Tag: home town

Case 137

Case 137 (Dossier 137)

Director – Dominik Moll – 2025 – France – Cert. 12a – 116m

*****

A member of the internal police watchdog department investigates a complaint of police violence in the 2018 Yellow Jackets riots – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 16th

Who watches the watchmen? Who polices the police? It’s a question with great relevance to today’s societies, including our own in the UK. In the US, the Police have the Internal Affairs. In France, the police have a branch called the IGPN (L’inspection générale de la police nationale / The General Inspectorate of the National Police). So if members of the public accuse the police of bad or criminal behaviour, they have a department set up to investigate that. An internal department, not an external body.

IGPN inspector Stéphanie Bertrand (Léa Drucker from Mars Express, Jérémie Périn, 2023; Two of Us, Filippo Meneghetti, 2019; The Blue Room, Matthieu Amalric, 2014) is working on allegations of police misconduct during the Yellow Jackets protests of 2018. She tries to be scrupulously fair in questioning an officer who threw stones at rioters, later defending him to superiors as being in a situation that put him under intense psychological pressure.… Read the rest

Tags 2018, accusation, accuse, allegation, Antonia Buresi, bad behaviour, bodycams, boss, Case 137, Côme Peronnet, complain, complainant, complaint, compromise, criminal behaviour, defend, Dominik Moll, ex, file a complaint, fired upon, fired upon by riot police, forgotten by politicians, France, Guslagie Malanda, home town, hospital, hotel maid, hotel window, IGPN, injury, inspector, Internal Affairs, internal department, interview, investigation, Jonathan Turnbull, L'inspection générale de la police nationale, Léa Drucker, minding your own business, misconduct, mothers and sons, my word against theirs, nice day out, officer, Paris, peer pressure, police, police accountability, police custody, police inspector, police misconduct, police officer, police violence, protest march, psychological pressure, questioning, represent, riot police, rioters, riots, Saint-Dizier, Sandra Colombo, separated, single parent, Solan Machado-Graner, speak out, spy, stalker, Stanislas Merhar, superior, supermarket aisle, surveillance cameras, teenage, The General Inspectorate of the National Police, throw stones, traitors, trouble, Valentin Campagne, video, violence, watchdog, witness, Yellow Jackets

Features Live Action Movies

Black Dog
(Gou Zhen,
狗阵)

Director – Guan Hu – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 106m

***1/2

An ex-con returns to his home town, which is infested with wild dogs, and befriends a stray – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 30th

Looking down from the edge of a slope towards Gobi Desert scrubland. In the distance, a coach moving along a road. Suddenly, a large pack of wild dogs come out of nowhere and charge down the slope. The startled bus topples over. The dogs are gone, the driver is getting everyone out of the bus. A man complains that his money, his life savings, have gone. He needs that money. Who has taken it? They are about ten miles from Chixia. One of those on the bus is Lang’s son. The police are called, they arrive and help get the bus back upright. Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), as required, shows an officer his parole ID. Lang walks behind the slow moving bus as the police escort the coach to Chixia.

As an announcement warns of a black dog seen around the town that may well be carrying rabies, Lang is strip searched at the station while the other passengers wait to be interviewed.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

The Road
To The Race Track
(Gyeongmajang
Ganeun Kil,
경마장 가는 길)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date November 9 2022
No Comments on The Road
To The Race Track
(Gyeongmajang
Ganeun Kil,
경마장 가는 길)

Director – Jang Sun-woo – 1991 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 138m

*****

An academic returns to Korea expecting to hook up with the woman student with whom he lived in Paris, and they meet up, but she now repulses his physical advances – part of a strand of films celebrating actress Kang Soo-Yeon (1966-2022) from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival which runs in cinemas from Thursday, November 3rd to Thursday, November 17th

As soon as R (Moon Sung-keun) arrives at the airport in Korea, he makes contact with J (Kang Soo-Yeon) and they get a room together, but she confounds his expectations by fending off his attempts at physical sex with her. This wasn’t what he was expecting, since she seemed willing enough when they lived together in Paris. He is desperate to have sex with her, but instead she offers to drive him first to the bus station and then to his home town, where he is reunited with his wife (Kim Bo-yeon), kids and extended family.

Whatever affection he once had for his wife has long since evaporated, and he callously repulses her attempts at intimacy in the bedroom. Brief scenes between the husband and wife punctuate the remaining narrative, the wife becoming increasingly hostile.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Departures
(Okuribito,
おくりびと)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date December 4 2009
No Comments on Departures
(Okuribito,
おくりびと)

Director – Yojiro Takita – 2008 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 130m

*****

An unemployed cellist finds himself working on the encoffination of corpses prior to their cremation – in cinemas Friday, December 4th 2009

Winner of 2009’s Best Foreign Film Oscar (and numerous other awards besides), this Japanese entry is a rarity in that it deals head on with death not in its horrific or violent aspects (as in numerous horror and action movies) but in a life ritual as significant as birth. Death being the last great contemporary Western taboo, we in the West ought to pay attention.

Daigo (Masahiro Motokii – Gemini, Shinya Tsukamoto, 1999) loses his new job as a cellist when the Tokyo orchestra employing him is dissolved, leaving him with a young wife to support and repayments on an expensive cello to find. Selling the instrument, the couple move back to his small home town where Daigo’s late mother has left him a house in her will.

Seeking work, he answers an ad dealing with ‘departures’, believing it a travel agency. The ad should however have read ‘the departed’, because he’s required to deal with the encoffination of corpses prior to their cremation, preparing the bodies for entry into the next life.… Read the rest