Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Deep Sea
(Shen Hai,
深海)

Director – Tian Xiaoping – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 112m

Subtitled ***1/2 / Dubbed **

A girl on a cruise, who never got over her mother leaving, falls overboard into fantastical worlds – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 7th

A red child’s coat with a hood lies abandoned on the sea bed. A girl’s feet stagger through a blizzard. She calls out for her mama. But her mama (voice: Ji Jing), a swirling mass of dark hair and eyes, is leaving. And now, the girl is lifted above the sea bottom (as we now realise this location to be) by what appears to be swirling red paint. She wakes, in her coat, on the bus. It was a dream.

Her stepmum (voice: Yang Ting) tells Shenxiu (voice: Wang Tingwen) not to mess around on the bus as she starts pulling faces at her little brother (voices: Dong Yi, Fang Taochen). She boards a big cruise ship, looking at texts from her absent mum, who is separated from her dad (voice: Teng Kuixing). Mum told her about the Hyjinx – if you made a wish on your birthday, it would come and make your wish come true.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Now, Voyager

Director – Irving Rapper – 1942 – US – Cert. PG – 117m

*****

A woman must overcome mental illness caused by her overbearing mother – out in cinemas on Friday, August 6th

The wealthy Vale family from Boston invites Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains) to meet their youngest daughter Charlotte (Bette Davis) to see if he can do anything with her. Failing to get matriarch Mrs. Henry Vale (Gladys Cooper) to introduce him without his title, he presses Charlotte to show him round the house, including her room. There, she keeps a library in which are hidden forbidden books, smokes illicitly and makes ornate boxes with ivory decoration. Years of living with her domineering mother have given Charlotte a problem with her own self-image.

Jaquith has Charlotte stay at his rest home, then instead of returning to Boston has her take the place of her sister Lisa (Ilka Chase) on a cruise to Rio de Janeiro on which she meets and falls for married man Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Durrance known to his friends as JD (Paul Heinreid), whose absent wife dominates one of his daughters Tina back home much as Charlotte’s mother dominated her. The pair spend time together in Brazil during which they are involved in a car accident in which no-one is injured. … Read the rest