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Features Live Action Movies

Sorcery (Brujería)

Director – Christopher Murray – 2023 – Chile, Mexico, Germany – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When the father of an indigenous Christian convert is murdered by her German Christian employer’s dogs, her thirst for justice leads her to employ occult folk magic against his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

1881. Chiloé, the Northernmost island of an archipelago off the coast of Chile. Indigenous, 13-year-old Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) works as a maid for German immigrant Stefan (Sebastian Hülk from All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger, 2022; Little Joe, Jessica Hausner, 2019; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) who together with his wife (Annick Durán) runs a sheep farm. The couple have two young boys, Thorsten (Matías Bannister) and Franz (Iker Echevers). The family are Christians, and Rosa is a convert to that religion.

One day, Stefan’s sheep lie dead in his field, with woven garlands of vegetation round their necks. With tensions understandably high, Rosa’s father approaches Stefan holding a knife, and Stefan releases his two dogs upon him, killing the man. Rosa later places a makeshift cross of two sticks bound together on his basic grave, which she and Stefan’s family visit, Stefan’s wife pointing out that the man wasn’t a Christian.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

àma GLORIA

Director – Marie Amachoukeli – Co-Director (Animation) – Pierre Emmanuel-Lyet – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 84m

Live Action **** / Animation *****

After her beloved nanny returns to Cape Verde, six-year-old Cléo visits her for the Summer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, July 22nd

Six-year-old Cléo (six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini) in France, but is mostly cared for by her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). One day, Gloria gets a phone call informing her that her mum has died, so she has to return to her home island in Cape Verde. Cléo is distraught, and makes Gloria promise that they will see each other again.

Gloria makes arrangements for the little girl to spend the Summer with her on her island. She meets the family from whom Gloria was separated by being in France – the pregnant Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela), the alienated ten-year-old César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) and, in due course, Fernanda’s baby Santiago. Gloria spends some considerable amount of time mothering the newly-born Santiago, causing Cléo to experience extreme sibling rivalry for Gloria’s attentions. Eventually, these emotions come to a head in the little girl…

This is one of those sadly all too rare films which in the process of telling a story from a child’s point of view completely gets inside their head.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Freud’s Last Session

Director – Matthew Brown – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 108m

****

Celebrated psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud is visited in the last month of his life, living in Britain, by young Oxford don and Christian apologist CS Lewis – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

September 1939. Chamberlain has issued his ultimatum to Hitler, and Britain waits to find out whether it will shortly be at war with Germany. Celebrated psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins), recently moved to Britain from Vienna to escape the Nazis, keeps turning the radio on and off in the hope of an update from the BBC. He is also expecting a visit from a young Oxford don, CS Lewis (Matthew Goode), “the Christian apologist”, with whose views he profoundly disagrees. 

Lewis has written books including a parody of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress called The Pilgrim’s Regress, which is mentioned here, and the first book in his science fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, which isn’t. He has however yet to either give his BBC broadcasts about the Christian faith, which will later form the basis of his most celebrated apologetic work Mere Christianity, or write his Narnia children’s fantasy novels.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Meet the Feebles

Director – Peter Jackson – 1989 – New Zealand – Cert. 18 – 97m

**

Offbeat special effects puppet movie proves a let-down despite inventive filmmaking – review originally published in What’s On in London, March 1992.

Walrus producer Bletch (voice: Peter Vere Jones) wants to take his crummy stage show Meet the Feebles onto syndicated television. Unfortunately, he’s switched amorous attentions from leading lady Heidi the Hippo (Danny Mulheron; voice: Mark Hadlow) to Samantha the Siamese Cat (voice: Donna Akersten) – only Heidi hasn’t got the message yet.

Robert the Hedgehog (voice: Mark Hadlow) arrives from method acting school eager to sample this glamorous backstage world; through rose-tinted vision, he falls in love with chorus girl Lucille the dog (voice: Mark Wright). Bletch’s P.A. Trevor the Rat (voice: Brian Sergent) shoots porno movies in the basement and has other plans for her. [His leading lady Daisy the Cow (voice: Stuart Devenie) is on her last udders.]

By now, you’re probably starting to get the idea. The effect is not dissimilar to watching The Muppets reconceived in terms of excessive sex and violence.

The brains (if that’s the right word) behind this dubious enterprise is New Zealand’s amazingly talented Peter Jackson, whose Bad Taste deservedly achieved cult status.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Perfect Days

Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany, Japan – Cert. PG – 123m

*****

A cleaner for The Tokyo Toilet Company takes great pleasure in his everyday routine – out on UK Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 10th

There is a pecking order in society. Right at the lowest level is anything to do with human waste. Nowhere is this more evident than towards the end of this film when his sister, who drives a large, impressive looking car and is making a rare visit to her sibling, asks, incredulously, “are you really cleaning toilets?”

In this remarkable film, Wenders turns this notion on its head. Welcome to the world of Hirayama (Koji Yakusho), employee of The Tokyo Toilet Company, who has been doing the job for five or six years and takes great pride in it. He is part of a two-person detail, however his young co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto) doesn’t share his enthusiasm, often arriving late for his shift and looking at his mobile phone on the job.

Hirayama drives a small van and has invested in various tools to help him carry out the job; Takashi rides a motor scooter. Hirayama takes great pleasure in his audio cassette collection (The Animals, Lou Reed, Patti Smith) which he listens to on his van’s cassette player driving to and from work.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Wilding

Good Stewardship

Wilding

Directed by David Allen

Certificate PG, 75 minutes

Released 14 June

After they inherited the Knepp farm in West Sussex from his parents in the early 1980s, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree (Lady Burrell) kept it going for some 17 years until the late 1990s, when they were one and a half million pounds in debt. The agro-chemical pesticides and industrial farming practices that they and other UK farmers use were destroying the land. The pair decided to stop running the estate as a farm and to see if there was a way of repairing or regenerating the depleted land. [Read the rest at Reform magazine.]

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

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Maria Full of Grace

Director – Joshua Marston – 2004 – US, Colombia – Cert. 15 – 101m

Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 25/03/2004.

Life’s options are limited for 17-year-old Maria Alvarez (Catalina Sandino Moreno). She would rather climb old ruined buildings in the open air than succumb to her parochially-minded boyfriend’s constant demands for sex, but that doesn’t stop him getting her pregnant. When he offers to marry her for no other reason than because that’s what you’re supposed to do; she dumps him. She hasn’t told anyone else about this yet. Warned she can’t use the lavatory on work time by the foreman at the rose-stripping factory where both she and her best friend Blanca (Yenny Paola Vega) works, she quits. She’s also fed up with being asked to contribute money to support her sister’s baby. What’s a good Catholic, Columbian girl to do? She visits the church to pray about it.

Travelling to Bogotá ostensibly in pursuit of a possible lead on work as a maid, Maria runs into carefree, leather-jacketed Franklin (Jhon Alex Toro) and the word “mule”. Suckered in by his confidence and the promise of $5 000, she agrees to bodily transport Heroin pellets to the US despite the terrible stories she’s heard of people being arrested for the offence.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2009 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 144m

Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 13/11/2009.

Haneke’s first period drama for the big screen is set in 1913-14 in a Northern German Protestant village where strange accidents befall the community. A doctor (Rainer Bock), out riding a regular route, is brought down and injured by a wire between two trees. The wife of a farm labourer is killed when factory floorboards give way beneath her. Children are abducted. A baby’s window is left open in Midwinter. A building burns. But who is – or are – responsible?

The film sets out its cast of characters in terms of the social hierarchy. The landowning classes are represented by the local Baron (Ulrich Tukur), his wife (Ursina Lardi) and their child; the professional classes by a widowed doctor, the midwife (Susanne Lothar) “who has made herself useful to him”, the Baron’s steward (Josef Bierbichler), the village Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) and the local teacher (Christian Friedel) – also as an old man the narrator (Ernst Jacobi) – who is courting the nanny of the Baron’s son; the working classes by numerous agricultural labourers who generally feature less prominently in the story.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Matrix

Directors – Larry and Andy Wachowski – 1999 – US – Cert.15 – 136 mins

*****

The Matrix combines tropes of Japanese animation with live action Hong Kong stunt choreography and groundbreaking ‘bullet time’ special effects.

25th Anniversary UK rerelease (4k remaster): Friday, June 8th, 2024;

UK release: June 11th 1999;

Article originally published in Manga Max, Number 8, July 1999.

—

1999. The Matrix is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E.

Technically, a matrix is a multidimensional array of locations, with each cell uniquely addressable. Contents not specified. Back in late April, when Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix was first screened for UK press, Warners’ line beneath the film’s title on the publicity flier ran, Blockbusting futuristic thriller with ground-breaking special effects. Perhaps it should have read, Blockbusting futuristic thriller with ground-breaking special effects and Hong Kong styled action. Or even, Blockbusting futuristic thriller with ground-breaking special effects and Hong Kong styled action reconceived in terms of anime. Okay, it’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s closer to the truth.

Ostensibly a megabudget Joel Silver (Lethal Weapon / Die Hard / Predator / Speed / Road House / Assassins) SF actioner well beyond the extremities of this magazine’s remit, directed by the Wachowski Brothers (writer‑directors of Bound, screenwriters for Assassins), The Matrix opens with an incredible sequence wherein Trinity (Carrie‑Anne Moss, who looks for all the world like a Westernised version of a Hong Kong starlet in cat burglar get up… Black Cat’s Jade Leung or Irma Vep’s Maggie Cheung, perhaps?)… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Dead Don’t Hurt

Director – Viggo Mortensen – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 129m

***1/2

An independently-minded woman whose partner is away fighting a war struggles to survive in the Old West – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 7th

While there is much to admire in this Western, it suffers from unclear flashbacks and parallel editing. Both the trailer (below) and the UK press handouts circumvent this problem by describing a straightforward, chronological narrative (and a fascinating narrative at that). For anyone who doesn’t try to follow plot, this may not be a problem. For those who do, it most definitely is.

Two things happen at the start. One is a shoot out in which Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), a nasty bit of work with scant disregard for either decency or law and order, rides away into the evening after shooting various people inside and outside the town’s saloon, including the deputy sheriff. The town is apparently called Elk Flats, Nevada – something I gleaned not from the film (where, if that information is there, it’s easy to miss, and I missed it) but from the production notes.

This is indicative of a problem with the film overall: there are certain key bits of information it needs to tell the audience, which it fails to deliver in a clear, comprehensible way.… Read the rest