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Features Live Action Movies

Longlegs

Director – Oz Perkins – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 101m

*****

An FBI hunt for a serial killer becomes embroiled in occult and Satanic practices, and the past history of the FBI agent involved – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th

There’s a peculiar flashback, denoted by a 4:3 rounded-edge frame within the wider letterboxed image, at the start of Longlegs involving a young girl (Lauren Acala) who comes out of her family house and a mysterious, white-feminine-haired stranger (Nicolas Cage) who explains the mystery of his arrival with the phrase, “I’ve got my long legs on today”, an indelible apparition and images that conjure fairy tales and nightmares. Although Cage isn’t on the screen all that much, when he intermittently appears, he delivers one of his most arresting performances in years.

The protagonist, who is onscreen pretty much all the time, is FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) who, with her FBI partner, has been charged with the job of investigating serial killer Longlegs. When early on she accurately picks out a house where he’s hiding with apparent ease, her psychic abilities are revealed to the Bureau and her FBI boss Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), changing the course of the Bureau’s investigations.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Master Gardener

Director – Paul Schrader – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

Order and chaos. A man works bringing horticultural order to his employer’s garden estate, but the disorder of his past threatens to catch up with him and wreak havoc upon it

Or. A man engaged in sexual relations with his female employer becomes involved with her grandniece, to whom his employer may one day leave her inheritance

Or. A man orders his employer’s garden estate until she ejects him for sleeping with her grandniece, leaving the pair to survive in the tough world beyond – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th

This appears to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it concerns a man (the central character, the eponymous master gardener) imposing order, but he is a man coming from chaos and at some point that chaos may undo what he has achieved there. On the other, it concerns two women – one his monied, controlling, matriarchal employer, the other her grandniece, from the wrong side of the tracks, who the employer wants to learn the business. The man is initially the lover of the first and, later, becomes the lover of the second, for which the first fires him.… Read the rest