Tag: monster

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Little Amélie
or
The Character of Rain
(Amélie
et
la Métaphysique des Tubes)

Directors – Maïlys Vallade & Liane-Cho Han – 2025 – France – Cert. PG – 77m

*****

A Belgian diplomat’s baby daughter growing up in Japan comes to realise, by her third birthday, that she is not God – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 13th; previews Saturday, 7th and Sunday, 8th February

In the beginning was God. At least, that’s how the new-born Amélie (French language version voice: Loïse Charpentier) sees herself. She is, essentially, a tube which swallows, digests and ejects (as per the film’s French language title). She has a perfect command of verbal language, so sees no need to say anything. That said, she makes great use of voice-over throughout the piece. She remains motionless, practising “the gift of serenity”. “Your child is a vegetable”, proclaims a doctor to the child’s parents. She remains in this state until her second birthday, when life is interrupted by an earthquake – nothing significant in the wider scheme of things, but a momentous event in the interior life of a small child. She attempts to speak, but to her horror the words in her head don’t emerge, only baby noises.

Amelie is the third child of Patrick (French voice: Marc Arnaud) and Danièle (French voice: Laetitia Coryn), and has two older siblings, Juliette (French voice: Haylee Issembourg) and André (French voice: Isaac Schoumsky).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Primate

Director – Johannes Roberts – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 89m

****1/2

A girl and her friends discover her family’s pet chimp has turned violent and trapped them in the house – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30th

Coming in commendably under 90 minutes, this is a hugely effective thriller about people trapped in a confined space with a monster. Which makes it all the more curious that it missteps for its first couple of scenes, making you wonder if you’re going to regret seeing the film. First up is a scene in which a vet ventures into a house’s exterior enclosure and is attacked by Ben, the distressed chimpanzee, who lives there. The problem is not the scene itself, which is both genuinely scary and sets the scene for what is to follow – indeed, it establishes that there is a chimpanzee in the house about to turn bad – but the fact that it’s almost impossible to relate the scene to the remaining narrative, apart from the fact that it takes place 36 hours earlier. Who was the vet? At what point in the unfolding flashback does this attack take place? The ensuing mayhem won’t leave you any time to ponder such questions, so it arguably doesn’t matter, but for me, because I couldn’t make any sense of it in the scheme of the wider film, it proved annoying.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Princess Mononoke
(Mononoke-hime,
もののけ姫)

Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 1997 – Japan – Cert. PG – 134m

*****

The groundbreaking, mythological Japanese animated epic returns to UK cinemas from Friday, 17th October 2025

Originally reviewed for What’s On in London when the film appeared in the Barbican’s 2001 Studio Ghibli season. It never got a proper theatrical release in the UK at the time. The review presents a fascinating snapshot of the cinema landscape in the UK from the time when, outside of anime fandom, film journalists, and industry insiders, Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki were largely unknown.

Film critics are occasionally privileged to see incredible films that, for one reason or another, never receive proper UK release. The Barbican is currently hosting a season of 11 films by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli (Jib-Lee), an animation company as familiar in Japan as Disney is here, that fall into exactly this category. They include Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and his imaginative fantasy epic Princess Mononoke (1997). Both took the Japanese box office by storm, the latter topping $150m putting it second only to Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Miyazaki’s latest Spirited Away (2001) has topped the Japanese box office for weeks.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Ne Zha 2
(Nezha:
Mo Tong Nao Hai,
lit. Nezha:
The Demon Child
Churns the Sea,
哪吒之魔童闹海)

Director – Yang Yu aka Jiaozi – 2025 – China – Cert. 12a – 143m

***1/2

Two supernatural, child warriors battle a plethora of marmots, dragons and immortals – action-packed, animated, spectacular, Chinese box office juggernaut is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, March 21st

All but destroyed by the events in Ne Zha (Yang Yu, 2019), supernatural, child warriors Ne Zha (voice: Lu Yanting) and his companion Ao Bing (voice: Han Mo) are reconstituted thanks to the giant lotus of deity Taiyi Zhenren (voice: Zhang Jiaming). Their new bodies, however, are unstable.

Mistakenly believing Ao Bing dead, his father Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East Sea (one of four dragon monarchs for each of the seas of the four compass points who live in a vast underground cavern) gives demon Shen Gongbao (voice: Yang Wei) a severed dragon’s claw capable of ripping the sky, and sends him off to the town of Chentang Pass to slash the heavens and cause them to leak lava upon it. A fiery battle ensues.

Meanwhile, after a series of adventures elsewhere including a fight with a hoard of marmots, Ne Zha goes to help heavenly immortal Wuliang (voice: Wang Deshun) as he traps Shen’s forces in a giant cauldron at what is left of Chengtang Pass.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

The Lab

Director – Izzy Livesey – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 3m

****1/2

In her secluded laboratory, an obsessive woman scientist develops a powerful serum which leads to unexpected consequences – animated short accompanies the reissue of Away, back in UK cinemas from Friday, March 14th

This plays around with that old horror movie trope, the mad scientist, making that figure into a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat. The pleasures to be had here come not so much from what happens – although the twist at the end, when you see it, is likely to surprise you – as they do in the expression of its happening. What impresses are the designs of the characters (both of them!), the look of the sets, the use of lighting to create atmosphere, and – once you get into the area of kinetics, the fact that this is a moving picture – the choreography and flow of the piece. (I use the world flow deliberately, since it perfectly describes Gint Zalbalodis’ two, wordless animated features to date. The current, animated short accompanies the reissue this week of the first of those, Away (2019). Zalbalodis’ second feature is the deservedly Oscar-winning Flow (2024), out in cinemas here next week on Friday, March 21st.)… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Mickey 17

Director – Bong Joon Ho – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 134m

*****

Contracted to have his fleshly body reprinted, and his memory restored every time he dies, the expendable Mickey is assigned to a ship run by a right-wing power couple who plan to colonise a distant planet – science fiction adaptation is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 7th

The snow has given way beneath his feet. Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has plummeted through several layers of ice and now lies helpless on a subterranean ice shelf. His best friend Timo (Stephen Yuen) comes to rescue him. Sorry. To retrieve mickey’s his gun, but leave Mickey himself there to die. Because, after all, it’s easier to reboot Mickey and upload his memories. His friend can’t but help to ask, “Mickey, what’s it like? To die?”

Left alone in the planet’s underground ice caves, where he’s already seen a fellow crew member attacked by cow-sized, insect-mammals for which will later be named “creepers”, Mickey 17 expects to be digested alive by the alien life forms. Of course he does – that’s what happens in movies about alien life on other planets. However, the script has some surprises in store, and the creepers, who are set to play a much bigger role in the story, don’t so much play the role of unfriendly monster as that of the misunderstood race of indigenous outsiders in relation to invading, would-be colonisers.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Giants of La Mancha
(Argentina: Gigantes;
Germany: Das Geheimnis
von La Mancha;
Spain: Los Exploradores;
US: Storm Crashers)

Director – Gonzalo Gutiérrez – 2024 – Argentina, Germany, Spain – Cert. U – 88m

***1/2

The young, present day descendants of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza must save La Mancha from a villainous property developer – animated children’s adventure is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 7th

(UK cinemas are showing the English language version: further voice credits are given for Spanish and German language versions, where available.)

Alfonso (voice: English: Micke Alejandro Morena Lamprea; Spanish: Patricio Lago; German: Julian Jansson) the great, great, great, great, great-grandson of Don Quixote, lives with his parents in the small Spanish village of La Mancha which is under threat of terrible storms that the occupants attribute to climate change. Like his ancestor, Alfonso misreads things, such as an impending storm which he believes to be a storm monster.

He and his dad Dan Quixote (voice: English: Bradley Krupsaw), who alone among all the characters here speaks in rhyming couplets, and his mum (voice: English: Jennifer Moule; Spanish: Carla Petersen) are both idealists, to the extent that Dan is the one person in the village who has refused to sign his home over to besuited property developer Mr. Carrasco (voice: English: Thomas Harris), whose snake oil salesman charms seem to have convinced all the other villagers to sell up and move out to his development “with children in mind” of Carascoland, towards which they are currently heading in their cars en masse, despite Alfonso’s hurtling around on his bicycle warning everybody of the storm monster heading in their direction.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla Minus One
(Gojira -1.0,
ゴジラ -1.0)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – out on 4K, Blu-ray & DVD from Monday, December 2nd

World War Two, Pacific theatre. Unwilling Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) feigns engine trouble and lands on an island for aircraft maintenance, where he is grounded. While there, he notices deep sea fish curiously floating on the surface of the surrounding ocean: they presage the arrival of a huge monster, named Godzilla by the locals. With Koichi failing to fire his 20mm aircraft guns at the creature to kill it, almost everyone else on the small island is killed. (Whether his guns would have had any effect in halting the creature’s advance is debatable. They probably wouldn’t have had any effect whatsoever.) The only other survivor, who had previously congratulated Koichi for a near impossible landing on a tiny runway, blames him for the multiple deaths because he didn’t pull the trigger.

In 1945, in the ruins of post-war Tokyo, Shikishima is accused by a survivor – a woman whose children have died – of being a disgrace.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Godzilla Minus One
/ Minus Color
(Gojira-1.0 / C,
ゴジラ -1.0 / C)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

Japan, defeated and demoralised after World War Two, must somehow defeat the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises from the depths of the ocean – now in black & white – out in UK cinemas from Friday, November 1st

Something happens when you watch this / Minus Color version of Gozilla Minus One, which director Yamazaki has gone through cut by cut and personally overseen. You are watching a 2023 movie, yet you feel as if you’re watching a 1954 one. Because the film is about Japan, World War Two and its immediate aftermath, the film seems to play better in black and white.

World War Two, Pacific theatre. Unwilling Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) feigns engine trouble and lands on an island for aircraft maintenance, where he is grounded. While there, he notices deep sea fish curiously floating on the surface of the surrounding ocean: they presage the arrival of a huge monster, named Godzilla by the locals. With Koichi failing to fire his 20mm aircraft guns at the creature to kill it, almost everyone else on the small island is killed.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

The Wild Robot

Director – Chris Sanders – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 102m

****1/2

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