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Features Live Action Movies

Mouthpiece

Director – Patricia Rozema – 2018 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 91m

****1/2

Tall Cassie and short Cassie struggle to find the words for the eulogy for their mother’s funeral after she dies suddenly and unexpectedly – on MUBI from Thursday, March 24th

Christmas. Tall Cassie (Amy Nostbakken) and short Cassie (Norah Sadova) get drunk in a bar with friends, make their way home on their (one) bicycle and collapse into bed, ignoring the flood of mobile messages which they don’t pick up ‘til the next, sunny morning. They answer. It’s bad news. Their mum has died. Could she pick the flowers? Danny is going to do the speech.

But Cassie is the writer in the family and she won’t have it. She’ll do the speech herself. Danny isn’t capable of doing it. Although she doesn’t yet know what to say. And the funeral is in 48 hours.

Welcome to the world of sudden parental bereavement where things you know to be solid and true fold and crumple before your eyes. Where you are flooded with random memories as you try to make sense of it all. There are social rituals and structures supposedly to help you deal with this – ordering the flowers, choosing suitable clothes to wear, picking out the coffin, writing a eulogy for the deceased, attending a funeral service.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

I’ve Heard
The Mermaids
Singing

Director – Patricia Rozema – 1987 – Canada – Cert. PG – 84m

****

A naive, amateur photographer comes unstuck as she gets to know a sophisticated art gallery owner – on MUBI from Wednesday, March 23rd

Polly (Sheila McCarthy) – an obsessive amateur photographer with her own darkroom – is blessed with a rich imagination and accompanying fantasy life in which she walks on water and climbs up the side of buildings. Being a scatterbrained social disaster area she is unable to hold down a job. She tells confessionally how the position of temporary secretary in the svelte Gabrielle’s art gallery didn’t work out – a tale relevant to us all, especially in these days of high unemployment. Sheila McCarthy is a perfect piece of casting with her sparklingly expressive eyes.

Gabrielle (Paule Baillargeon) is everything Polly admires – beautiful, intelligent, successful and articulate. Polly falls in love with Gabrielle and dreams of the two of them dressed in fine clothes, talking about art. The reality is that Polly dresses in polyester clothing, is completely inarticulate, and has a poor employment record.

Gabrielle is secretly involved in an art world scam with her business partner; inevitably, Polly’s naive, private world comes up against the sophisticated cunning of Gabrielle’s.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies Top Ten

Top Ten Movies
(and more)
2021

Work in progress – subject to change. Because I am still watching movies released in 2021, so it’s always possible that a new title could usurp the number one in due course. Before that, I have a lot more movies still to add.

All films received either a theatrical or an online release in the UK between 01/01/21 and 31/12/21. Prior to 2020, I’d never included online releases (well, maybe the odd one or two as a special case) but that year saw the film distribution business turned upside down by COVID-19. How 2022 and beyond will look is anyone’s guess.

This version excludes re-releases (Psycho, Paris, Texas and Pickpocket, not to mention the first six Bond movies, would top everything here). A link to that longer list will be added here in due course.

In addition to re-releases, this version also excludes films seen in festivals which haven’t had any other UK release in 2021. A link to that even longer list will be added here in due course.

Finally, last year’s list is here.

Top Ten (UK theatrical + online movie releases 2021)

Please click on titles to see reviews. (Some links yet to be added.)

1. Getting Away With Murder(s) (UK)

2.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Underground
(Souterrain)

Director – Sophie Dupuis – 2020 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 97m

**

A tale of friendship, loss and regret plays out against the working lives of miners – out in cinemas and on Virtual Cinemas and VoD from Friday, August 20th

A vast, modern, industrial mine in the French-speaking part of Canada. An explosion is heard, so a rescue team is put together to go and extract the trapped workers. Max, full name Maxime (Joakim Robillard) is one of the youngest team members and has a disagreement with the leader Catherine (Catherine Trudeau). They have two men on stretchers and need to get them out to safety. Protocol insists they should not go and rescue anyone else as it would endanger not only the two they are ready to take to safety but also the rescue crew members.

However, the headstrong Max wants to go down and save the remaining trapped miners. He seems incapable of following either protocol or orders.

We flash back two months and get to know Max’s life. He and his partner Andrée-Anne (Lauren Hartley) have for some time been trying to start a family using in vitro fertilisation, but when she miscarries, she decides she can’t go on with the process any more.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Lamya’s Poem

Director – Alex Kronemer – 2021 – US, Canada – 88m

****1/2

A young Syrian girl becomes a refugee at the same time as she explores the writings of 13th century poet Rumi in her dreams – from the Annecy 2021 Animation Festival in the Official Competition section

Lamya (Millie Davis) is a young girl living with her mum (Aya Bryn) in a city in Syria, her dad having been killed when he went out on a protest. Her tutor Mr. Habadani (Raoul Bhaneja) lends her a thick book of selected poetry by Rumi knowing her to be a voracious reader who will both get much out of the book and take good care of it.

Distant bombing raids seem to come closer every day until one day everyone needs to evacuate the locality. The day in question, Lamya has begged her mum to let her go to the shops with friends. Buying treats, she puts her backpack containing the poetry book on the floor only to find it gone seconds later.

The thief, a young boy named Bassam (Nissae Isen), is reprimanded by his mother and told to return the bag. A bomb raid turns the locality upside down. Unaware of Bassam and what’s been happening with him, Lamya finds the returned bag in the wreckage.… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Archipelago
(Archipel)

Director – Félix Dufour-Laperrière – 2021 – Canada – 72m

****

A journey along an estuary traversing its archipelago, perhaps real, perhaps imagined, a trip into an obscure territory of the mind – from the Annecy 2021 Animation Festival in the Official Competition Contrechamp section

Defying easy categorisation, this is a conversation between a woman on a journey and a man trying to convince her of her non-existence. The woman’s shape first appears as a framing device – through the moving shape that defines her we see locations, places and more. Eventually we see her too, as her representation changes from a moving window shape to a simple animated line drawing defining her features against what can be seen through the window of her shape.

Numerous elements jostle for attention as the film proceeds. On one level, it’s a journey along the Gulf of St Lawrence in the French-speaking part of Canada, the estuary of the river which connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. A train journey is represented by the view through a carriage window. There are numerous islands, some of which may be real. There are clips from black and white and occasionally colour travelogue documentary films.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Possessor

Director – Brandon Cronenberg – 2020 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 103m

*****

A woman possesses other people’s bodies via technology to assassinate selected targets – on Shudder from Thursday, June 10th, as well Digital HD or BFI Player rental

Anyone who’s seen Brandon Cronenberg’s earlier Antiviral (2012) will know that he is a force to be reckoned with, operating in much the same area as his father David (whose Crash, 1996, is currently out on VoD and is released on UHD and BD on December 14th) but with his own, highly individual slant. And equally impressive.

His protagonist here is assassin Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) whose boss Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) inserts Vos’ consciousness into others so she can carry out hits on designated targets while occupying their bodies and consciousnesses. Lately, though, things haven’t been going quite to plan. In the body of Holly (Gabrielle Graham), Vos picks up a cutlery knife then repeatedly and bloodily stabs her target with it rather than simply shooting him with the supplied gun. Although Vos gives all the right answers in the psychological evaluation tests following her return, Girder is concerned.

He fears are raised further when Vos asks for time off with her partner Michael (Rossif Sutherland) and young son Ira (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Dissident

Spiritual wickedness

The Dissident
Directed by Bryan Fogel
Certificate 12 (Amazon advisory), 119 minutes
Released on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and Ireland from April 1st 2021

On 2 October 2018, the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey to obtain a marriage licence. He never came out. It later transpired that Khashoggi had been murdered on the premises by Saudi officials and his body dismembered, taken away and disposed of.

This fast-paced and frankly mind-boggling documentary examines a good deal more than the murder…[read more]

Full review in Reform magazine.

See my alternate, longer review on this site.

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Dissident

Director – Bryan Fogel – 2020 – UK – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

An investigation into the state-sanctioned killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey in 2018 – on Amazon Prime from Thursday, April 1st

If you had to use a single phrase to describe this documentary, it would be “jaw-dropping”. The central subject here is the disappearance of Saudi-born Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi who on October 2nd 2018 entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey to obtain a document and was never seen again.

There are a number of narrative strands: the career of a Saudi exile Omar Abdulaziz Alzahrani in Montreal, Canada who Khashoggi befriended, a brief history of the Saudi regime focusing in particular on the last decade, Khashoggi’s ongoing romance with young Turkish political researcher Hadice Cengiz who he planned to marry and the story of what actually went on inside the consulate recounted by the Turkish prosecutor Irfan Fidan.

Jamal Khashoggi and Hatice Cengiz

It’s jaw-dropping because it delivers one devastating revelation after another. The idea of entering your country’s consulate to collect a document and not leaving alive is horrific enough, but there are numerous other, equally chilling disclosures here.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Possessor

The irredeemable flesh

Possessor
Directed by Brandon Cronenberg
Certificate 18, 103 minutes
Released 27 November

The controversial director David Cronenberg has long been an exponent of something he calls ‘the new flesh’, ways that humanity might transcend its bodies. His son Brandon is the same, his new film Possessor concerning the world of cybernetic industrial espionage. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is an assassin working for a company run by Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), which injects her consciousness into other people as host personalities so that, wearing the clothing of their minds and bodies, she can kill designated targets before being extracted…

His father’s notorious Crash (1996) was restored for reissue in November… [Read more]

Read the full review in Reform.

Read my alternative review here.

Trailer: