Tag: drinking

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Features Live Action Movies

Queer

Director – Luca Guadagnino – 2024 – Italy, US – Cert. 18 – 135m

*****

A journey through the gay fleshpots of Mexico City leading, through illness, to a deeper jungle wherein can be found a drug that will enhance telepathy – challenging William Burroughs adaptation with Daniel Craig & Lesley Manville is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 13th

Bookended with a prologue and an episode, this is a narrative split into three separate sections or chapters. In the first, set in Mexico City, fortysomething Bill Lee (Daniel Craig) spends his days and nights drinking in bars like Ship Ahoy frequented by (mostly younger male) US ex-pats. He talks with friends such as Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman), he watches newcomers, he attempts, sometimes successfully, to pick some up. He is taken with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), and the pair embark on an intense physical relationship. Lee persuades Eugene to accompany him to South America, with no stipulation other than Eugene “be nice” to him a couple of times a week.

In the second, on the trip Bill goes down with a nasty case of the chills. In the third, following his eventual recovery, he asks around about a drug called Yaga he understands can facilitate telepathy, the pair trekking deep into the jungle to find biologist Dr.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Aimless Bullet
(Obaltan,
오발탄)

Director – Yu Hyun-mok – 1961 – South Korea – 110m

****

Former soldiers and others struggle with the effects of post-war economic depression in the newly constituted South Korea – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Made and released in the brief period of about a year between the collapse of one dictatorship and the rise of another, and the temporary relaxation of state censorship that accompanied it in South Korea, Aimless Bullet deals with the struggle to survive in that country amidst economic collapse. Men including demobbed soldiers and officers struggle to find work, others lucky enough to have jobs struggle to support their extended networks of loved ones while women drift into prostitution – or, if they’re really lucky, become movie stars.

It opens with crippled, former officer Gyeong-sik, constantly asking Sgt. Park and other drinking buddies not to call him “The Commander”, making a scene in a bar and smashing a glass door. Wandering through the streets at night alone afterwards, he’s accosted by former girlfriend Song Myeong-suk (Seo Ae-ja) who desperately wants him to fulfil his promise and marry her, but he won’t because as a cripple he feel an incomplete man.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Weak and the Wicked

Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1954 – UK – Cert. 12 – 88m

***1/2

A woman spends 12 months in prison after being convicted of fraud – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital in August, 2024

Jean (Glynis Johns) is marched from her cell and up the stairs into the courtroom to hear the judge’s verdict. She gets 12 months for fraud, and is sent to HM Prison Blackdown. Her crime is detailed in flashback – she has a gambling problem, which costs her her doctor boyfriend Michael Hale (John Gregson) who walks out on her. She pays for chips at a casino with a cheque, for which she hadn’t the funds in the bank. In this office, the owner Mr. Seymour (Edwin Styles) tells her he has his own way of dealing with debts, as she’ll shortly find out.

Her friend Pam (Ursula Howells) gets her a job in a clothing store, but it turns out Pam is actually working for Mr. Seymour and steals a family heirloom from Jean’s handbag the first chance she gets. Jean claims the insurance money only for two policemen to arrest her the day the money comes through, going into her home and finding a pawn ticket for the allegedly stolen item tucked into the back of a mirror.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Riddle of Fire

Director – Weston Razooli – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 115m

****

Two siblings and their friend get caught up in a quest through the great hills and woods of Wyoming on their bikes to find a speckled egg so they can bake the boys’ sick mother a blueberry pie – out on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, July 8th

Wyoming. Young siblings Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie A’Dale (Skyler Peters) along with their slightly older friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro) break into the Otomo warehouse to steal a videogame console so they can play on the TV during the Summer holidays. Alas, they’ve reckoned without the two boys’ mother (Danielle Hoetmer) password protecting the TV. She currently has the worst cold she has ever had and isn’t going to relent on the password for the foreseeable future – it’s a beautiful day, and she wants them outside enjoying themselves, not cooped up in the house – unless the kids go to the store and get her a blueberry pie, the one thing that would make her feel better.

So the three kids set out for the local store on their pushbikes, but on arrival find the place has run out of blueberry pies and the cook is off sick (perhaps there’s a bug going around).… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Song of the Sea

Director – Tomm Moore – 2014 – Ireland – Cert. PG – 93m

*****

A family is torn apart after the mother returns to the sea as a selkie – reviewed for Third Way, July 2015

Tomm Moore picked up an Oscar nomination for his medieval Irish animated fantasy The Secret Of Kells (2009). Like that earlier work, his equally impressive Song Of The Sea eschews Hollywood’s headlong rush towards 3D in favour of traditional 2D animation with an emphasis on drawing and visual design – and it’s a real pleasure to watch. A family movie in the best sense – there’s nothing here parents wouldn’t want children to see – it explores difficult issues about parents and children, being set in a family where, effectively, the mother has walked out leaving dad to look after the two kids. The plot employs Celtic folklorish figures of selkies – creatures who periodically change from female seals to human girls or women and back again.

Thus, the reason for the departure of Bronach (voice: Lisa Hannigan) a few minutes into the proceedings is that the sea is calling her to become a seal once again. She leaves behind her lighthouse keeper husband Conor (voice: Brendan Gleeson) and kids Ben (voice: David Rawle) & Saoirse (voice: Lucy O’Connell) to fend for themselves and their beloved dog Cu.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Next Sohee
(Da-eum So-hee,
다음 소희)

Director – July Jung – 2022 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 134m

*****

A schoolgirl on an internship is appallingly exploited by her employers, and a police detective is called in to investigate – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Here’s a film which presents a real problem for reviewers. Something monumental happens in the middle of the film which entirely changes it. It’s a little bit like the shift from the traumatic drama to the police manhunt in High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963) and a bit like the infamous shower scene in the middle of Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). And yet, the film is like neither of those classics in any other way (except, perhaps, the fact that it’s a remarkable film that will leave you with an indelible impression afterwards). Still, how much can a reviewer give away without ruining the film for audiences?

It’s very much a film of two halves. The first half centres around Sohee (Kim Se-eun), a star pupil at an average secondary school. She is obsessed with dancing, specifically the kind of dance moves associated with K-pop girl- and boy-bands. Among her friends are another former intern from her school who dropped out of her intern position and now spends her evenings getting paralytically drunk.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

If Only I Could Hibernate
(Baavgai Bolohson)

Director – Zoljargal Purevdash – 2023 – Mongolia, France, Switzerland, Qatar – Cert. 12a– 96m

****

A gifted Mongolian boy is torn between providing for his siblings and pursuing his studies – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 19th

Teenager Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh) lives with his mum and his three younger siblings in the yurt district of Ulaanbaataar, Mongolia’s capital city, their father having long since disappeared. Mum (Ganchimeg Sandagdorj) is illiterate and struggles to find work, and there is much antagonism between her and Ulzii, who is going through the school system his mother never experienced and took money from his summer job to buy sneakers before giving the remainder to his mum, who needs it to buy coal for their yurt’s stove to keep the family warm in severe, subzero wintry conditions. Sometimes it’s all too much for their mum, who often gets drunk at night.

In class, Ulzii is the star pupil at physics, often completing complex equations using solutions his teacher wouldn’t expect from anyone less than two years older. His teacher (Batzorig Sukhbaatar), finding a prodigy on his hands, starts to coach him to do well in the National exams in order to win a free university scholarship to study physics, which the boy wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Killers
Of The Flower Moon

Director – Martin Scorsese – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 206m

*****

A returning WW1 veteran marries into Oklahoma’s Osage Indian tribe at the time of the Osage Indian Murders – plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 20th

At slightly over 80 years of age, Martin Scorsese has now been making movies for over 60 years. Like his last, fictional, narrative feature The Irishman (2019), this one is pushing three and a half hours. I always have issues with films that long: the vast majority are that way due to director’s ego and / or inability to tell a story concisely. Some of them might have been better suited to a TV mini-series ( a medium in which, incidentally, Scorsese also works). Yet if you try and imagine Killers Of The Flower Moon cut down in length, it’s difficult. Maybe you could take out the frame story – the performance of a crime drama on the radio on the subject of the Osage Indian Murders – but that sets the scene nicely at the start and takes you back out of the movie equally nicely at the end, so it would be a shame to do so.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Ex-Files 4:
Marriage Plan
(Qian Ren 4,
前任4：英年早婚)

Director – Yusheng Tian – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 129m

****

A man in a trial marriage attempts to help his best friend, on the rebound from a failed relationship, navigate the process of finding a new partner – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 6th

Chinese writer-director Tian’s romantic franchise, now on its fourth entry, has built its previous instalments around characters whose former partners interfere one way or another with their current, ongoing, attempts at relationships. Meng Yun (Han Geng), a character from the original The Ex-Files (2014) is single again following events in The Ex-Files 3: Return Of The Exes (2017), while the relationship of regular character Yu Fei (Zheng Kai) with girlfriend Ding Dian (Zeng Mengxue) has settled down into some sort of stability.

The latter couple are eating out when she suggests, more on a whim than from any basis in fact, that she might be pregnant. His offer to marry her were that to be the case is met with a degree of disbelief in her arguments about being an independent woman, so they agree to a trial marriage. Yu Fei juggles this with trying to help the single Meng find love, enrolling him in a dating site and offering advice as things develop.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Lakelands

Director – Robert Higgins, Patrick McGivney – 2022 – Ireland – Cert. 15 – 100m

****

The health of an amateur player of Irish football suffers after he gets badly beaten up one night, forcing him to withdraw from playing – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 5th

Football. Violence. This is a film that soft-soaps neither, yet it has no interest whatever in any justice / revenge plot resolution, opting instead for a very different approach.

It’s actually quite a gentle, downplayed affair focusing on the after effects of violence on a person’s life. It’s a rare foray into the landscape of masculine sensibilities, in a far more thoughtful and considered way than is usual in the cinema. For a start, it’s framed by farming, with protagonist Cian (Éanna Hardwicke) working on his dad’s farm caring for livestock, mucking out cowsheds, driving in fence posts and so forth, a slow, seasonal pace of life. And then his involvement in football (in this case, Irish football, which isn’t something this reviewer has seen much of on the screen, or, indeed, anywhere) is presented as a driving passion in marked contrast to the farming; you get the impression of a full, worthwhile existence, punctuated by nights out drinking with fellow players in the local town’s pubs and clubs.… Read the rest