Category: Animation

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Mavka
The Forest Song
(Mavka.
Lisova Pisnya,
Мавка.
Лісова пісня)

Directors – Oleh Malamuzh, Oleksandra Ruban – 2022 – Ukraine – Cert. PG – 99m

Ukrainian language dubbed version with English subtitles ****1/2

English language dubbed version ****

#Mavka

Can the love of a brave and essentially honest youth for Mavka the forest spirit succeed in the face of the enmity between humans and nature? – Ukrainian animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 28th

Long ago, events flared into a terrible winter war between the Guardian (voice in Ukrainian: Nazar Zadniprovskyi; in English: Marc Thompson) of the forest beyond the Dark Mountain and a sawmill owner who initially wanted to obtain one drop of the Source of Life to heal his sick daughter but then became greedy and brought an army to seize the rest of the Source of Life for himself. Seeing the terrible devastation wrought upon the forest in the conflict, the Guardian decreed that no human should ever again set foot in the forest.

Many years later, as young forest spirit Mavka (voice in Ukrainian: Natalka Denysenko; in English: Laurie Hymes) awakens from her winter sleep to spread the new life of Spring, in the nearby village where flautist Lucas (voice in Ukrainian: Artem Pyvovarov; in English: Eddy Lee) is performing with fellow musicians, the late sawmill owner’s daughter Kilina (voice in Ukrainian: Olena Kravets; in English: Sarah Natochenny) returns promising well paid work.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Tunnel
To Summer,
The Exit
Of Goodbyes
(Natsu
E No Tunnel,
Sayonara
No Deguchi,
夏へのトンネル、
さよならの出口)

Director – Tomohisa Taguchi – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 83m

****

Damaged boy meets damaged girl one summer to discover a tunnel in which time passes much faster and innermost desires are fulfilled – from the 2023 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Official Competition section and out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 14th

A rural railway platform in the rain. Puddles on the platform. The tannoy states that the train is delayed by half an hour because it has collided with a deer. The standing boy explains to the sitting girl who isn’t from around these parts that that often happens in this region and offers her his umbrella. At first, she refuses thinking him a bit of a creep, but then comes round. They swap names and numbers on their phones so that she can return his umbrella. They read each other’s names out loud: she reads Tano Kaoru; he reads Hanashiro Anzu.

Next day, Kaoru (voice: Ouji Suzuka) takes the train to high school where the class is introduced to a new girl: it’s Anzu (voice: Marie Iitoyo). Like her initial coldness towards Kaoru, she ignores various girls attempts to be sociable and has a run in with the girl class bully Kawasaki (voice: Arisa Komiya), punching the latter in the face and causing a nosebleed when Kawasaki “accidentally” drops the old manga in which Anzu is engrossed onto the floor.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Elemental

Director – Peter Sohn – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 109m

*****

Can a romance between a girl of fire and a boy of water succeed in a city populated by beings of earth, air, fire and water where entrenched separate ethnic identities run deep? – latest Pixar / Disney animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 7th

In search of a better life, a young fire people couple Bernie (voice: Ronnie Del Carmen) and Cinder (voice: Shila Ommi) move to Element City, which is populated by not only fire people but also earth people, air people and water people. The couple find a cheap, rundown place to rent and Bernie turns it into The Fireplace, a store selling all manner of fire products from the fire people’s culture. Cinder gives birth to a girl Ember who grows into a twentysomething (voice: Leah Lewis). The plan is that when Ember is ready, she should take over the running of the store and let Bernie peacefully retire. Managing shop customers can be challenging, however, and while Ember is good at most aspects of the job, she has one flaw that lets her down – her fiery temper: she loses it with the most difficult customers.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

Flesh Of God
(Carne De Dios)

Director – Patricion Plaza – 2022 – Argentina, Mexico, Columbia – France 16+ – 21m

*****

When a travelling monk falls prey to a fever, the folk remedy administered by an old woman causes him to experience bizarre hallucinations – from the 2023 Annecy International Animation Festival in the Official Competition section

(Warning: not suitable for work or for those of a sensitive disposition. Potentially offensive to religious i.e. Christian viewers. Also, spoilers.)

In a prologue, a young girl races through a field of crops but runs into a monk, who squishes the mushrooms she’s carrying in her bag with his foot, feels her face and checks out her teeth before she flees.

Some time later (or perhaps some time earlier), the profusely sweating monk falls off on his donkey beside his walking guide and wakes in a nearby hovel, or it might be a church, tended by an old woman muttering unintelligible rituals as she attempts to heal him. The perpendicular bars of the roof’s sole window form a makeshift cross on which hangs a Christ figure, but when mushrooms resembling the ones trampled at the start are placed in the initially reluctant monk’s mouth, glowing sprites exit his body and enter the Christ figure, which assumes a monstrous aspect and attacks him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

My Extinction

Director – Josh Appignanesi – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 80m

***

In which director Appignanesi chronicles both his unease at the climate crisis and what happens when he joins Extinction Rebellion to do something about it – world premiere on Thursday, June 29th at the Curzon Mayfair, out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 30th

As well as making small British narrative features (Female Human Animal, 2018; The Infidel, 2010), Aappignasi makes little diary films about his life. The previous two, in which his wife, the author and academic Devorah Baum, is credited as co-director, chart impending parenthood (The New Man, 2016) and their relationship (Husband, 2022). This third entry sees Josh hit a professional lull after a planned feature film falls apart and he wonders if his career as a film maker is over. Actually, he reiterates variants of this question at various points throughout the film.

At the same time, environmental activists Extinction Rebellion (XR) are on the TV news for bringing parts of London to a standstill. Cue a title sequence montage of collapsing ice shelf, burning tar sands, gridlocked London traffic, industrial pollution, a bewildered kangaroo with outback ablaze behind it, a flooded street with parked cars, a polar bear stranded on an ice floe, the UK government declaring a climate emergency in response to XR and Greta Thunberg’s “I want you to… act as if your house was on fire” speech.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Chicken
For Linda!
(Linda Veut
Du Poulet !)

Directors – Sébastien Laudenbach, Chiara Malta – 2022 – France, Italy – 75m

*** 1/2

A mother’s relationship with her young daughter lurches into farce as a domestic misunderstanding spirals out of control – from the Annecy International Animation Festival 2023 in the Official Competition section

This starts off with a poem in French – which, alas, has lost its rhyming in the translation to English subtitles – about the blackness of night and the empire of memory, illustrated by images within a little circle, including a ring. Then it moves to another series of floating circles, one of which is little, yellow-coloured, toddler Linda sitting in a high chair being fed spicy chicken – her favourite – by her muted-red-coloured father (voice: Pietro Sermonti) and her orange-coloured mum (voice: Clothilde Hesme), while amidst a popping of champagne corks – the muted red lines of dad’s colour against the black background – mother calls out papa’s name Giulio in horror and little Linda is upset…

The present, years later; an image not now in small circles but filling the whole movie picture frame. Schoolgirl Linda (voice: Mélinée Leclerc) badgers her mum into letting her borrow mum’s special ring, plays with it for a day then takes it to school the next day where she hangs out with her purple-coloured friend Annette (voice: Scarlett Cholleton), whose mum had bought her a beret in the exact same colour as Linda’s yellow, which Annette lends her.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Spider-Man
Across
The Spider-Verse

Directors – Joachim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 140m

*****

Assorted Spider-Men and -Women interact across many multiverse worlds as an elite Spider force attempts to prevent their interactions causing disaster – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 2nd

The first part of a two-part sequel to Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, 2018) with the conclusion Spider-Man Beyond The Spider-Verse due for release next year. So be warned: Across ends mid-story with a To Be Continued… legend plastered across the screen.

Having played around with the multiverse concept in Into, Across ramps it up to overload, introducing new worlds with titles that appear on screen before you’ve worked out where you are, making you want to hit pause and stop and take it in. You can’t do that in a public cinema, where the image and sound is sharper than it is in the home but you have no personalised remote control, and that’s a defining characteristic of the theatrical cinema medium.

You can of course go back and see a movie again and again for successive viewings, and I imagine that will be happening a lot with Across during its theatrical run because its visuals are consistently amazing, but once it’s available on a home platform where you can freeze it, go back, look at bits of scenes again, this movie will take on a whole new life as the viewers interact with it at their own pace.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Old Man
Movie
Lactopalypse!
(Vanamehe Film)

Directors – Oskar Lehemaa, Mikk Mägi – 2019 – Estonia – Cert. 15 – 88m

***

A farmer and his grandchildren must recapture his unmilked cow before its udders burst into lactopalypse – stop-frame epic is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 2nd and currently screening in previews

Estonia’s answer to Britain’s Shaun The Sheep, this feature spin-off from long-running, popular, puppet animation TV comedy series Vanamehe Multikas (Old Man Cartoon) shows Estonian sensibilities to be very different from those of the British. This is aimed at not as you might expect children but rather the young adult market – it’s stuffed full of sexual innuendo and toilet or other bodily function humour. Since I can imagine it being an uproarious experience with the right audience, it’s a shame to have first seen this online rather than in a packed movie theatre owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bookended by black and white newsreel of Old Milker’s disastrous failure to stop a cow’s unmilked udders exploding into a lactopolypse complete with milk mushroom cloud, the plot has three kids sent to stay with their grandpa on his farm for the summer. Their family car back seat introduction shows us teenage boy Priidik and girl Aino constantly on their mobile phones while their pre-teen boy sibling Mart has built an incredible, fully functioning, miniature robot cow for grandpa.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Boonie Bears
Guardian Code
(Xiong Chu Mo
Ban Wo Xiong Xin,
熊出没·伴我“熊芯”)

Directors – Lin Yongchang, Shao Heqi – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 99m

****1/2

Abandoned by their mother as children, bear siblings Bramble and Briar uncover a conspiracy involving roboticists and robots – in a dubbed format for family audiences – out in cinemas on Friday, May 26th following its premiere at the Prince Charles Cinema around midday on Saturday, May 13th

Bear cubs Bramble (voiced in the English language version by Siobhan Lumsden) and Briar (voice: Nichalia Schwartz) enjoy and idyllic life in the Pine Tree Mountain forest in the care of their loving, lullaby-singing mother Barbara (voice: Kally Khourshid). Barbara shows them her amber pendant containing a moon and a star shape, one for each of her two cubs who have those shapes in light patches of fur on their chests. (Bramble is the one with the yellowish fur and Briar the one with reddish fur.)

One day, Briar sees her walk away through the burning ruins of a house as if she never knew him. The brothers never see her again, growing up on their own and looking out for one another.

Years later, the adult Bramble (voice: Joseph S. Lambert) and Briar (voice: Patrick Freeman), disguised as robots using makeshift fridge and washing machine costumes that would give the robot performer of Brian And Charles (Jim Archer, 2022) a run for his money, are being driven by their best friend the human Vick (voice: Paul ‘Maxx’ Rinehart) along with roboticist Dr.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Blind Willow,
Sleeping Woman
(Saules Aveugles,
Femme Endormie)

Director – Pierre Földes – 2022 – France, Canada, Luxembourg, The Netherlands – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

Three characters experience the aftermath of the 2011 Tokyo earthquake in a story based on six Haruki Murakami short stories – animated feature is out to rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th

This is an animated feature based on six Haruki Murakami short stories which comes not, as you might expect, from Japan, but rather from one of the few other countries that can reasonably be said to have an animation industry: France. Writer-director Pierre Földes, whose father Peter is an award-winning animator, further confounds expectations by making a film of six Murakami short stories… [Read the full review at All The Anime…]

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is out to rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th.

It was out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, March 31st.

Trailer: