Category: Live Action

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Movies Documentary Features Live Action Music

Pink Floyd at Pompeii

Pink Floyd at Pompeii

Director – Adrian Maben – 1972 – UK – Cert. PG – 93m

*****

Around the time of Meddle, Pink Floyd perform in the amphitheatre at Pompeii and in a Paris sound studio; later, at EMI Abbey Road, they work on their next album The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII is out in UK cinemas on Thursday, April 24th

This review is of the Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii – The Director’s Cut version that came out on DVD in 2003. There have been various versions over the years; indeed, that DVD release also contains the 62-minute cut which excises all the Abbey Road material. The newly released version (as yet unseen by this writer) boasts a 4K restoration and a new sound mix by Steven Wilson. Even without these new enhancements, the film is pretty impressive some fifty odd years on.

It starts and ends with a version of Echoes (which originally took up the second side of Meddle and is here conveniently broken up into a part one and a part two). This is followed by Careful With That Axe Eugene and another lengthy opus A Saucerful of Secrets.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

The Last Dance
(Po Dei Juk,
破·地獄)

The Last Dance (Po Dei Juk, 破·地獄)

Director – Anselm Chan – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12a – 130m (extended version – Cert. 15 – 140m)

**** (regular version) / unseen (extended version)

A failed, professional wedding planner joins a Taoist funeral director as a partner in his company as various crises come to a head in the latter’s family – engaging drama is back out in UK cinemas in an extended version on Friday, April 24th following the original version’s release on Friday, November 15th 2024

There have been movies about undertakers and funeral parlours before, but never one quite like this. Whether or not one is at a stage in life where one has had much experience of bereavement, at some point, each one of us is going to die – and, before that, in all likelihood, have to deal with our nearest and dearest dying and, by extension, undertakers and funeral directors in whatever culture we happen to live. Consequently, there is a universal fascination with such matters.

Hong Kong has a very specific cultural take on this phenomenon in its Taoist priests and rituals. While these have over the years supplied the basis for much beloved and fantastical Hong Kong action or horror fare such as Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983) or the Mr.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

The Devils

The Devils

Director – Ken Russell – 1971 – UK – Cert. 18 – 106m 41s (cut)

*****

UK DVD release date 19/03/2012, cert. 18, 107 mins plus extras, £19.99. Reviewed for Third Way

40 years after its 1971 theatrical release, the late Ken Russell’s key work reaches UK DVD in its original UK X Certificate version with a host of invaluable DVD extras. Although a more complete (2004 restoration) director’s cut exists, the nature of the excised material makes the current cut as complete as is ever likely to be released on DVD. In terms of controversy, the film has everything – sex, religion, politics and torture – and Russell’s original cut didn’t hold back in any of these areas. This presented headaches for not only the distributor Warner Bros. in terms of a mainstream US release but also the UK censor who questioned, as the BBFC’s secretary John Trevelyan succinctly put it, “whether artistic quality justifies total freedom.”

The plot concerns seventeenth century France where Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) is attempting to increase the Catholic Church’s hold on the nation by persuading decadent monarch Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) to knock down the walls surrounding cities that enable their functioning as self-governing entities.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

Shark Skin Man
and Peach Hip Girl
(Samehada Otoko
to Momojiri Onna,
鮫肌男と桃尻女)

Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl
(Samehada Otoko to Momojiri Onna, 鮫肌男と桃尻女)

Director – Katsuhito Ishii – 1998 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 108m

*****

Arresting and highly inventive thriller is out as a standalone Blu-ray release in the UK from Monday, April 14th 2025, also on digital, having previously appeared as the first disc of the three disc release Katsuhito Ishii Collection from Third Window Films just over a year ago (when the following piece was written for All the Anime).

Deriving its odd title from a literal translation of the leads’ surnames, Katsuhito Ishii’s highly original gangster movie from 1998 is based on a familiar plot: a man runs off with the mob’s money, and a lady companion. Or, as pioneering French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard once put it: all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.

Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl has much the same strengths as Godard when he’s on form. Ishii demonstrates a similar flair for taking actors or actresses and having them do what they do on camera so that it’s completely absorbing to watch: look no further than the extraordinary title sequence which starts about five minutes in and consists of little more than names and images of all the major cast members against a white background with overlaid black line animation images.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

Babe

Babe

Director – Chris Noonan – 1995 – Australia – Cert. PG (2025), U (1995) – 92m

The story of a sheep that thinks it’s a dog – back in cinemas 30 years later on Friday, April 11th 2025, with a higher BBFC classification rating. The below is my review from What’s On in London in 1995, where I badgered my editor to make it the Film of the Week.

The very different worlds of Gloucestershire-born children’s author Dick King-Smith and Australian production company Kennedy Miller (Mad Max, George Miller, 1979; The Year My Voice Broke, John Duigan, 1987; Dead Calm, Phillip Noyce, 1989) might appear to have little in common. Then along comes Babe, a Kennedy-Miller adaptation of King-Smith’s hilarious fable The Sheep-Pig in which Farmer Hogget’s sole piglet Babe decides to become a sheepdog. Although the book is a very fine (and highly recommended) example of the children’s book, it’s hardly groundbreaking – we’ve read tales about talking animals before. For that matter, too, we’ve seen films with talking animals before – many of the better ones made by Disney.

What we haven’t seen before is this conceit pulled off flawlessly in live action.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

The Return

The Return

Director – Uberto Pasolini – 2024 – Italy, Greece, UK, France – Cert. 15 – 116m

**

Odysseus returns home to his island kingdom of Ithaca ten years after the Trojan War to find faithful wife Penelope fending off insistent suitors who threaten to kill son Telemachus – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 11th

A young man (Charlie Plummer) stares out on clear blue Mediterranean waters crashing against the shore’s rocks. In an interior, an older woman (Juliette Binoche) weaves at her shuttle. On a beach, unobserved, the flotsam and jetsam of a shipwreck wash up, as does the unconscious body of a man (Ralph Fiennes). In the local village, a man threatens the young man with a knife.

Under pressure to marry one of the men in the village – her husband Odysseus, the island’s king, never having returned from the Trojan War – Penelope (for the woman played here by Binoche is she) claims she will do so once she has finished weaving her grandfather’s shroud. She is accused of having been weaving it for months.

The Fiennes character is rescued from the sea by a boat, only for crew members to throw him back into the sea.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

Novocaine
(2025)

Novocaine (2025)

Directors – Dan Berk, Robert Olsen – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 110m

*****

An assistant bank manager who is medically unable to feel pain pursues the bank robbers who have kidnapped his brand new and first ever girlfriend – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 28th

(There have been several other movies with this title. Apart from having the same title, this one appears to be completely original.)

San Diego, California. Driving to work in gridlock, Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) is the type to annoy fellow motorists by obsessively maintaining the correct space in front of his vehicle when no-one else is doing so. At work, he’s the assistant bank manager. He’s a genuinely nice guy who genuinely cares from people, such as long-standing customer Earl (Lou Beatty Jr.) who Nate helps through an unpleasant foreclosure on his workshop by doing things on a schedule that will help ease the man’s pain.

Also, there’s this new teller Sherry (Amber Midthunder) at the bank who Nate rather likes but can’t bring himself to talk to. In fact, despite her obvious attentions, he goes out of his way to avoid talking to her.

Somehow, she talks him into a lunch date where she has cherry pie and he… doesn’t.… Read the rest

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Art Movies Documentary Features Live Action

War Paint
Women at War

The Crying Game. Between a Rock and a Hard Place 2017 by Marcelle Hanselaar

War Paint: Women at War

– Margy Kinmonth – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 89m

*****

A look at the output of various women artists who have documented and dissected war, and what they can tell us – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 28th

Although being promoted, reasonably enough, with an image from World War Two of women working with barrage balloons, right from the start in narration over its opening titles this breaks the mould for anyone expecting it to cover any one specific historical or geographical war. “I’m going to talk to women all round the world”, says director Kinmonth in regard to the concept of war as a catalyst for creativity. “What do women see that men don’t?” Quite apart from her gender, she is well-placed to tackle such a subject having recently made two documentaries on the subject of war artists: Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022), War Art with Eddie Redmayne (2015), and many more before that on the subject of art in assorted social contexts.

The film is a compendium of interviews with living female artists or, in the cases of artists who’ve passed on, their descendants or proponents. Some of the names are familiar, such as Lee Miller, Maggi Hambling or Dame Rachel Whiteread, others much less so.… Read the rest

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Movies Features Live Action

When Autumn Falls
(Quand Vient l’Automne;
US: When Fall is Coming)

When Autumn Falls
(Quand Vient l’Automne;
US: When Fall is Coming)

Director – François Ozon – 2024 – France – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

A grandmother’s cooking accidentally poisons her daughter, who survives… in the ensuing emotional turmoil, past truths are revealed, which have devastating effects… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

Michelle (Hélène Vincent) lives alone in rural Burgundy. She goes to church. She goes out picking mushrooms with her old friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Bolasko), who attempts to stop her picking the poisonous ones. At home, Michelle double-checks the mushrooms against photos and blurb in her mushroom reference book. She cooks the mushrooms. She gets a phone call telling her her guests are on the way. She is surprised that the driver is using Laurant’s car.

Her daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) arrives in the car with grandson Lucas (Galan Erlos) in tow. He is looking forward to spending the Summer with his gran. Valérie, however, is constantly angry, blaming her mum for everything, occasionally making remarks about “what you did”. She is clearly upset by something in their past history, although it’s unclear as to exactly what. Although grandmother has given daughter her former Paris apartment, Valérie also seems keen that Michelle sign over the current house to her under a scheme that would exempt Valérie from paying tax on it.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Animation Features Live Action Music

Disney’s Snow White
(2025)

Disney’s Snow White (2025)

(Live action remake of animated feature, so filed under animation, among other categories.)

Director – Marc Webb – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 119m

***1/2

Disney’s new Snow White redoes the first animated feature, with its eponymous heroine, wicked queen and dwarfs, as live action – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

There are a very small number of watershed films after which cinema is never been quite the same again. One of them is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937), the first ever animated feature film, widely considered a folly until it became a huge success and helped fuel the rise of the Hollywood Studio that still bears its founder Walt Disney’s name today. Before that film, no-one made animated features. After that film, Disney regularly made animated features of a consistently high standard, and his name became synonymous with animation for the three decades until his death in 1966.

Yet, the film isn’t good simply because it was the first animated feature – it’s good for a whole host of other reasons, namely excellence in storytelling, character, visuals, and songs, elements which would similarly underscore his Studio’s output during the remainder of Disney’s lifetime.… Read the rest