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Movies Features Live Action

Wild Horse Nine

Wild Horse Nine

Director – Martin McDonagh – 2026 – US – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

Two Santiago-based CIA operatives travel to to Easter Island prior to the 1973 coup in Chile; one of them is dying – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, November 4th

In 1973, Shortly before the CIA’s destabilisation of Chile, two of its operatives travel from Santiago to Easter Island. The terminally ill Chris (John Malkovich) wants to see the Big Heads (the island’s famous indigenous statues) before he dies, and his colleague Lee (Sam Rockwell) – possibly his only friend – has agreed to accompany him.

Their Santiago-based boss MJ (Steve Buscemi) is concerned; Chris has a habit of shooting his mouth off and saying things he shouldn’t, as evidenced in the airport when Chris starts to chat with two attractive female Chilean students Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) and Alicia (Ailín Salas) and he states, after bringing up the subject of “destabilising your country”, that “we ARE the CIA, actually,” leading to furious denials of the fact by Lee. Both girls are horrified.

Chris has an agenda beyond seeing the Big Heads – as he later confides to Lee, when you’ve seen one Big Head, you’ve seen them all.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Features Live Action

Eagles of the Republic
(نسور الجمهورية)

Eagles of the Republic (نسور الجمهورية)

Director – Tarik Saleh – 2025 – Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland – Cert. 15 – 129m

****

A top Egyptian movie star finds himself working on a big budget, high concept, state-sponsored propaganda movie – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 22nd

The opening three scenes… The credits run over a montage of Egyptian movie posters. A group of men outdoors in the Egyptian sun listen attentively to radio commentary of a horse race. One of the men lights his lady passenger’s cigarette from his own as their car speeds towards the horizon of what could well be Monument Valley.. “cut” …but is a movie set with back projection. His assistant tells him has son has called three times – it’s the boy’s birthday, so the actor has his assistant buy his son an expensive watch. Not the greatest of fathers. The kissing couple on the side of the outside studio wall proclaims him to be Pharoah of the Screen George Fahmy (Fares Fares from Cairo Conspiracy, Tarik Saleh, 2022; Westworld, TV series, 2018; The Nile Hilton Incident, Tarik Saleh, 2017; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Gareth Edwards, 2016; Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes, Mikkel Nørgaard, 2013; Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) and her Rula Haddad (Cherien Dabis, director of Only Murders in the Building, 6 episodes, 2021-23).… Read the rest