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Features Live Action Movies

Tokyo Pop

Director – Fran Rubel Kuzui – 1988 – US, Japan – Cert. 18 – 99m

****

A girl singer, fed up with being sidelined by the music business in New York, relocates to Tokyo and falls in with local rock band hopefuls there – select UK cinema screenings from Friday, April 25th prior to its Blu-ray release on Monday, May 5th

“Hey, Mike, when do I get to use my song?” asks the band’s disgruntled, leather-clad back-up singer, feeling redundant as she stands on stage holding a tambourine. Her music career in New York stalling fast, Wendy (Carrie Hamilton from Cool World, Ralph Bakshi, 1995; Shag, Zelda Barron, 1989) receives a “Wish you were here” postcard from her friend Jane in Japan and shoots back a reply: “Hope you meant it – ‘cos I’m coming.”

In Japan, a band does an English language cover of Blue Suede Shoes. When Wendy arrives in Tokyo, her girlfriend has moved on to Thailand. Barely speaking any Japanese, Wendy winds up in a cheap hotel in Itabashi the space of a small Japanese apartment where footwear is removed on entering and, as an Aussie resident tells her, everything operates on credit card and a shower is Y100 for ten minutes.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

House Of Gucci

Director – Ridley Scott – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 157m

*****

A woman marries into the wealthy Gucci family and inadvertently brings about its downfall – out in cinemas on Friday, November 26th

First impressions.

A beautiful day. A well-dressed man (Adam Driver) relaxes at the café, pays his bill, cycles through the streets. Life is good. He reaches his destination. As he approaches the door, a voice asks, “Mr. Gucci?”

Milan, 1978. Another beautiful day. A woman dressed and moving like a goddess (Lady Gaga) walks past trucks and workers to her father’s transportation business office where she works as his assistant. Later, a friend asks her to a costume party. She dances. She looks incredible. She goes for a drink. The barman (Driver) turns out not to be not the barman. He makes her a drink anyway. He’s Maurizio. Gucci. He knows the host. She’s Patrizia Reggiani. She doesn’t. He tells her he can’t dance. She drags him onto the dance floor and makes him look good even though he does nothing. He leaves at midnight, worried he’ll turn into a frog. It’s a pumpkin, she calls after him.

She stalks him, ‘accidentally’ bumping into him at a bookshop where he’s buying armfuls of legal books (he’s studying to be a lawyer).… Read the rest