Tag: LFF 2024

A service robot shipwrecked on a desert island is imprinted as its mother on the mind of an orphaned gosling – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 18th following its screening in the London Film Festival

Waking up on an unknown beach with no idea as to how she got there, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voice: Lupita Nyong’o) is a Universal Dynamics service robot designed to complete any task assigned to her. Without any such task, she feels completely lost. She wanders around the island, populated only by animals, in search of her owner. Unable to understand all the noises the animals make communicating with each other, she has her translation circuits decode their meaning so that, soon, she is hearing them communicate in English.

She accidentally almost destroys a family of geese but managing to rescue a goose egg. She must protect the egg from the fox (voice: Pedro Pascal) who attempts to steal it to satisfy his hunger. Her robotic rationale for this is to question whether the egg is the fox’s property, A thought process that might make sense in a human environment but makes none at all in this animal one.… Read the rest

Animation Features Movies

Watership Down
(new 4K restoration)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 October 2024
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(new 4K restoration)
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Director – Martin Rosen – 1978 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

When a young rabbit visionary foresees doom for those who remain, some of the rabbits leave their warren in search of a safer home, encountering many life-threatening perils along the way – new 4K restoration of animated feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 25th, following its World Premiere in the London Film Festival on Saturday, October 12th

LFF: Sat 12 Oct 12:20 World Premiere, Tues 15 Oct 12:15,
both BFI Southbank NFT1.

This opens with a mythological segment involving a powerful God, represented as the sun, and rabbitkind, specifically the archetypal rabbit El-ahrairah. It’s drawn and painted in an arresting, non-naturalistic style involving coloured lines animated against a white background to create the impression of moving, primitive drawings, due in large part to uncredited director John Hubley, whose vision for the film was at odds with that of producer Martin Rosen. The latter ended up firing the former as he wanted something grittier and less lightweight.

It’s arguable this has worked to the film’s advantage: the fable sequence works as otherworldly rabbit mythology, suggesting a race of intelligent creatures capable of constructing creation myths about their species much as human beings do.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, adaptation, animal tales, animated storytelling, animation, anthropomorphism, background, Black Rabbit of Death, British, cage, cat, children's film, children’s book, climate crisis, codified Disney style, coloured lines, countryside, creation myths, D.H. Lawrence, darkness, death, decadence, Denholm Elliot, despot, destination, dog, doom, drawing, drawn animation, English countryside, family film, fantasy, fresh food, God, Harry Andrews, hawk, illustration, in search of home, injury, intelligent creatures, John Bennett, John Hubley, John Hurt, journey, kingdom, leader, leave, leave home, lethal, LFF, LFF 2024, life and death, life crisis, life-threatening, London, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2024, Martin Rosen, Michael Graham Cox, militarism, myth, mythology, natural history illustration, naturalism, nature, nature red in tooth and claw, non-naturalism, novel, painting, perils, power, predator, primitive drawings, rabbit, rabbitkind, Ralph Richardson, resistance, Richard Adams, Richard Briers, safe haven, seagull, sentimentality, snare, societal collapse, storytelling, sun, totalitarian regime, trauma, UK, violence, visionary, warren, watercolour, Watership Down, woods, Zero Mostel

Animation Features Movies

Flow
(Straume)
(2024)

Director – Gints Zilbalodis – 2024 – Belgium, France, Latvia – Cert. U – 84m

A cat must survive rising water levels as they engulf both the countryside and cities – remarkable, dialogue-free, computer animated feature from the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player and then out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 1st, 2025

LFF: Sun 13 + Q&A 20:15 Curzon Soho, Sat 19 11:30 BFI IMAX, Sun 20 14:30 Curzon Soho Screen 1

Like his earlier Away (2019), Zilbalodis’ new CG animated movie features creatures who don’t speak as well as an incredible music score. The central character is a cat, and you’d be forgiven, after years of animated films about cats in which they talk, for expecting the same, but Zilbalodis isn’t interested in anthropomorphised talking animals. He’s clearly interested in animals, and in characters, but the cat here has been derived from watching and studying real life cats and their behaviour in the real world. There’s a long history of this in drawn animation, typified by the classic Disney films, where it was all about what you could achieve with a paper and pencil, studying from life, making drawings of characters move.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Rumours
(2024)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 12 October 2024
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(2024)
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Director – Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson – 2024 – Germany, Canada – Cert. 15 – 109m

****1/2

The G7 leaders meet at a summit only to find themselves trapped in the woods following an apocalyptic event – from the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player and then out in UK cinemas on out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 6th

LFF: Sun 13 Oct 15:15, BFI Southbank NFT1; Mon 14 Oct 20:30, Prince Charles Cinema; Sun 20 Oct 19:13, Curzon Soho Screen 1.

Every so often, the leaders of the world’s leading liberal democracies – the G7 – gather for summits to deal with the impending global crisis. On this occasion, it’s a bright, sunshiny day. Prior to getting down to business, they are toured through some local woods and shown the remains of one of the Bog People in a deep pit, their corpses perfectly preserved, apart from their bones which have disappeared, thanks to the properties of the bog land environment in which they were buried thousands of years ago. One corpse which they are shown has had his penis cut off and hung ornamentally round his neck.… Read the rest

Tags alcohol, alcoholic, Alicia Vikander, apocalypse, apocalyptic event, bog land, Bog People, bones, bot to entrap paedophiles, Britain, burial, Canada, catastrophe, Cate Blanchett, catering staff, Charles Dance, clearing, corpses, crisis, cross the lake, dark skies, Denis Ménochet, distant, divorce, draft statement, drink, elected leaders, estate, EU President, Evan Johnson, falling asleep, fancy, fantasy, ferry, foggy, follow the rope, food, France, French Premier, G7, Galen Johnson, gazebo, German Chancellor, Germany, giant brain, gibberish, global crisis, gust of wind, Guy Maddin, horror, host, into the water, Italy, Japan, jetty, leaders, LFF, LFF 2024, liberal democracy, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2024, mansion, metaphor, mud, Nicky Amuka-Bird, old age, penis, photo opportunity, pieces of paper, pit, PM, political system, politics, preservation, President, prime minister, protestors, relationship reconciliation, remains, representative, rescue, Rolando Ravello, Roy Dupuis, satire, science fiction, scribble, seven-year-old girl, severed penis, sex, split into groups, statesmen, summit, Swedish, table, Takehiro Hira, terrorists, text, tour, trance, trapped, trapped in the woods, US, US President, waffle, weather, Western democracy, wheelbarrow, wine, woods

Features Live Action Movies

Blitz
(2024)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 11 October 2024
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(2024)
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Director – Steve McQueen – 2024 – UK, US – Cert. 12a – 120m

*****

As the Germans bomb London in WW2’s Blitz, a boy evacuated by his mother as per government instructions refuses to stay on the train and finds his way back to London – from the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player and then out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st

(This review is a piece of writing currently in progress. Please bookmark and return to this page to see the whole review in due course.)

A five-star review (and I’m unrepentant) for a film that’s less than perfect. It gets the five stars because of the incredible things it gets right.

Blitz promises two things: one, an immersive experience of the London Blitz, and two, the mother and son story of a woman sending her son out of London in the mass child evacuation and the child’s refusal to follow the plan, complicated with the racial tension of the child’s having a black father (who is absent) and a white mother.

Writing these lines, the film’s potential problem is evident; the immersive experience is probably a movie in itself, and this side of things is brilliantly realised without the need for narrative coherence.… Read the rest