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Features Live Action Movies

And Then Come
The Nightjars

Director – Paul Robinson – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 81m

***1/2

The deep friendship of a Devon farmer and a local vet is tested by the UK government’s culling of herds in the 2001 Foot And Mouth outbreak – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 1st

Michael (David Fielder) is a Devon farmer. Everyone knows everyone else in his local, rural community, and he is often visited by the vet Jeffrey (Nigel Hastings), first glimpsed in an uncharacteristic, bright red cowboy hat he won at a local village do when he turns up to help with the delivery of a calf. He’s previously tested Michael’s cows for Foot and Mouth disease, and all the results have been negative.

Later in 2001, Jeffrey visits Michael again, but this time with three other white-protective-suited colleagues and some bad news. With the Foot and Mouth outbreak reaching epidemic proportions, the government has decided to cull all cattle within a three-mile radius of any infection, regardless of whether they test negative or positive for the disease. Michael, shotgun at the ready, thinks there’s a mistake because, as Jeffrey knows, Michael’s herd has tested negative. But, as Jeffrey attempts to explain, government policy doesn’t work like that…

There are further scenes in December 2001, eight years later in 2009 and four years later still in 2013.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Get The Hell Out
(Tao Chu Li
Fa Yuan,
逃出立法院)

Director – Wang I-Fan – 2020 – Taiwan – 96m

**1/2

The Taiwanese Parliament must contain a zombie outbreak caused by a rabies outbreak at a chemical plant (!) – playing in the UK as part of the Chinese Visual Festival which runs until Sunday, July 25th

Hsiung Ying Ying (Megan Lai) got into the Taiwanese Parliament as an MP to fight gangster politician Li Kuo-Chung (Chung-Huang Wang) over an environmentally unfriendly chemical plant where she lives which she wants to shut down. And now it’s spawned a rabies outbreak which infected the President on an official visit. Things are already pretty heated in the Parliament building when the President goes full zombie and the infection spreads rapidly throughout the large meeting room which is promptly sealed with those people inside.

In a six months earlier flashback, the hot-tempered Ying Ying gets into a fight with a security guard Wang You-wei (Bruce Ho) on the premises while the media’s cameras are present. As a result, she is forced to resign and a by-election held. Wishing to retain the power of an MP, she persuades the basically honest but naive Wang who is secretly in love with her to stand as her ‘puppet’ to support her fight against the plant.… Read the rest