Tag: bike

Black Dog
(Gou Zhen,
狗阵)

Director – Guan Hu – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 106m

***1/2

An ex-con returns to his home town, which is infested with wild dogs, and befriends a stray – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 30th

Looking down from the edge of a slope towards Gobi Desert scrubland. In the distance, a coach moving along a road. Suddenly, a large pack of wild dogs come out of nowhere and charge down the slope. The startled bus topples over. The dogs are gone, the driver is getting everyone out of the bus. A man complains that his money, his life savings, have gone. He needs that money. Who has taken it? They are about ten miles from Chixia. One of those on the bus is Lang’s son. The police are called, they arrive and help get the bus back upright. Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), as required, shows an officer his parole ID. Lang walks behind the slow moving bus as the police escort the coach to Chixia.

As an announcement warns of a black dog seen around the town that may well be carrying rabies, Lang is strip searched at the station while the other passengers wait to be interviewed.… Read the rest

Animation Movies Shorts

Pachyderm
(Pachyderme)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 March 2024
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(Pachyderme)
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Director – Stéphanie Clément – 2022 – France – 11m

*****

A nine-year-old struggles with the trauma that befalls her at her grandpa’s – nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2024 Academy Awards, VoD details below review

She’s nine (voice-over: Christa Theret), and in the Summer she goes to stay with granny and grandpa. She plays on a swing, missing mum and dad, she watches a cabbage white butterfly in the garden. The house is tidy, ordered, perhaps obsessively so. It smells of polish; the kitchen smells of bleach. Tomorrow, grandpa will take her to the lake, where he likes to fish. To get to her bedroom, she must pass the big, intimidating horn mounted at the top of the stairs, a hunting trophy from a pachyderm. In her room, she can see eyes watching her from the wood grain of the ceiling timbers. She doesn’t sleep by counting sheep; she kills monsters. As the floorboards creak outside her door, she hides in the wallpaper, in the flowers, in sleep. After all, as grandma says, what could happen?

Before the trip, she accidentally pricks a finger on one of grandpa’s fishing hooks – lures, as they call them – but grandpa kisses the cut better with the kiss that heals all things.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, Alfred Hitchcock, animation, arms, bedroom, bike, birdsong, bleach, bush, butterfly, cars in landscape, ceiling timbers, CG animation, child abuse, children playing, Christa Theret, computer animation, counting sheep, countryside, crushed, cypress trees, Dario Argento, death, deserted, dread, drown, eyes watching, fenced-in, fiery orange, fire, fishing, floorboards creak, flowers, France, garden, girl, grandpa, grandparents, grandparents and children, granny, granny and grandpa, grave, hair, Henri-Georges Clouzot, hide, hooks, horn, horror, hunting, hunting trophy, idyllic, incendiary, into the night Psycho, kiss, knickers, lake, landscape, malice, Marc Rius, monsters, night animals, nine-year-old, Olivier Militon, open the door, ordered, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, outside, pachyderm, Philip Ridley, Pierre-François Renouf, play area, Polish, portent, pricks a finger, pruning, quiet, road, rose head, roses, roundabout, seaweed, secateurs, sleep, spillage mug of tea, stabilisers, stairs, Stéphanie Clément, summer, surveillance, swimming costume, swing, tidy, toads, trauma, trellis, tusk, Van Gogh, vegetation, wallpaper, watched, water, wedge of light, wild reeds, wood grain

Features Live Action Movies

Crazy Thunder Road
(Kuruizaki
Sanda Rodo,
狂い咲きサンダーロード)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 10 June 2022
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(Kuruizaki
Sanda Rodo,
狂い咲きサンダーロード)
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Director – Sogo Ishii – 1980 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

Following on from Arrow’s superb BD of Sogo Ishii’s Burst City (1982) comes Third Window’s equally impressive BD release of its predecessor in the Ishii canon Crazy Thunder Road (1980) – on Blu-ray from Monday, February 21st 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK

This was Ishii’s Nihon University student graduation project, his first to be shot on 16mm rather than Super 8, which somehow got picked up for distribution by major Japanese Studio Toei which led to their giving him a budget for Burst City. Tom Mes, who as with Burst City supplies a commentary for the film, describes Crazy Thunder Road as “one of the Holy Grails of Japanese film releases if not the Holy Grail.”

When Toei presented Ishii with what seemed like astronomical funding for Burst City, it led him to overreach himself. In retrospect, he considers Burst City unfinished… [Read the full review at All The Anime]

Crazy Thunder Road was out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, February 21st, 2022 and, as of January 2024, available to stream on Amazon Prime UK.… Read the rest

Tags 16mm, 1970s, 1976, Adam Torel, amateur, amateur film, amateur film movement, anti-establishment, army, aspiring filmmakers, Autonomous Film, barmaid, bike, biker, bikers, bookend, camera spin, car, commentary, concrete, defence, defend, destruct, doom, enthusiasm, entry points, eruption, film club, film production, funding, Gakuryu Ishii, gang, gang leader, gangster movie, gone soft, graduation, Holy Grail, improvisation, independent, Japan, Japanese film production, Jasper Sharp, Jishu Eiga, Kinji Fukusaku, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, leader, listings magazine, maboroshi, microbudget, Naomi Kawase, nationalist, Nenji Kobayashi, Nihon. student, no money, on your own terms, p, paramilitary, performance, phantom, Pia, Pia Film Festival, production, project, punk, punk ethos, rage, raining, renegade, right-wing, script, Shinya Tsukamoto, shooting at different speeds, Sogo Ishii, stopped hiring, Super 8, Tatsuo Yamada, Time Out, Toei, Tokyo, Tom Mes, UK, unfinished, university, university film club, volcanic ash, volcano, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, YIDFF

Features Live Action Movies

Mission: Impossible
Dead Reckoning
Part One

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 July 2023
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Dead Reckoning
Part One
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Director – Christopher M^cQuarrie – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 163m

*****

Tom Cruise’s seventh and director Christopher M^cQuarrie’s third Mission: Impossible outing delivers globetrotting action and one of the most incredible stunts ever committed to film – out in UK cinemas on Monday, July 10th

It seems almost fatuous to attempt to synopsise this latest Mission: Impossible effort because it basically boils down to various parties including Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his allies chasing after a key which most of them don’t know what it opens. I tell a lie, actually two halves of a key (this sounds a lot like the ancient artefact in this year’s Indiana Jones movie, which I’m sure is pure coincidence) each one of which can be used to verify that the other is the genuine article and not a fake. This MacGuffin, the thing all the characters want and which propels them through the story, in turn provides producer and star Tom Cruise, director Christopher M^cQuarrie and their collaborators with the excuse for a series of exhilarating, bravura set-pieces.

There’s also the visual pleasure of this franchise’s usual amount of people wearing photorealistic masks to disguise themselves as other people, and later ripping off (or having others rip off) their fake faces to reveal their real ones.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Rodeo
(Rodéo)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 October 2022
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(Rodéo)
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Director – Lola Quivoron – 2022 – France – Cert. 15 – 105m

***

Le Fast et la Furieuse. A young woman bike thief makes her mark on a group of bikers living in a bike repair shop run from a prison by its incarcerated owner – out in UK cinemas and exclusively on Curzon Hone Cinema on Friday, April 28th following its appearance in the BFI London Film Festival 2022

Julia (Julie Ledru) loves motorbikes. She loves riding them. And she loves stealing them. At various points in the narrative, she follows up ‘bike for sale’ ads, goes to see the seller, impresses them with her considerable knowledge, persuades them to let her test drive the bike by riding it alone for a certain distance then rides off with it. She’s also poor and living on a rundown housing estate, an environment beloved of a certain strata of French cinema (e.g. Two Of Three Things I Know About Her, Jean-Luc Godard, 1967, La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995; District 13, Pierre Morel, 2004). Not that you see much of this environment after the opening reel. She represents a very French form of anti-hero, and if you don’t have any problem with her sense of entitlement and the fact that she sees nothing wrong with stealing, this is a rollicking good yarn.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Holy Spider
(Ankabut-e Moqaddas,
عنکبوت مقدس)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 17 January 2023
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(Ankabut-e Moqaddas,
عنکبوت مقدس)
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Director – Ali Abassi – 2022 – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany – Cert. 18 – 116m

*****

An Iranian lady crime journalist poses as a prostitute in an attempt to uncover the identity of a serial killer justifying his killing spree in the name of Islam – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 20th and on MUBI from Friday, March 10th

2000. The Holy City of Mashhad, Iran. Leaving her small daughter at home, a woman goes out into the night. She changes into high heels in a lavatory then goes onto the streets to ply her trade as a prostitute. She tells a streetcrawler to “fuck off”. In any encounter with male sexuality, violence is never far away; in a frenzied coupling in an apartment littered with the awards of a successful entrepreneur, a client tells her, “I’m going to tear your pussy apart.”

Another man refuses to pay more than half for a blow job when police are seen near the car in which she’s performing the service, preventing him from climaxing. A further man asks her onto his bike, but later in the stairwell to his apartment she thinks she may have made a mistake and tries to excuse herself.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies Music

Burst City
(Bakuretsu Toshi
Burst City,
爆裂都市
BURST CITY)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 June 2022
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(Bakuretsu Toshi
Burst City,
爆裂都市
BURST CITY)
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Director – Sogo Ishii – 1982 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 115m

Film ****

Cultural significance *****

Arguably the lynchpin film that brought Japanese cinema back from the brink of extinction in the early 1980s and paved the way for much of what was to follow – on Blu-ray from Monday, November 20th 2020

Looked at today through Western eyes, the opening with its breakneck, speeded up race through (presumably) Tokyo cutting between nighttime and daytime POV shots, with motorbike noises, anticipates the more demented pixillated chase scenes of Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989), shots of bikers recall the anti-establishment feel of Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) and patterns caused by moving lights burning into film emulsion recall Norman McClaren and Len Lye’s early animation experiments drawing and painting direct onto film. Then it seems to turn into Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) by way of a gangster film elements (two men in a car wearing a suit and a leather jacket respectively) who avoid a near collision with two punks on a motorcycle and sidecar.

How many of these precedents Ishii had in mind (or even had seen) when he made this is impossible to say.… Read the rest

Tags 16mm, abandoned factory, aesthetic, amateur, anti-establishment, bands, battle, bike, bike noise, bikers, bondage, box office, breakneck, burning into film emulsion, car, Cell Number 8, chase, cinema, cops, daytime, direct onto film, drawing, drawing and painting direct onto film, early animation experiments, engine noise, fight, film industry, frantic, Gakuryu Ishii, gangster, Hollywood aesthetic, hyperkinetic, inaccessible, independent, indigenous, James Cameron, Japan, Japanese punk, Japanese punk bands, Japanese punk rock, Japanese punk rock bands, Japanese rock, Japanese rock bands, Jasper Sharp, Jishu Eiga, leather jacket, Len Lye, lynchpin, Midnight Eye, motorbike, motorbike noise, motorcycle and sidecar, moving lights, music, near collision, nighttime, Nihon University, no pay, noise, Norman McClaren, nudity, outlandish, painting, Pink Cinema, Pinku Eiga, pixillation, porn, POV, pubic hair, punk bands, Punk Rock, punk rock bands, punks, race, restless, rock, rock bands, Shinya Tsukamoto, Sogo Ishii, song, speeded up, suit, Super 8, The Rockers, The Roosters, The Stalin, The Terminator, Tokyo, Tom Mes, UK, UK punk, UK punk rock, unpaid, whore

Features Live Action Movies

Father Stu

Director – Rosalind Ross – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 124m

***

A boxer turned actor who fancies a Catholic girl is drawn into first the church and then the priesthood – out in cinemas Friday, May 13th

Stuart Long (Mark Wahlberg) is stuck. His career as a boxer has been going nowhere for three years, then comes the news from his doctor that he needs to pack it in. That’s okay, though – he always wanted to be an actor, so he moves to LA and lands himself a job serving on a supermarket meat counter. This seems to him as good a place as any to get discovered. That doesn’t go anywhere, but what DOES happen is that he sees a girl he likes, Carmen (Teresa Ruiz).

However, Carmen is a Catholic and won’t date anyone who isn’t. So, to make something happen, he first of all finds her church and attends services there just to see her, then pretty soon he’s signing up to classes to get baptised into the faith. This seems to have the desired effect and they become a couple with marriage on the horizon sometime in the future. It has a further effect on Stuart that he didn’t bargain for: being around religious people and studying what Catholics believe, he starts to become one himself and develop a genuine faith.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

The Lost City

Directors – Aaron Nee, Adam Nee – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 112m

***

A jaded woman’s romantic adventure novelist and her cover model find themselves in a real life jungle straight out of one of her books – out in cinemas on Wednesday, April 13th

Ever since her archaeologist husband died five years ago, novelist of trashy, erotic women’s adventure fiction Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) has had writer’s block. Her publishers love her books because they sell in huge volume, but she’s really an archaeology nerd who hates the novels she’s written. A friendly nudge from her editor Beth (Da’vine Joy Randolph), however, helps her complete another one, so it’s on to the promotional tour, something else Loretta hates.

She’s told exactly what to do by Beth and new social media manager Allison (Patti Harrison) This time round Loretta is required to wear a one-piece, cleavage-revealing, purple sequinned outfit that she (understandably) really doesn’t like as she is interviewed once again before fan audiences by male model Alan (Channing Tatum), whose appearance alongside her on the front cover of her books has helped propel her (and him) to stardom, effectively casting them as her heroine Angela and sidekick Dash.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies Music

Annette

Director – Leos Carax – 2021 – France, US – Cert. 15 – 141m

****1/2

Musical conceived and composed by Sparks plays out as a very dark opera ending in tragedy – on MUBI from Friday, November 26th

Although billed as a musical, this may actually be closer to opera given that even though it starts as a story about two people deeply in love, it veers into very dark territory.

And yet framing all that, and underscoring it throughout, is the sheer pleasure of writing / composing songs… and, for that matter, performing them. The opening song is So May We Start while the closer, as the credits roll, is It’s The End. (For added enjoyment, watch 90% of the audience leave before the last song starts. Or in my case, 10% of my fellow critics.)

The former starts with the band, the brothers Mael (singer Russell and keyboard player / composer Ron, profiled in recent documentary The Sparks Brothers, Edgar Wright, 2021) and a backing band in a recording studio in an invitation for the proceedings to get going, swiftly joined by the film’s two leads, while the latter ends with seemingly the entire movie cast and crew walking through the countryside hoping we’ve enjoyed the show and asking us to tell our friends if we did so.… Read the rest