Tag: flight

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Dragonkeeper
(Gardiana de Dragones)

Director – Li Jianping, Salvador Simó – 2023 – Spain, China – Cert. PG – 98m

****

Faced by powerful forces of empire and a ruthless traitor, a girl must accompany an old dragon to ensure the survival of its egg – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 27th

Ancient China. As revealed in a voice-over and an ancient, panoramic, wall-hanging scroll, the empire of the humans united with the dragons to successfully defeat necromancy. But then, the Emperor turned on the dragons, hunting them.

A long time after these events have occurred, a hard-nosed trader Master Lan (voice in the English language version: Tony Jayawardena) and his wallas are receiving some goods at a trading post when they stumble upon an abandoned baby girl. One of the wallas notices strange, blue-lit rocks floating near the baby. The group take the girl back across mountain ranges and vast plains to their small town.

Around eight years later, Ping (voice: Mayalinee Griffith) is living in that town, in the care of an old lady Lao Ma (voice: Sarah Lam), and feeding her pet rat Hua Hua (non-dialogue voice: Jonathan David Mellors) who lives in a hole in a storehouse and often goes with her in her jacket or any container or bag she might be carrying.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Big Banana Feet

Director – Murray Grigor – 1976 – UK – Cert. 12 – 77m

****1/2

The camera follows comedian Billy Connolly to Dublin and Belfast for the final dates of his 1975 tour – 2K restoration is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th, and on BFI Blu-ray/DVD (Dual Format Edition) and digital from Monday, May 20th

This played the Scala Cinema a few times back in the day. I always thought there must be a reason why, and now, with its release in a restored form by the BFI, I get to find out. I must admit to mixed feelings prior to viewing – I’m not someone who particularly enjoys stand-up comedy; indeed, watching videos of comedians doing their material onstage has been known to bore me to tears, even as it enthralls fans.

Although this has clips of Billy Connolly performing on stage – comic routines, songs with banjo and guitar – it’s essentially a fly-on-the-wall piece that captures his personality as he, with the help of his seemingly tireless road manager Billy Johnson, plays dates in Dublin and Belfast on the final leg of his 1975 tour. Watching it, you feel you get to know Connolly well, at least at the period of his career being filmed.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Plane

Director – Jean-François Richet – 2022 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

A commercial passenger aircraft flying through bad weather conditions gets into trouble and is forced to land on an island run by military insurgents – out on digital from Monday, March 13th

While this is unlikely to win any Oscars, it’s a shrewdly put together action movie that gets everything right, tells its audience exactly what it’s going to do and then proceeds to do it, wrapping up everything very quickly in about thirty seconds once the narrative is over. That might not sound like much, but most action movies you see fail to meet such criteria. Moreover, a lot of action movies work perfectly well on a small screen, but this one works better if you see it on as big a screen as possible.

Singapore. Scotsman Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler from 300, Zak Snyder, 2007) is cutting it fine and may be about to be late for work again. Since he’s an airline pilot, that’s quite a big deal. Somehow, he gets to the cockpit of the plane with enough time to introduce himself to his co-pilot Samuel Dele (Yosun An from Mulan) ahead of the pre-takeoff, routine inspection by an aviation official.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Top Gun:
Maverick

Director – Joseph Kosinski – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 131m

****

The eponymous Maverick (Tom Cruise) returns to the Navy pilot Top Gun school to train a dozen new recruits to fly an impossible bombing mission and come back alive– out in cinemas on Wednesday, May 25th

Welcome back to the world of US Navy aviation where pilots all have their own self-given flying nicknames. While his contemporaries such as Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky (Val Kilmer), now an admiral in charge of the Pacific fleet, have advanced in ranks, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise) has remained a captain in order to stay on active service in the field. He’s now a test pilot and loves his job.

However, Maverick has got into trouble one too many times, most recently by disobeying orders when he went ahead with a Mojave Desert test flight on a programme which a rear admiral (Ed Harris) wanted shut down. In doing this, and proving that the plane in question can fly not just at the untried Mach 9 but also at Mach 10…10.1… 10.2… Maverick sees himself safeguarding the jobs of all those working on the programme. The Navy, however, sees it as insubordination and want him grounded.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Escape
From Mogadishu
(Mogadisyu,
모가디슈)

Director – Ryu Seung-wan – 2021 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 121m

****

In the early 1990s, besieged North and South Korean officials join forces to escape from the Somali capital as it descends into lawlessness – out in cinemas and VoD platforms on Friday, March 25th

In 1990, both North and South Korea have yet to have a seat at the United Nations. With many of those seats and hence the UN’s votes being held by African nations, influence in Africa is seen as the key to obtaining a seat. In Somalia, both sides are keen to ingratiate themselves with the ruling Barre military regime in Mogadishu, the capital, with a great deal of subterfuge and hostility between the two rival Korean factions.

However, the regime, which has held power for twenty years, is in trouble. (Barre would be ousted in 1991). As the capital becomes a war zone with government troops fighting rebel militias, the city descends into lawlessness and both sets of Korean representatives need to get out.

If you want a wider picture of the political realities of how all this came to pass in Somalia, this film is not the place to come. The clue is in the title: this is a Korean movie about Koreans having to depart a politically unstable country, and after some skullduggery at the start in which the car of South Korea’s Ambassador Han (Kim Yoon-seok from The Fortress, Hwang Dong-hyuk, 2017; 1987 When The Day Comes, Jang Joon-Hwan, 2017) is raided by bandits on its way to a meeting with President Barre the Southerners have taken months to set up, causing them to run to the meeting on foot and arrive 15 minutes late only to find the President can’t see them because he has another meeting immediately afterwards – with North Korea’s Ambassador Rim (Huh Joon-ho from Default, Choi Kook-Hee, 2018) who unbeknown to the Southerners hired the local bandits.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

An Autumn’s Tale
(Chau Tin Dik
Tung Wa,
秋天的童話)

Director – Mabel Cheung – 1987 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 98m

****

A girl leaves her home in Hong Kong and flies to New York where her boyfriend has dumped her, so her cousin looks after her there instead – screening as part of Focus Hong Kong 2022 Chinese New Year on Tuesday, January 25th, 2022 8:15 pm, NFT2, info here

Young and innocent 23-year-old hopeful Jennifer (Cherie Chung from The Story Of Wu-Viet, Ann Hui, 1981; Wild Search, Ringo Lam, 1989; Once A Thief, John Woo, 1991, all co-starring as here with Chow Yun-fat) takes a one-way, 20 hour flight from Hong Kong to New York where she’s enrolled in acting school, something for which she plans to get whatever work she can in order to pay her way. Her other – perhaps her main – reason for the journey is to be reunited with her boyfriend, but when she goes to meet Vincent (Danny Chan Bak-yeung) off the train, she sees he’s with the more sophisticated Peggy (Cindy Ou / Wu Fu-sheng) and no longer interested in her, Jennifer.

Meanwhile, looking out for her is her Big Apple streetwise cousin ‘Figurehead’ a.k.a.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Away

Director – Gints Zilbalodis – 2019 – Latvia – Cert. U – 75m
****1/2
Exclusively in these cinemas from Friday, August 28th

A boy hangs from a tree by a parachute in a wilderness. He wakes. A strange, towering black / grey figure approaches, shining as if metallic or viscous like a solidified, smooth, crude oil or tar. It picks him up. He is in a dark tunnel, light at one end. He goes the other way, is out of the giant’s clutches, runs. It slowly turns and lumbers after him. There are occasional, giant, semicircular hoops in his path. He goes through them, eventually entering a grotto which fully circular hoop the giant can’t follow. Welcome to the strange, dreamlike world of Away.

Beyond an abandoned motorbike, in the middle of the grotto, is a lake bordered with orange trees and the ocean. The boy feeds, bathes and makes the acquaintance of a shy, little yellow bird. Finding a key and a map in a rucksack, the boy learns that the semicircular hoops mark a route to a harbour. His bike will furnish him the means to get there. A flock of white birds is flying in the same direction, however the yellow bird can’t join them because it can’t fly.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Jurassic Park ///

Director – Joe Johnston – 2001 – US – PG – 92m

****1/2

Joe Johnston directs Jurassic Park ///, the third instalment of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park franchise – out in UK cinemas from Friday, July 20th 2001

This redresses two minor omissions in Steven Spielberg’s first Jurassic Park (1993): JP///’s dinosaurs include some that interact with water (Michael Crichton’s original book contained a T.Rex swimming after its human prey, but the film didn’t) and some that fly (pteranodons). A rival giant dinosaur (here, a spinosaurus) at last fights the star predator (the T.Rex), a device used by dinosaur movies from The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt; effects: Willis O’Brien, 1925) and King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Shoedsack, effects: Willis O’Brien, 1933) through Disney’s Fantasia (Rite Of Spring segment, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, 1940) to One Million Years BC (Don Chaffey; effects: Ray Harryhausen, 1966).

Gone is all the chaos theory talk and cuddly Sir Richard Attenborough. The proceedings have now been pared down to people trapped on a deserted isle – with no obvious means of escape – and dinosaurs. Guess what – this time those dastardly corporate folks at InGen have populated a third island (Isla Sorna) with dinosaurs then abandoned it.… Read the rest