Tag: meds

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Quiet Place
Day One

Director – Michael Sarnoski – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

A terminally ill woman returns to the New York of her childhood as hostile aliens land and start wreaking havoc – franchise prequel is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 28th

Another attempt to duplicate the success of A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018), this time by showing us the first day of the alien invasion in New York City, the sort of thing that couldn’t be done on the small budget of the original. Which sounds like more of the same – and on one level, that’s exactly what this is (so admirers of the original – among whom I number myself – wanting more aliens who hunt by sound, and more terrifying games of hide and seek with them, should find themselves more than satisfied).

There’s a curious attempt by the Studio’s marketing department to offer the chance to find out “why the world went quiet”, which is a great idea but bears no relation whatsoever to this film. Once you know that the aliens hunt by sound, so you must keep quiet to survive – revealed in the original film – this new film offers no further explanation as to why the world went quiet.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mob Land

Director – Nicholas Maggio – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 110m

****

Needing money to pay off debts, a family man, mechanic and racer gets sucked into a robbery by his uncle, then finds himself working alongside a mob killer hired to clean up the loose ends of the crime – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 25th

A small. rural town in the Southern States. Shelby Conners (Shiloh Fernandez) completely in love with wife Caroline (Ashley Benson) and devoted to young daughter Mia (Tina DeMartino), pops pills to get through the day and hasn’t yet told his wife about the mounting household bills. His uncle Trey (Kevin Dillon), the proud owner of an expensive, lurid lime green, Japanese car, offers him a way out in the form of a sure fire robbery about which Shelby is less than sure.

There’s this pills / meds store called the Happiness Pain Centre which, Trey explains, is turning over a huge amount of money a day and is only guarded by a couple of hicks, so it would be a pushover. And all Shelby needs to do is drive the car, something both men know he’s really good at, especially as Trey can provide the car to Shelby’s specification.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Nocebo

Director – Lorcan Finnegan – 2022 – UK, Ireland – Cert. 15 – 96m

***

A mother and fashion designer’s stress levels increase when she hires a too good to be true Filipino au pair – on Shudder UK, US and Canada from Friday, February 24th

A nocebo is a negative placebo – a belief that some factor will cause a medical or psychological condition to get worse, which it then does.

Christine (Eva Green), a high-flying fashion designer, and her husband Felix (Mark Strong), who works in advertising, lead pressured lives, and they have a daughter Roberta, known to her friends as Bobs (Billie Gadsdon), at primary school. Deciding which of them is going to drop Bobs off at / pick her up from school is always a challenge.

Christine is in the middle of a shoot involving child models when she receives a phone call with bad news about “they’re pulling out the bodies” and has a nervous breakdown, suddenly experiencing bizarre and horrifying hallucinations, with everyone she sees on the set spouting boils, a fate also visited on a mysterious, blind dog covered in sores. A tiny beetle burrows into her neck, later resulting in an itchy sore.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Heaven:
To The Land
Of Happiness
(Hebeun:
Haengbokeui Nararo,
행복의 나라로)

Director – Im Sang-soo – 2021 – South Korea – 101m

*****

A meds thief on the verge of arrest and an escaped convict inadvertently steal money from gangsters – closing gala with a director Q&A as part of a strand of films celebrating actress Youn Yuh-jung at LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival which ran in cinemas from Thursday, November 4th to Friday, November 19th

The sexual frankness of director Im’s earlier A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003) and The Housemaid (2010) is absent from his latest, a producer-suggested project more lightweight than his usual fare which nevertheless achieves a degree of poignancy. Its template is the German film Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Thomas Jahn, 1997) in which two terminally ill men steal a car so that one of them can visit the sea before he dies, the car unfortunately belonging to a gangster and carrying a quantity of cash in the boot.

Writing his own script around this loose premise, Im makes the man who wants to see the sea a convict, inmate 203 (Choi Min-sik from The Tiger, Park Hoon-jung, 2015; Lucy, Luc Besson, 2014; New World, Park Hoon-jung, 2013; Lady Vengeance, Park Chan Wook, 2005), sent to the hospital for an MRI scan where it’s discovered he has a brain tumour and two weeks to live.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Offering
(L’Ofrena)

Director – Ventura Durall – 2020 – Spain – Cert. 18 tbc – 111m

**

When two former lovers run into one another, the fallout theatens to derail both their marriages – out in cinemas, virtual cinemas and VoD from Friday, July 30th

This starts off with webcam porn actress Rita (Verónica Echegui) giving a come on to an unseen viewer in American English, which is pretty odd because everything else is in Spanish. Surely not a cheap shot by the producers to sell the film to the English-speaking world? Anyone who thinks they’re in for an internet exposé along the lines of Cam (Daniel Goldhaber, 2018) is however in for a disappointment. Apart from a line later on where Rita is asked her job and replies, “I used to be a porn actress”, the whole sequence is gratuitous.

More relevant is the scene’s interruption by the arrival of Jan (Alex Brendemühl), sent by a relative to deliver the first of the narrative’s two eponymous offerings, a tall box containing a message or artefact from a deceased loved one. This has echoes of the Violet Evergarden anime series and its spin-off feature (Taichi Ishidate, 2020) in which the heroine works for a company which helps dying or terminally ill clients to write a letter or in some cases a lengthy series of letters to their loved ones to be delivered after the client’s death.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Babyteeth

Director – Shannon Murphy – 2019 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 118m

*****

In cinemas from Friday, August 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, December 7th

Uniformed schoolgirl Milla (Eliza Scanlen) stands on a platform ill at ease with her classmates. The train comes in. Before she can move to get on it, someone has knocked into her rushing past to stand close to the passing train. It’s Moses (Toby Wallace), unkempt in shorts and tee shirt. He asks her for money. He points out she has a nosebleed, cradles her on the ground, puts his tee over her mouth and jaw… to catch the blood.

Milla’s psychiatrist father Henry (Ben Mendelson) has a home session with a patient that turns into sex on a desk. This is his wife Anna (Essie Davis) who is on medication and has mental problems. They have another problem as a family: their daughter has cancer.

When Milla brings Moses into her parents’ comfortable suburban family home, they take an immediate dislike to him. This reaction is compounded by his habit of stealing medications from their home to sell later on the street. Nevertheless, he will be around the home more and more and by the end will be to all intents and purposes living there with Henry and Anna’s consent.… Read the rest