Tag: parents and children

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Wildwood

Wildwood

Director – Travis Knight – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 132m

*****

Portland, Oregon teenager Prue must rescue her little brother from Wildwood, a forest she’s forbidden to enter, following his abduction by a murder of crows – out in UK cinemas from Friday, October 23rd

Somewhere in a town within Wildwood, a teenage boy kills himself by throwing himself off the balcony of the family mansion immediately after revealing that his body, when he tears the flesh of his chest apart, is not flesh and blood but a mechanical construct of cog wheels and other metal parts.

His ‘mother’, the Dowager Governess Alexandra (voice: Carey Mulligan) built this robot boy as a substitute for her son, from whose tragic loss she has never recovered.

Outside Wildwood, in neighbouring Portland, Oregon, for years the parents of teenager Prue (voice: Peyton Elizabeth Lee) have regaled their daughter with stories about why she must never enter the Wildwood on the edge of Portland Oregon where the family live: father (voice: Jake Johnson), mother (voice: Maya Erskin), and her little toddler brother Mac (voice: Arthur Knight, the director’s son).

Rebellious as are all teenagers, on an afternoon where her parents are out and have left her babysitting Mac, on strict instructions that she not go out of the house with him, Prue bicycles out taking Mac with her in her trailer cart on a journey through Portland.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Arrietty
(US: The Secret World
of Arrietty)
(Karigurashi no Arietti,
借りぐらしのアリエッティ,
lit. Arrietty the Borrower)

Arrietty

(US: The Secret World of Arrietty)

(Karigurashi no Arietti,

借りぐらしのアリエッティ,

lit. Arrietty the Borrower)

Director – Hiromasa Yonebayashi – 2010 – Japan – Cert. U – 94m

*****

A teenage girl under a foot high is found by a kindly boy with a heart condition who has come to his aunt’s home on the city’s outskirts to convalesce – back out in a 4K remaster in UK IMAX cinemas on Wednesday, October 14th, then in regular UK cinemas on Friday, October 16th through Sunday, October 18th

His Aunt Sadako (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Keiko Takashita; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Phillida Law) drives (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Ryonosuke Kamiki; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Tom Holland) to the house on the city’s outskirts he is visiting. On arrival, he sees a crow having a spat with the cat, which in turn is taking an interest in a group of plants in which he spots a teenage girl less than a foot high. After he’s been called inside the house, the girl, Arrietty (voice / 2010 Japanese dub: Mirai Shida; 2010 StudioCanal UK English dub: Saoirse Ronan) escapes the cat through the grille into the basement, where she outruns grasshoppers to enter her family’s cosy, miniature cottage accessible by a small flight of steps.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Babystar
(Babystar)

Babystar (Babystar)

Director – Joscha Bongard – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 12a – 98m

*****

A social media influencer family suffers upset when the teenage daughter discovers her parents plan a second child – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 25th

Parents and teenagers. Fraught at the best of times. More so than most for 16-year old Luca (Maja Bons) whose social media influencer mother Stella (Bea Brocks) and father Chris (Liliom Lewald) have exploited their family life on various social media channels and done very well out of it financially. Materially, the family has it all – a stylish house with a swimming pool and all and any goods they could possibly want. This applies to Luca too, but where her mother climbed up to this high social position from poverty, Luca has lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous ever since she was born. She has never known anything else. And as well as the family’s our_bright_life online channel, she herself has her own channel.

As if this situation wasn’t already a potential powder keg waiting to blow sky high in her teenage years, her parents drop a bombshell on her. How would she like a new brother or sister?… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies Music

Everybody Digs Bill Evans

Everybody Digs Bill Evans

Director – Grant Gee – 2025 – UK / Ireland – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

Following the unexpected death of his trio’s bass player in a car crash, jazz pianist Bill Evans finds himself incapable of playing – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 11th

Director Gee has a clear empathy for the worlds of music and musicians, with documentaries Meeting People is Easy (1998), about Radiohead touring to promote their album OK Computer, and Joy Division (2007). The current film represents his first foray into the narrative feature.

It opens with a recreation of a number from Evans’ 1961 New York Village Vanguard gig – the Bill Evans Trio with Evans (Anders Danielsen Lie from The Summer Book, Charlie McDowell, 2024; Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021; The Worst Person in the World, Joachim Trier, 2021) on piano, Scott LeFaro (Will Sach) on bass, and Paul Motian (Boz Martin-Jones) on drums – two recordings of which were released as the highly regarded LPs Sunday at the Vialllage Vanguard and Waltz for Debby. As reel to reel spools rotate, so too do car wheels, specifically those carrying LeFaro to his death in a car crash 11 days later.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The End of Oak Street

The End of Oak StreetDirector – David Robert Mitchell – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 99m

Film ***

Prehistoric Beasts *****

A family in a pleasant American suburb is inexplicably transported to a prehistoric time where dinosaurs and other dangerous creatures roam – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 14h

A typical family in 1980s American suburbia. At a local community get together, Greg (Ewan McGregor) takes part in a sack race. His wife Denise (Anne Hathaway) takes him aside for a serious conversation about their marriage, which she doesn’t think is working. She is also annoyed that their son Brian (Christian Convery) has bought along their dog Starbuck (played by dogs Buzz and Brisket) who has a habit of getting out of control. Denise is further frustrated when Greg bunks off to do some deliveries (it later transpires that she hates the Pizza Delivery sign he fixes to the car roof when doing his rounds.) The family also has a young teenage daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella).

Denise pays a visit to her elderly friend Mrs. Huddleston (a striking turn form Anne Gee Byrd) who is somewhat perturbed as to the identity of the flower that has sprung up in her garden, growing to about four feet high in two days and resembling a small palm tree or yucca bearing a fruit something like an acorn about the size of a hand.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Bouchra

Bouchra

Directors – Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani – 2025 – Italy, Morocco, US – Cert. 15 – 83m

***1/2

A queer artist and filmmaker jackal living in New York desperately wants to come out to her mother back in conservative Morocco – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 7th

This opens with a lengthy, bravura shot framing a section of a moving carriage on an urban, New York train. Inside, passengers include our main protagonist, the eponymous, anthropomorphised, leather jacket-clad, female jackal Bouchra, standing. The shot is static in the sense that the camera and the train are moving completely in sync, so that the moving carriage, although clearly moving, is motionless relative to the viewer (apart from the occasional judder caused by the travelling of the train).

As the train travels its route, our moving view of the moving carriage is constantly interrupted by objects between us and the carriage – grids of cabling, sections of barrier and other trackside features. This momentarily recalls the similar urban carriage interior early on in Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997), although there are no reflections here, merely levels, and any similarity between the two films stops beyond this point.

Bouchra is very different from Perfect Blue in intent, with a narrative – such as it is – that feels as if someone is shooting a documentary within New York’s queer subculture, capturing footage on camera and seeing what turns up, then trying to turn the resultant footage into a film.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Exit 8
(Hachiban Deguchi,
8番出口)

Exit 8 (Hachiban Deguchi, 8番出口)

Director – Genki Kawamura – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 95m

*****

A commuter tries to leave the Tokyo Underground but finds himself retracing his steps within a repeating system from which there is no exit – out on digital Monday, June 8th and Blu-ray Monday, June 29th in the UK and Ireland

A packed carriage on the Tokyo Underground. A commuter (Kazunari Ninomiya from Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood, 2006), heading to his first day at a new job, can’t help but notice a young mother whose baby is crying. This is not a situation anyone likes to find themselves in, least of all the young mother. One male passenger takes it upon himself to berate and belittle the woman for selfishly allowing her child to make a noise in such a crowded, public space, inconveniencing everyone present. On one level, is he simply voicing what everyone else in the carriage is thinking? On another, is he completely out of order? After all, the mother is not the child making the noise, and she is doing her best to calm it. The irate passenger is clearly not helping the situation.

Perhaps someone should intervene and tell the man to leave the woman alone.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

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

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 – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June.

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.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles
Mutant Mayhem

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem

Directors – Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

The much loved comic-generated franchise gets a remarkable reboot in animation that breaks the filmmaking mould to really get under the skin of the teenage experience – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June.

Hollywood animated children’s films since the advent of computer animation. They all look the same. Okay, that’s not entirely fair, but with notable exceptions like the Laika films and the recent Spider-Verse films there’s a definite homogeneity to this output overall, industry wisdom dictating the production parameters and the overall look and feel. There’s a mould there, the films make money and producers are terrified to break that mould. Not so here.

The irony is that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property, born out of a late night joke between two comic book artists who never expected to sell more than a one-off issue, has spawned numerous spin-offs in comics, animated TV series, video games and movies. Somehow, the previous six movies – three in the 1990s (including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Steve Barron, 1990; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze, Michael Pressman, 1991), one in 2007, and two more in the last decade following a reboot in 2014 – never quite delivered on the promise of the franchise, as if everyone concerned was too focused on the moneymaking potential and trying to play everything safe, an approach completely at odds with that of the two artists who originated the property and simply thought of it as a fun idea worth developing.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies Music

Köln 75
(Köln 75)

Köln 75 (Köln 75)

Director – Ido Fluk – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 112m

*****

How an 18-year-old girl came to stage what would become the biggest selling jazz album in history – narrative feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 5th

At a party honouring her career as a music promoter, 50-year-old Vera Brandes (Suzanne Wolff) is upbraided by her dentist father (Ulrich Tukur from The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009; The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, 2006; Solaris, Steven Soderbergh, 2002; Lulu, George Moorse, Peter Zadek, TV movie, 1991) that she never amounted to anything. In a quasi-documentary sequence, she intervenes as narrator to talk about this being a really bad start, and proceeds to play, like a presenter in a music documentary, some music takes abandoned by bad starts from, among others The Cramps and Bob Dylan.

The film starts again, this time with 18-year-old Vera Brandes (Mala Emde) who enjoys hanging out with friends at jazz venues, such as the one where English club owner Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts from September 5, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024; Alien Romulus, Fede Alvarez, 2024; Allied, Robert Zemeckis, 2016) is playing.… Read the rest