Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Relative Worlds
(Ashita Sekai
Ga Owaru
To Shitemo,
あした世界
が終わる
としても)

Director – Yuhei Sakuragi – 2019 – Japan – 93m

***

Teenage romance, parallel worlds and dysfunctional families are the main ingredients of The Relative Worlds, Yuhei Sakuragi’s uneasy cross between a mawkish boy meets girl tale and a sci-fi action picture in the James Cameron mould. The romantic, emotional parts are gentle and almost hesitant. The science fiction, fantasy and action parts are fast, full on and frantic – and indeed in places quite hard to keep up with. The dysfunctional families are more a background plot device than anything else. That said, if you’re prepared to get on its wavelength (or wavelengths, plural) it’s an enjoyable enough romp, with action that looks great on a big screen… [read more]

Full review at All The Anime.

Trailer:

Festivals

2019

Scotland Loves Anime

Annecy International Animation Festival

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Memory:
The Origins Of Alien

Director – Alexandre O. Philippe – 2019 – US – Cert. 15 – 95m

**** 1/2

A detailed examination of the ideas and personalities behind Dan O’Bannon, H.R.Giger and Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 SF shocker Alien – in cinemas on Friday, August 30th 2019, and then on VoD the following Monday, September 2nd 2019

When Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) first came out, no one knew about its most notorious scene. These days it’s been so referenced in films, television and popular culture that everyone, it seems, does so. If you’ve never actually seen Alien, watch it before seeing this documentary or reading this review.

You’d be forgiven, as this new documentary starts, for thinking you’d wandered into a different film. Spiders on sun-drenched stone surfaces. Footage of Greek temples. But then, visuals clearly inspired by Alien show three Furies waking up on the floor of a spaceship interior and advancing towards camera. The voice-over invokes the myth of Clytemnestra and the Furies, although… [Read more…]

Memory: The Origins Of Alien is out in the UK on Friday, August 30th 2019, and then on VoD the following Monday, September 2nd 2019.

Review originally published in DMovies.org.

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Art Movies Shorts

Memorable
(Mémorable)

Director – Bruno Collet – 2019 – France – 12m

*****

The techniques used in this remarkable short include both computer and puppet animation, with all the surfaces of both the puppets and the sets resembling that of a canvas painted with oils. It’s the perfect artistic form in which to express the story the film wishes to tell.

Louis is a painter suffering from dementia. Neither he nor his wife and model Michelle are coping well. He struggles to recognise different items of food by name at the dinner table – a bit of a problem when Michelle asks him to pass the pepper – and attempts to eat a banana without taking the skin off it first… [read more]

Nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2019 (92nd) Oscars.

As part of my Annecy 2019 coverage, I review Memorable (Mémorable) for DMovies.org.

Categories
Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Buñuel
in the Labyrinth
of the Turtles
(Buñuel
en el Laberinto
de las Tortugas)

Director – Salvador Simo – 2018 – Netherlands – 80m

***1/2

Streaming on BFI Player (extended free trial offer here) from Thursday, July 16th 2020 – with more Buñuel movies here.

Following the success of his surrealist film L’Age D’Or / The Age Of Gold (1930), film director Luis Buñuel finds his main source of funding cut off when the strongly Catholic mother of his primary investor puts pressure in the latter. At the same time, a stranger named Eli Lotar strikes up a post-premiere conversation with the director, saying he saw no influence of Dali in the film and presses a book Las Hurdes into Buñuel’s hands.

Frustrated at the lack of funding for his films, Luis decides to film the book, which details the appalling living conditions of poor people in a remote village in rural Spain.

As part of my Annecy 2019 coverage, I review Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles for DMovies.org.

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Default
(Gukgabudo-ui Nal,
국가부도의 날)

Director – Choi Kook-Hee – 2018 – South Korea – Cert. 12 – 114m

****

Drama fictionalises the economic crisis of mid to late 1990s South Korea and the role played by banking, government and speculators – teaser screening from the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) 2019

The year is 1996. The news media are championing South Korea’s economy as it seemingly goes from strength to strength, never questioning whether financial institutions might in fact be pursuing practices which are sooner or later going to have disastrous economic results. Ms. Han Si-hyun (Kim Hye-su) who runs a fiscal policy unit at the Bank of Korea submits a devastating report to the Bank’s governor, explaining that she and her small department have procedures set in place to save the economy and protect ordinary Koreans from disaster.

The politicians have a very different agenda, however, specifically the smarmy Vice-Minister of Finance (Jo Woo-jin) who views financial collapse as a way to weaken the rights of the working class and restructure the economy in favour of large business interests. Although it’s not name checked, there are echoes here of Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine and the film based upon it.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Keeper
(Trautmann)

Director – Marcus H. Rosenmüller – 2018 – Germany / Austria – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

The (not-so-) beautiful game. A WW2 PoW who becomes Manchester City’s goalkeeper is faced with anti-German prejudice both on and off the pitch – in cinemas from Friday, April 5th 2019

Set in WW2 and its aftermath in Britain, this looks at first sight like a football movie. However, it becomes something else altogether by taking a long hard look at the plight of a person living in another country that’s heavily prejudiced against his own. Sadly one doesn’t have to look very far in present day, hostile environment Britain to see that such attitudes are currently very real and out in the open.

German infantryman Bert Trautmann (David Kross) is captured by the British and sent to a PoW camp just outside Manchester. Despite the presence of a few hardcore Nazis among the prisoners, most including Bert are ordinary Germans caught up in the conflict. Nevertheless, the English sergeant who runs the camp would have all of them shot were the decision his and makes their lives as difficult as possible.

However Bert has something specific in his favour: for as long as he can remember, he’s loved playing football… [read more]

Full review published in DMovies.org… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Shoplifters
(Manbiki Kazoku,
万引き家族)

Director – Hirokazu Kore-eda – 2018 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 121m – Palme d’Or winner

*****

Sleight of hand. A family of small-time criminals takes a little girl into their care – now out on VoD

The nuclear family. Dad Osamu (Lily Franky) takes son Shota (Jyo Kairi) shoplifting at a local convenience store. Mum Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), a former sex worker, dispenses advice to her younger sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka). Grandma (Kirin Kiki) lives with the family, making a total of five persons in one small living space.

Father and son spot a little girl (Miyu Sasaki) sitting on the street. She’s hungry, so they take to theirs and give her a meal. Taking her home, it’s clear that neither father nor mother wants the child currently nor ever did. So the family decides to take Yuri in as its newest member.

Shota takes Yuri on a shoplifting trip but it doesn’t go so well… [Read the rest]

Out on Thunderbird Video. Also currently on Amazon Prime, BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema (all rental). This review originally appeared in DMovies.org.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Foreboding
(Yocho,
予兆 散歩する侵略者)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2017 – Japan – 140m

*****

Loving the alien. Again. Japanese director reshapes his earlier Before We Vanish into an effective drama which plays out as an edge of the seat, sci-fi alien invasion thriller – from the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) 2018

This is not exactly a remake, not exactly a reboot, not exactly a sequel. Most definitely a companion piece, though, and arguably the more effective of the two movies. And apparently, an edit of the director’s five-part series for Japanese satellite station Wowow, although it feels like a (well over two hours long) standalone feature. Kiyoshi Kurosawa revisits Before We Vanish / Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha (2017) for another story about the aliens clad in human bodies who steal concepts from people’s minds by touching a finger to a forehead E.T. (Steven Spielberg, 1982) style prior to a full scale invasion of Earth.

Where previously the director took the material and threw a cornucopia of different elements at it, this time round his efforts feel much more thought through and the resultant film far more consistent overall – a creepy and unsettling sci-fi paranoia thriller grounded in compelling, character-driven human drama.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Cam

Director – Daniel Goldhaber – 2018 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

***1/2

An erotic webcam performer discovers to her horror that her online presence has been hacked by an unknown rival, in a film conceived by a real-life cam artist– from the 62nd BFI London Film Festival and on Netflix from Friday, November 16th 2018

Alice (Madeline Brewer) is in charge of her destiny, or so it seems. From a secret and self-contained, fluffy pink studio set up in her apartment, she promotes herself as her online persona Lola who hosts her own live online erotic shows where enthusiastic fans can encourage her to do specific things by sending her virtual currency. Her goal is to become number one on the site which hosts her and many thousands of other hopefuls, but she seems to have got stuck somewhere around the rank of 60th. What’s a camgirl to do in order to boost her ratings?

Clearly, spicing the sex up with a little violence is a winner, so when one of her admirers encourages her to use a knife, while others egg her on and other still try to talk her out of it, Lola cuts her throat online.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Little Forest
(리틀 포레스트)

Director – Yim Soon-Rye – 2018 – South Korea – 103m

*****

This review originally appeared in DMovies.org.

The passing of the seasons. A young woman finds her true self in the Korean countryside in this adaptation of a Japanese manga; the outcome will make you drool, for more reasons than one – from the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) and the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF)

Raised in the countryside by her mother (Moon So-ri) but dissatisfied with life there, Hye-won (Kim Tae-ri) moves to Seoul and acquires a boyfriend. But after both of them have taken their exams, she returns to the village in which she grew up to get some space and think about her life.

The boyfriend has passed his exams and is hoping she has done the same, leaving messages on her voicemail to this effect, but she’s still waiting for her own result to come through. She doesn’t respond to his messages.

For reasons that aren’t immediately apparent, but which surface to a degree in the course of the narrative, her mother has left, presumably to start a new life now that the job of raising a well adjusted daughter is complete.… Read the rest