平町シネマブルース)

Director – Hideo Jojo – 2022 – Japan – 99m

*****

Two homeless men find a new spiritual home at a run-down, local cinema which, like them, is struggling to survive – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Down on his luck in his home town of Ginpei-cho, Takeshi Kondo (Keisuke Koide fromShin Godzilla, Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi, 2016) is napping by the riverside in daylight. Along comes another tramp Sato (Shohei Uno from A Far Shore, Masaaki Kudo, 2022; 37 Seconds, Hikari, 2019) to sell him a flier for money and, when Kondo is distracted by the arrival of his old friend Kumika, to steal his bag. After Kondo tracks Sato down and retrieves his bag – “sorry, it’s a habit”, says Sato – the two tramps respond to an ad claiming it can help them play the system and receive welfare payments. Sadly, the people behind the scheme will turn out to be, as a fellow tramp vocally suspects, crooks with a whole other moneymaking agenda.

Kondo attends welfare-claiming training sessions with Sato, but his heart isn’t in it.… Read the rest

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Mondays:
See You ‘This’ Week!
(Mondays/
Kono Taimu Ruupu,
Joshi ni Kizukasenaito Owaranai,
MONDAYS／
このタイムループ、
上司に気づかせないと
終わらない)

Director – Ryo Takebayashi – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 82m

****

A comedy in which a group of office workers must find a way to escape the week-long time loop in which they find themselves trapped – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

A dream. A Friday night conversation with the client she’s always wanted to work for and with whom she starts a job next Monday. Monday, October 25th. Akemi Yoshikawa (Wan Marui) wakes up in the office where she and advertising her co-workers have just pulled an all-nighter to get the presentations done for the client. They are exhausted, necks in travel pillows as they kip on the floor. A hapless bird strikes the window. Their middle-aged boss Mr. Nagahisa (Sports Makita) saunters in after a restful weekend.

Now Yoshiwaka must get working on that Miso Soup Soda Tablet product launch that the client wants to sound like something out of the ordinary. But then, the two guys at the next desk try to tell her that they are trapped in a time loop. They, as in, everyone in the office. She doesn’t really have the time to listen.… Read the rest

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Shadow of Fire
(Hokage,
ほかげ)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 95m

****

A woman has drifted into prostitution, while a small boy struggles to survive in post-war Tokyo – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

An interior in the ruins of post-war Tokyo. A figure sleeps restlessly on a mat. A man hunts for a child who has broken in and is stealing food to survive. The man says to the waking woman (Shuri), “I approach the ones who look harmless – but who knows?” As he forces himself upon here, the image cuts away to decay on the walls. The woman’s hand, like a strange, disembodied limb, appears over a parapet fixture. The man goes out to solicit clients from the woman.

A soldier (Hiroki Kono) comes in, clearly in a bad way, drinks some Sake, pays the fee, then falls asleep. In the morning, she makes him breakfast. He asks to stay, promising to get work and pay his way, but after a day or so the young boy (Oga Tsukao), who she has taken under her wing, reports that he just sits in the same spot and does no work-hunting.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

Getting It Back:
The Story of Cymande

Director – Tim MacKenzie-Smith – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

****

How a promising, innovative black 1970s band failed to crack the UK music business, only for their music to take on a life of its own through various later, popular musical movements – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 16th and out on BFI Blu-ray, BFI Player Subscription, iTunes and Amazon Prime on Monday, 26 February

Film critics have their blind spots (there are films you’d assume I’ve seen which I never have) and so too do serious music listeners, among whom I number myself. Prior to this film, I had never heard of Cymande. That’s surprising to me, actually, because I started seriously listening to music in the 1970s and have never stopped (although, significantly, rap and hip-hop, which came later, never really did it for me). And Cymande, it turns out, were a band of the early 1970s. It’s not mentioned in this film, but they played a couple of sessions for legendary UK Radio One DJ John Peel where it’s likely I would have heard them, had I started listening regularly to his show earlier than 1974, after they recorded a session.

The narrative in MacKenzie-Smith’s documentary runs something like this: in the 1950s and 60s, Britain invited numerous Commonwealth citizens from Caribbean islands like Jamaica, St.… Read the rest

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Bob Marley
One Love

Director – Reinaldo Marcus Green – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

***1/2

From his childhood in poverty in Jamaica, Bob Marley rises to stardom and international fame as the bast known proponent of reggae music – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 16th

All this movie has to do to succeed is give us lots of Bob Marley’s recordings and show us lots of images of him doing things in the process. That’s what the movie says on the tin and that’s what you find inside. It fundamentally delivers what its audience expects and will probably do very well. Although I wouldn’t describe myself as a particular fan, over the years Marley’s music has seeped inescapably into both the popular and my own consciousness: it’s good, positive stuff which genuinely hits a tangible musical groove. I watched the movie and had the good time I was expecting. And Kingsley Ben-Adir is watchable enough as Marley.

However.

Anyone who comes to this wanting to know more about Bob Marley will find this a frustrating experience. Director Green, who co-wrote the script, fails to introduce a number of characters properly. Among Marley’s entourage of musicians and friends, for instance, I couldn’t tell you which one in the film is Peter Tosh (Alex-A Game), who is something of a lesser legend in the world of reggae.… Read the rest

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The Taste of Things
(The Pot-au-Feu)
(La Passion
de Dodin Bouffant)

Director – Tran Anh Hung – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 145m

*****

A nineteenth century, French gastronome tries to persuade his live-in cook to become his wife – in cinemas in the UK and Ireland from Wednesday, February 14th

1885. Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) is the live-in cook for celebrated gastronome Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel). Over the years, he and his male friends have enjoyed her culinary skills. They are in a relationship: some nights, her bedroom door is unlocked and he can gain admission, other nights, it’s locked. She likes things the way they are and has no plans to marry him. However, he has other ideas…

This opens with a bravura cooking sequence in a huge, French chateau kitchen as Eugénie and her assistant Violette (Galatéa Bellugi) and Violette’s younger, visiting cousin Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), with a degree of assistance from Dodin, prepare the most amazing French meal you’ve ever seen. You start to think you’re in for two and a half hours of hunger-inducing food porn when the tone starts to shift, and the threads of a plot impose themselves ever so subtly on the proceedings.

Dodin accepts a challenge from a foreign prince, used to lengthy meals that last longer than 24 hours, to cook a meal the challenger will never forget.… Read the rest

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Dune
(2021)

Director – Denis Villeneuve – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 155m

*****

A powerful family is exiled to a desert planet populated with giant sandworms as part of an interplanetary conspiracy to end their dynasty – back out in cinemas from Friday, February 8th 2024

Frank Herbert’s sprawling novel Dune (1965) was read in the late 1960s and 1970s by any teenage boy with the slightest interest in science fiction and fantasy. It had (a little) space travel but more significantly it had alien worlds, notably the desert planet Arrakis on which 95% of the action takes place, and so ticked the SF box.

Then it had a whole ecology involving the planet’s occupants the Fremen, a drug known as ‘the Spice’, and giant sandworms, so it also ticked the fantasy box.

On top of this, it pitted dynasties – ‘Houses’ – against each other in a tale of interplanetary political intrigue.

The plot was unbelievably convoluted, spawning a lengthy series of sequels. I gave up around the fifth or sixth book. And yet, the first book possessed an almost mythic quality that my diminishing interest in the later volumes was unable to dispel.

The sheer quantity of plot was always going to be a challenge for a standalone movie.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Fungi Web of Life
laser digital IMAX 3D

Director – Joseph Nizeti – Co-directors – Gisela Kaufmann, Paul Phelan – 2023 – Australia – Cert. U – 40m

*****

The amazing world of fungi, its place in the ecosystem and how it may be able to help solve some environmental issues; narrated by Björk, presented by Merlin Sheldrake – out at the BFI Waterloo IMAX on Friday, February 9th

Think of fungi and most of us immediately think of mushrooms or toadstools, but those are merely its above ground manifestation. In fact, the wood wide web (a phrase easily misheard as the more familiar World Wide Web) extends through forests which are, as this notes in passing, disappearing at an alarming rate through deforestation, when the mostly slow paced and marvellous imagery and peaceful sounds and music on offer are briefly interrupted by a close up of the huge drive wheel of a mechanical digger and grating sounds of machinery to match.

Innovative Icelandic musician Björk, who has referred to her 2022 album Fossora as her ‘mushroom album’, lends her voice to the English language narration here. This gives the piece a strange, unearthly feeling that’s somehow perfect for its subject matter. Also on hand is biologist, writer and speaker Merlin Sheldrake, who wanders through the proceedings to visit Kew Gardens and assorted natural areas of forest around the planet to point out pertinent items and features.… Read the rest

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Born To Fly
(Chang Kong
Zhi Wang,
长空之王,
lit.
King Of The Sky)

Director – Liu Xiaoshi – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 128m

***1/2

Genuinely thrilling action movie about Chinese test pilots owes much to US movies Top Gun and The Right Stuff, even as it attempts to justify current expansionist Chinese views – out on Blu-ray and Digital from Monday, February 5th

From above the clouds. Two stealth jets. Down towards the sea surface and an oil platform flying a Chinese flag. Coffee in a cup vibrating Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) style to indicate the imminent approach of the monster. Sonic boom. Aircraft fly past. Oil rig windows blow out. Faces are cut to ribbons. In one cockpit, the pilot radios his colleague and, presumably, anyone else listening (in US English): “we can come and go anywhere we want.”

Then, a Chinese plane after them. In their sights. But, before the American can shoot it down, the Chinese loops the loop, transforming from target to shooter. Vowing, like that villainous Hollywood icon The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) to be back, the US pilots leave Chinese airspace.

The Chinese aircraft, meanwhile, clearly inferior to its US counterparts, suffers flameout requiring its ace pilot to make a forced landing during which its drogue parachute fails to open.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Japan Foundation Touring Programme 2024

The Snow Flurry

This year’s Japan Foundation (JPF) Touring Programme, which runs throughout February and March and is celebrating its 21st edition, is based around one of the great theme of cinema: memories. With screening venues spread widely over the UK, it covers the following thirty UK cities or counties (six more than last year, making it the largest number of JPF venues to date):

Aberystwyth Belfast Birmingham Bristol Cambridge Cardiff Chester Chichester Colchester Coventry Derby Dundee Edinburgh Exeter Inverness Kendal Lancaster Leicester Lewes Liverpool London Manchester Newcastle upon Tyne Norwich Nottingham Orkney Oxford Plymouth Sheffield and York.

(Click on any of the cities or counties above for more information.)

Under the moniker Unforgettable: Memories, Times and Reflections in Japanese Cinema, the programme gathers together films showing how Japanese filmmakers employ memories, from those using them as a focal point to those where they subliminally drive or affect characters’ behaviour.

Highlights include:

– the UK Premiere of Shadow of Fire, the latest work from festival favourite Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man),

– a new entry in the Roman Porno genre, Hand, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Nikkatsu’s controversial line of erotic cinema,

– visually stunning anime Lonely Castle in the Mirror,

– fascinating courtroom drama Winny about a computer programmer arrested for creating a P2P file-sharing platform,

– a retrospective classic from the Golden Age of Japanese cinema in Keisuke Kinoshita’s The Snow Flurry.… Read the rest

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Winny
(Winny)

Director – Yusaku Matsumoto – 2023 – Japan – Cert. tbc – 127m

*****

Based on a true story; the state attempts to prosecute the software developer of the file sharing programme Winny for copyright violation – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

2003. After programmer Isamu Kaneko (Masahiro Takashide) creates a file-sharing programme Winny, the media reports that people are using it to illegally download movies. Across Japan in late November, a series of police raids on flats leads to the arrests of several Winny users, along with its creator. In custody and being questioned, Kaneko is very bad at paying attention. Believing the cops have his and society’s best interests at heart, he cooperates by copying into his own handwriting a confession they have written and signing it, on the verbal understanding that he can change or tweak the document before it is used in court. The interrogating cop, however, has deceived him into making a statement that will stand as evidence in court.

Defence attorney Toshimitsu Dan (Takahiro Miura) agrees to take on Kaneko’s case and is horrified by the computer programmer’s naivety about all things legal.… Read the rest

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The Zone of Interest

Director – Jonathan Glazer – 2023 – UK, Poland – Cert. 12a – 106m

*****

A drama about the everyday, domestic lives of the Commandant of Auschwitz, his wife, and their family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 2nd

How do people sleep at night? If they do bad things? Well, some people who do bad things are tormented by them. They sleep badly. Their conscience, however repressed by them, disturbs them. The others? Well, they seem to sleep soundly.

The Zone of Interest is about people who, as part of their daily routine, do or at least consent to, even inaugurate, unspeakable things. These people are a respectable married couple and their extended family. The focus here is on the ordinary, everyday activities they pursue rather than the unspeakable activities. A nice bathing trip to the river; a later panic when there might be an infection in the river and family members are bathing in it. (The bad stuff seeps into the everyday, routine, speakable stuff, it seems.) Mum taking the little one round the garden and telling her the names of the flowers. Mum running an efficient household, with an army of servants. Mum trying on a second-hand, fur coat.… Read the rest

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American Fiction

Director – Cord Jefferson – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

A black, American college Literature professor, unexpectedly finds celebrity via an anonymous alter-ego when he writes a cliché-ridden book about ‘the black experience’ – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 2nd

College professor Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is a black academic at a white university. He teaches literature. While he’s teaching a class on the literature of the American South, a young, white, female student objects to the “N-word”, walks out of the class, and – in due course – gets him put on an unpaid Sabbatical. He’s a published novelist who hasn’t had anything published for years, including a manuscript currently doing the rounds through his agent Arthur, whereas other, white, faculty members publish work he considers beneath him yet which also sell in volume in airports.

His Sabbatical ties in with the fact of his going to a Literature Festival in his home city of Boston, where he finds his seminar poorly attended because it’s up against one by rising publishing sensation Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), author of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, which, when he investigates her session, turns out to be what he considers pandering to black stereotypes of living in poverty, crime and misery.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies Music

Blue Giant
(BLUE GIANT)

Director – Yuzura Tachikawa – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 120m

*****

Three 18-year-olds form a jazz band with the aim of playing at Tokyo’s top jazz club – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, January 31st and Thursday, February 1st

Before this property was a movie – an animated movie – it was a manga. Which, on one level, is nothing that out of the ordinary in Japan (see, for instance, basketball movie The First Slam Dunk, Takehiko Inoue, 2022) but on another is extraordinary. Blue Giant is about music, specifically jazz, even more specifically teenager Dai Miyamoto (voice: Yuki Yamada; musicianship: Tomoaki Baba) who gives up basketball and decides he wants to be the best tenor sax player in the world. He rehearses intensively by the banks of the river in the city of Sendai where he lives, leaving for Tokyo at age 18 and talking his way into moving in with old pal Shunji Tamada (voice: Amane Okayama; musicianship: Shun Ishikawa).

Unsure where to start, Dai visits a bar named Jazz – Take Two where the friendly Mama-san Akiko (voice: Sayaka Kinoshita), who no longer hosts live jazz gigs there, takes pity on him and plays him selections from her vast wall of jazz LPs.… Read the rest

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Samsara (2023)

Director – Lois Patiño – 2023 – South Korea, Spain – Cert. U –113m

*****

The story of two lives – an old woman dying in Laos and a goat born in Zanzibar – and the connection between them – is out in cinemas in the UK in the new year on Friday, January 26th following its screening in the 2023 London Film Festival

You think you’ve seen everything there is to see in movies, and then along comes a movie that does something unexpected that completely breaks the mould. In the middle of this film, we are invited to close our eyes and not open them again until asked; if we follow this instruction, something extraordinary occurs.

The word Samsara is used in a number of Asian religious systems (notably Hinduism and Buddhism) to denote the idea of a constant cycle of reincarnation: you are born, you die, you are reborn in another form, you die, you are reborn in another form, an so on. This idea is contrary to that of the Judeo-Christian religions in which you are born, you die, once only, and you are judged.

What Samsara does so brilliantly is show us the first of these two systems, showing the end of one life and the beginning of another.… Read the rest

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Jackdaw

Director – Jamie Childs – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

**

When ex-British army mercenary Jack Dawson – a.k.a. Jackdaw – retrieves a package from the North Sea for a client, things go horribly wrong, forcing him to go through the North East in search of answers – British action thriller is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 26th

Jackdaw is the nickname for Jack Dawson (Oliver Jackson-Cohen from Emily Frances O’Connor, 2022; The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021; The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannel, 2020), an ex-army mercenary who looks after his down syndrome brother Simon (Leon Harrop). A call comes in to his answering machine for what appears to be a routine job picking up a package from the coastal waters of the North Sea, and it pays well, so might provide the much-needed opportunity for the two brothers to improve their lot. Jack is good at what he does, but the job proves to be far less routine than stated, as he finds himself first the quarry of a pursuit then discovers his brother has been kidnapped. In search of answers, he sets off on visiting a trail of contacts across the underworld of the North of England.… Read the rest

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Crazy Thunder Road
(Kuruizaki
Sanda Rodo,
狂い咲きサンダーロード)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1980 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

Following on from Arrow’s superb BD of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) comes Third Window’s equally impressive BD release of its predecessor in the Ishii canon Crazy Thunder Road (1980) – on Blu-ray from Monday, February 21st 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK

This was Ishii’s Nihon University student graduation project, his first to be shot on 16mm rather than Super 8, which somehow got picked up for distribution by major Japanese Studio Toei which led to their giving him a budget for Burst City. Tom Mes, who as with Burst City supplies a commentary for the film, describes Crazy Thunder Road as “one of the Holy Grails of Japanese film releases if not the Holy Grail.”

When Toei presented Ishii with what seemed like astronomical funding for Burst City, it led him to overreach himself. In retrospect, he considers Burst City unfinished… [Read the full review at All The Anime]

Crazy Thunder Road was out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, February 21st, 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK.… Read the rest

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The Holdovers

Director – Alexander Payne – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 133m

*****

A teenage pupil must remain at school in the care of his strict and widely despised Ancient History teacher over the 1970 Christmas holidays – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 19th

A school movie with a difference: this takes place not in term time, but in the holidays. Specifically, a New England boys’ boarding school in the 1970 Christmas holidays, when, for various reasons, five pupils – three teenage, two younger – are unable to go home for the seasonal break, so must instead be looked after by a member of staff at the school. That task falls to ancient history teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), who is filling in for the member of staff who made up a story about a difficult family health situation to get out of being lumbered with the task. Paul is put upon for jobs like this because he’s the guy who can’t say no; he’s also a stickler for hard work and discipline who is disliked by fellow teaching staff and pupils alike.

Once the other staff and students have left, one other person remains on the premises: the head cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who has a connection to the institution beyond her employment.… Read the rest

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In Broad Daylight
(Bak Yat Ji Ha,
白日之下)

Director – Lawrence Kwan Chun Kan – 2023 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 106m

***1/2

A woman uncovers a catalogue of abuse visited upon the residents of the Hong Kong care home in which her grandfather lives – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 19th

This opens and closes to the strains of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and images of Hong Kong buildings reaching towards the sky.

Ling Hu Kay (Jennifer Wu from The Shadows, Glenn Chan, 2020; Tracey, Li Jun, 2018) enters the Rainbow Bridge Care Home in search of her grandfather Chow Kin-Tong (David Chiang from Election, Johnnie To, 2005; The Adventurers, Ringo Lam, 1995; Once Upon a Time in China II, Tsui Hark, 1992; Yes, Madam!, Corey Yuen, 1985; Shaolin Temple, Chang Cheh, Wu Ma, 1976) who she hasn’t visited for a while as she’s been abroad in Canada. He doesn’t remember her. Chow’s roommate is the amiable Shui (Woo Fung). Shocked at finding a dead rat in their room, she finds the manager Cheung Kim-wah (a memorable Bowie Lam The Crossing, 2014; Hard Boiled, 1992, both John Woo) who informs her both that while they are always understaffed, the place is like a family where everyone pitches in.… Read the rest

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Mean Girls (2024)

Directors – Samantha Jayne, Arturo Perez Jr. – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 112m

**

A reimagining as a musical of the eponymous, 2004 US High School movie in which the new girl finds herself up against a girl clique – out in UK cinemas on Friday, Wednesday, January 17th

Raised and homeschooled on the open plains of Kenya, 16-year-old Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is in for a shock when her mum suddenly decides the family is moving back to the US. The shock comes specifically in terms of High School, which she swiftly discovers to be a hostile world of exclusive cliques.

Two outsiders Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) take it upon themselves to explain who’s who and against their advice, she falls in with the Plastics: Regina George (Reneé Rapp), Gretchen (Bebe Wood), and Karen (Avantika), a group of three rich, bitchy and style-obsessed girls who regard themselves as superior to everyone else.

Cady swiftly puts a foot wrong by falling head over heels for Regina’s boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), and the narrative swiftly develops into a conflict between her and the other three Plastics, particularly Regina. It’s a musical, too: cue song and dance numbers.… Read the rest

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The Boys in the Boat

Director – George Clooney – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 123m

*****

Based on a true story. A group of students become the rowing team who compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 12th

Washington State, the mid-1930s. Engineering student Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) can barely afford to live, sleeping in an abandoned, wrecked automobile at night and faced with University fees he can’t pay during the day. Desperate for some – any – work that pays enough to help him get by, he is encouraged by fellow student Roger Morris (Sam Strike) to sign up for the rowing team. Only nine people can ultimately be chosen for the team (eight plus a reserve), and to get there all applicants must undergo a rigorous trial process so that coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton from Master Gardener, Paul Schrader, 2022, and much else) and his team can select the best men for the job.

It’s backbreaking work, and against all odds, both Rantz and Morris make it into the team. Curiously, the film starts off as being about the two of them, but as the narrative progresses, the focus on Morris fades as the emphasis shifts both to Rantz and the whole eight-man-strong team.… Read the rest

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Blank

Director – Natalie Kennedy – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 94m

****

Struggling with writer’s block, a successful author checks in to an AI-controlled retreat facility only for a virus to wreak havoc on the software which runs it, turning her into a prisoner – out on UK digital download from Monday, January 8th

Successful writer of pulp horror fiction Claire Rivers (Rachel Shelley) has writer’s block. And a deadline. And is being hassled on the phone by her agent, Alice (voice: Tamsin Jeffrey). She has a month, and Alice can’t keep fobbing off her publisher. Claire needs to get round whatever the problem is. So Claire accepts that invitation to a writer’s retreat she’s been avoiding.

Now, this is now ordinary retreat – it’s run by AI. Once there, her hand is scanned to open the door. She’s met by a charming man (Wayne Brady) – or rather, a holographic projection of a charming man, who informs her that her personal concierge is being set up as he speaks. So Claire meets Rita (Heida Reid), an android who unpacks her things for her. And who almost – but not quite – interacts with her. There’s some something quite odd about Rita.… Read the rest

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SCALA!!!
Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits

Directors – Ali Catterall, Jane Giles – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 96m

*****

From 1978 to 1993, London’s Scala Cinema programmed everything from art house to sexploitation, ushering in the upcoming generation of anti-establishment musicians, filmmakers, and others – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 5th

Whatever the strengths of this film – and they are legion – it may be impossible for me to write an objective review of it. From my first visit to Tottenham Street to watch an afternoon programme of back-to-back Tex Avery animation shorts on Saturday, 25th October 1980, I could often be found at London’s Scala cinema in the 1980s, broadening my mind as I lapped up welcome servings of movies long or short, old or new, highbrow or trashy. So there are a few additional titbits in what follows which come from my own personal, mental Scala archive of memory rather than from the documentary itself.

As for the date, my memory’s not actually that good. Such information can, however, be discerned from the wondrous if unfeasibly large-sized book SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, which amongst other things contains all the monthly Scala programmes. It was written by co-director and former Scala employee / programmer Jane Giles’ and edited by fellow co-director Ali Catterall.… Read the rest

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Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2023

Full Tiime

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2023, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add / sort.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/23 and 31/12/23.

This version includes re-releases, but those aren’t numbered. It’s hard to imagine movies improving on Powell and Pressburger’s i know where i’m going or The Red Shoes, Powell’s Peeping Tom or Von Trier’s Melancholia.

In addition to re-releases, this version also includes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2023.

The star ratings may occasionally differ from the star rating I gave a particular film at the time of review.

Beyond the first 25 numbered titles, there may be numerous errors (missing links to reviews where I wrote one, year of release, country, and maybe more). All this will be fixed in time, but I wanted to get something online in the holidays.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten Movies (and more) 2023

Please click on titles to see reviews. (Links yet to be added.)… Read the rest

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The Boy And The Heron
(Kimitachi Wa
Do Ikiru Ka,
君たちはど
う生きるか,
lit.
How Do You Live?)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

During WorldWar Two, a boy bereaved of his mother moves to the countryside with his businessman father where a heron lures him into another dimension to rescue his vanished stepmother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 26th

Directors, eh? They make their last film, then, some time later, they go and make another one. The Wind Rises (2013) was supposed to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, but three years later, he was working on his next one. And seven years further on, The Boy And The Heron hits cinemas. The Japanese title How Do You Live? comes from a popular children’s novel, a copy of which appears in the film, rather than the film being an adaptation of the novel.

Three years into World War Two, young boy Mahito (Japanese dub: Soma Santoki; English dub: Luca Padovan) loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. Four years into the war, his father (Japanese dub: Takuya Kimura; English dub: Christian Bale) – a businessman who manufactures aircraft cockpits for the war effort – decides to move both his factory and his son out of Tokyo to the countryside where he plans to marry his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Japanese dub: Yoshino Kimura; English dub: Gemma Chan).… Read the rest

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Ferrari

Director – Michael Mann – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 130m

*****

As Enzo Ferrari’s racing team takes on a particularly tough race in 1957, the complexities of his private life prove equally challenging – out in UK cinemas on Tuesday, December 26th

You might reasonably expect a movie about legendary driver turned racing car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari to be about motor racing, and while that’s undeniably true of this film, it’s about far more. In essence, it’s a character study about a man’s life focused on a brief period of his career, in which complex professional and personal issues intersect.

Based on a script by the late, great Troy Kennedy Martin (1932-2009 – writer of The Italian Job, 1969; BBC TV series Z Cars, 1962 and Edge of Darkness, 1985), Mann’s film covers four months in 1957 building up to a particularly tough race, the Mille Miglia, the route for which covers 1 000 miles of open country roads.

Alongside the considerable challenges and demands of the race itself, the personal life of Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is nothing if not complex. His marriage to business-savvy Laura Garello Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) is on the rocks thanks to the death from muscular dystrophy in 1956 of their son Dino aged 24.… Read the rest

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Next Goal Wins
(2023)

Director – Taika Waititi – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

*

Big budget, narrative remake / reimagining of the compelling 2014 documentary about the world’s worst national football team mostly falls flat – out in UK cinemas on Tuesday, December 26th

Film productions come in all shapes and sizes: there is a valid place for both small, microbudget, independent, art house films and another for big budget, Studio based, mega-budget, mass market films. Nine years ago, Next Goal Wins (Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, 2014), a tiny, independent documentary film shot with minimal resources, emerged from a production set-up which afforded the filmmakers considerable creative freedom without which it’s unlikely their ultimately remarkable, compelling and insightful film would ever have come together in the way it did. Nine years after the original film, it has been remade as a narrative feature with name actors and a director with a proven gift for comedy.

The documentary was about the world’s worst national football team. American Samoa suffered the worst ever defeat for a soccer team in a World Cup qualifier when they lost to Australia by a staggering 31 goals to nil. The filmmakers hit paydirt when the team hired professional football coach Thomas Rongen to turn their fortunes around: suddenly, they unexpectedly had a film pitting the chilled out, American Samoan way of life against the ruthless, competitive ethos of international team sports.… Read the rest

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Next Goal Wins
(2014)

Directors – Mike Brett, Steve Jamison – 2014 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

DVD review for Third Way, 2014.

In 2001, American Samoa suffered the worst ever defeat for a soccer team in a World Cup qualifier when they lost to Australia by a staggering 31 goals to nil. Ten years later, FIFA still ranked the side at the bottom of its league table. Where most football teams dream of winning, American Samoa dreamed of not conceding a goal. Sensing herein the seed of a subject for a documentary film, Brit filmmakers Mike Brett & Steve Jamison headed for the tiny, English-speaking, Pacific island and spent months there hanging out with and filming the team in the training run up to the 2014 World Cup. What they captured on camera and edited into a feature film is both remarkable and compelling, whether or not you’re interested in football.

Rather than the expected group of losers, they find the team are steeped in the culture of American Samoa which is all about community, family and (Christian) religion, a very different cultural underpinning to Brett and Jamison’s. Western capitalism – and football within it – is all about competing, pushing yourself and your team as far as you / they can go and, ultimately, winning.… Read the rest

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The Red Shoes

Producers-Writers-Directors – The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) – 1948 – UK – Cert. PG – 135m

*****

A young dancer gives her all to the art of ballet, symbolised by the story’s centrepiece of the Ballet of the Red Shoes, in which the heroine is danced to death by the eponymous footwear – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th; major season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger continues at BFI Southbank and on BFI Player until the end of December with a free exhibition The Red Shoes: Beyond The Mirror (booking essential) running until Sunday, January 7th 2024

The second movie by the Archers not to deal with wartime issues in any way, shape or form (the first being Black Narcissus, 1947) deals with art in the story of a young dancer torn between love and her chosen art form. Student Julian Craster (Marius Goring) is outraged to discover, during its debut performance, that his music tutor Professor Palmer (Austin Trevor) has lifted several passages of Craster’s college work to pass them off as part of his latest dance score Heart of Fire. His subsequent interview with ballet company head and creative genius Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook, who appeared in four Productions of the Archers and later in The Queen Of Spades, Thorold Dickinson, 1949) secures him a lowly job as music arranger for the prestigious Ballet Lermontov.… Read the rest

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The Peasants
(Chłopi)

Directors – DK Welchman, Hugo Welchman – 2023 – Poland, Serbia, Lithuania – Cert. 15 – 114m

****1/2

A rural drama of romance, adultery and inheritance is expressed through the remarkable, foot-in-two-camps medium of live action filmmaking turned into animated painting – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

A small rural village in the early 20th Century. Young woman Jagna Paczesiówna (Kamila Urzędowska) is in love with Antek Boryna (Robert Gulaczyk). Unfortunately, not only is Antek already married to Hanka (Sonia Mietielica), who is fed up with his philandering, but also the latter’s father Maciej (Mirosław Baka), who is the richest person in the village, is widowed and wants Jagda to marry him – against her will but in line with that of her parents, who know a good thing when they see it. Alas, after the marriage, she carries on with Antek and things slowly go from bad to worse.

It’s gripping if harrowing stuff and would probably work well enough in live action, although it might not look that dissimilar to many other period costume dramas. It can occasionally be hard to keep track of who’s who, which I suspect is down to the script, an adaptation of a 1906 novel originally written as four volumes covering one year through the seasons Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, a trajectory also followed by the screenplay.… Read the rest

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Anselm
(Anselm
– Das Rauschen
Der Zeit)

Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany – Cert. PG – 93m

****

An exploration of the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer and the influences which lie behind it – 3D documentary plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

Wim Wenders seems to step effortlessly between narrative and documentary feature films, and you never feel that he considers one or the other more important. To him, they are all movies. As with his earlier Pina (2011), similarly about an artist – the choreographer Pina Bausch – this is another portrait of an artist shot in 3D. Wenders’ subject here, again eponymously designated by Christian name, is Anselm Kiefer, a practitioner of the plastic rather than the performing arts.

From the outset, it’s clear that the film needs to be seen in 3D. Wenders’ camera moves deliberately and formally around maquettes that resemble life-sized women wearing dresses, but without the women in them so that they stand as empty objects, often with strange constructions in the space where you would expect their neck and heads to be. The forest setting in which Wenders films them seems almost as significant as the maquettes themselves as we slowly pass by an upright tree trunk between the sculpture and us.… Read the rest

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Chicken Run:
Dawn of the Nugget

Director – Sam Fell – Co-Director – Jeff Newitt – 2023 – UK – Cert. PG – 101m

****

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Having escaped the farm for an island paradise, the chickens must break into and wreck a food processing factory masquerading as a holiday camp to lure unwitting chickens to their doom – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th and on Netflix from Friday, December 15th

More than two decades after the original Chicken Run (Nick Park, Peter Lord, 2000), its poultry return. They can hardly escape from the farm again, having established themselves on a secluded island in a lake well away from human beings. So the original’s co-screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick, a veteran of The Rescuers Down Under (1990), James And The Giant Peach (1996), The Little Vampire (2000), Charlotte’s Web (2006), makes use of a number of very clever tricks to have the chickens break in to a facility that endangers chicken lives rather than break out of one.

He effectively redeploys the escapees from the original, but it being over two decades since its production, he races through what would be just over a decade in chicken years if their lifespans were comparable to humans and has the hero Rocky (voice: Zachary Levi) and the heroine Ginger (voice: Thandiwe Newton) get together and produce a family in the form of a daughter, Molly (voice: Bella Ramsey) , who in the opening minutes’ montage grows into a teenager.… Read the rest

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Wonka

Director – Paul King – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 112m

Movie ****

Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa when he eventually appears*****

How the youthful Willy Wonka became the world’s most celebrated maker of chocolate – musical based on one of Roald Dahl’s best-known characters is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

Willy Wonka is familiar to generations of children through both the book in which he first appeared, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) and its two film adaptations Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton, 2005). Rather than remake the novel a third time, Warner Bros. have taken the bold step of creating a Willy Wonka origin story. Who was Wonka before he became the innovative and eccentric chocolate factory owner that book and movie audiences know and love? It’s a great idea for a film.

Paul King, who previously breathed cinematic life into another well-known figure from British children’s literature in his two Paddington movies (2017 and 2014), has, together with Paddington 2 co-screenwriter Simon Farnaby, come up with an original story which feels like a Dahl adaptation – although it isn’t.… Read the rest

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Chicken Run

Producer-Directors: Nick Park, Peter Lord – Producer – David Sproxton – 2000 – UK – Cert. PG – 84m

*****

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Plasticene stop-frame animation house Aardman Animations’ debut feature film reconceives The Great Escape with chickens – review originally published in year 2000

Aardman Animations’ A Close Shave (1995), the third half-hour outing for Nick Park’s popular Wallace & Gromit duo, exhibited several danger signs – specifically its close resemblance to brilliant, immediate precursor The Wrong Trousers (1993). Clearly aware of such pitfalls, Park and founding Aards Sproxton and Lord shrewdly signed a five-picture deal with Dreamworks but refused to rush into a first feature. Their caution has paid dividends: this first full length Aardmovie proves an unexpectedly wondrous odyssey.

It’s The Great Escape reconceived with chickens: familiar WW2 prison camp is reconfigured as North of England chicken coop with impenetrable fencing, rows of huts and a motley assortment of portly hen inmates. Ginger (voice: Julia Sawalha) wants to escape, but several disastrous attempts lead to solitary confinement (where she bounces a ball off the wall Steve McQueen style). Other chickens can’t see a problem – Bunty (voice: Imelda Staunton) simply keeps on laying eggs, while Babs (Horrocks) busies herself with constant knitting.… Read the rest

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Eileen

Director – William Oldroyd – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 97 m

***** Most of the film

* The last five minutes

NSFW

In the 1960s, the life of a young woman working in a Boston boys’ correctional facility is turned on its head by the arrival of a radical, young woman prison psychologist from New York – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 1st.

I don’t usually start with the ending of the film – and I’m not about to deliver a spoiler – but the ending of Oldroyd’s otherwise enthralling drama (if that’s the right term – I’m not sure it is) takes everything that has gone before which appeared to be building up to something and unceremoniously dumps it, as if there were another twenty minutes that had been written but not shot and an unsatisfactory ending had been tacked on.

There’s always that feeling with a truly extraordinary movie when you watch it for the first time that you don’t want the filmmakers to screw up and let go of whatever it is that’s working. Well, this one is extraordinary right up to the last five minutes, when it completely loses it. Prior to that, it starts out as one thing, turns into something else then swerves and moves about all over the place, taking the viewer with it on a strange, unpredictable journey.… Read the rest

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There’s Something
in the Barn

Director – Magnus Martens – 2023 – Norway – Cert. 15 – 100m

*

An American family immigrates to Norway where a relative has died and left them a farmhouse with a barn… and there’s something in the barn – badly misjudged horror comedy is out in UK cinemas and on digital download from Friday, December 1st

I have watched this film so that you don’t have to.

Incidentally, it has some of the best film stills I’ve ever seen. They are truly great. Don’t let that fool you: it’s a rotten movie.

One year after the unpleasant death of their Norwegian relative, the Californian nuclear family of dad, step-mum, son and daughter arrive at his farmhouse and barn in Norway which they’ve inherited. The unpleasant death is intriguing and workable if unoriginal horror fare; there is indeed something in the barn, and it’s not happy. So not happy, that it kills the relative.

But once the Californian family appear, the film undergoes a huge shift of tone from straight horror to pretty embarrassing comedy. Or, more accurately, alleged comedy because the laughs (or laugh – I think I may have laughed once) are (is) few and far between. Dad Bill (Martin Starr) is a happy-go-lucky, irritating, nerdy caricature; his new wife – and therefore step-mum to his kids – Carol (Amrita Acharia) is an equally annoying, former self-help guru.… Read the rest

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Wish

Directors – Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn – 2023 – US – Cert. U – 95m

**

The ruler of a kingdom where wishes can come true, undone by assuming the role of gatekeeper, morphs into a tyrant – latest Disney animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 24th

A believer in the idea that wishes can come true, a man trains himself in the art of sorcery and, with his wise and faithful wife at his side, sets himself up as King Magnifico (voice: Chris Pine) of the Mediterranean island of Rosas with his wife Queen Amaya (voice: Angelique Cabral). The king wants to create a land where wishes truly can come true, and to that end he has his subjects hand over their most heartfelt wish for safekeeping on their 18th birthday, after which the wish is erased from the wisher’s mind. He examines the wishes for himself, decides which ones would benefit society, and periodically has ceremonies where a citizen is granted their wish.

It’s a heavy workload, though, and now he’s advertising for a new assistant. Soon to be 18 teenager Asha (voice: Ariana DeBose) applies, although the King is rumoured to be difficult to work with.… Read the rest

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Another Body

Directors – Sophie Compton, Reuben Hamlyn – 2023 – UK, US – Cert. 18 – 80m

***

A young woman discovers her face has been added by deepfake technology into porn videos, and attempts to find out the perpetrator – documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 24th

The opening five minutes show a normal, well-adjusted, young woman. Taylor Klein comes from a family of engineers, with a mother who is the hardest working person she knows, an attribute that always encouraged Taylor to work hard to become a success. So she went to a college called C-net to study engineering. She was one of two female students out of a group of around fifty. And that was fine. Or so it seemed at the time.

Some time after successfully completing her course, a friend sent her a social media message. Her first reaction has that he had been hacked – but no, he assured her, it was definitely him. And she needed to look at the link he had sent her. When she did so, her world collapsed. Because she found herself watching porn videos on PornHub starring herself. Seven in total, and one more on another site called xHamster.… Read the rest

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The Picks that spoiled our film critic!

Tallinn viewed from the Nordic Hotel Forum.

Jeremy Clarke returns to the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in order to cover the Critics’ Picks section (which is now on its second year); he encounters what’s probably the strongest section of the event

Some people have a fear of flying. I don’t, but dislike of all the bureaucratic paraphernalia that surrounds airports. Not to mention London’s transport system, which is good most of the time, but not so much when it goes wrong. Coming home from the Festival last year, I got caught up in a tube strike. That didn’t happen this year. Indeed, the travel to and from the airport worked better for a number of reasons.

One was that the Festival’s hospitality team were kind enough to book my flights to and from Heathrow. This meant I could use the Elizabeth Line to travel to and from the airport. I currently live on the Victoria Line, which connects directly with three major rail terminals (Kings Cross, Euston, Victoria) but not the Elizabeth Line. The Elizabeth was all a bit too new last year, but Londoners who frequently travel into the centre of town as I do have got rather more used to it, and the Oxford Circus (Victoria Line) to Bond Street (Central Line) to Heathrow (Elizabeth Line) is reasonably easy to navigate.… Read the rest

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Mrs.

Director – Arati Kadev – 2023 – India – Cert. none – 111m

****

After getting married, a woman is expected to work cheerfully from dawn to dusk, waiting on the menfolk of the house hand and foot – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This is the Hindi remake of Malaysian film The Great Indian Kitchen (Jeo Baby, 2021).

It starts off cheerfully enough with a big song and dance routine with lots of percussion instruments in which the heroine Richa (Sanya Malhotra), who we later learn is a keen amateur choreographer, shows off various Bollywood dance moves in sync with her fellow dancers. You wouldn’t know it from the cleverly constructed trailer, but there are surprisingly few song and dance routines overall for a Bollywood production – the only two complete numbers take place right at the start and right at the end, with the film’s running length at just under two hours a lot shorter than your average, three hour, Bollywood epic which tends to interrupt the action for a song every five minutes. In that sense, the whole thing feels surprisingly Western.

In another sense, the first hour or so doesn’t feel Western at all.… Read the rest

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Fez Summer ’55
(” 55″ خمسة وخمسين)

Director – Abdelhai Laraki – 2023 – Morocco – Cert. none – 114m

****

An 11-year-old boy navigates the rooftops of a Moroccan city while insurgents plot the overthrow of French colonialists in private courtyards and sometimes confront the occupying police in the streets – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The old medina of Moroccan city Fez, a lattice of narrow streets where there is room for no more than pedestrian traffic. Or, to 11-year-old boy Kamal (Ayman Driwi), a network of rooftops and walkways allowing him to go anywhere. His freedom on the top of the city stands in sharp contrast to the country’s political reality: occupied by France, with their police patrolling the streets. The locals either keep their heads down or agitate for the return of their exiled ruler, Sultan Mohammed V.

The story is very much told from Kamal’s point of view. He is at once possessed of a child’s enthusiasm for life and from his rooftop vantage point able to see things unseen by most of the narrative’s adults most of the time. Yet, he is hampered by his immaturity and lack of understanding of what’s really going on.… Read the rest

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The Land
Where Winds
Stood Still
(Zhel Toqtaghan Zher)

Director – Ardak Amirkulov – 2023 – Kazakhstan – Cert. none – 108m

*****

A Kazakh mother made homeless by Soviet policy must protect her two sons in the harsh environment of the Steppes – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

An historical, period, survival movie. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, Soviet forced collectivisation polices, intended to have a levelling effect, instead forced Kazakh peasants off the land and led to the famine of the early 1930s. People were reduced to eating livestock essential for agricultural production, not to mention each other.

In a barren Steppes landscape loosely reminiscent of the Spaghetti Western, mother Jupar and her two pre-teenage sons Jolan and Boshay must survive mounted gunmen, starvation, extreme weather, wolves, and hungry fellow human beings. Jupar carries a concealed knife within her clothing and will stop at nothing to protect her kids in one of the most powerful expressions of motherhood ever to grace the screen.

Their seeming nomadic existence is however not without purpose; she has to get them to the eponymous Land, the village where she was born, and safety. Yet the dangers they face on the way are legion.… Read the rest

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Observing
(Opazovanje)

Director – Janez Burger – 2023 – Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, North Macedonia – Cert. none – 83m

*****

A paramedic must deal with the aftermath of a man being kicked unconscious after people watch the incident on social media livestreaming – plays in the spirit of the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The sounds of a man (Vito Weiss) being beaten up by others. No images. Mercifully.

If you lived in Slovenia, you’d be familiar with a news story about a man who was beaten up by others who livestreamed the event over social media, picking up an audience of 20 000, out of whom only a negligible number, maybe a handful, thought to call the police. That incident was the starting point for this film, which is an attempt to come to term with such events.

It’s a drama based around the three-person ambulance detail who find themselves picking up the victim of the livestreamed attack. He’s in a bad way and winds up in intensive care. Most of the ambulance pickups either die on the way to or in hospital, or they make a full recovery; this man, however, remains stable but unconscious in the ICU with no sign of either recovery or lapse.… Read the rest

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Nobody Leaves Alive
(Ninguém Sai Vivo Daqui)

Director – André Ristum – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 86m

****

After a woman is incarcerated in Brazil’s notorious Colonia psychiatric hospital simply because she is pregnant outside of marriage, her hold on reality starts to disintegrate – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Lovingly shot in a stylish black and white that both makes the whole thing feel like a dream and detracts from any sense of reality, this opens with a young woman being bundled by two men into what looks like a cattle truck. Inside the truck are other people, and the group is clearly being sent somewhere specific.

Once off the train they are frogmarched down a country track, through some wrought metal gates of late 19th / early 20th Century design and into a hallway where they are separated into men and women and the women (since it is one woman’s story we are following here) are taken to a large, tiled room and hosed down by two women, the younger of whom is Laura.

Then the woman we are following is taken for interview with a man who denies he’s a doctor. Her name is Elisa, and she explains there’s been some sort of mix-up.… Read the rest

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Light Falls

Director – Phedon Papamichael – 2023 – Georgia, Greece, Albania, Germany – Cert. none – 90m
*****

A Greek island, a lesbian couple from L.A., migrant Albanian workers, a racist cop, and an abandoned brutalist hotel… What could possibly go wrong? – terrific thriller premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Photographer Ella (Nini Nebieridze) and her girlfriend Clara (Elensio aka Elene Makharashvili), Georgians resident in L.A., are holidaying on a Greek island. On the same island, three Albanian youths – two brothers, the older Altin (Jurgen Marku) and the younger Eddy (Juxhin Plovishti), and their cocksure friend Veton (Silvio Goskova) – hang around in the hope of running into rich Western tourists they can fleece. Certainly, when a rich English couple drive up in a nice car and ask the where the nearest pharmacy is (the three don’t speak English), it looks like the three are going to do something awful to them. But then, the man sensibly drives off. The audience is left with a sense of dread.

The three Albanian men have just been turned away from a restaurant when the two L.A. girls enter, hang out, and learn from friendly locals where they can rent a 50cc Vesper (no licence needed).… Read the rest

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The Milky Way
(Halav)

Director – Maya Kenig – 2023 – Israel, France – Cert. none – 94m

***

In need of income to feed her baby, a mother gets a job in a factory breast-pumping out human milk for sale to rich mother clients – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Singer-songwriter Tala (Hila Ruach) loves performing and writing, but can’t seem to make any money at it. And she needs money, having recently given birth to Sheleg (whose name means Snow), so gets herself a day job at Milky Way. It’s a company that employs mothers to pump their milk into containers so that rich mothers can buy the best quality milk – at a premium price. Each employee is given their own individual cubicle, and the women communicate with each other through and over the partition walls. It’s basically a milking factory for human women.

Tala quickly gets into trouble with the company authorities via an argument with a staff member when Tala lies down with her baby in an area filled with balls – supposedly for children only, not adults – as it is the only thing that will stop him crying.… Read the rest

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Daaaaaali! (Daaaaaali!)

Director – Quentin Dupieux – 2023 – France – Cert. none – 77m

*****

Dali, played by five actors, repeatedly stalls a journalist’s attempts to film an interview with him, and a priest describes a dream over a meal – plays in the spirit of the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

There are movies about art and artists. There are documentaries. And then there is Daaaaaali!

Whatever expectations one has of a Quentin Dupieux movie (Deerskin, 2019; Smoking Causes Coughing, 2022), this fulfils them. France’s comic auteur makes movies unlike anyone else, completely bonkers and very funny.

It doesn’t start off with celebrated Surrealist artist Salvador Dali but with Judith (Anaïs Demoustier from Smoking Causes Coughing and The New Girlfriend, François Ozon, 2014), 33, a former pharmacist who decided one day to become a journalist.

Actually, it doesn’t start off with Judith but with a scenario that stages a Dali painting (Necrophilic Fountain Flowing from a Grand Piano, 1932). A piano in barren Spanish countryside with a tree-shaped, potted plant sitting on top and a continuous arc of water flowing from a hole in the side of the piano.… Read the rest

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Your Mother’s Son
(Anak Ka Ng Ina Mo)

Director – Jun Robles Lana – 2023 – Philippines – Cert. none – 100m

****

An intense cocktail of two uneasy, polyamorous relationships erupts into jealousy, betrayal and violence – sexually explicit political allegory of nepotism in Filipino politics plays in the spirit of the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

A candidate’s electoral vans belts out loud-hailer exhortations to secure votes in an upcoming election, but no-one in the poor rural locality through which they pass pays any attention. Everyone is struggling to make ends meet. Middle-aged Sarah (Sue Prado) puts all her efforts into both running a laundry business, providing ad hoc employment for much younger Amy (Elora Españo) who lives nearby, and teaching students online. Sarah’s son Emman (Kokoy De Santos) has just lost his job at a restaurant because it closed down. He doesn’t seem to share her work ethic, and would rather lounge around in bed all day than actually have to do anything of an employed nature.

Or, at least, that’s how things appear outwardly.

When his mother finally prises Emman from his bed so that he can go out looking for work – which might include a contact she has who may, possibly, be able to help him – he instead hangs out at the house of Amy who, like his mother, has a strong work ethic, to have sex with her at every opportunity, and do drugs.… Read the rest

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Pelikan Blue
(Kék Pelikan)

Pelikan Blue (Kék Pelikan)

Director – László Csáki – 2023 – Hungary – Cert. none – 79m

****

How three friends wanting to travel to the West after Hungary opened up in 1985 stumbled onto a lucrative scam forging rail tickets – innovative documentary employing animation premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This talks about Hungary opening its borders and allowing its citizens to travel beyond the iron curtain for the first time in 1985. The problem was that for most school students and ordinary working people, travel was too expensive. 1987-90 was the best time, says one man. Owing to peculiarities in the exchange rate system, it was possible to change East German marks into West German marks and triple the value of your money.

One man was in a queue at a counter with a man named Atos who had enough to clear out that particular counter, but he took pity on the other punters behind him and only took half what he could have had. Petya and another grateful friend of his in that queue later found themselves on a plane to Berlin, then sharing a hotel room with Atos.… Read the rest

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Everything, Everywhere

Director – Lim Kah Wai – 2023 – Japan – Cert. none – 88m

**

A woman meets, loses then searches for a film director who makes films by travelling around finding places and people around which and whom to make films – premieres in the Rebels With A Cause Competition in the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Backpacking hosteller Eva returns from Japan to Belgrade, where Jay has a package waiting for her. On collecting it, she is surprised at how little it contains (he’s a film director, and it includes a hard drive containing one of his films). She wanders around the Balkans, where Jay (Shogen) shoots her with his camera before introducing himself as an independent film director currently scouting interesting places and people. He persuades her to star in his upcoming film, but when she nearly drowns in a shot where he’s telling her to go further out in a lake, she refuses to complete the shoot, saying he’s self-obsessed.

Later, she meets other people with whom he’s friends who speak of him in glowing terms, and goes in search of him. Unfortunately, he’s nowhere to be found. He has however hooked up with another woman and lived with her for some period of time.… Read the rest

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Her Body
(Její Telo)

Director – Natálie Císarovská – 2023 – Czechia, Slovakia – Cert. 18 – 105m

****

Olympic diving champion Andrea Absolonová, forced by injury to abandon that career, reinvents herself as a porn actress – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Based on the real life story of Olympic diving champion Andrea Absolonová (Natália Germáni), this deploys a narrative that splits readily into three separate parts. In the first, she trains for the Olympics. Until one day, in the second, after executing a seemingly perfect dive, she wakes up in hospital fitted with a neck brace to the news that she’ll never dive again. And, finally, in the third, she reinvents herself as a porn actress.

The first section – her Olympic career – takes the viewer inside the sports training regimen, all the minutiae that are required to achieve greatness and rise to the very top of the competition in the athlete’s chosen field. As the film’s title suggests, it’s all about keeping the body in perfect condition to achieve the dream.

Andrea shares a flat with her younger sister Lucie (Denisa Barešová) who is under no such pressure, and on one occasion Andrea comes home to find her sister having a party, with lots of drinks Andrea mustn’t touch if she is to maintain her Olympic diet regime.… Read the rest

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Kalman’s Day (Kálmán-nap)

Director – Szabolcs Hajdu – 2023 – Hungary, Slovakia, US – Cert. none – 72m

*****

In Kálmán and his wife’s house, another couple gather to celebrate his birthday in what turns out to be a devastating drama about relationships falling apart and coming to an end – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

NSFW. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is adapted from a stage play, never a great selling point for your current scribe because it can lead so easily to stagebound cinema, but inventive camerawork ensures that doesn’t happen here.

The setting is a couple’s home in the woods, and it starts off with housewife Olga (Orsi Tóth) on the phone to a woman Zita (Nóra Földeáki) so in love with the sound of her own voice that at one point Olga leaves the room (and the screen) and drifts out of earshot, only to return some while later, and we realise that although we have missed a huge amount of verbiage, we have missed absolutely nothing in terms of significant content. To cut a long story short, Zita and her husband are coming over today as planned for Olga’s husband Kálmán’s birthday and wants him wants to sign a form saying she and her family live at the house Olga and Kálmán occupy because they want to get one of their kids into a school in its catchment area.… Read the rest

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Great Sertão
(Grande Sertão)

Director – Guel Arraes – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 114m

*****

The constantly shifting relationship between a man and his friend constantly shifts against the backdrop of a war between a street gang protecting their turf and an army trying to impose law and order – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Riobaldo (Caio Blat) tells his story. As a young boy in the urban jungle of Brazil’s Sertao, he bonds with fearless kid his own age Diadorim, who shows him how to scale brutalist towers and scare off predatory adults with an effective flick of the knife.

By the time Riobaldo has grown up to become a teacher, this concrete sprawl has become the battleground for a struggle between a gang led by local, criminal warlord Joca Ramiro (Rodrigo Lombardi) and forces under the command of Colonel Zé Bebelo (Luis Miranda) determined to restore law and order to the country. They may trade in violence, but both leaders are honourable men.

Not so one of Joca’s lieutenants Hermógenes (played with great relish by the ingratiating Eduardo Sterblitch), a seemingly unstoppable force of nature who has sold his soul to the devil to advance his own ends.… Read the rest

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Mars Express
(Mars Express)

Director – Jérémie Périn – 2023 – France – Cert. none – 85m

*****

In the 23rd Century, a private investigator and her resurrected robot assistant go to Mars to investigate the murder of a cybernetics student – from the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The difference between humans and machines is one of the great themes of science fiction from Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) to Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995). Mars Express takes its name from an Earth-Mars shuttle which, following a bravura action / chase sequence early on, not unlike the one at the start of Ghost in the Shell, is used by private investigator Aline Ruby (voice: Léa Drucker from Custody, Xavier Legrand, 2017) and her assistant Carlos Rivera (voice: Daniel Njo Lobé) to transport a captured suspect from Earth to Mars where, it transpires on arrival, the relevant paperwork to detain their prisoner has been wiped from their on-person devices and internet-accessible office, meaning they are forced to release their prisoner. The narrative is littered with cleverly thought out ideas like this.

The setting is the 23rd Century and mostly Mars, where the pair are hired to search for a second year cybernetics student who has gone missing.… Read the rest

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Lessons of Tolerance
(Uroky Tolerantnosti)

Director – Arkadii Nepytaliuk – 2023 – Ukraine – Cert. none – 95m

*****

To help pay off her family’s debt with the accompanying grant, an exasperated teacher enlists her sceptical family in a state LGBT+ awareness training course – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition in the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

NSFW. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A typical older family with debt problems in Ukraine. The mother Nadia (Olena Uzlyuk) is the one member of the family keeping everything together, holding down a job as a teacher. From what we see of her at home, we would imagine she’s very good at it, too. Alas, the same can’t be said for the rest of the family. Husband Zenyk (Oleksandr Yarema) has always wanted his own garage, but has no head for running a business. He spends his evenings sitting around drinking beer and being waited on hand and foot by his wife and daughter, because that’s what women are supposed to do. Then he complains in bed because his wife is not interested in sex these days.

They have two grown-up kids. Daughter Diana (Karolina Mruha) is an aspiring actress who is applying for drama school despite warnings that she may lack the necessary talent.… Read the rest

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PÖFF’s
Critics’ Picks Competition:
pick me again

Pelikan Blue

Jeremy Clarke anticipates his return visit to Tallinn to cover the second year of its Critics’ Picks strand

Last year, I was privileged to be invited for the first time by DMovies.org’s publisher-editor Victor Fraga to attend the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. This year I’m back again, the major difference being that I have some idea of what to expect. Superb, superfast broadband while I’m there, for a start. Clean air and near- or sub-zero weather conditions (although I confess I haven’t yet checked the weather forecast). And great hospitality.

As for the films, the titles in the Critics’ Picks section were generally an impressive lot, and it grieves me to report that apart from the one British film in there, Carol Morley’s sublime Typist Artist Pirate King – a favoured director as rising star here in the UK and an obvious shoo-in – not one of the other films in the strand has made it into UK distribution. These include Dito Tsintsadze’s superb German / Georgian gangster thriller Roxy and Çigdem Sezgin’s arresting, Turkish feminist drama Suna, both of which some enterprising UK distributor ought to snap up and put out as soon as possible.

I generally dislike writing about films before I’ve seen them: we’ve all seen those films which looked great upfront and turned out to be duds, or films which look the sort to be avoided at all costs which turn out to be masterpieces.… Read the rest

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Roxy (Roxy)

Director – Dito Tsintsadze – 2022 – Germany, Georgia, Belgium – Cert. none – 100m

*****

When a taxi driver’s latest clients retain his services, both end up getting much more than they bargained for– premieres in the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The eponymous Roxy is a fight dog who has so far killed 12, no, 14 dogs. We first become aware of him when, for no good reason, he bites a pedestrian’s hand, causing his walker to hand a wad of banknotes to seemingly unflappable, hired taxi driver Thomas Brenner (Devid Streisow) to straighten the situation out. Then his new fare has put Roxy on the back seat, his panting head inches away from Thomas’ face. “You have to buy a muzzle for this dog,” Thomas calmly explains to his fare. “It’s the law in Germany.”

Thomas, whose working life consists of picking up an arrival from the railway station, taking them where they want to go, and then returning to the station to pick up the next arrival, loves routine and order. In his intermittent voice-over running through the film, we learn that his grandfather was in the Wehrmacht and his father the Stasi, the latter eventually committing suicide in 1990.… Read the rest

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Suna
(Suna Kahevahel)

Director – Çigdem Sezgin – 2022 – Turkey, Spain, Bulgaria – Cert. none – 102m

*****

A fifty-year-old woman finds herself in conflict with conservative values when she moves in with a widower – premieres in the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

In a hotel room, sitting on two beds at right angles to each other, she says to him: “you won’t be too controlling, right? I don’t want anybody interfering with my life.” Then he sets out his own stall. “I’ll eat whatever you cook me,” he says. “When necessary, I’ll take a bath immediately.” You get the impression that that might not happen all that often.

Played by Turkish singing star Nurcan Eren, Suna craves the security of a relationship without any of the male domination that so often accompanies it. The man she has chosen, Veysel (Tarik Pabuccuoglu), has recently become a widower and wants a companion and partner in life. Not only that, he seems to want someone very like his former wife. He seems a kind, gentle man.

So they have an Imam wedding, a discreet Muslim ceremony with the local Imam present, which joins them in the eyes of Allah but may not have quite the same legal force as a regular marriage in Turkish society.… Read the rest

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Silence