Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Colony
(Gunche,
군체)

Colony

Director – Yeon Sang-ho – 2026 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 123m

*****

A scientist wreaks revenge on his former corporation in a bioterrorist attack which turns its victims into zombies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 28th

Inside the Doongwoori building, CEO of the Chains Bio corporation Kang Woo-chul (Kim Jong Tae) gives a speech about mass communication via networks. Her ex-husband Professor Han Kyu-seong (Go Soo) urges Professor Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) to speak to CEO Kang following his speech, but Kang is called away for a phone call regarding one Suh Young-chul and a possible bioterrorist attack.

Encouraged to find Kang and leave her card, Kwon witnesses him assault another man behind the frosted glass walls of his office. That other man is the aforementioned Suh Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan), who fights back, injecting Kang with a serum which makes him vomit, writhe and turn into a zombie. Pretty soon, Kang is biting others, giving rise to a local zombie outbreak.

Despite witnessing the initial stages of the assault, Kwon is unaware of the injection and everything that follows, stopping at a cafe with her ex to quiz him as to why he left her.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen:
John Singer Sargent
Fashion & Swagger

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

Late nineteenth century society portrait painter John Singer Sargent was fascinated more by their clothing and the possibilities of paint than he was by the women he painted – documentary is out in UK cinemas for selected screenings from Tuesday, April 16th

Based on the exhibition first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) and now at Tate Britain, this opens with incidental music that conjures a contemporary dance floor, a soundtrack which provokes a strange tension with paintings hanging on walls and costumes displayed in glass cases as the camera moves through the physical spaces in which they are displayed. But then, the title suggests this might be a little different from Exhibition on Screen’s usual fare.

John Singer Sargent’s A Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer (A Lady In White), 1889-90, shows the energy and intensity of his portraiture. The brushstrokes are arresting and like nothing else being done at the time. The paintings might be perfect, but the people within them most definitely are not: Sargent captures their imperfections in a most compelling way. He looked deeply at people, and some of his sitters were afraid to sit for him because of what he might see.… Read the rest

Categories
Dance Features Live Action Movies

Climax

Director – Gaspar Noé – 2018 – France – Cert. 18 – 97m

*****

Uppers and downers – either way blood flows. Arthouse enfant terrible Noé combines technical skill and singular focus with some of the most spectacular dancing ever put on film to produce a dark and challenging vision of hell on earth – now available on VoD

Cinema at its purest. Bright white on a screen. A woman starts crawling from the top of the screen. Extreme audience disorientation. We realise she’s crawling through snow. She appears to be in a bad way. Traces of blood. The camera follows her forward movement down the screen. Slowly a tree comes into shot from the bottom. We are watching the same overhead camera movement.

A series of vox pops on a television screen with shelves of books on one side and piles of DVDs on the other. Dancers answer questions on why dance is important to them. Would they do anything in order to make it big? What would they do if they weren’t able to dance?

Then the narrative proper begins. It’s 1996. We’re inside a building with a dance floor watching the most amazing dance routines we’ve ever seen.… Read the rest