Tag: bad weather

Escape
(Talju,
탈주)

Director – Lee Jong-Pil – 2024 – South Korea – LEAFF Cert. 18 – 94m

*****

An army sergeant is caught attempting to escape from North to South Korea, but then a second chance presents itself – played as the Opening Gala at the 2024 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 23rd to Sunday, November 3rd

North Korea. Sgt. Lim Kyu-nam (Lee Je-hoon) is stationed at the edge of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North from South Korea, a smart but frustrated soldier who knows he’s never going to rise up the chain of command riddled as it is with nepotism and privilege. Nights, when the rest of his unit is asleep, and inspired by his treasured book of the explorer Edmund Amundsen, he sneaks out of the barracks to map a section of the minefield in the DMZ.

His plan is to escape through that minefield and reach South Korea to defect before the monsoon arrives in four days time and the water moves all the mines around, making his map useless. Then he learns that the bad weather is coming two days earlier than expected. So he must move the date of his escape forward.… Read the rest

Tags alleged heroism, Amundsen, army, bad weather, blood, blown up, bomb disposal, book, captured, cat and mouse, caught, chain of command, checkpoint, childhood friends, classical music, concert, cover, dance, defect, defector, demarcation line, deserter, dig, DMZ, dress uniform, drive, drunk, edification, effect of monsoon, elegance, escape, escape attempt, escape tunnel, explorer, explosion, explosive, fake death, freedom, from the lavish officer’s mess ball, gay, gender balance, hazard, head for the border, headquarters, Hero of the People, heroism, Hong Xa-bin, imprison, intimidation, investigate, Koo Kyo-hwan, Korea, Korean Demilitarized Zone, ladies; off-grid, LEAFF, LEAFF 2024, Lee Je Hoon, Lee Jong-pil, London East Asia Film Festival, London East Asia Film Festival 2024, malnourishment, map, military, military aide, mine clearance, minefield, monsoon, move date forward, music, national security, nepotism, North Korea, officer, officers and men, passenger, perimeter fence, piano, privilege, propaganda, rain, rainfall, rank, reschedule, scrubland, self-serving, sergeant, slogan, South Korea, speech, spotted, superior officer, survival, Tannoy, the great and the good, thriller, torture, under fire, uniform, well dressed, well groomed, wild boars, wilderness, wildlife

Features Live Action Movies

“i know
where i’m going!”
(IKWIG)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 16 October 2023
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where i’m going!”
(IKWIG)
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Producers-Writers-Directors – The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) – 1945 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

A London banker’s daughter’s determined to marry her wealthy fiancé on an Hebridean island has reckoned without the weather and other local factors preventing her from doing so – engaging romantic drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 20th while major season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger opens Monday, October 16th at BFI Southbank and on BFI Player

You wouldn’t expect a film which is essentially a romantic comedy to open with its leading lady at age one, but that’s exactly what The Archers do here. Joan crawls, going (as the male voice over would have it) neither right nor left but straight on. By age five the male voice has her asking Santa for silk stockings (real, not artificial, a request that will have chimed with austerity-pressed, British audiences in 1945 after six years of war), by 12 she’s the one schoolgirl getting a lift home in the milk van. She’s accustomed to getting her own way and by her mid-twenties Joan (Wendy Hiller) is surprising her banker father, who she has wrapped around her little finger, with the news that she is going to marry the lucrative Consolidated Chemical Industries, specifically their ageing owner Sir Robert Bellinger.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Plane

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 27 January 2023
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Director – Jean-François Richet – 2022 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

A commercial passenger aircraft flying through bad weather conditions gets into trouble and is forced to land on an island run by military insurgents – out on digital from Monday, March 13th

While this is unlikely to win any Oscars, it’s a shrewdly put together action movie that gets everything right, tells its audience exactly what it’s going to do and then proceeds to do it, wrapping up everything very quickly in about thirty seconds once the narrative is over. That might not sound like much, but most action movies you see fail to meet such criteria. Moreover, a lot of action movies work perfectly well on a small screen, but this one works better if you see it on as big a screen as possible.

Singapore. Scotsman Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler from 300, Zak Snyder, 2007) is cutting it fine and may be about to be late for work again. Since he’s an airline pilot, that’s quite a big deal. Somehow, he gets to the cockpit of the plane with enough time to introduce himself to his co-pilot Samuel Dele (Yosun An from Mulan) ahead of the pre-takeoff, routine inspection by an aviation official.… Read the rest