Tag: affair

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Wife Of A Spy
(Supai No Tsuma,
スパイの妻)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2020 – Japan – 115m

****1/2

A Japanese businessman’s wife decides to help her husband after discovering he is passing inflammatory state secrets to the Americans – out on MUBI in the UK and Ireland on Wednesday, September 8th

1940, Kobe, Japan. British silk trader John Fitzgerald Drummond is arrested by the Kenpetai then released thanks in part to his friend and business associate Yusaku Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi from Shin Godzilla, Hideaki Anno, 2014; Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, Quentin Tarantino, 2003 & 4; Whisper Of The Heart, Yoshifumi Kondo, 1995), who defends him against Officer Taiji Tsumori (Masahiro Higashide from Foreboding, 2017; Before We Vanish, 2017; Creepy, 2016 – all Kiyoshi Kurosawa), a childhood friend of Yusaku’s wife Satoko (Yu Aoi from Killing, Shinya Tsukamoto, 2018; Journey To The Shore, Kurosawa, 2015 and much else). (Europeans are systematically being arrested, with the exception of Axis power nationals Germans and Italians.)

As Fukuhara and his nephew Fumio Takeshita (Ryota Bando) travel abroad to Manchuria, Satako invites Taiji to her house for a whisky, but once there he berates her for the drink being Western- not Japanese-made and suggests she should wear traditional Japanese clothes rather than Western dresses.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Ice Cream Truck

Director – Megan Freels Johnston – 2018 – US – Cert. 15 – 96m

**1/2

A housewife newly moved in to a suburb is unnerved by the creepy, local ice cream man and van… with good reason, as it turns out – on VoD and DVD from Monday, March 1st

Having just moved back into the neighbourhood where she grew up, Mary (Deanna Russo) should probably be worried that it looks a lot like the location of classic shocker Halloween (John Carpenter, 1979) with its pavements bordering lawns and hedges around residential houses. (There’s now prowling, gliding camera here though – the shots are mostly static.)

The locality also now boasts the traditional American ice cream truck, a simple, slow moving van which still serves exactly the same traditional ice cream that it has for generations. The ice cream man himself (Emil Johnsen) seems almost a parody of his profession, addressing both children and adults alike with archaic lines like, “hello there, young fellow.”

She takes an immediate dislike to nosy next-door neighbour Jessica (Hilary Barraford) but nevertheless accepts an invitation to a barbecue where it’s promised drink will flow celebrating the recent graduation of local couple’s son Max (John Redlinger – who feels a lot older than 18) who she meets on her way to the party as he hangs out with his girlfriend Tracy (Bailey Anne Borders) to smoke pot.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

In The Mood For Love
(Fa Yeung Nin Wah,
花樣年華 )
/ 2046

In The Mood For Love

Director – Wong Kar-wai – 2000 – Hong Kong – Cert. PG – 94m

*****

2046

Director – Wong Kar-wai – 2004 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12 – 123m

*****

In the Mood For Love is a romantic drama set in 1962 with 2046 a sequel which follows what happened to the man some time after – out now on BFI Player Rental in 4K restorations as part of a wider Wong Kar-wai season. (Originally reviewed for Third Way on both films’ UK DVD release in the mid-2000s when they were available both separately and as a double pack).

On the same day in 1962, two couples move into neighbouring apartments in Hong Kong. The husband of secretary Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is away on business in Japan, while the wife of journalist Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai from Bullet In The Head, John Woo, 1990, Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; Lust Caution, Ang Lee, 2007; Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Destin Daniel Cretton, 2021) is often absent for similar reasons. It gradually dawns on Su and Chow that their respective spouses are having an affair.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Intimate Strangers
(Wanbyeokhan Tain,
완벽한 타인)

Director – Lee Jae-kyoo – 2018 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 115m

****

Four couples attend a dinner party where a game with mobile phones threatens to revel all their intimate secrets – online from 2pm Friday, November 6th to 2pm Monday, November 9th, book here, from the Special Focus: Friends and Family strand of the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) taking place right now

A group of male friends since childhood and their wives and girlfriends meet for a house-warming of one of their number. One of the wives suggests a game. Why don’t they all put their mobile phones on the table and share any call, text, email or data that comes in?

Actually, it turns out there are some very good reasons why not – as they will all discover during the course of the evening. Indeed, the film’s final five minutes or so (and, strangely, this is not a spoiler) shows the couples driving home separately and contentedly after a pleasant evening where they wisely declined to play the game. All’s right with the world.

However, in between that coda and the opening, 34 years earlier prologue in which the four men’s childhood selves catch fish through a hole in the ice of a frozen river then spend the evening together round a camp fire in the dark, the four couples do indeed play this game at the present day house-warming.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Every Time I Die

Director – Robi Michael – 2019 – US – 97m

***1/2

Reality disintegrates around a man tormented by the accidental, childhood death of his sister – on VoD from Monday, October 26th

People who’ve apparently died then come back to life have often reported the sensation of going down a dark tunnel towards the light, which they then haven’t reached because they’ve been brought back to life. That motif is realised a repeated, clumsy special effect at various points in Every Time I Die, along with more subtle and arguably more successful variants on the same theme, such as a child waking up in a hospital room where the door is slightly ajar revealing a light source beyond.

Other elements recur too: protagonist Sam (Drew Fonteiro) repeatedly feels a pain in his head and blacks out, only to repeatedly come to or wake up in another scenario. He wakes as a young lad of eight (Kenneth Moronta), a camera on the table in front of him, in the hospital room with the door ajar and the light beyond, Then he wakes up, in that device we’ve seen so many times in movies where it was all a dream. Here he wakes staring at the face of Mia (Melissa Macedo) who has spent the night with him and now must leave early to go back to her husband Tyler (Tyler Dash White), a soldier recently returned from several months away on active duty.… Read the rest