Tag: job

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Klokkenluider

Director – Neil Maskell – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 84m

*****

A couple have seen something; two men are assigned to look after them as they wait in the middle of nowhere for a journalist to come and interview them – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 1st

Mr. Appleby (Amit Shah) and Mrs. Appleby (Sura Dohnke) arrive at the house on the outskirts of a small village in Belgium they’ve booked for a party. Appleby is not their real surname, and nor will there be a party. He is what the Dutch call a ‘klokkenluider’ or bell ringer, slang in that language for whistleblower. He has approached a newspaper and is following instructions. They are at the house awaiting the arrival of a journalist to interview them.

Meanwhile, Brits Kevin (Tom Burke) and Ben (Roger Evans) are driving to meet them. They have guns in the boot. We don’t really see them at first. For the first few minutes, they are shown only in little details cropped or in shade so as to be almost unrecognisable – a fragment of a detail in a wing mirror here, a view beyond a car window part obscured by a reflection there – and they choose their words carefully so as not to give away anything more than they need to.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Mavka
The Forest Song
(Mavka.
Lisova Pisnya,
Мавка.
Лісова пісня)

Directors – Oleh Malamuzh, Oleksandra Ruban – 2022 – Ukraine – Cert. PG – 99m

Ukrainian language dubbed version with English subtitles ****1/2

English language dubbed version ****

#Mavka

Can the love of a brave and essentially honest youth for Mavka the forest spirit succeed in the face of the enmity between humans and nature? – Ukrainian animation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 28th

Long ago, events flared into a terrible winter war between the Guardian (voice in Ukrainian: Nazar Zadniprovskyi; in English: Marc Thompson) of the forest beyond the Dark Mountain and a sawmill owner who initially wanted to obtain one drop of the Source of Life to heal his sick daughter but then became greedy and brought an army to seize the rest of the Source of Life for himself. Seeing the terrible devastation wrought upon the forest in the conflict, the Guardian decreed that no human should ever again set foot in the forest.

Many years later, as young forest spirit Mavka (voice in Ukrainian: Natalka Denysenko; in English: Laurie Hymes) awakens from her winter sleep to spread the new life of Spring, in the nearby village where flautist Lucas (voice in Ukrainian: Artem Pyvovarov; in English: Eddy Lee) is performing with fellow musicians, the late sawmill owner’s daughter Kilina (voice in Ukrainian: Olena Kravets; in English: Sarah Natochenny) returns promising well paid work.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Far Shore
(Tooi Tokoro,
遠いところ)

Director – Masaaki Kudo – 2022 – Japan – 128m

****

An underage Okinawa bar hostess attempts to raise her small son while worsening circumstances conspire against her – world premiere in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) 2022 which runs from Friday, July 1st to Saturday, July 9th

A man in Okinawa club Night Babylon asks her age of a hostess: “you don’t seem very old”. It turns out the girls in question are under 18 (the legal age limit for working there; in Japan, it’s also illegal to consume alcohol under the age of 20). In fact, these girls are 17 and proud of the fact that in “wild Okinawa”, the hostesses in bars are so young. The hostesses in question are Aoi (Kotono Hanase) and her friend Mio (Yumemi Ishida), and when not working, they like to party hard, for instance to celebrate a friend’s birthday, which involves much drinking and dancing in a club. There don’t appear to be any men in their immediate peer group: they’re all women.

Once she returns home from her club night shift, Aoi calls in on her grandmother to pick up her two-year-old son Kengo (Tsuki Hasegawa).… Read the rest