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All of Us Strangers

Director – Andrew Haigh – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 105m

*****

A gay Londoner travels by train to visit his parents in Sanderstead, following their deaths in a car crash when he was 12 years old – out on digital from Tuesday, March 12th

He (Andrew Scott) lives alone in a London tower block. Not only is he the single occupant of his flat, there’s almost no-one else in the building. When he goes outside for a breath of fresh air, he sees a guy in the window of one of the other apartments. Later, there’s a knock at his door. It’s the guy (Paul Mescal), who is slightly drunk, comes on strong and tries to get himself invited in. The visitor’s name is Harry. The occupant introduces himself as Adam, but doesn’t let Harry in.

By day, Adam writes screenplays. But he’s got stuck, so after perusing some personal effects, he takes the train to Sanderstead. There, he watches a boy in a window. He follows a man across an area of parkland. Coming out of a shop, the man spots him and asks him to come over. You think it might be a pickup – but no, it’s his dad (Jamie Bell).… Read the rest

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Hoard

Director – Luna Carmoon – 2023 – UK – Cert. – 126m

****

A young girl’s strange relationship with her rubbish-hoarding mother, cut short in childhood, leads to an equally bizarre bond in adult life – plays Glasgow Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, February 28th to Sunday, March 10th, and is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 10th

When I first stumbled across the title of this film, and the image used to promote it of a young couple staring into what I took to be a circular hole, which, I realised after seeing the film, was in fact the outline of a communal bin of the type commonly found on an English housing estate, I guessed it was a thriller – two people stumble upon a hoard: a bag of money or otherwise valuable contents. A noun. However, after viewing, I now realise the title could equally well suggest an activity, a verb. To hoard. The act of hoarding. The state of being which is hoarding. The film isn’t really a thriller. To describe it as a drama might be closer to the mark, but that doesn’t prepare the viewer for how utterly strange and alien the experience of watching this is.… Read the rest

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Winny
(Winny)

Director – Yusaku Matsumoto – 2023 – Japan – Cert. tbc – 127m

*****

Based on a true story; the state attempts to prosecute the software developer of the file sharing programme Winny for copyright violation – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

2003. After programmer Isamu Kaneko (Masahiro Takashide) creates a file-sharing programme Winny, the media reports that people are using it to illegally download movies. Across Japan in late November, a series of police raids on flats leads to the arrests of several Winny users, along with its creator. In custody and being questioned, Kaneko is very bad at paying attention. Believing the cops have his and society’s best interests at heart, he cooperates by copying into his own handwriting a confession they have written and signing it, on the verbal understanding that he can change or tweak the document before it is used in court. The interrogating cop, however, has deceived him into making a statement that will stand as evidence in court.

Defence attorney Toshimitsu Dan (Takahiro Miura) agrees to take on Kaneko’s case and is horrified by the computer programmer’s naivety about all things legal.… Read the rest

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Animation Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies Music

SCALA!!!
Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits

Directors – Ali Catterall, Jane Giles – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 96m

*****

From 1978 to 1993, London’s Scala Cinema programmed everything from art house to sexploitation, ushering in the upcoming generation of anti-establishment musicians, filmmakers, and others – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 5th

Whatever the strengths of this film – and they are legion – it may be impossible for me to write an objective review of it. From my first visit to Tottenham Street to watch an afternoon programme of back-to-back Tex Avery animation shorts on Saturday, 25th October 1980, I could often be found at London’s Scala cinema in the 1980s, broadening my mind as I lapped up welcome servings of movies long or short, old or new, highbrow or trashy. So there are a few additional titbits in what follows which come from my own personal, mental Scala archive of memory rather than from the documentary itself.

As for the date, my memory’s not actually that good. Such information can, however, be discerned from the wondrous if unfeasibly large-sized book SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, which amongst other things contains all the monthly Scala programmes. It was written by co-director and former Scala employee / programmer Jane Giles’ and edited by fellow co-director Ali Catterall.… Read the rest

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The Goldfinger
(Jin Shouzhi,
金手指)

Director – Felix Chong – 2023 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 126m

*****

Director Felix Chong reunites his two Infernal Affairs stars for a lavish, if frequently incomprehensible, 1980s tale of cops and robbers, corruption and fraud – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, January 5th 2024.

The experience of watching The Goldfinger is a lot like watching the classic Hollywood private eye movie The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946). There, you know that the hero is investigating a string of murders, and the narrative is completely engrossing, even for the viewer watching the film for the umpteenth time, yet it’s also impenetrable and incomprehensible. And so it is with The Goldfinger, which is based not on a novel but on a real life financial scandal.

Real life Hong Kong conglomerate The Carrian Group, founded in 1977 by one George Tan, expanded rapidly and made huge profits until it was declared bankrupt in 1983. The whole operation turned out to be mired in fraud. In the film, set in the late 1970s / early 1980s, the central character Ching (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) is modelled on Tan, starting off penniless but wearing suits that look like a million dollars and blessed with an understanding of what’s required to gain people’s confidence, secure deals and make money.… Read the rest

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Fez Summer ’55
(” 55″ خمسة وخمسين)

Director – Abdelhai Laraki – 2023 – Morocco – Cert. none – 114m

****

An 11-year-old boy navigates the rooftops of a Moroccan city while insurgents plot the overthrow of French colonialists in private courtyards and sometimes confront the occupying police in the streets – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

The old medina of Moroccan city Fez, a lattice of narrow streets where there is room for no more than pedestrian traffic. Or, to 11-year-old boy Kamal (Ayman Driwi), a network of rooftops and walkways allowing him to go anywhere. His freedom on the top of the city stands in sharp contrast to the country’s political reality: occupied by France, with their police patrolling the streets. The locals either keep their heads down or agitate for the return of their exiled ruler, Sultan Mohammed V.

The story is very much told from Kamal’s point of view. He is at once possessed of a child’s enthusiasm for life and from his rooftop vantage point able to see things unseen by most of the narrative’s adults most of the time. Yet, he is hampered by his immaturity and lack of understanding of what’s really going on.… Read the rest

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#Manhole
(#マンホール)

Director – Kazuyoshi Kumakiri – 2023 – Japan – LEAFF Cert.15 – 99m

***

A man falls down a manhole following his stag night and turns to social media to get help and, hopefully, escapeplays in the Official Selection at the 2023 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 18th to Sunday, October 29th.

The opening minutes of #Manhole resemble any number of Japanese movies you can think of as Shunsuke Kawamura (Yuto Nakajima) attends a surprise party put on by work colleagues at his local watering hole. It’s a good night, suggesting he’s well loved (albeit on a fairly superficial level) and he leaves extremely drunk, briefly saying goodbye to best mate Etsuro Kase (Kento Nagayama from Love Life Koji Fukada, 2022; Villain, Lee Sang-il, 2010) whose well-intentioned present – a lighter – may not be so much use to Kawamura now that he’s given up smoking. Or so it would seem at that point in the proceedings.

Kawamura must have drunk a good deal more than he realised because as he staggers home, he falls down a manhole off of which someone, by accident or design, has left the cover. His upper leg is badly cut.… Read the rest

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Where
The Wind Blows
(Feng Zai Qi Shi,
風再起時)

Director – Philip Yung – 2022 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 144m

***

The parallel careers of two dishonest Hong Kong cops plays out against the backdrop of corruption in the Hong Kong Police Force between the end of WW2 and the end of the 1960s – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 8th

Out of the ashes of the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, two men join the Hong Kong Police Force only to discover that it is riddled with corruption, a fact of life they embrace in different ways throughout the 1950s and 60s even as the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) under George Lee (Michael Hui) attempts to investigate them and shut them down. The well-dressed Nam Kong (Tony Leung Chiu-wai from Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Destin Daniel Cretton, 2021; Lust, Caution, Ang Lee, 2007; Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, 2002) is quietly building a corrupt empire with links to the triads, while Lui Lok (Aaron Kwok from The Storm Riders, Andrew Lau, 1998) attempts to eschew corruption but find its pervasive presence in the force irresistible.

The latter falls for and marries the beautiful Tsai Chan (Du Juan), subsequently taking on Siu Yin (Yixuan Zeng) as his mistress because she reminds him of former girlfriend Xiao Yu (Chun Xia aka Jessie Li) who disguised herself as a male soldier to find her lost brother, was discovered by the Japanese and pressed into service as a comfort woman.… Read the rest

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The Wicker Man:
The Final Cut

Director – Robin Hardy – 1973 – UK – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A Christian police sergeant investigating a missing child on a remote Scottish island meets a terrible fateout as a Collector’s Edition UHD / Blu-ray /DVD from Monday, September 25th following its release in UK cinemas in a 4K restoration from Wednesday, June 21st, 2023

(Originally reviewed for cinema release in a 2K restoration on Friday, September 27th, 2013)

Originally released forty years ago in the UK in a cut down version its director disliked, The Wicker Man now reaches our cinema screens in a longer, restored version which he says fulfils his original vision. Its plot is deceptively simple. A Christian police sergeant flies to a remote Scottish island in response to a letter about a missing child. But when he arrives on Summerisle, no-one seems to have heard of that child. It gradually emerges that the policeman has stumbled into an intricate web of lies and deceit wherein a terrible fate awaits him….

Using material from a recently discovered, longer US release print – rechristened The Final Cut by Hardy who assembled this cut in 1979 – it’s a provocative work on a number of levels.… Read the rest

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No More Bets
(孤注一掷,
Gu Zhu Yi Zhi)

Director – Shen Ao – 2022 – China – Cert. 15 – 129m

***

A rising star computer programmer and a dropped model are lured into working as forced labour for a fraudulent, foreign online gambling operation – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 8th

Zhao Dongran (Yong Mei), the knowledgeable head of a well-equipped Chinese police team fighting internet fraud, gives a lecture in which she outlines the story of a top flight programmer lured into the shady world of gambling beyond China’s borders.

The talented Pan Sheng (Lay Zhang), after being passed over for a promotion in favour of a not-especially talented young relative of the boss, opts for his safety net – a job offer from a company in Singapore. Along with a number of other recruits, he boards the plane with company rep Cui (Sunny Sun from The Crossing, Bai Xue, 2018), who is in charge of them, but in Singapore the deal rapidly turns sour when in an alleyway the group are rounded up by thugs with baseball bats to be transported to the corporate compound which amounts to a slave labour camp from which Lu (Eric Wang) runs an online gambling company which is in fact a scam defrauding millions of people, many of them in China.… Read the rest