Tag: little brother

Wildwood

Wildwood

Director – Travis Knight – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 132m

*****

Portland, Oregon teenager Prue must rescue her little brother from Wildwood, a forest she’s forbidden to enter, following his abduction by a murder of crows – out in UK cinemas from Friday, October 23rd

Somewhere in a town within Wildwood, a teenage boy kills himself by throwing himself off the balcony of the family mansion immediately after revealing that his body, when he tears the flesh of his chest apart, is not flesh and blood but a mechanical construct of cog wheels and other metal parts.

His ‘mother’, the Dowager Governess Alexandra (voice: Carey Mulligan) built this robot boy as a substitute for her son, from whose tragic loss she has never recovered.

Outside Wildwood, in neighbouring Portland, Oregon, for years the parents of teenager Prue (voice: Peyton Elizabeth Lee) have regaled their daughter with stories about why she must never enter the Wildwood on the edge of Portland Oregon where the family live: father (voice: Jake Johnson), mother (voice: Maya Erskin), and her little toddler brother Mac (voice: Arthur Knight, the director’s son).

Rebellious as are all teenagers, on an afternoon where her parents are out and have left her babysitting Mac, on strict instructions that she not go out of the house with him, Prue bicycles out taking Mac with her in her trailer cart on a journey through Portland.… Read the rest

Tags abduction, Angela Bassett, army, Arthur Knight, babysitting, bandit, battle, battle scene, bereavement, bicycle, bird, bureaucracy, Carey Mulligan, cast of thousands, chase, childless couple, climbing frame, cog wheels, coyote, deal, dire warnings, eagle, epic, family mansion, farmer, forbidden, forest, imprisoned, ivy, Jacob Tremblay, Jake Johnson, Laika, LFF, LFF 2026, little brother, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2026, loss, Mahershala Ali, Maya Erskin, mechanical body, murder of crows, Oregon, owl, paperwork, parents and children, particle systems, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, playground, Portland, rebel, rebellious, rescue, Richard E. Grant, robot boy, role-playing games, RPG, sacrifice, siblings, slide, soldier, sorcery, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, studios, substitute child, suicide, teenager, trailer cart, Travis Knight, violence, Wildwood

Movies Features Live Action

DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date July 30 2024
No Comments on DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)

DÌDI (弟弟, translates as ‘little brother’)

Director – Sean Wang – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young, Taiwanese-American teenager must deal with issues of ethnicity, family and love in 2008, when social media has become a significant element of growing up – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

2008. California. Summer. 13-year-old Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang), who prefers to go by the nickname Wang Wang, is rebelling. Mandarin is spoken at home by Nai Nai (‘grandma’; Chang Li Hua) and mum (Joan Chen), but that doesn’t stop mega-sweary English language shouting contests at the supper table between Wang Wang and elder sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) who is due to attend UCSD later in the year. When she’s out, Wang Wang hangs out in her room and posts as her on her Facebook (about which, amazingly, she never comes back to him). In the bathroom, he pees into her moisturising cream (leading to her threatening to period him in the mouth if he ever does it again).

Outside the house, he hangs out with his peers Farhad Mahmood (Raul DIal) and Jimmy Kim aka SOUP (Aaron Chang). Egged on by them in the manner of pubescents everywhere, he attempts to hang out with Madi (Mahaela Park), the girl he fancies.… Read the rest

Tags 13-year-old Izaac Wang, 2008, Aaron Chan, alcohol, amateur painter, autobiographical, bathroom, bedroom, brothers and sisters, California, Chang Li Hua, childhood, Chinese, Chiron Cillia Denk, coming of age, culture, Cynthia Lee, Dìdi, drink, drunk, ethnicity, Facebook, family, filmer, gaffe, grandma, grandmother, grandmothers and grandsons, high school, home movie, Joan Chen, little brother, love, Mahaela Park, Mandarin, moisturising cream, Montay Boseman, mothers and sons, Nai Nai, painter, party, peer group, peers, period, pubescent, puke, Raul Dial, rebel, room, Sean Wang, Shirley Chen, sibling rivalry, siblings, skateboarders, skateboarding, skill set, social media, summer, Sunil Maurillo, supper table, Taiwan, Taiwanese-American, teen, teenage rebel, teenager, throw up, UCSD, US, video

Movies Animation Features Live Action

Deep Sea
(Shen Hai,
深海)

Deep Sea (Shen Hai, 深海)

Director – Tian Xiaoping – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 112m

Subtitled ***1/2 / Dubbed **

A girl on a cruise, who never got over her mother leaving, falls overboard into fantastical worlds – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 7th

A red child’s coat with a hood lies abandoned on the sea bed. A girl’s feet stagger through a blizzard. She calls out for her mama. But her mama (voice: Ji Jing), a swirling mass of dark hair and eyes, is leaving. And now, the girl is lifted above the sea bottom (as we now realise this location to be) by what appears to be swirling red paint. She wakes, in her coat, on the bus. It was a dream.

Her stepmum (voice: Yang Ting) tells Shenxiu (voice: Wang Tingwen) not to mess around on the bus as she starts pulling faces at her little brother (voices: Dong Yi, Fang Taochen). She boards a big cruise ship, looking at texts from her absent mum, who is separated from her dad (voice: Teng Kuixing). Mum told her about the Hyjinx – if you made a wish on your birthday, it would come and make your wish come true.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, 3D animation, absent mum, animation, birthday, blizzard, bus, CG, CG animation, China, Chinese ink painting, clown, computer animation, cruise, cruise ship, customers, dad, deck rough seas, deep sea restaurant, Dong Yi, drawn animation, dream, eyes, Fang Taochen, film projector, fish, giant duck, hair, hoodie, Hyjinx, Ji Jing, little brother, magic trick, mama, marketplace, monster, parental separation, picture book, propellers, red coat, red ink, red paint, restaurant, rubber ring, sea, sea bed, separated, Shanghai Animation Studios, snow, soup, stallholder, stepbrother, stepmother, stepmum, storm, Su Xin, swept out to sea, swirling red paint, Teng Kuixing, texts, thrown off the boat, Tian Xiaoping, undersea, walrus. Cook, Wang Tingwen, waterspout, wish, Yang Ting, Yi Qiao

Movies Animation Features

Weathering With You
(Tenki no Ko,
天気の子,
lit. Child of Weather)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date April 3 2023
No Comments on Weathering With You
(Tenki no Ko,
天気の子,
lit. Child of Weather)

Weathering With You
(Tenki no Ko, 天気の子, lit. Child of Weather)

Director – Makoto Shinkai – 2019 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 112m

***1/2

A runaway teenage boy in a constantly raining Tokyo falls for a girl who can replace rain with sunshine – Makoto Shinkai’s feature returns to cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, April 5th, ahead of the release of Shinkai’s new film Suzume on April 14th

A bravura opening shot pulls from rainswept Tokyo in through a hospital window to a girl waiting by a patient’s bedside, recalling nothing so much as the heroine of everyone’s favourite anime identity thriller Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) reflected against a train carriage window with a Tokyo cityscape visible beyond, but where Kon uses such imagery as an entry point to multilayered realities, Weathering With You’s vision never really extends beyond trying to recreate and repeat the formula that rendered its director’s previous Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016) such a runaway success.

Like Your Name, Weathering With You centres on a teenage boy / girl romance but instead of the gender body swap and time travel devices in the earlier film – which probably shouldn’t have worked but somehow did – Weathering has an equally flimsy plot device about a girl named Hina who possesses the ability to turn rain into sunshine.… Read the rest