Category: Features

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Features Live Action Movies

ManHunt
(Zhui bu,
追捕)

Director – John Woo – 2017 – China, Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 109m

*****

Hong Kong action director John Woo’s return to form – currently on Netflix.

The late Japanese actor Ken Takakura who died in 2014 appeared in more than 200 films and made his name playing ex-cons and gangsters for Toei studios between the mid-fifties and mid-seventies. He was a major inspiration for Hong Kong director John Woo who here remakes the 1976 Takakura vehicle Manhunt.

Du Qiu (Chinese actor Zhang Hanyu) finds himself in a Japanese bar swapping notes on movies with the mama-san Rain (Korea’s Ha Ji-won). Almost immediately, a loutish group of men in suits storm into the same bar to demand he leaves so she can give them her full attention. Once he’s gone, Rain and her partner Dawn (the director’s daughter Angeles Woo) proceed to gun down the suits, the camera whirling around them as Woo choreographs the mayhem.

Du is a lawyer working for a pharma company. The morning after a huge corporate event he wakes up to find a dead woman (Tao Okamoto) lying next to him in his bed. Implicated in her murder, he goes on the run.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Pixie

Director – Barnaby Thompson – 2020 – Ireland – Cert. 15 – 93m

***1/2

A free-spirited, rule-bending Irishwoman takes on a world of small-time gangsters from the inside – in cinemas from Friday, October 23rd

The West of Ireland. Fergus (Fra Fee) and Colin (Rory Fleck Byrne) have received a tip-off about a shipment coming to a country church. Colin has recently split with longtime girlfriend Pixie. Entering the vestry and presumably expecting gangster types, the pair are surprised to find four priests, two who are visiting from Afghanistan “to discover the lessons we’ve learned from dealing with the IRA”. Our two protagonists, suspicious that Catholics don’t exist in Afghanistan, find themselves in a shoot out. After which, they discover the bag containing the drugs shipment.

We’ve not even met the central character yet. Pixie (Olivia Cooke) adores and dotes on her gangster stepfather Dermot O’Brien (Colm Meaney) but hates and distrusts her quick-tempered stepbrother Mike. She heads out to drink tequila in a bar where, coincidentally, Frankie (Ben Hardy) and Harland (Daryl McCormack) are picking up pills from Daniel (Chris Walley). Frankie always fancied Pixie and, encouraged by Daniel’s lewd, drugs-fuelled suggestions regarding Pixie’s sexual proclivities, Frankie, with Harland in tow, drives out to Pixie’s remote house at two in the morning.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

I Am Greta

The Greta good

I am Greta
Directed by Nathan Grossman
Certificate 12a, 98 minutes
Released on 16 October

Greta Thunberg is, without doubt, a remarkable young woman. And this is a remarkable film, although not perhaps for the reasons you might expect.

What’s remarkable is that when the 15-year-old schoolgirl with Asperger’s started her strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament, the documentary film-maker Nathan Grossman possessed the foresight to start filming her. He kept filming as she was invited to address organisations such as the European Parliament in Strasbourg, meet with world leaders such as France’s President Macron and speak to climate activist meetings and rallies around the globe.

You can’t get that close to a person without finding out something about them. Greta is driven by a focus on one issue. As it happens, that issue is the single most important one facing the survival of the human race and the planet. Read the rest…

I review I Am Greta for Reform.

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Features Live Action Movies

The Intruder
(El Prófugo)

Director – Natalia Meta – 2020 – Argentina, Mexico – Cert. – 95m

***1/2

A woman moves between dreams and reality as she starts to fear that a foreign entity may be taking her over – on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 from 20.30 Monday, October 12th to 20.30 Thursday, October 15th

This opens with a close up of a woman’s body bound in bondage gear. She speaks in Japanese and then somewhat disorientatingly (as if this disturbing imagery hadn’t already thrown you enough) in a different voice in Spanish. Voice actress Inés (Erica Rivas) is working in a dubbing theatre. “More powerful, Inés”, says the man in the booth. After a take or two more, he’s got what he needed and they move on to the next clip.

The film’s a bit like that. The opening is representative of what is to follow: a series of bravura and often disturbing sequences that suck you in and make you wonder exactly where the film will end up. As the sequences build, one on another, I was fully expecting this to be a five star review. Alas, the film didn’t seem to know how to end and the final scene, which needed to somehow pull everything together and make sense of the larger whole, quite simply didn’t.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Journey
To The Shore
(Kishibe
No Tabi,
岸辺の旅)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2015 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 127m

****

Currently on BFI Player (extended free trial offer here) as part of 21st Century Japan, MUBI as part of The Uncanny Universe of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Eureka Video Dual Format BluRay/DVD.

Review published in All The Anime.

Loner Mizuki (Fukatsu Eri) is alone one evening when her husband Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano) appears out of a dark corner into the light as if through a door. There doesn’t seem to be anything odd about this even though as she says, “it’s been three years”. “I’m dead,” he affirms. “In the sea off Toyama. My body’s been eaten by crabs. You wouldn’t find it even if you searched.”

Before departing, the dead come to terms with their death and help those close to them do the same.

This quiet, subtle, underplayed affair works as a gentle romance… Read the rest

Currently on BFI Player (extended free trial offer here) as part of 21st Century Japan, MUBI as part of The Uncanny Universe of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Eureka Video Dual Format BluRay/DVD.

Review published in All The Anime.

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

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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

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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

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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

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Fabulous
Baron Munchausen
(Baron Prášil)

Director – Karel Zeman – 1961 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. U – 85m

*****

Available on Blu-ray/DVD and now on BFI Player too.

This capsule review originally appeared in Reform in 2017 as part of a wider Watch And Talk review roundup.

Using not only live action but also every form of animation you can imagine, the 1961 Czech fantasy The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (BD/DVD, cert U, 85 mins) puts the infamous teller of tall tales in the company of a rational astronaut he meets on the moon for a series of improbable adventures. It’s a charming and delightful piece of escapism and a visual marvel from start to finish.

Director Karel Zeman has probably come closer than anyone to filming the equivalent of a moving woodcut and the whole thing is highly inventive throughout, challenging the very idea of what a film might look and feel like. Children and adults alike will be entranced. For good measure, the disc includes a documentary in which students try to recreate some of the film’s spectacular special effects.

Trailer here:

This capsule review originally appeared in Reform in 2017 as part of a wider Watch And Talk review roundup.