Tag: mundane

The Old Man
and the Land

Director – Nicholas Parish – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

As he works on the land, an aging farmer hears his two adult children argue about the future of the family farm – plays UK cinemas from Friday, September 20th 2024, with previews from Monday, September 16th following its premiere in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, where it was the best film out of a superb lot

Movies. You think everything’s been done, then along comes something you’ve never seen before. Or, in this case, seen or heard before.

The Old Man in question is an English farmer (Roger Marten) whose family have worked the land for generations. He’s getting on in years, so won’t be around forever. His wife died a while ago, so he’s now running the farm on his own. He has two children who have long since grown up and left home: a son (voice: Rory Kinnear) and a daughter (voice: Emily Beecham), and the big question is, when he dies, will they take over – or will they get rid of the farm?

In recent years, the UK has produced a number of rural movies that stand in stark contrast to the urban- (often London-) based films produced.… Read the rest

Tags #GFF24, advice, alcoholic, answering machine, answering message, bereaved, British, brothers and sisters, childhood, children, conversation, countryside, documentary, Emily Beecham, English, everyday, family, farmer, fields, Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival 2024, illusion, image and sound, improvisation, inheritance, land, leave message, left home, London, modern world, modernise, mundane, Nicholas Parish, Nico Mensinga, obscenities, parents and children, phone, phone calls, phone turned off, PÖFF, PÖFF 2023, pub, radical, radio drama, roots, Rory Kinnear, running a farm, rural, siblings, sins of the fathers, solitary, Spain, take over, Tallinn, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2023, tractor, UK, unsentimental, urban, viable business, visit, workaday, working life

Features Live Action Movies

Sky Peals

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2024
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Director – Moin Hussain – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 91m

****

When his estranged father dies after leaving him an answering machine message, a motorway service station employee starts to question the identity of his father and, by extension, of himself – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Adam (Faraz Ayub) receives an answerphone message from his father Hassan (Jeff Mirza) who he’s not seen for years; his father hasn’t much time left, is currently near Adam’s home and wants to meet up and talk. Like the answerphone message left by her soon-to-be deceased husband for the heroine of After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020) – is a British subgenre emerging here with Muslims and bereavement? – the recording plays on Adam’s mind at his workplace, the Sky Peals motorway service station, where he does the night shift preparing burgers in the kitchen and keeps himself pretty much to himself. He complains to his superior that the system isn’t working and customers aren’t getting served their orders, but the old manager has left, and the new one doesn’t start ’til Monday. Meanwhile, people aren’t getting their orders.

The police find a dead body in a car in the service station car park.… Read the rest

Tags answering machine, answering machine message, bereavement, bridge, British, Britishness, burgers, car, car park, CCTV, Claire Rushbrook, co-worker, connect, cultural heritage, dead body, death, degraded image, disappear, dislocation, disorientation, employee, estate agent, estranged, ethnic, Faraz Ayub, father, fish-out-of-water, funeral, furniture, glitch, greeter, home, home life, house clearance, identity, indoor bridge, investigation, Islam, isolation, Jeff Mirza, kitchen, loss, manager, Moin Hussain, mosque, mothers and sons, motorway, motorway service station, move out, mundane, Muslim, Natalie Gavin, new manager, new partner, night shift, orders, Pakistani, pointless, post-industrialisation, prospective house buyers, queues, recoding, recording, relationship, relationship breakup, sell a house, selling off, Simon Nagra, single parent mum, Steve Oram, suit and tie, traditional Islamic garb, UK, uncle, vanish, white British, work social, workplace, Yorkshire

Features Live Action Movies

The Zone of Interest

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 February 2024
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Director – Jonathan Glazer – 2023 – UK, Poland – Cert. 12a – 106m

*****

A drama about the everyday, domestic lives of the Commandant of Auschwitz, his wife, and their family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 2nd

How do people sleep at night? If they do bad things? Well, some people who do bad things are tormented by them. They sleep badly. Their conscience, however repressed by them, disturbs them. The others? Well, they seem to sleep soundly.

The Zone of Interest is about people who, as part of their daily routine, do or at least consent to, even inaugurate, unspeakable things. These people are a respectable married couple and their extended family. The focus here is on the ordinary, everyday activities they pursue rather than the unspeakable activities. A nice bathing trip to the river; a later panic when there might be an infection in the river and family members are bathing in it. (The bad stuff seeps into the everyday, routine, speakable stuff, it seems.) Mum taking the little one round the garden and telling her the names of the flowers. Mum running an efficient household, with an army of servants. Mum trying on a second-hand, fur coat.… Read the rest

Tags Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, annihilated, Auschwitz, banal, bathing trip, Christian Friedel, concentration camp, corridors, daily routine, Death Camps, domestic drama, domesticity, drama, efficient, engineer, everyday, extermination, flowers, fly-on-the-wall, fur coat, garden, good and bad, good and evil, Hedwig Höss, Holocaust memorial museum, house and garden, husbands and wives, Jonathan Glazer, marriage, married couple, memorial, mountains of shoes, mundane, museum, names, Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, officer, ordinary, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, othering, photographs, plain clothes, Poland, posting elsewhere, relationship, respectable, Rudolf Höss, second-hand, self-deception, separate beds, sleep soundly, speakable, The Holocaust, The Third Reich, throughput, UK, UNESCO World Heritage Site, unspeakable, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2