Month: July 2026

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

On the Beach

Director – Stanley Kramer – 1959 – US – Cert. PG – 134m

*****

Australia is the only country yet to succumb to radiation sicknessfollowing a nuclear war – on Blu-ray from Monday, July 27th

The nuclear submarine USS Sawfish, under the command of Commander Dwight Lionel Towers (Gregory Peck), surfaces in Melbourne, Australia. Lieutenant Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) makes a bottle of milk for baby Jennifer and a cup of tea for his sleeping wife Mary (Donna Anderson from Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer, 1960; Count Yorga, Vampire, Bob Kelljan, 1976). He has to pick up the milk as it won’t be delivered any more. He’s on his way to see the admiral, who gives him a job on the Sawfish.

Reporting to the commander, he offers to take the latter for a drink, and winds up inviting his to stay at his home. He puts local woman Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) in charge of him; at a party, where there’s a row between scientist Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire) and another man over who caused the nuclear war, she gets very drunk and comes on to Towers, but she falls asleep, so he puts her to bed.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Operation Hurricane

Director – Ronald Stark – 1952 – UK – Cert. U – 33m

**

Britain’s first A-bomb test takes place in the Monte Bello islands– included as an extra on the BFI Blu-ray of
On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959)

The overly serious, half-hour British Ministry of Supply short Operation Hurricane documents the first A-bomb test in the Monte Bello islands 60 miles off the coast of Australia. There’s something terrifying about the way it presents the bomb as a good thing made to help the British people.

Those interested in soundtracks will want to know it has music composed by John Addison (from Torn Curtain, Alfred Hitchcock, 1966; The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Tony Richardson, 1962; Reach for the Sky, Lewis Gilbert, 1956) and the Musical Director was the prolific Muir Mathieson (Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958; Henry V, Laurence Olivier, 1944; Things to Come, William Cameron Menzies, 1936).

Categories
Features Live Action Movies Music

Blow the Night
(Yoru o Buttobas,
夜をぶっとばせ)

Director Chusei Sone – 1983 – Japan – Cert. 18 tbc – 108m

****

Two teenage girls: a high school dropout who falls in with gangs, and 24 hours in the life of a girl who knows a band – part of the Chusei Sone Double Feature on Blu-ray from Monday, July 27th.

NSFW

This starts out with a rock drummer playing a fill, freeze-framed almost immediately to the title of the film, then his band The Street Sliders – whose record company Epic / Sony put ¥10m into the film’s budget – launching into a blistering Japanese Punk / R&B number with the cheerful chorus “Masturbation! Masturbation!” The film travels quite some distance with a cut to disaffected schoolgirl Takada (Namie Takada playing a younger version of herself) being told by the principal that she just needs to turn up for school while the exams are on. “Well-behaved student, my ass!” says a suited teacher after the girl’s been dismissed. “What kind of student dyes her hair and her nails red?”

Well, Namie is the kind that gets in at home without keys in the afternoon by negotiating an open window, changes schools every couple of years, and lives with her sister, grandma.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Scars of the Sun
(Taiyo no Kizu Ato,
太陽のきずあと)

Director – Chusei Sone – 1981 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 99m

***1/2

A young gang leader whose father is a successful literary figure finds himself battling against a rival – part of the Chusei Sone Double Feature on Blu-ray from Monday, July 27th.

NSFW

A dull, industrial pumping sound can be heard in the background. A man in a white raincoat and a hat waits. The wind blows his open coat. He takes out a cigarette. Down the road, another man steals a white car from a garage explaining, “I’ve a funeral to attend.” He picks up the raincoat and hat man.

Another car, red, heading in the opposite direction on the other side of the highway, U-turns and joins him. Both drive recklessly until the white one narrowly avoids a collision with a bicycle.

The other man asks Shuhei (Keniichi Kaneda), in the raincoat and hat, what they do about the now somewhat battered car. Shuhei says it can be fixed using his father’s money. When he tries to sign in for the funeral, he’s told to leave because the deceased wouldn’t have wanted him to attend.

They gather with others at a bar. His companion, Kobayashi, explains that Sugeru was so good at driving that he, Kobayashi, fell asleep.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Odyssey
(2026)

Director – Christopher Nolan – 2026 – US – Cert. 15 – 172m

**** (regular cinema version, not the 70mm IMAX print)

While Odysseus is lost presumed dead returning home from the Trojan Wars to his island Kingdom of Ithaca, his wife is confronted with multiple suitors – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 17th

For anyone unfamiliar with the classical Greek literature source, Homer’s Odyssey is about a journey (with which meaning the word odyssey is synonymous in modern parlance). Odysseus (Matt Damon) fights for ten years (a time span unclear in the new film) in the Trojan Wars, then spends another ten getting home to his island Kingdom of Ithaca (the film is clear that he’s away a total of 20 years).

Homer doesn’t play out his narrative in linear form, but goes back and forth, for instance using flashbacks. Nolan’s screenplay uses a framing device of Odysseus’ wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) holding out against numerous suitors hoping she’ll marry one of them and make him king, remarkably similar to that other recent, inferior adaptation of (the Ithaca bits of) the Odyssey, The Return (Umberto Pasolini, 2024), except that Nolan’s instincts for casting are a lot stronger and he has a bigger crew and budget with which to play.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Give It a Shot

Director – Vaishali Sinha – 2025 – Canada, India, US – uncertificated – 92m

***

An Indian scientist has created a reversible male contraceptive technique, yet a combination of human greed and bureaucracy has so far prevented it reaching the masses – International Premiere at 6.30 pm at the ICA on Tuesday, July 14th in the London Indian Film Festival which runs from Thursday July 9th to Sunday, July 19th in London, Birmingham and Manchester

A man visits a trade show in Las Vegas of healthcare products and technology. He’s touting a male contraceptive, a field in which nothing much has happened since the introduction of the condom in the 17th Century. His product is an injection into the vas deferens of the male reproductive system which can last for ten years, yet is totally reversible within that time. He has date on its use and safety going back to the 1970s. He is not the original developer, but has been refining the formula since then. The product has been used extensively in India.

The film moves to India. “This for the vagina, that for the vagina,” says a woman cheerfully. “And meanwhile, the penis is just sitting in the corner.”… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Last One for the Road
(Le Città di Pianura)

Director – Francesco Sossai – 2025 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 100m

****

Two older men travel around Italy by car, constantly stopping for “a last one for the road”, joined by a young architecture student – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

Night. Two men passed out in a car. A voiceover relates a local myth, shown to us in flashback as he describes it. On the day that Primo (Gianni Da Re) retires from the workforce, he is taken aside by officials and… presented with a gift from the company president (Roberto Citran from Conclave, Edward Berger, 2024; The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story, Peter Greenaway, 2003; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, John Madden, 2001) who flies in by helicopter. As the latter leaves, he tells Primo the secret of life, but his words are lost in the noise of the ‘copter blades. At the back, a figure leaves.

In the car, moustache wakes up. It’s still dark. Dori (Pierpaulo Capovilla) is still out. They wake. The go for a last one for the road. Moustache, who is Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano), can’t remember what it was he was saying. It’s gone. It was something important.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Moana
(2026)

Director – Thomas Kail – 2026 – US – Cert. PG – 115m

***1/2

Disney’s live action remake of its Polynesian heroine mythological romp – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

It’s a curious experience watching Disney’s live action remake of Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), one of the Studio’s better animated movies of recent years. Of course, some audience members (particularly small children) may never have seen the orginal, or, equally, because Disney are very, very good at marketing their films to a mass audience, they may already be familiar with it. Either way, the film is likely to be enjoyed by both those who know the original and those who don’t.

The original had its roots in Maori mythology, and this live action retread follows much the same path. It’s set on the island of Te Fiti, a resting goddess whose heart (a small, round, green stone) has been stolen from her in order to give humans the power of creation by the demigod Maui, and then lost along with his giant fishhook which bestows shapeshifting powers upon him.

As a small child, the chief of the island Te Fiti’s daughter Moana can’t stop thinking about venturing beyond the reef, a trangression forbidden by her father Chief Tui (John Tui) and his ancestors.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Evil Dead Burn

Director – Sébastien Vaniček – 2026 – New Zealand – Cert. 18 – 110m

*

A French-born widow visits her bereaved American husband’s family for his funeral, and demonic mayhem ensues – less fun than it sounds horror franchise entry is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

After her husband Will (George Pullar) is killed in a car accident, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) stays with his gathered family at their home for the funeral. She is French, and there’s a definite feeling that his family doesn’t like her very much, a situation compounded by his demise. Her late husband’s father Edgar (Errol Shand) is consumed with grief. Will’s younger brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and hs girlfriend Thya (Lucine Buchanon) don’t reallty know what to make of her. Her mother-in law Susan (Tandi Wright) is trapped in a desolate marriage with a man she was once passionate about. And the family’s half-senile grandmother Polly, (Maude Davie) is convinced Alice has stolen from her.

Polly’s late husband was obsessed with the Necronomicon, the fabled Book of the Dead that runs through the foundation of the Evil Dead franchise, and so it is that the family into whose proximity Alice finds herself thrust, turn, one by one, into demons.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ in the Schoolyard
(Niwa ni wa
Niwa Niwatori ga ita,
庭には二羽ニ
ワトリがいた。)

Director – Seishiro Negaya – 2025 – Japan – Cert. tbc – 19m

*****

Aliens love eating humans, and two humans avoid being eaten by disguising themselves as chickens – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June

It’s just another everyday schoolday for Yohei (voice: Kazuki Ura). He gets out of bed. His mum (voice: Emi Shinohara) makes breakfast and tells him not to keep the cute girl Moemi Kaneda (voice: Kimiko Saito) waiting who wants him to walk her to school. She is twice his height. He’s on animal duty, which means that he must ensure the chickens kept in the schoolyard get fed.

This might sound like nothing out of the ordinary, but Yohei’s strange blue skin and odd face tells a different story, as do Moemi’s mandibles. They are aliens who defeated the humans when they invaded Earth in 2019. And they ate most of the humans, who were particularly tasty to aliens. They would love tto eat more, only, apparently, they’ve eaten all the humans.

Somehow, however, two humans Yuto (voice: Kensho Ono) and Ami (voice: Shin Sakurai) have survivived by disguising themselves as chickens, which aliens don’t like the taste of so much.… Read the rest