Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Elio

Directors – Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 99m

****

An alien-obsessed orphan, whose aunt tracks space debris for NASA, makes contact with aliens – latest Disney / Pixar romp is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 20th

Young lad Elio Solis (voice: Yonas Kibreab) has never got over the death of his parents, and lives with his aunt Olga (voice: Zoe Soldana) with whom he doesn’t really get on, even though she puts him before the advancement of her career at NASA, where she has forgone aspiring to astronaut training and works tracking space debris. One day, she is having a meal in the large work canteen with him when he vanishes, sneaking in to an exhibit about the cosmos to hear a Carl Sagan monologue about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.

Following this incident, Elio decides that all his problems would be solved if only aliens would abduct him, and goes out of his way to make this happen, drawing a big “Abduct me” message / diagram on the beach and lying in the middle of it so he can be clearly seen from the sky, not to mention sending ham radio messages to the stars with his woefully inadequate radio transmitter.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Monty Python’s
Life Of Brian

Director – Terry Jones – 1979 – UK – Cert. 12a – 93m

****

An absurdist comedy about of Brian, Jesus Christ’s next-door neighbour, who falls in with left-wing activists, develops a religious following and ends up crucified – back out in UK cinemas in Glorious Standard Definition on Friday, April 7th

Like The Last Temptation Of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988), a Biblical epic made by a New Yorker who tries to bring first century Palestine to life on the screen by filling it with actors who speak as if they’re on the streets he knows, so too Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, made by the Monty Python team, nurtured first by Oxbridge student drama society culture then by British radio and television, attempts a comic equivalent of the Christian Gospel narrative by filling it with characters possessing such quintessentially English names as Brian and Reg and sporting English accents. For the Pythons and their audience, this strategy works because of its familiarity from Britain’s hugely popular Monty Python’s Flying Circus television show, made for the BBC. It’s what everyone attending the film in the UK expected.

The Monty Python team (Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle & Michael Palin) all wrote the film between them and take on multiple acting roles, with Jones also directing, animator Gilliam also taking on production design, and Chapman, who had studied medicine, also taking on the role of set medic.… Read the rest