Month: June 2025

The Road to Patagonia

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 23 June 2025
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Directed by Matty Hannon
Certificate 15
90 minutes
Released 27 June

In his mid-20s, former ecology student and keen surfer Matty Hannon returns to Melbourne, Australia. For five years, from age 21 to 26, he has lived alongside one of Indonesia’s Sumatran Island tribes, a utopia where people live in harmony with nature, assigning spirit gods to rivers and mountains. And then there are the waves.

Melbourne hits him with culture shock; a culture that refers to its people as consumers, where national success is measured in terms of how much they buy. Depression is common. Hannon records his response in this documentary as he gets out, takes a tent to Alaska, then… on his motorbike… travels down the West Coast of the Americas to Patagonia… [read the rest in the Issue 4 – 2025 edition of Reform]

[Read my longer review for this site here.]

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Trailer:

Tags 14 months, abattoir, age 21-26, Alaska, alternative lifestyle, Amazon rainforest, animism, Australia, Baja California, Baja Peninsula, balance, bike, bike theft, biker, breathtaking vistas, butcher, California, Canada, ceremony, Chile, civilisation collapse, clearing the jungle, commodification, commodified, community, computer, consumer culture, consumers, culture shock, depression, desert, destroying the ecosystem, Developed World, ecology, environmental impact, farming, fertilise the land, fuel, harmony with nature, Heather Hillier, home-built rig, horses as fellow spirits, Inca pyramids, inspiring, interconnectedness of living things, journey, landscape, letter-writing, lifestyle, living in the wild, local customers, Matty Hannon, Melbourne, Mexico, missing something, motorbike, Patagonia, plant medicines, population density, possessions, pre-packaged jobs, raise a family, reliance on motor fuel, respect, ride the waves, robbed, simple lifestyle, small farm, Southbound, spirit gods, spirits in balance, sprits, student, success measurement, surfboard, surfer, sustainable farm, sustainable future, tent, The Road to Patagonia, trade bikes for horses, travel, unspoiled beaches, US, utopia, Vancouver, voice-over, West coast of the Americas, work, work on computer

Animation Movies Shorts

Little Shrew
(Snowflake)

Director – Kate Bush – 2024 – UK – Cert. PG – 4m

*****

As modern warfare decimates a landscape, a shrew crosses countryside and town as a small, spirit-like light falls towards it – short accompanies the UK cinema release of From Hilde, With Love on Friday, June 27th

Musician / songwriter Kate Bush originally recorded the song Snowflake, which appeared on her album 50 Words for Snow (2011), in part to record her young son Albert’s voice before it broke. The creative process is such that people don’t always know exactly why they do what they do, and that is clearly the case with this song, since Kate has returned to it after the event to direct an animated film around it. Animation being a painstakingly slow production process, the soundtrack for the short is an edit of the song, pulling it down from almost 10 minutes to 4 minutes. The 4-minute edit is surprisingly coherent and seems to distil the essence of the piece.

Most of the lyrics are sung by Albert, yet Kate sings the haunting refrain:

The world is so loud

Keep falling

I’ll find you

It’s impossible to listen to this without thinking she is the mother somehow waiting for her falling son, whatever that means.… Read the rest

Tags 2024, 50 Words for Snow, aircraft, Alan Henry, Albert McIntosh, animation, animation compositor, animator, atmospheric sfx, awareness, background artist, battlefield, beams of light, black and white, black pollutant, blast, block of flats, bomb blast, broken, cathedral, cloud formation, comet, creative process, dead soldier, decimate, decimated by a bomb, detritus, drone videographer, Earth’s atmosphere, edit, egg, emotion, environment, exploration, fall, falling, feelings, flying, Gayle Martin, guided missile, gun, hope and drone animation, illustrator, Inkubus, James Clifford, Jim Kay, Jon Carin, Kate Bush, killed by Russians, landscape, life force, light, Little Shrew, Lorenzo Cenci Di Bello, loud, loudness, Maksim Levin, miniature, missiles, modern warfare, mothers and sons, moving illustration, musician, nebula, need, Nicolas Loudot, Nicolette Van Gendt, nowhere to go, outer space, pair of spectacles, panning, panning shot, photographic naturalism, pocket, pollution, producer, production process, refrain, rendering, Reuters, running, safe haven, scamper, shark, short, short film, shrew, smoke, snarling mouth, Snowflake, son’s voice, song, songwriter, soundtrack, spasms, sperm, spirit, target, telegraph pole, terror, Tomato Twist, tree trunk, twisted metal, Ukraine, voice breaking, war, war-torn, weaponry, womb, wonder, world-building

Features Live Action Movies

From Hilde, With Love
(In Liebe, Eure Hilde)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 27 June 2025
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(In Liebe, Eure Hilde)
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Director – Andreas Dresen – 2024 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 125m

***

A young, pregnant German woman involved with a group of radicals trying to undermine the Nazi regime is arrested and put on trial with a possible death sentence – out in UK cinemas accompanied by the Kate Bush short Little Shrew (Snowflake) on Friday, June 27th

Its opening, pre-credits moments of a German mother and bespectacled, pregnant adult daughter picking strawberries in the garden belies what is to follow, but that sense of calm doesn’t last long as two barely seen black cars pull up in the lane. The pregnant woman packs a suitcase before the two men accompany her out to the car. How long will it take, she asks. That depends on you, comes the reply.

In the lift, the big, burly man asks after her pregnancy. It seems his wife, too, is expecting. When she is questioned in the interrogation room, she is asked about her husband’s radio equipment, on the table in front of her in a suitcase. She makes up stories about her innocence and ignorance, but they (including, when we finally see him, the man from the lift) run rings round her.… Read the rest

Tags Andreas Dresen, arrest, authorities, birth, boat, cell, child born in prison, civilian life, complicit, death sentence, expecting, fear, female guard, fool around, From Hilde With Love, garden, German, Germany, gruel, handheld camera, Hans-Christian Hegewald, health, husbands and wives, idyllic afternoon, ignorance, innocence, interrogation, lift, Lisa Hrdina, Lisa Wagner, Liv Lisa Fries, maternal exercises, Nazi, Nazi regime, pack a suitcase, parachutist, plead a case, plead your case, plotting, plotting against the Nazis, post, pregnancy, pregnant, prison, prison cell, prison hospital, prison hospital birth sequence, questioned, radicals, radio equipment, radio messages, riverbank, ruthless, shot in one take, signaller, spectacles, spy, stimulate milk production, strawberries, strip-search, suitcase, the Front, transcribe, trial, unborn child, women friends, women’s health

Features Live Action Movies

Red Path
(Les Enfants Rouges,
الذراري الحمر)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 June 2025
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(Les Enfants Rouges,
الذراري الحمر)
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Director – Lotfi Achour – 2024 – Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When paradise is suddenly taken away from him, a young innocent must come to terms with stark and brutal forces of corruption and death – searing drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 20th

** SPOILER ALERT**

Two boys are herding a flock of sheep cross-country. The older one (Wided Dabebi), who tells the younger not to be scared, but to watch out for mines, knows his way around. The younger one Achraf (Ali Helali) hasn’t told his mother he’s doing this, because he knows she would have forbidden him from coming.

They are navigating the slopes of Tunisia’s Mighila Mountain, which is fabulously beautiful. They find a perfect place to give the sheep a rest, and the older one shows the younger a good spot – they climb to the top of a ridge, with a stunning, panoramic view of the local landscape, and bask on the rock in the sunshine. Life is good. In fact, it is paradise. After some time, they head back down to the watering hole they left earlier, plunge their heads in the cool water.… Read the rest

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Elio

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 June 2025
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Directors – Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 99m

****

An alien-obsessed orphan, whose aunt tracks space debris for NASA, makes contact with aliens – latest Disney / Pixar romp is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 20th

Young lad Elio Solis (voice: Yonas Kibreab) has never got over the death of his parents, and lives with his aunt Olga (voice: Zoe Soldana) with whom he doesn’t really get on, even though she puts him before the advancement of her career at NASA, where she has forgone aspiring to astronaut training and works tracking space debris. One day, she is having a meal in the large work canteen with him when he vanishes, sneaking in to an exhibit about the cosmos to hear a Carl Sagan monologue about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.

Following this incident, Elio decides that all his problems would be solved if only aliens would abduct him, and goes out of his way to make this happen, drawing a big “Abduct me” message / diagram on the beach and lying in the middle of it so he can be clearly seen from the sky, not to mention sending ham radio messages to the stars with his woefully inadequate radio transmitter.… Read the rest

Tags abduct, abduct me, abduction, Adrian Molina, aggressor, alien-obsession, aliens, ambassadors, Ana de la Reguera, Anissa Borrego, anthropomorphism, Atsuko Okatsuka, aunt, bargaining chip, beach, Brad Garrett, Brandon Moon, Brendan Hunt, bully, canteen, carapace, Carl Sagan, clone, computer technician, conquer, cosmos, death of parents, Disney, Domee Shi, Dylan Gilmer, Elio, exhibit, expansionist, extra-terrestrial life, first contact, first contact with aliens, Golden Record, hair follicle, ham radio, hobby club, incoming message, intergalactic, intergalactic ambassadors, Jake Getman, Jameela Jamil, language translation device, larva, liquid supercomputer, Madeline Sharafian, Matthias Schweighöfer, mecha, Naomi Watanabe, NASA, negotiate, orphan, Pixar, radio transmitter, Remy Edgerly, sci-fi, science fiction, SF, Shirley Henderson, space debris, spaceship, subdue, Summer camp, US, Voyager spacecraft, warmonger, world leader, Yonas Kibrea, Zoe Soldana

Features Live Action Movies

Hidden
(Caché)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2005 – Austria, France, Germany – Cert.15 – 117m

***1/2

Covertly delivered VHS videotapes suggest to an upper middle class family that they are being watched, and begin to tease out guilt for an incident in the husband’s past – the closing film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 20th

A lengthy, locked-off camera shot of a street. A woman (Juliette Binoche) leaves the house through a full body height metal gate that seems to serve a security function, although the street seems largely quiet and unremarkable. Then the image starts to rewind in the manner of a videotape; what we are watching is a recording in the videotape player of a couple Georges and Anne Laurent (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), who are discussing its contents. The tape has been left outside their front door for reasons that are not immediately obvious and by person or persons unknown.

This opening shot is mirrored by another static shot at the end taken from outside the school of their son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) as pupils leave, in which… well, you’ll have to see for yourself, and director Haneke doesn’t make it easy to see what it is he wants you to see, so you’ll have to work at it… and even then, you may miss it.… Read the rest

Tags adopt, adultery, affair, affluent, Algerian, Algerian boy, apartment, Austria, axe, banlieue, book publishers, Caché, chicken, closest friends, collective guilt, coming to light, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, corridor, courtyard, covert, Daniel Auteuil, Daniel Duval, delivery, dinner parties, dreams, drowned, Europe, family, farmhouse, flat, France, French colonial history, gate, Germany, guilt, hidden, How did you find me?, incident in the past, judgement, Juliette Binoche, killing, Lester Makedonsky, locked-off camera, Luke 8:17, Maurice Bénichou, media professional, memories, Michael Haneke, Nathalie Richard, Paris Massacre of 1961, past misdemeanours, recording, rewind, school, security, Seine, street, surveillance, talk show, talk show host, television, torment, trigger, upper middle class, VHS, video recording, videotape, Walid Afkir, watched

Features Live Action Movies

Funny Games
(1997)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 20 June 2025
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(1997)
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Director – Michael Haneke – 1997 – Austria – Cert.18 – 103m

*****

Two young men turn up at a family’s holiday home to humiliate and torture them via a series of controlling exchanges (or games) – plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Saturday, June 21st

Review originally published in Shivers around the time of the film’s 1997 London Film Festival premiere

With Hollywood currently rediscovering the profitability of slick, fun horror movies in the blockbusting wake of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), Europe proves itself well capable of delivering work at the other end of the spectrum. Funny Games is the latest brainchild of Austrian-born Michael Haneke (Benny’s Video, 1992).

Like Scream, Funny Games never misses a trick on the technical level. Unlike Scream, its intention is not a non-stop, mass-consumption, vicarious thrill-laden roller coaster ride (which Funny Games certainly isn’t) but a rigorous and unrelenting, one way descent into madness, fear and despair depicting violence, mutilation, torture and – above all – amoral manipulation of one’s fellow human beings – as truly horrific.

To dismiss Funny Games as either moral lecture or morality play would do it great disservice. Never afraid to plumb the most violent depths of human depravity to make its points, it sidesteps the usual blinkered, narrow‑minded arguments about both the portrayal of violence in the media and its place in modern life.… Read the rest

Tags action movie, actioner, amoral, Arno Frisch, Austria, blood, chopping vegetables, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, control, controlling, descent into madness, despair, dog, everyday normality, family, fear, Frank Giering, games, gore, Hide and Seek, holiday home, Hollywood, horrify, horror, horror thrille, human depravity portrayal of violence, humiliate, kitchen, lakeside, manipulation, media, Michael Haneke, mundane activity, mutilation, naturalism, naturalistic observation, nuclear family, parents and children, pleasurable audience consumption, polite, press scan/rewind, psycho, retaliation, rigorous, shotgun, shy, Stefan Clapczynski, Susanne Lothar, taciturn, tell me it's only a movie, thrill, thrillers, Tom And Jerry, tormentors, torture, TV remote, Ulrich Muhe, unrelenting, upsetting, viewer, violence, well-spoken, young men

Features Live Action Movies

Tornado

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 June 2025
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Director – John Maclean – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 91m

*****

A bereaved Japanese in Britain in 1790 must prove herself as a samurai to survive – unique coming of age historical drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 13th

A 16-year-old Japanese girl (Koki) flees over the moors, through the wood, towards a large mansion. So does a young boy. Their male pursuers walk relentlessly in her direction, but they haven’t seen her. Woe betide her if they do, because their leader (Tim Roth from Pulp Fiction, 1994; Reservoir Dogs, 1992, both Quentin Tarantino; The Hit, Stephen Frears, 1984) addresses one of their number by name then slits his throat. She gets to the house, opens the door, the sudden draught inside causing papers to blow around, but she shuts it pretty fast, sensing the woman inside. A little later, she opens the door, gingerly enters the house. A hiding place, but she must be sure the occupants don’t spot her.

No such hesitancy for the gang following her; they step inside confidently as if they own the place, pushing over and kicking the male occupant while he’s down. They spread out, and a younger man in the party, who we will later come to know as Little Sugar (Jack Lowden frrom Benediction, Terence Davies, 2021; Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017; ’71, Yann Demange, 2014), son of the gang leader Sugarman (Roth), finds her at the end of an upper corridor whose floor has given way beneath another gang member.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Lollipop

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 June 2025
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Director – Daisy-May Hudson – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

After four months in prison, a young woman must deal with the UK’s social services to regain custody of her kids – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 13th

East Londoner Molly (Posy Sterling) leaves prison following a four-month sentence to discover that her two kids Ava, 11 (Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads) and Leo, 5 (Luke Howitt) have been taken into care because her alcoholic mum Sylvie (TeriAnne Cousins from Silver Haze, Sasha Polak, 2023) couldn’t cope with them. This means the kids have been taken into care by social services, and in order to get them back, Molly has to have a roof over her head. Alas, while she was detained, the council have taken her home off her.

She finds herself trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea – she can’t get her kids back until she has a suitable home, and she can’t get a suitable home because, until she gets her kids back, she will only be offered accommodation suitable for a single homeless woman. For the time being, she lives out of a tent.

The impulsive Molly worsens her own situation when, during a supervised visit, she abducts her kids and flees with them on the train to the wilds of the countryside.… Read the rest

Tags abduction, alcoholic, authorities, bereaved, bureaucracy, casting director, casting tweet, council, detained, East Londoner, ex-convict, family lawyer, get her kids back, hands-tied, home, homeless, homeless person’s hostel, Idil Ahmed, improvisation, legal challenge, legal consultant, Lollipop, London, Lucy Pardee, Luke Howitt, mothers and children, mothers and daughters, non-actors, not fit for purpose, out of your depth, Posy Sterling, pregnant, prison, prison sentence, professional actors, roof over your head, schoolfriend, Sherma Polidore-Perrins, social services, social work manager, Somali heritage, suitable accommodation, supervised visit, taken into care, Tegan-Mia Stanley Rhoads, tent, TeriAnne Cousins, train, trapped, UK, welfare system

Animation Features Live Action Movies

How to Train Your Dragon
(2025)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 June 2025
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(2025)
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Director – Dean DeBlois – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 125m

****

Instead of fighting dragons like other viking teenagers, Hiccup shoots a dragon out of the sky then secretly trains it as his steed– live action remake of animated classic is out in UK cinemas from Monday, June 9th

Following in the footsteps of Disney, who are slowly but surely turning their back catalogue of animated features into live action movies, Dreamworks have taken the plunge and turned the first of their three animated How To Train Your Dragon movies into live action. Director DeBlois previously directed the three animated outings, and clearly cares a great deal about the franchise because he has made a live action equivalent of the first film with the same plot, dragons that look near identical, and locations that feel like those in the original.

If you’re an admirer of the first film, which I am, as you’re watching this new one, you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Except, this is in live action. It’s enjoyable enough, and avoids the obvious trap of trying to redesign its classic animated characters for live action (the trap that Disney’s Snow White remake (Marc Webb, 2025) walked straight into with its hyperrealist dwarfs).… Read the rest