Tag: actress

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Features Live Action Movies

The Crime is Mine
(Mon Crime)

Director – François Ozon – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

Two young women, an actress and a lawyer, take advantage of casting couch sex abuse of the former to boost both of their fledgeling careers – sharp period comedy with more to it underneath the surface is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 25th

A swimming pool. A lavish, art deco mansion. Out of a door staggers a clearly distressed, young blonde woman. Leaving the estate, she walks down the street, bumping into people. The setting and her clothes indicate the 1930s.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged M. Pistole (Franck de Lapersonne) calls on young brunette tenant Pauline (Rebecca Marder) to demand 3 000 Fr for five months’ back rent. A qualified lawyer, she manages to negotiate 48 hours’ respite on the grounds that a hotshot producer wants to put her flatmate Madeleine in his new play, and money will follow once the contract is signed. However, once Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz from Only The Animals, Dominik Moll, 2019) comes in to spill her tale of woe – in a manner closer to screwball comedy than rape or crime drama – it rapidly becomes obvious that the situation has changed.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Critic

Director – Anand Tucker – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 101m

The first four fifths of The Critic *****

The final fifth of The Critic *

In the 1930s, a London theatre critic, a flamboyant homosexual known for destroying careers with his acerbic prose, finds his job under threat from his newspaper’s new proprietor – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 13th

This originally played in the Toronto Film Festival in a 95m version, only to be acquired for UK release on the proviso that an ‘unsatisfactory’ ending be changed by way of reshoots involving the director, the screenwriter (Patrick Marber), and key cast members. So this current cinema release is the version with the ending changed, and this writer found that new ending less than satisfactory. Which is a pity, because up to about the last twenty minutes, the film impresses.

Now, one could construct a review narrative which says that the original ending must have worked better, and the film has been ruined by its UK distributor. It’s possible that that is indeed the case. However, not having seen that first cut, it is equally possible that the original ending had severe problems which this new version has attempted to fix, even if that doesn’t seem to have entirely worked, and that this new version is an improvement.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Catching Fire:
The Story of
Anita Pallenberg

Directors – Alexis Bloom, Svetlana Zill – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 113m

***1/2

The chaotic life of the archetypal rock chick, told through her own words and those of her children – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th

After her death in 2017, Anita Pallenberg’s two surviving children Marlon and Angela discovered a manuscript; she had written an autobiography. Marlon worked his way through it as part of his bereavement process and was so taken with the articulate text that he sought out producers to turn it into a film. (He is one of the film’s executive producers himself, while both directors are credited as among the producers). Numerous clips from an interview with him are used in this resultant documentary, along with excerpts from Anita’s manuscript voiced by an actress, along with interview footage with Angela and verbal audio from Rolling Stones band member Keith Richards, Anita’s partner for a decade and the father of her children.

Like many of the young generation who rose meteorically to cultural prominence in the swinging sixties, Anita Pallenberg was a war baby. Her first years were accompanied by the sound of falling bombs; as she puts it, she didn’t learn to walk, but to run.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Sweet East

Director – Sean Price Williams – 2023 – US – Cert. 18 – 104m

****

Dumping her boyfriend, a South Carolina high school student skips a class trip to Washington, DC and falls in with a series of outsiders living in their own isolated visions of America – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

Although this starts off with heroine Lilian (Talia Ryder from West Side Story, Stephen Spielberg, 2021) in bed with her boyfriend Troy (Jack Irv), and a lot of visible flesh, it’s not so much a sex scene as a scene in which two people talk about the ending of the movie they watched last night. Soon after, the pair and their classmates are piled into a coach, complete with tour guide, driving them to Washington, DC. When Troy and others lark around in hotel corridors, she doesn’t really feel part of what’s going on.

At a restaurant, she meets activist and body-piercing enthusiast Caleb (Earl Cave from True History of the Kelly Gang, Justin Kurzel, 2019, Days of the Bagnold Summer, Simon Bird, 2019), who without sexual intent shows her the piercings and metal studs encrusting his penis. Going with him and his fellow commune members to an activists’ event, she finds herself at an outdoor radicals’ fair where she meets Laurence (Simon Rex from Red Rocket, Sean Baker, 2021) to whom she gives her name as Annabelle and who kindly offers her a place to stay – his place in Delaware, no strings attached.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lessons of Tolerance
(Uroky Tolerantnosti)

Director – Arkadii Nepytaliuk – 2023 – Ukraine – Cert. none – 95m

*****

To help pay off her family’s debt with the accompanying grant, an exasperated teacher enlists her sceptical family in a state LGBT+ awareness training course – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition in the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

NSFW. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A typical older family with debt problems in Ukraine. The mother Nadia (Olena Uzlyuk) is the one member of the family keeping everything together, holding down a job as a teacher. From what we see of her at home, we would imagine she’s very good at it, too. Alas, the same can’t be said for the rest of the family. Husband Zenyk (Oleksandr Yarema) has always wanted his own garage, but has no head for running a business. He spends his evenings sitting around drinking beer and being waited on hand and foot by his wife and daughter, because that’s what women are supposed to do. Then he complains in bed because his wife is not interested in sex these days.

They have two grown-up kids. Daughter Diana (Karolina Mruha) is an aspiring actress who is applying for drama school despite warnings that she may lack the necessary talent.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Inland Empire

Director – David Lynch – 2006 – US – Cert. 15 – 180m

*****, *, or somewhere in between

Immersing herself in the role she plays in the movie she’s currently shooting, an actress loses herself in it as she becomes increasingly divorced from reality – 4K remaster is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th then Blu-ray / DVD on Monday, June 19th

I first watched this when it came out in 2007. I wasn’t sure what to make of it then and, revisiting it for the first time in roughly a decade and a half, I’m still not sure what to make of it now. It’s a Hollywood film in the sense that Lynch is highly respected in Hollywood, yet it’s not a Hollywood film in the sense that it steadfastly refuses to play by any rules other than Lynch’s own – and whatever those rules are, they are almost certainly made to be broken.

To attempt to impose a plot on the film is probably a mistake. Most commercially produced movies have a script, characters, a plot and can be judged on their narrative coherence, technical expertise and the actor’s performances. Technical expertise may be a good place to start.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Champions

Director – Bobby Farrelly – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 124m

****

A disgraced basketball coach is sentenced to community service coaching a team of people with learning difficulties – out on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, June 12th

After spending the night with less than impressed, fortysomething, one night Tinder partner Alex (Kaitlin Olsen), assistant American football coach Marcus (Woody Harrelson) vocalises his strategy disagreement with his coach boss Peretti (Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters) during a match on the sidelines with national TV cameras watching. Later, drunk driving and full of himself, he drives into the back of a police car. His lawyer (Mike Smith) assures Marcus he’ll be fine in court until his brief reveals the judge to be the notorious Hanging Mary (Alexandra Castillo). Despite almost talking himself into a jail sentence, Marcus is given 90 days community service.

His service consists of coaching The Friends, a team of people with learning difficulties run by Julio (Cheech Marin). There is one brilliant player on the team, Darius (Joshua Felder), who was set for basketball stardom prior to being hit by a drunk driver’s car. His immediate reaction when Marcus enters the gym is, he won’t play for him.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Mother Night

Director – Keith Gordon – 1996 – US – Cert. 15 – 114m

*****

In this adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, a former Nazi propagandist awaits trial in Israel for war crimes – retail VHS review from Home Entertainment, 1997

From his Israeli prison cell where he must compose his memoirs while awaiting trial for his war crimes in black and white, Howard W. Campbell, Jr. (Nick Nolte in a career-defining performance) recalls in colour flashback his rise to fame in wartime Berlin as a radio propaganda writer / broadcaster for the Third Reich, surviving that regime’s madness by devoting himself to actress wife Helga (Sheryl Lee) and their self-contained Nation Of Two.

Recruited from a park as an undercover American spy by raincoat‑wearing American top brass John Goodman (a small part, but likewise impressive), Campbell has to incorporate coded messages to the Allies in his broadcasts. In 1944, Helga dies. After the War, Campbell winds up alone in a seedy New York apartment where neighbours include fellow widower Alan Arkin and Auschwitz survivor‑turned‑doctor Ayre Gross.

When admiring right wing activists arrive at Campbell’s door, the tale (based on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel) lurches even further into surrealism. Gordon’s direction is flawless throughout.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Lucky Chan-sil
(Chansilineun
Bokdo Manhji,
찬실이는 복도 많지)

Director – Kim Cho-hee – 2019 – South Korea – 95m

****

When a film director she’s worked for over several years dies, his film producer has to rethink her life – currently streaming on MUBI as part of their New South Korean Cinema season

Director Ji (Seo Sang-won), his fortysomething producer Lee Chan-sil (Kang Mal-geum) and three or four others are drinking Soju round a table after a hard day’s work on the set. Suddenly, Ji slumps forward. Everyone thinks he’s kidding. He’s not. He’s dead. Unexpectedly dead. Ji makes little independent films in his own highly idiosyncratic style. If he’s no longer there, then the film, too, is dead. And Chan-sil, who has only worked with him, is suddenly out of a job.

With her regular income gone, she downsizes and moves into a cheap flat owned by an ageing live-in landlady (Youn Yuh-jung). It’s near the top of a hill, so other members of the abandoned film production help her carry stuff up there. She sees a lot of her flighty actress friend Sophie (Yeung Soon-ah) for whom she now goes to work as a cleaner. These changes of circumstance give her the both the space and the opportunity to reassess her life.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Sound Of Nomad:
Koryo Arirang

Director – Kim So-young (as Kim Jeong) – 2017 – South Korea – 87m

****

How an indigenous theatre company kept the culture of the Koryo people alive after they were deported by the Soviet authorities from Far East Russia to Kazakhstan in 1937 – in the documentary season: Korean Film Nights: In Transit presented by LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival

The Beijing Treaty (of 1860 although the date isn’t mentioned) ceded to Russia the so-called Maritime Province – an area of land stretching down to Vladivostock. The territory bordered on the Northwestern tip of Choson (Joseon), today’s Korea, and Chosons stated migrating into the Maritime Province, calling themselves the Koryo people. In late 1937, the Soviet authorities decided that the Koryos could potentially be Japanese spies and deported them in boarded up trains to Ushtobei, Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

The journey took two days and many children died, their corpses thrown unceremoniously out of the train at night. After the journey, the deportees faced a harsh winter, the eventual death toll rising to 40 000.

This story has been documented in Korea, but little else about the Koryos has. The first Kazakhstan Koryo settlement in Ushtobei is today marked by a memorial.… Read the rest