Tag: nature

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Creeping Garden

Directors – Jasper Sharp, Tim Grabham – 2014 – UK – Cert. E – 81m

***1/2

You wouldn’t make a documentary about slime mould unless you found it fascinating. These two filmmakers clearly do so and their enthusiasm is likely to win you over – available on dual format BD/DVD and now also on Arrow Channel from Fri, 28th April 2023

Plasmodial slime mould. I have to confess that before this film came along, I’d never even heard of it. The Creeping Garden gives me the impression that I am not alone in this, since within the confines of biology, few researchers have paid much attention to the phenomenon. However, those few who have done so and are featured here – plus an artist – are clearly smitten.

To the naked eye, plasmodial slime mould is similar to fungus. There is one huge difference between the two: slime mould moves. Purposefully. Not that you’d notice in passing because it moves very, very slowly…

[read the full review at DMovies.org]

The Creeping Garden is available on dual format BD/DVD and now also on Arrow Channel from Fri, 28th April 2023

Review originally published on DMovies.org on 07.03.2017.

Trailer:

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Avatar:
The Way Of Water

Director – James Cameron – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 192m

Immersive Cinema *****

Screenplay *

Now raising their own family on the planet Pandora, a couple flee the attacking Sky People to live among a tribe of sea people – first Avatar sequel is out on digital on Tuesday, March 11th

Having gone native on the planet Pandora following the events in Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), in which paraplegic human soldier Jake Sully (performance capture including voice or Pcap: Sam Worthington) was transformed into an avatar of a non-disabled, native Pandoran, in the first third of the film, Jake is raising a family with Na’vi partner Neytiri (Pcap: Zoe Saldaña): two boys, two girls. They play in the jungle forest with their friend Spider (Jack Champion), a human child who was too young to be evacuated when the other Sky People left. Spider has been raised by human scientists who remained behind, and he must constantly wear a breathing mask to survive in Pandora’s atmosphere; he is to all intents and purposes feral.

When the Sky People return to Pandora with a new remit – to prep the planet for human habitation since the Earth is becoming uninhabitable – Jake’s old commander Quaritch (Pcap: Stephen Lang), who died in the first film but is now reconstituted as an an avatar embedded with the character’s DNA and memories, is determined to hunt down and kill the Sully who, as he sees it, betrayed him.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Features Live Action Movies

Hilma

Director – Lasse Hallström – 2022 – Sweden – Cert. 12a – 119m

****

Late in her life, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, today considered the world’s first abstract painter, remembers her life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 28th

As Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (Lena Olin) takes a tram journey, she remembers key events and moments within it: she is haunted by the memory of her little sister Hermina (Emmi Tjernström), who tragically died when Hilma (Tora Hallström) was 18 and with whom she often played hide and seek.

Interested in drawing and painting from nature as a form of scientific inquiry – at her art school interview panel she lists mathematics, geometry, biology and astronomy as interests other than flowers – she meets up with other women studying technical painting and drawing in Stockholm, among them the wealthy Anna Cassel (Catherine Chalk) who becomes her lover and finances her as an artist – and becomes part of their group of five women artists interested in spiritism. She also studies the Theosophical writings of Madame Blavatsky and makes a particular connection to the Anthroposophist ideas of Rudolf Steiner.

Acknowledging these interests, the film infuriatingly refuses to explore them at any great depth, perhaps because it fears such ideas might prove controversial and perhaps because they might prove boring to a contemporary audience, it’s impossible to tell.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Fire Of Love

Director – Sara Dosa – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 93m

The volcano footage *****
(and there’s lots of it, plus footage of the volcanologists themselves)

The brief animated inserts ***1/2

Almost everything else **

The 25-year career of the late volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft is explored through their extensive film archive of volcanic activity – out in cinemas on Friday, July 29th

There have been volcano movies before, but nothing quite like this. Most of them fall into the disaster movie category, with the better ones (The Last Days Of Pompeii, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1935; Dante’s Peak, Roger Donaldson, 1997) delivering incredible visual effects. The force of nature that is the volcano is obviously extremely dangerous to film so you can understand why film producers would want to recreate images of the phenomenon for the big screen rather than attempt to go out and film them.

This current film, however, is not a fictional feature in that mould but something entirely different: a documentary. It perfectly fits the remit of its distributor National Geographic of “exploring, illuminating, and protecting the wonder of our world”. It’s ostensibly a film about two real life volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft who first met in 1966 and died in an volcanic blast in 1991.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Mourning Forest
(Mogari
No Mori,
殯の森)

Director – Naomi Kawase – 2017 – Japan – Cert. 12 – 97m

****

Currently on BFI Player as part of 21st Century Japan.

Wind. Trees. Tall grass. A road barely discernible but for the occasional top of a hedge. A fluttering, white banner of a funeral procession moves imperceptibly across the landscape, a futile ritual for an unknown person.

A room’s corner between two windows. Beyond them: wind and trees. Against the corner leans the sleeping Mr Shigeki (Shigeki Uda). The boss of this old people’s home Wakako (Makiko Watanabe) is showing new care worker Machiko (Machiko Ono) the ropes. “There are no rules here”, she tells her. Machiko is in emotional free-fall. At home, a candle beside a photograph of a young boy. Berated by her husband for letting go of her child’s hand, Machiko has never got over the incident.

Kawase is a master of understatement… [Read the rest]

Currently on BFI Player as part of 21st Century Japan.

Full review at All The Anime.

Trailer:

2020

Monday, August 24th: MUBI

2017

August: Eureka! Video released the film on BD/DVD

Categories
Animation Features Movies

WolfWalkers

Director – Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart – 2020 – Ireland, Luxembourg, France – Cert. PG – 100m

*****

An adventurous English girl from Kilkenny encounters a wild Irish girl in the woods who can change into a wolf in groundbreaking 2D animation – on BFI Player as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 on Saturday, October 10th, 18.30-19.00 start, in cinemas from Monday, October 26th, then on Apple TV from Sunday, 13 December

This is co-director Moore’s third production based on Irish mythology for Irish animation house Cartoon Saloon following The Secret of Kells (2009, about the making of the Book Of Kells) and Song of the Sea (2014, about selkies / mermaids).

Irish WolfWalkers mythology concerns humans who can transform into wolves and back again, while mankind’s relationship with the wolf down the ages has to do with destroying its natural habitat and a fear of the animal derived largely from its attacks on small animals such as pets and, very occasionally, children. These two ideas are combined in the film WolfWalkers along with Oliver Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland as Lord Protector, although historical accuracy clearly isn’t the intention as not only is his name left out abut also what happens to the Lord Protector here is very different from what happened to him in real life.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

WolfWalkers

Subdue the forest

Wolfwalkers
Directed by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart
Certificate PG, 100 minutes
Previews from 26 October, released 30 October, then on Apple TV from 13 December

The tree cutters attempting to clear the forest around the walled town of Kilkenny, Ireland, live in fear of wolves. They also believe in WolfWalkers – human by day, wolf by night – who appear in daylight to call off wolf attacks on humans. Ireland is under English rule, administered by the God-fearing Lord Protector (Simon McBurney) through his northern English officer Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean), charged with clearing the forest of wolves. Bill’s young daughter Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) dreams of slaying wolves with her crossbow. However, children are barred from leaving the city.

This prohibition doesn’t prevent Robyn from sneaking out to the forest, however, where her wolf hunting goes disastrously wrong… Read the rest

Review for Reform magazine.

See also my BFI London Film Festival 2020 review.

Previews from 26 October, released 30 October, then on Apple TV from 13 December.