Month: October 2020

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Cheaters

Director – Paulette McDonagh – 1930 – Australia – 95m
***1/2

A criminal gang leader’s lifelong vow for revenge threatens the future happiness of his daughter in this beautifully restored and presented Australian silent -– free to watch on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 from 13.00 hrs Sunday, October 11th to 13.00 hrs Wednesday, October 14th

The first thing to say about this film is that it looks in remarkably good nick by any standards. Judging by the restoration trailer, this is an amazing testimony to today’s technology. Much of the footage before had deteriorated to near unwatchable. After the process, it looks fantastic.

As for the silent side of things, the current presentation on BFI Player shows the film windowboxed as you’d expect but then also the keyboard accompanist in locked off shot, keyboards and hands only, also windowboxed in a comparatively tiny image at the bottom left. This proves extremely effective and provides an excellent model for both future online screenings of silents and presentation on home video media such as Blu-ray or DVD.

The film medium has come a long way since 1929, so this film begs the question, is it any good?… Read the rest

Categories
Live Action Series Television

A Day-Off
Of Kasumi Arimura Ep. 1
(Arimura Kasumi
No Satsukyu,
有村架純の撮休 第1話)

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2020 – Japan – 42m

****

In the first episode of director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s TV series A Day-Off Of Kasumi Arimura, the actress Kazumi Arimura plays herself in a fictionalised version of her life – on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 from 13:00 Saturday, October 10th to 13:00 Tuesday, October 13th

This is a curiosity, one-off festival screening that admirers of contemporary Japanese cinema are going to want to see. Kore-eda (Shoplifters, 2018) is one of the highest profile, contemporary directors in Japan and like many other directors around the world in between his theatrical cinema films he also works in small screen television. This is the first of eight episodes of the TV series A Day-Off Of Kasumi Arimura in which actress Kazumi Arimura plays herself in a fictionalised version of her life. As the subtitle of the end title indicates, this drama is fictional. It has nothing to do with Kazumi Arimura’s real life. 

There’s a little pre-amble in which Kazumi learns that tomorrow’s shoot is cancelled because someone has gone down with the ‘flu. Which you might think makes the episode rather close to or currently perilous pandemic times, but it doesn’t really.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Perfectly Normal Family
(En Helt Almindelig Familie)

Director – Malou Reymann – 2020 – Denmark – Cert. PG – 97m

****

A girl struggles to deal with her dad’s new female gender identity – in cinemas and on Modern Films Virtual Screening Room and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, October 2nd

This opens, closes and is punctuated at regular intervals with 4:3 aspect ratio home movie footage of a family, two sisters growing up and precious moments with their mum and, particularly, their dad (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard). The first excerpt sees dad carrying baby Emma, showing her to the camera and herself in a mirror, showing her her mum Helle (Neel Rønholt) in bed and her elder sister Caroline / Caro in her cot, then taking her downstairs to watch the football match on TV with dad. “Are you a little football girl?”, he asks her.

The rest of the film is in 16:9 widescreen, starting off with teenage Emma (Kaya Toft Loholt) and the rest of her football team being told off by their coach. On the sidelines, dad dribbles the ball. She comes over and tackles him effortlessly. Later, when the family go to look at a dog because both girls want the family to have one, it becomes clear that something is up with their parents.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Rialto

Director – Peter Mackie Burns – 2019 – UK, Ireland – Cert. 15 – 89m

****1/2

A man who has recently lost his father faces uncertainty about his future – in cinemas from Friday, October 2nd

Colm (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), 48, works in middle management at a port in Dublin. Various aspects of his life are in crisis. He meets a young man (Tom Glynn-Carney) in a shopping mall public lavatory and a relationship of sorts ensues. A corporate takeover at work means Colm may lose his job which he’s had since he was a teenager. At home in the suburb of Rialto, he talks to his grown up daughter Kelly (Sophie Jo Wasson) but not so much to his wife Claire (Monica Dolan) while he and his grown up son Shane (Scott Graham) don’t get on at all. All of which is underscored by Colm’s recent loss of his dad, with whom he had a pretty lousy relationship.

This is a film which constantly surprises in the sense that, if you were to guess the synopsis based on the first ten, or 20, or 30 minutes, you’d guess wrong. It’s not directly about a rent boy, or redundancy, or relationship breakup, or alcohol dependency, although it covers all those elements in some detail.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Dick Johnson
Is Dead

Director – Kirsten Johnson – 2020 – US – 89m

*****

The director imagines the death of her dad in a film which celebrates both the man himself and the art of cinema – on Netflix worldwide from Friday, October 2nd

I was alerted to this movie both because not only was Johnson’s prior Cameraperson (2016) excellent but also the subject matter of this new film looked promising. Johnson spent three decades as the cameraperson on numerous documentaries (among them Farenheit 9/11, Michael Moore, 2004 and Citizenfour, Laura Poitras, 2014) before making her previous feature out of interesting bits and pieces of footage she had lying around. Her new film is highly personal and almost fits into the home movies or personal diary school of film making – lent an inevitable, additional gravitas given Johnson’s prior artistic and technical career.

C. Richard Johnson (b. 1932 – ) is Kirsten Johnson’s dad. One day, like all of us, he is going to die. So his daughter decided that while he was still alive she would make a film about his dying, filming his possible deaths and staging his funeral service ahead of time.

There’s a huge contradiction at the heart of this idea.… Read the rest