Tag: floor

Alien
Romulus

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 16 August 2024
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Romulus
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Director – Fede Alvarez – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A group of young people escape from a planet housing a repressive, corporate mining colony in search of something better … only to find something worse… – latest SF horror franchise entry is out on digital on Friday, October 18th following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The Alien franchise, after quite literally bursting onto cinema screens with Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), then having lost its way somewhat on Alien³(David Fincher, 1992), picked up again somewhat on Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 1979), and now settled title-wise into the sensible enough format of Alien: Ship’s Name, delivers a new entry made by a writer-director, Fede Alvarez, who understands the franchise enough to both put in everything required of it and throw in some innovative ideas without compromising its essence.

The first 20 or so minutes, arguably the best thing here, could equally easily have opened a science fiction epic unrelated to the franchise. A young woman Rain (the terrific Cailee Spaeny from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) is trapped on a planet where the sun is permanently hidden owing to pollution caused by the corporation’s mining operation.… Read the rest

Tags abandoned, access, acid, acid blood, action, adopt, adopted, adoption, Aileen Wu, airlocks, alien, Alien franchise, android, antigravity, Archie Renaux, birth, bottom floor, burst, care, carer, cat and mouse, clone, colony, company android, corny jokes, corporation, corridor, counter admin staff, creature, creature feature, credits, cryogenic, Daniel Betts priority, David Jonsso, decaying orbit, deep space travel, directive, doors, drug, emotionally damaged, escape plan, expectations, face-huggers, fantasy, Fede Alvarez, floor, franchise, freedom, frozen, fuel, get away, global warming, horror, Ian Holm, identification, insert finger, intruders, Isabella Merced, life support, lift shaft, maw, metaphysics, mining, mining colony, monster, motherhood, nurturing carer, outer space, peers, persona, planet, planet’s rings, pollution, pregnant, preservation, programme disc, programmed, purge, raise the temperature, reboots, Remus, repair, research and development, Romulus, Rosie Ede, salvage, Saturn, scanned actor, sci-fi, science fiction, security clearance, SF, SF horror, shallow water, sibling, Sigourney Weaver, slavery, space station, spaceship, Spike Fearn, storage facility, sun, survival, swim, time is running out, trash, trauma, unethical employment practices, US, vaginal, vulnerable, xenomorph, young generation, younger brother

Features Live Action Movies

The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 20 April 2024
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Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)
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Director – Sogo Ishii – 1984 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 105m

*****

After proudly moving into their first home as owner-occupiers, a family go berserk and destroy the building – out on Blu-ray on Monday, June 17th

This seemingly starts out as a conservative family drama. The family in question comprises father Katsukuni Kobayashi (Katsuya Kobayashi in his debut feature role), mother Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho who worked with directors Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura and Kaneto Shindo), elder teenage son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono from Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, both Takashi Miike; Electric Dragon, 80,000 V, Sogo Ishii, all 2001) and younger teenage daughter Erika (Youki Kudoh from Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985; Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch, 1989; Heaven’s Burning, Craig Lahiff, 1997). The Kobayashis move in to their first home as owner-occupiers which, although it’s a little on the small side, promises an idyllic existence. Father is the breadwinner with a nondescript office job, mother waters the plants and does the cooking and housework, the daughter wants to be an idol singer and the son is spending all his time studying for school and university in his room upstairs.… Read the rest

Tags a place to live, accommodation, armour, baseball bat, basement, bicycle, biker gang, bravado, breadwinner, build, building work, catalyst, Chinese, coffee, defensive, derelict, digging, drama, drill, failure, family, family unit, father, floor, flyover, grandfather, hand-held, head of the family, Hitoshi Ueki, home, horror, house implosion, housewife, housing, husbands and wives, idol singer, intimacy, intimate, Japan, Japanese cinema, JG Ballard, Katsuya Kobayashi, killing, kitchen implements, living room, living room floor, Mitsuko Baisho, mother, naive, nuclear family, office job, one-piece swimsuit, outer space, owner-occupiers, parents and children, pixelation, poison, power tool, primal types, public housing, rape, rape as weapon of war, room, run, salaryman, school, Second Sino-Japanese War, SF, sibling, sick, social breakdown, societal norms, Sogo Ishii, soldier, streets, studying, suburbia, sword, teenage, threat, train, turmoil, uniform, university, upstairs, warrior, weapon of war, white ant, World War Two, Yoshiki Arizono, Youki Kudoh

Features Live Action Movies

Hoarder on the Border
(Danshari Paradise,
断捨離パラダイス)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 2 April 2024
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(Danshari Paradise,
断捨離パラダイス)
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Director – Takayuki Kayano – 2022 – Japan – 101m

****

A failed pianist takes on a job at a cleaning company which specialises in decluttering houses filling up with rubbish – played UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Promising young pianist Ritsuke Shirotaka (Ryo Shinoda), whose mantelpiece is adorned with prizes he won in school, can’t carry on due to hand tremors. His girlfriend pushes him towards eking out a living giving piano lessons, but that isn’t enough to stop her abandoning him.

In need of gainful employment, he interviews for and gets a job at cleaning company Danshari Paradise. (Note: Danshari is a Japanese philosophy of decluttering, based on principles that have been around in that culture a long time.)

This is a whole new world to him, and he must learn on the job. The houses or flats that the company deals with are typically places where you can’t see the floor for items of clothing and packaging that have been discarded there.

On his first assignment with such a team, Ritsuke attempts to physically pull blockages from a kitchen sink, only for a female colleague to pull him aside and pour liquid down the plughole to clear it.… Read the rest