Tag: knife

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The Guest
(301호 모텔 살인사건)

Director – Yeon Je-gwang – 2023 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 18 – 77m

***

An out-of-the-way motel, with numerous hidden cameras covertly recording the unwitting guests, becomes the site of multiple killings – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

There’s an idea that the widespread presence of security cameras make the world a safer place, because things can be seen rather than hidden; equally, however, things can be recorded, turned into product and sold for profit. The Guest takes place in a familiar world of roads and car journeys and motels in the middle of nowhere at which the traveller can take a break. And all of it seems to be covered by security cameras.

That applies to the roads, where the cams are there for traffic enforcement (and, perhaps more pertinently, traffic tax raising or penalty charging) purposes. Why they are there, for good or ill, isn’t really discussed here. But their ubiquitous presence is inescapably noted.

It also applies in the seedy motel at the centre of this horror / drama / suspense / thriller. The loan shark Deuk-chan (Hyun Bong-sik) who owns the place employs two young staff members Min-cheol (Lee Joo-seung) and Young-gyu (Han Min) to run the place in a day-to-day basis both of whom are indebted to him and therefore have little choice other than to do whatever he asks, however unreasonable.… Read the rest

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No Trees in the Street

Director – J. Lee Thompson – 1959 – UK – Cert. 12 – 96m

****

An essentially honest young woman living in her parents’ East End slum fails to stop her impetuous younger brother from becoming involved in the criminal underworld – one of two J. Lee Thompson movies out on UK Blu-ray, DVD and Digital

Framed by a contemporary story of plain clothes policeman Frank (Ronald Howard) trying to talk sense into a knife-carrying teenager (David Hemmings), this takes place in the East End street where the latter lives some 20 years previously. The name has changed: back then, Somerset Street was known as Kennedy Street. The policeman, who is local, has always worked this beat. 20 years ago, he was trying to prevent another young man from drifting into a life of crime.

That other young man is Tommy (Melvyn Hayes), who lives with his father, mother and older sister Hetty (Sylvia Syms) in fairly basic accommodation. It’s a poor area and honest work is hard to come by. Both brother and sister would like to find a way out, into a better life. Both have less than honest ways of doing so, in the form of local ‘businessman’ Wilkie (Herbert Lom).… Read the rest

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Love Hotel
(Rabu Hoteru,
ラブホテル)

Director – Shinji Somai – 1985 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 88m

***1/2

After violently taking out the stress of yakuza business debts on a call-girl, a man finds her two years later and attempts to rekindle a relationship – roman porno is out on UK Blu-ray on, Monday, July 22nd

NSFW.

Tokyo. Muraki (Minori Terada) phones Milky Way from room 301, all dark suit and shades, obviously a gangster, to be is told a girl, Yumi, will be with him in 10 minutes. Only, a flashback reveals him as the owner of a publishing office, his stairwell to his small office premises blocked by a yakuza, another of whose number, he discovers on entering, is forcibly having sex with Muraki’s wife (Kiriko Shimizu) while two further fellow yakuza look on approvingly. Later, he considers throwing himself out of the third storey window of his unfurnished office with “for rent” signs, but swats a fly and thinks better of jumping.

When Yumi (Noriko Hayami) arrives at 301, her initial euphoria at Y100 000 for two hours is dispelled when Muraki unexpectedly slaps handcuffs on her, pulls a knife, slashes at the bedsheets and her clothing to undress her than violates her with a dildo, later cutting the skin between her breasts as she writhes orgasmically.… Read the rest

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Sorcery (Brujería)

Director – Christopher Murray – 2023 – Chile, Mexico, Germany – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

When the father of an indigenous Christian convert is murdered by her German Christian employer’s dogs, her thirst for justice leads her to employ occult folk magic against his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

1881. Chiloé, the Northernmost island of an archipelago off the coast of Chile. Indigenous, 13-year-old Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo) works as a maid for German immigrant Stefan (Sebastian Hülk from All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger, 2022; Little Joe, Jessica Hausner, 2019; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) who together with his wife (Annick Durán) runs a sheep farm. The couple have two young boys, Thorsten (Matías Bannister) and Franz (Iker Echevers). The family are Christians, and Rosa is a convert to that religion.

One day, Stefan’s sheep lie dead in his field, with woven garlands of vegetation round their necks. With tensions understandably high, Rosa’s father approaches Stefan holding a knife, and Stefan releases his two dogs upon him, killing the man. Rosa later places a makeshift cross of two sticks bound together on his basic grave, which she and Stefan’s family visit, Stefan’s wife pointing out that the man wasn’t a Christian.… Read the rest

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The Land
Where Winds
Stood Still
(Zhel Toqtaghan Zher)

Director – Ardak Amirkulov – 2023 – Kazakhstan – Cert. none – 108m

*****

A Kazakh mother made homeless by Soviet policy must protect her two sons in the harsh environment of the Steppes – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

An historical, period, survival movie. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, Soviet forced collectivisation polices, intended to have a levelling effect, instead forced Kazakh peasants off the land and led to the famine of the early 1930s. People were reduced to eating livestock essential for agricultural production, not to mention each other.

In a barren Steppes landscape loosely reminiscent of the Spaghetti Western, mother Jupar and her two pre-teenage sons Jolan and Boshay must survive mounted gunmen, starvation, extreme weather, wolves, and hungry fellow human beings. Jupar carries a concealed knife within her clothing and will stop at nothing to protect her kids in one of the most powerful expressions of motherhood ever to grace the screen.

Their seeming nomadic existence is however not without purpose; she has to get them to the eponymous Land, the village where she was born, and safety. Yet the dangers they face on the way are legion.… Read the rest

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Great Sertão
(Grande Sertão)

Director – Guel Arraes – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 114m

*****

The constantly shifting relationship between a man and his friend constantly shifts against the backdrop of a war between a street gang protecting their turf and an army trying to impose law and order – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Riobaldo (Caio Blat) tells his story. As a young boy in the urban jungle of Brazil’s Sertao, he bonds with fearless kid his own age Diadorim, who shows him how to scale brutalist towers and scare off predatory adults with an effective flick of the knife.

By the time Riobaldo has grown up to become a teacher, this concrete sprawl has become the battleground for a struggle between a gang led by local, criminal warlord Joca Ramiro (Rodrigo Lombardi) and forces under the command of Colonel Zé Bebelo (Luis Miranda) determined to restore law and order to the country. They may trade in violence, but both leaders are honourable men.

Not so one of Joca’s lieutenants Hermógenes (played with great relish by the ingratiating Eduardo Sterblitch), a seemingly unstoppable force of nature who has sold his soul to the devil to advance his own ends.… Read the rest

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Expend4bles

Director – Scott Waugh – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 103m

**

The mercenaries must prevent a nuclear bomb on a ship from blowing up in enemy waters and starting World War Three – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 22nd

Sylvester Stallone’s star-studded, action franchise returns some nine years after The Expendables 3 (Patrick Hughes, 2014) and 13 years after the original The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010). In the heyday of the first three movies, they were appearing at the rate of one every couple of years and building a cast of returning regulars.

However, aside from Stallone himself, who is clearly getting old, and Jason Statham, for good reason one of the most popular contemporary movie action stars, and a couple of smaller names further down the cast – Dolph Lundgren (as Gunner Jensen, whose major achievement in this film is sporting an unkempt head of blonde hair) and Randy Couture (as Toll Road, the demolitions man with the cauliflower ear) – the members of the eponymous team of mercenaries are played by actors new to the series.

Gone are Jet Li and Terry Crews from all three previous films, and Arnold Schwarznegger who was in both The Expendables 2 (Simon West, 2012) and the third entry.… Read the rest

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A Moment
Of Romance
(Tin Joek
Yau Ching,
天若有情)

Director – Benny Chan – 1990 – Hong Kong – Cert.18 – 92m

***1/2

When a biker and gang member on the lam from a jewel heist takes a well-to-do girl hostage then falls for her, their romance is doomed – out on Radiance Blu-ray from Monday, August 21st 2023 following its screening in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) 2021

Gang member Wah (Andy Lau) is the archetypal bad boy who, in the opening sequence, speeds through a narrow gap between two lorries and wilfully breaks a wing mirror on a stationary police vehicle as he rides past. Director Chan keeps up the mayhem with a sequence of two competing lorries on a makeshift racing circuit, each with a pretty girl standing on top – until one of them crashes into a stationery car sending the falling girl through its windscreen and scattering the onlookers as the police approach.

Ascendant gang member Trumpet seems to have it in for Wah and puts him on getaway car duty for a jewel heist. Wah must improvise when cops happen by chance to turn up outside the building while the crime is in progress and during the ensuing pursuit by car, in which he gets the robbers successfully away from the scene, and on foot, his only way of escaping the cops is to take an innocent bystander hostage.… Read the rest

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The Son

Director – Florian Zeller – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 123m

****1/2

A man and his wife must deal with the mental illness of his son by a previous marriage when he moves in with them – in cinemas from Friday, February 17th

Peter (Hugh Jackman) is a successful New York lawyer with a wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and a small child Theo. One day, his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) turns up at his apartment door to inform him that, as she’s just found out, their teenage son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) has not been to school for one month. She has tried to talk to the boy but got no sense out of him. When Peter goes to visit them, the boy insists he’d like to come and live with his dad.

New mum Beth is understandably hesitant, but nevertheless the couple agree to have Nicholas stay. It quickly becomes apparent that he has grievances against his father and step-mother for leaving his mother and becoming involved with his married father respectively. While Nicholas has never got over his parents’ break-up, Peter has continued in a career which leaves him increasingly less time for family. That looks like getting worse, too, because he has the chance of being part of the team of an electoral candidate.… Read the rest

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Men

Director – Alex Garland – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

***

An urban woman dealing with separation and bereavement encounters several men with the same face in an English village – out in cinemas on Wednesday, June 1st

A face passes before the eyes of Harper (Jessie Buckley) as her husband James (Paapa Essiedu) falls to his death from the balcony above their London flat. It’s the Spring. She drives to a house in the country – strictly speaking, in a small rural village – which she’s rented for two weeks to get away from it all.

There, she meets well-to-do landlord Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) who shows her round the property and hands over the keys. He’s an affable and chivalrous sort of chap who insists of bringing her bags in from the car and can’t stop talking; he might have walked straight in from the previous century or even the one before. He mentions that the TV reception can be a bit iffy, especially when it’s raining, and also recommends a visit to the village pub.

She’s glad when he’s left and promptly calls her partner Riley (Gayle Rankin), who she will be in touch with this way on and off throughout the narrative and who will eventually drive over to see her, the only time we ever see Riley in the flesh.… Read the rest