Category: Live Action

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Lee

Director – Ellen Kuras – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 116m

****

Former fashion model Lee Miller, played by producer Kate Winslet, reinvents herself as a war photographer for London Vogue at the start of World War Two – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s all too easy to assume (as per the ‘auteur’ theory espoused by the French ‘Cahiers du Cinema’ critics of the 1950s) that films are the works of directors. If one had to pick a single creative force behind this film, however, it would be the person who put it all together as producer before any director or writer were involved as collaborators.

That producer was the actress Kate Winslet who wanted to make a film about Vogue model turned photographer Lee Miller. Winslet doesn’t look much like the tall statuesque beauty that Lee Miller was in her younger days, and it didn’t occur to her to portray Lee Miller herself until some way into the process of putting the film together.

To direct the film, Winslet has chosen former cinematographer Ellen Kuras, an appropriate choice since Kuras has worked on documentaries shooting such musicians as David Byrne, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Neil Young, lensed narrative features on the such diverse cultural figures as Jane Goodall and Andy Warhol, and worked with unique film director Michel Gondry.… Read the rest

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Reawakening

Director – Virginia Gilbert – 2024 – UK – Cert. 15 – 90m

***

When a couple’s daughter returns after a decade’s long absence, the husband starts to suspect she is not really their daughter – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

It’s been ten years since their daughter Clare left home at 14. Not a day has gone by for her parents John (Jared Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) when they haven’t thought about her. The couple are in touch with the police and give periodic press conferences which have, so far, yielded nothing in the way of results.

Yet John, a self-employed electrician, has never given up hope. On the streets, he looks out for his daughter in the hope that he might one day see her again. And then, one day, he sees her sitting at then getting up from a table outside a café. He runs towards her, nearly getting hit by a car in the process, then follows her only to lose her down a turning.

Every morning at the primary school where she teaches, his wife Mary re-pins the poster of their missing daughter over the top of other bits of posters pinned on top of it to ensure that it can be clearly seen.… Read the rest

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Firebrand

Director – Karim Ainouz – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 121m

*****

Henry VIII’s sixth wife Katherine Parr must navigate the increasingly treacherous waters between her desire for religious tolerance and Henry’s more authoritarian take on Christianity – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 6th

With her husband Henry VIII away fighting wars abroad, the Queen – Henry’s sixth wife Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander) – has been declared Regent. Yet, for all the power, at least temporarily, entrusted to her, she cannot go anywhere outside the castle without male guards. On the pretext of visiting a religious shrine to which only women can be admitted, she (and her loyal ladies in waiting) slip off to a forest glade where her old friend Anne Askew (Erin Doherty) is preaching on the fact that the Bible has recently been translated into English and therefore made available to the common people in their own language for the present time. “Where will it all end?”, Anne asks her small, gathered audience.

Where indeed? Katherine may be a reformer at heart, but she is also staunchly royalist and believes in the King both as an institution and Henry himself specifically.

And then Henry (Jude Law) comes back from the wars, bringing her time as Regent to an end.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 104m

***1/2

The hyperactive ghost from the afterlife returns, along with a number of characters from the original – sequel to the 1988 film is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 6th

When the original Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) came out, no-one had quite worked out what Tim Burton was about, and the film was arresting, shocking, completely out there, utterly bonkers and like nothing anyone had ever seen. It’s difficult to know exactly what one could do to achieve that same effect in a sequel, or whether one should even try that approach. In the interim, Burton has had a lengthy and successful Hollywood career, arguably the system’s resident maverick director. When he’s good he’s very good; when he’s not, you wait for the next one and it’s usually an improvement.

In the event, perhaps inevitably, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t have the same shock of the new as its predecessor, but it’s similarly out there and bonkers and recognisably a sequel. It takes a while to get going – the first hour lumbers along with flashes of brilliance, such as a memorable, 3D-animated passenger aircraft crash at sea sequence, but the final third or so (from the point where one of the characters is lured in to the afterlife by another who turns out to be a ghost) is much more effective.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Beetlejuice

Director – Tim Burton – 1988 – US – Cert. 15 – 92m

***1/2

A recently deceased couple hire a bio-exorcist to rid their former house of its new, yuppie occupants – review originally published in Samhain, 1988

Whilst its opening shot recalls the aerial opening of The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) segueying into that of The Witches Of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987), this film has been described as a reworking of Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) and The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) (!) from the ghost’s point of view. The plot concerns a couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who die and then find that their house – which they have to live in as ghosts – is bought by an horrific collection of yuppie trendies.

The couple try to carry on as normal, picking up the occasional useful tip from a weighty tome entitled ‘The Handbook for the Recently Deceased’ (or diseased, as they first pronounce it!) and despite warnings from their afterlife caseworker Juno (played by veteran Hollywood actress Sylvia Sidney) they decide to employ the self-styled bio-exorcist Beetlegeuse (Michael Keaton) to frighten off the new occupants.

The single most memorable image of Beetlejuice is that of a desert landscape peopled by sea monster-like worms, reminiscent of nothing so much as a surrealist version of Frank Herbert’s Dune.… Read the rest

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Firebrand

Directed by Karim Ainouz
Certificate 15
121 minutes
Released 6 September

Reviewed for Reform magazine.

History. The Tudors. King Henry VIII wanted a male heir to the throne. His first wife failed to deliver, so he divorced her. When the Pope excommunicated him, Henry set up the new, Protestant, Church of England. He kept marrying new wives who ended up, as a popular rhyme puts it, ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’.

The wife who died, Jane Seymour, gave Henry his desired son – however, Edward (Patrick Buckley) later dies at age 15. The wife who survived, Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), is the subject of this movie, which deals with the later period of Henry’s sixth marriage… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

[Read my longer, alternative review on this site.]

Firebrand is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 6th.

Trailer:

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Features Live Action Movies

Hard Miles

Director – R.J. Daniel Hanna – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 108m

****1/2

A youth facility social worker takes a group of troubled young men on a transformative team bicycle ride – out on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Monday, September 2nd

Day-to-day life is one thing after another for Colorado medium-security correction school staff member Greg Townsend (Matthew Modine). He is in court defending, failing to get the court to see one of his charges as a human being rather than someone who committed an offence. Leaving, he finds someone has stolen his bicycle (it later gets found by the police, having sustained only minor damage). He is fielding calls from his prison-incarcerated brother about their father, who is in a care home and may not have much longer to live, and with whom Greg has not had contact for years. He is at the school, pulling boys apart as they attack each other for the most trivial remark.

However, not everything is about work and family responsibility. Greg is a cycling enthusiast, and is looking forward to taking his booked holiday of a week or more off cycling 1 000 (well, 762) miles to the Grand Canyon. Except that his boss Skip (Leslie David Baker) wants him to fill in that week, which Greg isn’t going to do.… Read the rest

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The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1984 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 105m

*****

After proudly moving into their first home as owner-occupiers, a family go berserk and destroy the building – out on Blu-ray on Monday, June 17th

This seemingly starts out as a conservative family drama. The family in question comprises father Katsukuni Kobayashi (Katsuya Kobayashi in his debut feature role), mother Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho who worked with directors Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura and Kaneto Shindo), elder teenage son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono from Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, both Takashi Miike; Electric Dragon, 80,000 V, Sogo Ishii, all 2001) and younger teenage daughter Erika (Youki Kudoh from Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985; Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch, 1989; Heaven’s Burning, Craig Lahiff, 1997). The Kobayashis move in to their first home as owner-occupiers which, although it’s a little on the small side, promises an idyllic existence. Father is the breadwinner with a nondescript office job, mother waters the plants and does the cooking and housework, the daughter wants to be an idol singer and the son is spending all his time studying for school and university in his room upstairs.… Read the rest

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Black Dog
(Gou Zhen,
狗阵)

Director – Guan Hu – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 106m

***1/2

An ex-con returns to his home town, which is infested with wild dogs, and befriends a stray – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 30th

Looking down from the edge of a slope towards Gobi Desert scrubland. In the distance, a coach moving along a road. Suddenly, a large pack of wild dogs come out of nowhere and charge down the slope. The startled bus topples over. The dogs are gone, the driver is getting everyone out of the bus. A man complains that his money, his life savings, have gone. He needs that money. Who has taken it? They are about ten miles from Chixia. One of those on the bus is Lang’s son. The police are called, they arrive and help get the bus back upright. Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), as required, shows an officer his parole ID. Lang walks behind the slow moving bus as the police escort the coach to Chixia.

As an announcement warns of a black dog seen around the town that may well be carrying rabies, Lang is strip searched at the station while the other passengers wait to be interviewed.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

No Trees in the Street

Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1959 – UK – Cert. 12 – 96m

****

An essentially honest young woman living in her parents’ East End slum fails to stop her impetuous younger brother from becoming involved in the criminal underworld – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital

Framed by a contemporary story of plain clothes policeman Frank (Ronald Howard) trying to talk sense into a knife-carrying teenager (David Hemmings), this takes place in the East End street where the latter lives some 20 years previously. The name has changed: back then, Somerset Street was known as Kennedy Street. The policeman, who is local, has always worked this beat. 20 years ago, he was trying to prevent another young man from drifting into a life of crime.

That other young man is Tommy (Melvyn Hayes), who lives with his father, mother and older sister Hetty (Sylvia Syms) in fairly basic accommodation. It’s a poor area and honest work is hard to come by. Both brother and sister would like to find a way out, into a better life. Both have less than honest ways of doing so, in the form of local ‘businessman’ Wilkie (Herbert Lom).… Read the rest