Tag: hospital

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Art Features Live Action Movies

Leonora
in the Morning Light
(Leonora
im Morgenlicht)

©Mirjam Kluka, Dragonfly films, Alamode Film

Leonora in the Morning Light (Leonora im Morgenlicht)

Directors – Thor Klein, Lena Vurma – 2025 – Germany, Romania, Mexico, UK – Cert. 15 – 103m

**

In Mexico, France, Spain and the England of her childhood, Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington must confront her personal demons – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 29th

Deserted hillsides, a sliver of a road, eventually a tiny red car moving along it, to the accompaniment of a pulsating electronic score suggesting the present day. Another stretch of road: the car drops off the woman, in stylish trousers and blouse, who smokes observing the landscape. The driver gets out to photograph her, much to her displeasure, but he’s run out of film.

An illustrated title card: Death. Xilitla, Mexico, 1951. The man takes her to the rooming house of Edward (Ryan Gage), leaving her as he promises to look after their son. Outside the window, she can hear the two men discuss all that has happened to her. Her madness.

©Mirjam Kluka, Dragonfly films, Alamode Film

She and Edward are riding with others in the back of a lorry on a road. In Spanish, she asks a woman on the lorry (Yasmira Escárrega) about her amulet – “a sacred stone that illuminated the path through the underworld”.… Read the rest

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Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

The Testament
of Ann Lee

The Testament of Ann Lee

Director – Mona Fastvold – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 130m

****

In the mid-eighteenth century, wishing to preach her unique take on the Christian Gospel, Ann Lee crosses the Atlantic with a small party from from Manchester, England, to establish a Shaker community in America – unlikely religious musical is on Disney+ from Wednesday, March 13th

This review is written after seeing this film for a second time. On my first viewing, I went in cold, knowing a great deal about both Christian history and the Quakers, but nothing about the Shakers (‘the Shaking Quakers’) around whom the historical side of this film is based. As far as I can tell, the historical portrayals of the Shakers here, and their leader Mother Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried in a career-defining role), are pretty accurate.

This is to leave aside the fact that this is also a musical, the genre in which people suddenly burst into song, and we somehow accept it. In real life, people generally don’t burst into song in the ordinary run of things. And yet, it’s a genre convention we accept, and as a genre the musical has a perfectly respectable history.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Wild Foxes
(La Danse des Renards)

Wild Foxes (La Danse des Renards)

Director – Valéry Carnoy – 2026 – Belgium, France – Cert. 15 – 91m

***1/2

A promising young school boxer’s mindset changes following an accident which damages his arm – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 1st

This starts off with the camera darting nimbly around a boxing ring in a gym in which two teenage fighters (one in red, one in blue) spar while their compatriots and trainer spur them on from the sidelines. Camille (Samuel Kircher), in blue, is the winner. Afterwards, five of them lark around in the changing rooms, filmed on a smartphone. (The French title, with its reference to dancing, seems particularly apt here.)

A coach journey. Camille rehearses his fighting moves in a mirror and hangs up the medal round his neck. And on a football field with a team mate. And back in the gym. Which routine is interrupted when his trainer Bogdan (Jean-Baptiste Durand) summons him for a talk with the director. The dates have come through for the Brussels competition in June, but rather than train alongside his professional team mates, Cam wants to stay at the gym and practice with his friend Matteo (Faycal Anaflous) – who has been warned by the gym, one more screw up and you’re out.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Exhibitions Immersive Music

Miseris Succurrere Disco
(I Learn to Help
Those in Need)

© Paul Heartfield

Miseris Succurrere Disco (I Learn to Help Those in Need)

Curators – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2026 – UK

****

A chapel interior is repurposed as a reflection on how personal tragedy can awaken empathy, mercy and collective care – exhibition / installation at Fitzrovia Chapel from Friday, March 6th to Wednesday, March 25th

It’s a strange phenomenon when you attend an exhibition / installation and the unfamiliar venue is, to you, as exciting as the event itself. Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s new outing isn’t a film, but an exhibition, the second of three they’ve created in this particular space as it turns out. And the space they’ve deployed is fabulous, a new one on me. 

The Byzantine-inspired Fitzrovia Chapel, as the name implies, is situated in the heart of Fitzrovia, the area of London North of Oxford Street between Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road. It’s the chapel of the former Middlesex Hospital, one of London’s flagship NHS teaching hospitals, which was closed in 2006. You may be familiar with the chapel from King Charles’ 2024 Christmas broadcast.

The venue is open on particular days, often Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but not every week, and opening times can vary if the space is hosting an exhibition.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Jack Nicholson

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Director – Milos Forman – 1975 – US – Cert. 18 – 133m

*****

An unpredictable new inmate unsettles the controlling nurse presiding over a hospital ward’s mental patients– out now in the UK on 4K UHD and 4K UHD Steelbook

A state hospital for the mentally ill, a live-in ward presided over by Miss Ratched (Louise Fletcher). For reasons that are never entirely clear, RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) arrives for a stay to evaluate his mental health. It’s also not clear whether there is anything actually wrong with him; the prison that sent him thinks he was faking it to get out of a work detail.

McMurphy finds himself on Miss Ratched’s ward, which she runs in a highly regimented fashion. He doesn’t like that, and the scene is set for a battle of the wills.

The film was originally a 1962 novel by Ken Kesey which became a play within a year with Kirk Douglas playing McMurphy. That ran on Broadway for six months, and Douglas was so taken with it that he spent most of the 1960s trying to make the film, eventually deciding on Forman as director and sending him a copy of the novel.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Attending the Festival
at a distance

Oh, What Happy Days!

Attending the Festival at a distance

Health issues prevent Jeremy Clarke from attending the Critics’ Picks at the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, but he manages to watch the films anyway.

2025 has been a strange year for me personally, not least because of my ongoing fight against cancer. Which, I am happy to report, I appear to be winning. To cut a very long story short, for the previous three years I’ve had the great privilege and joy of attending PÖFF, the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and covering, since its inception in 2022, the Festival’s Critics’ Picks Competition for Dmovies.org. This year, however, I found myself on a five day course of radiotherapy on dates immediately before the Festival. One of the things you learn very quickly when having treatment for cancer is that everybody is different – every body is different – and reactions and side effects can vary enormously from person to person.

Invisibles

The hospital warned me of possible side effects which might kick in anything up to a month after the treatment, and also that I would be very unwise to delay the radiotherapy. That effectively stopped me from leaving the UK around the time of the Festival this year.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

It Was Just an Accident
(Yek Tasadef Sadeh,
یک تصادف ساده)

It Was Just an Accident (Yek Tasadef Sadeh, یک تصادف ساده)

Director – Jafar Panahi – 2025 – Iran, France, Luxembourg – Cert. 12a – 105m

*****

When a man hits an animal driving on country roads late at night, unforeseen consequences ensue – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 5th

It’s late at night and the family are returning by car. Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), who is driving, and his wife (Afssaneh Najmabadi) keep their small daughter (Delnaz Najafi) amused with raucous, Iranian dance music. Then there’s a bang as the car hits something. Dad stops, gets out and finds he’s hit an animal. “Animals just walk onto these roads,” he explains to his traumatised daughter. The mother tries to pacify the child, saying this happens all the time and is nothing to worry about. The little girl is upset; she was enjoying the loud music before, but now she isn’t. At her request, dad turns it off. A sombre mood settles over the car.

The vehicle isn’t right since the collision, so dad takes it to a garage for them to have a look at it. One of the mechanics Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) spots him, keeps out of sight, then borrows his boss’ van keys for a emergency to follow the departing vehicle.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Round 13
(13ème Round)

Round 13

Round 13 (13ème Round)

Director – Mohamed Ali Nahdi – 2025 – Tunisia, Cyprus, Qatar, Saudi Arabia – 85m

*****

A young boy is diagnosed with a tumour in his arm, and his parents must guide him through his ensuing medical treatment – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

My third Critics’ Picks entry is another five star movie. Which is great, but once again, I wonder, for how many more films can this last? What IS true is that this is not another ‘urban unease and finding your way in the world’ movie like China Sea (Jurgis Matulevičius. 2025) or Mo Papa (Eeva Mägi, 2025), it’s something altogether different.

Sabri (Hedi Ben Jabouria) is a very ordinary eight-year-old boy who likes boxing. We first meet him out with his dad in the cinema where the pair are watching a black and white movie about boxing. They return home where Sabri looks at his dad’s old photos of his days as a boxer in Rome.

They are interrupted by Sabri’s mum Semia whose name curiously isn’t spoken until about ten minutes before the end of the movie (Afef Ben Mahmoud) and who wants to know why she can never reach Kamel (Helmi Drid), the boy’s dad, on the phone.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Valley of the
Shadow of Death
(不赦之罪)

Valley of the Shadow of Death (不赦之罪)

Directors – Jeffrey Lam Sen & Antonio Tam – 2024 – Hong Kong, China – Cert. 15 – 84m

***1/2

The lives of a Christian pastor and his wife become intertwined with that of a youth who believes himself responsible for their teenage daughter’s suicide some years ago – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 14th

For roughly its first half, this delivers a narrative that sits squarely in an evangelical Christian framework. Unable to keep that up, it shifts focus in its second half to fire off in a number of directions.

Pastor Leung (Anthony Wong) and visits an old lady named Chan who is dying in hospital, asking her on her deathbed to accept Jesus as her Saviour. As he’s leaving, the nurse with him spots her grandson coming in, chained between two police officers. His granny is unconscious, and he finds her clasping a crucifix tight in one hand.

Praying alone, the Pastor talks about ”joining in the sufferings of Christ” as well he might: when interviewed by a lady journalist (Amber Van Cheung) about suffering and his experiences, something he is known for speaking about widely, it’s apparent that he and his family – pictured on a cupboard top photo as father, mother and daughter – suffered terrible grief a few years back.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Alone in the Night
(Yoru ga Mata Kuru,
夜がまた来る)

Alone in the Night (Yoru ga Mata Kuru, 夜がまた来る)

Director – Takashi Ishii – 1994 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 108m

****1/2

After her undercover cop husband is killed by a gang, Nami infiltrates the gang and suffers much abuse as she attempts to identify and take her revenge on his killer – out on Blu-ray as part of the Takashi Ishii: 4 Tales of Nami limited edition digipack set (2000 copies) 

A compelling yet initially indecipherable image is slowly revealed, as we pull out, to be a pink marker pen colouring the handle of a black pistol in the hands of a girl wearing the pyjama top of the man against the side of whose bed she is sitting. He, it turns out, is Mitsuru (Toshiyuki Nagashima from Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, Miyagawa, 2002; Godzilla vs. Biollante, Seiichi Yamamoto, 1989; Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Paul Schrader, 1985), an undercover cop; she is Nami (Yui Natsukawa from I Wish, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2011; Still Walking, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008; Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, Takeshi Kitano, 2003), and she’s fed up with his lack of contact while he’s on the job. As they embrace, she pleads with him, “Don’t do it!… Read the rest