Tag: identity theft

Concrete Utopia
(Konkeuriteu Yutopia,
콘크리트 유토피아)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 April 2024
No Comments on Concrete Utopia
(Konkeuriteu Yutopia,
콘크리트 유토피아)
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Director – Eom Tae-hwa – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 130m

****1/2

A massive earthquake makes the residents of the sole Seoul apartment block still standing close their doors to survivors outside – out on UK digital platforms on Monday, April 1st

Concrete: a structural material made of aggregate, cement, and water. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) Harsh. Unyielding. Impenetrable. Opaque. Not alive. Commonly used in today’s world in the manufacture of buildings, and associated with Brutalist architecture.

Utopia: an ideal community whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) The English word derives from two Greek words, the compound meaning of which is nowhere. Hence, “seemingly”. Utopias tend to have some fatal flaw. If they didn’t, any story about them would lack dramatic conflict. Thus, the word carries within it a degree of irony.

The eponymous montage of these two words pits them against each other: an unyielding, dead physicality confronts the optimism of a better world. The title evokes JG Ballard’s novels Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975), the former about a stranded motorist struggling to survive on a spaghetti junction after a car accident, the latter about a newly built block of flats in which the residents descend through social breakdown towards a new order.… Read the rest

Tags Anti-Crime Force, apartment, apartment block, architecture, block of flats, brutalism, Brutalist architecture, buildings, city, community, compassion, con, concrete, congressman, construction, couple, crime, decision-making, decision-making process, delegate, devastation, dystopia, earthquake, Eom Tae-hwa, extinguish, family unit, fire, food, foot in the door, freezing, freezing weather, homeless, hose, identity theft, jet of water, JG Ballard, Kim Sun-young, LEAFF, LEAFF 2023, Lee Byung-hun, London East Asia Film Festival, London East Asia Film Festival 2023, murder mystery, neighbour, new order, Park Bo-young, Park Ji-hu, Park Seo-joon, payment, people, representative, residents, scam, schoolgirl, search for food, selfish, selfishness, sentenced to death, Seoul, social breakdown, South Korea, special effects, steal, survival, survive, survivors, Taxi Driver, theft, thriller, Tremors, urban, utopia, violence confrontation, vote, weather, Women's Association

Features Live Action Movies Music

Elvis

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 June 2022
No Comments on Elvis
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Director – Baz Luhrmann – 2022 – US, Australia – Cert. 12a – 159m

***

Elvis Presley’s career from the mid-1950s through to his death in 1977, and his complex business relationship with his manager Colonel Tom Parker – out in cinemas on Friday, June 24th

Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), having a heart attack, reminisces to himself about his career. Many considered him the abuser and exploiter of the singer Elvis Presley, but that wasn’t the way it was. In the early 1950s, when Parker was managing the touring show of country singer Hank Snow (David Wenham), he heard Presley’s first recording on Sun Records though Hank’s son Jimmie Rodgers Snow (Kodi Smit-Mcphee), a singer in his own right who Parker didn’t think was anything like as good as his father.

Parker, an old time carnival showman, is always on the lookout for that one act that’s a little bit different, affects audiences and might well clean up at the box office. When he first sees Elvis (Austin Butler) perform, and notices young girls and older women going wild at the singer’s dance moves, he is convinced there’s money to be made and determines to sign him before someone else does.… Read the rest

Tags abuser, Alton Mason, Arthur Crudup, artistic integrity, Austin Butler, Australia, Baz Luhrmann, Beale Street, Black, black musicians, black neighbourhood, Black Pentecostalism, bogus identity, box office, business relationship, career, carnival, Col. Tom Parker, country, dance moves, David Wenham, degenerate, degenerate black rock and roll, devil’s music, drugs dependency, Elvis, Elvis Presley, establishment, excesses, exploiter, fake identity, fame, first ever global TV broadcast concert, free line of credit, gambling addiction, Gary Clark Jr., GI, gigs. B.B. King, Hank Snow, heart attack, identity theft, International Hotel Las Vegas, Jimmie Rodgers Snow, Josh McConville, juke joints, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Kodi Smit-Mcphee, Las Vegas, lewd behaviour, Little Richard, male establishment, marriage, meal ticket, Memphis, military service, money-spinning, mother, mother’s death, movie star, movies, music, officer’s daughter, older women, Olivia DeJonge, overweight, performance, Presley, Priscilla Presley, recording, residencies, revivalist gospel tent, rock and roll music, rockabilly, Sam Phillips, separation, showman, singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, songs, Spirit-led, stardom, Sun Records, Tennessee, Tom Hanks, tone back, tone down, US, voice, white, white-designated house, Yola, young girls

Features Live Action Movies

Possessor

Director – Brandon Cronenberg – 2020 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 103m

*****

A woman possesses other people’s bodies via technology to assassinate selected targets – on Shudder from Thursday, June 10th, as well Digital HD or BFI Player rental

Anyone who’s seen Brandon Cronenberg’s earlier Antiviral (2012) will know that he is a force to be reckoned with, operating in much the same area as his father David (whose Crash, 1996, is currently out on VoD and is released on UHD and BD on December 14th) but with his own, highly individual slant. And equally impressive.

His protagonist here is assassin Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) whose boss Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh) inserts Vos’ consciousness into others so she can carry out hits on designated targets while occupying their bodies and consciousnesses. Lately, though, things haven’t been going quite to plan. In the body of Holly (Gabrielle Graham), Vos picks up a cutlery knife then repeatedly and bloodily stabs her target with it rather than simply shooting him with the supplied gun. Although Vos gives all the right answers in the psychological evaluation tests following her return, Girder is concerned.

He fears are raised further when Vos asks for time off with her partner Michael (Rossif Sutherland) and young son Ira (Gage Graham-Arbuthnot).… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Possessor

The irredeemable flesh

Possessor
Directed by Brandon Cronenberg
Certificate 18, 103 minutes
Released 27 November

The controversial director David Cronenberg has long been an exponent of something he calls ‘the new flesh’, ways that humanity might transcend its bodies. His son Brandon is the same, his new film Possessor concerning the world of cybernetic industrial espionage. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is an assassin working for a company run by Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), which injects her consciousness into other people as host personalities so that, wearing the clothing of their minds and bodies, she can kill designated targets before being extracted…

His father’s notorious Crash (1996) was restored for reissue in November… [Read more]

Read the full review in Reform.

Read my alternative review here.

Trailer:

Features Live Action Movies

The Intruder
(El Prófugo)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 October 2020
No Comments on The Intruder
(El Prófugo)

Director – Natalia Meta – 2020 – Argentina, Mexico – Cert. – 95m

***1/2

A woman moves between dreams and reality as she starts to fear that a foreign entity may be taking her over – on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 from 20.30 Monday, October 12th to 20.30 Thursday, October 15th

This opens with a close up of a woman’s body bound in bondage gear. She speaks in Japanese and then somewhat disorientatingly (as if this disturbing imagery hadn’t already thrown you enough) in a different voice in Spanish. Voice actress Inés (Erica Rivas) is working in a dubbing theatre. “More powerful, Inés”, says the man in the booth. After a take or two more, he’s got what he needed and they move on to the next clip.

The film’s a bit like that. The opening is representative of what is to follow: a series of bravura and often disturbing sequences that suck you in and make you wonder exactly where the film will end up. As the sequences build, one on another, I was fully expecting this to be a five star review. Alas, the film didn’t seem to know how to end and the final scene, which needed to somehow pull everything together and make sense of the larger whole, quite simply didn’t.… Read the rest