Tag: promotion

Cloud
(Kuraudo,
クラウド)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2024 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 124m

*****

The art of the deal. The past of an internet goods reseller driven by making money who has made enemies among his one-off suppliers and customers comes back to bite him – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 25th

Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) makes a take-it-or-leave it offer to Tonoyama (Masaaki Akahori), who manufactures electric therapy devices: ¥90 000 for his entire inventory. Tonoyama protests that at such a low price he will barely make any money after all the investment he has made. Tonoyama’s wife (Maho Yamada) is horrified and pleads with Yoshii, but he is ruthless. He explains that if he can’t sell the items, the ¥90 000 will ocver him to pay someone to take the unsaleable goods away. Returning home to his sometime live-in girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), Yoshii puts the items online at ¥200 000 each. They quickly sell out. He tells her she can buy whatever she wants with his credit card.

At Yoshii’s day job, in what appears to be a factory floor for the laundering of clothes, his boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) holds him in high regard, feeling his talents are underused as a mere shop floor worker and regarding him as a future leader.… Read the rest

Tags abandon, abandoned factory, action figurines, apartment, apparition, boss, capture, city and countryside, clothes laundering, cloud, computer, consumerism, corruption, credit card, customer, Daiken Okudaira, day job, delivery, designer handbag, designer handbags, discipline, dread, easy money, electric therapy devices, entrepreneur and consumer, ethical code, factory floor, fake, greed, internet reseller, inventory, investment, Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Kotone Furukawa, lakeside house, leader, LEAFF, LEAFF 2024, legitimate business opportunity, livestreaming, local, London East Asia Film Festival, London East Asia Film Festival 2024, low price, Maho Yamada, making money, manufacturer, Masaaki Akahori, Masaki Suda, Masataka Kubota, mentor, moral code, move house, murder, online reviews, online selling, organised crime, personal assistant, personal ego-search, police, promotion, purchasing power., quit, revenge, ruthless, school acquaintance, sell out, shadow, shipment, supplier, Tokyo, torture, town and country, unemployed, unsaleable goods, van, window, woods, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa

Features Live Action Movies

The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 7 February 2025
No Comments on The Seed
of the Sacred Fig
(Dane-ye
Anjir-e Ma’abed,
دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)
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Director – Mohammad Rasoulof – 2024 – Iran, Germany, France – Cert. 15 – 167m

*****

An Iranian state functionary, married with two teenage daughters, is promoted to the position of judge at the same time as the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupt… And then, his gun goes missing at home… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 7th

A film so extraordinarily brilliant that it is almost impossible to conceive.

An opening intertitle explains the remarkable life cycle of a tree which grows on one of the southern Iranian islands. Its seeds fall onto the branches of other trees through bird droppings. The seeds then germinate, and their roots move towards the ground. When the roots reach the ground, the sacred fig tree stands on its own feet and its branches strangle the host tree.

2022. The tireless and diligent work of state functionary Iman (Missagh Zareh) has finally been rewarded; he is to be appointed a judge. In a repressive regime like Iran, that’s not a job looked upon favourably by most of the population, so his work gives him a pistol just in case he should need to defend himself or his family. At home, in the Tehran apartment where he lives with his family, he keeps the weapon in a drawer.… Read the rest

Tags 2022, Amineh Arani, authorities, beaten, behave, best behaviour, bestie, career and promotion, case files, cat and mouse, cells, college, corridor, death sentence, drawer, family night out, family row, France, Germany, germination, home, hometown, husbands and wives, imprisonment, incarceration, interrogator city and country, Iran, Islam, Islamist, judge, keep women down, labyrinth, life cycle, Mahsa Rostami, Missagh Zareh, missing gun, Mohammad Rasoulof, mother, Niousha Akhshi, non-conformism, overwork, parents and children, parents and daughters, parents and teenagers, patriarchy, pistol, promotion, protests, radical and conservative, regime, repression, rooftop, roots, rubber stamp, scrupulous, Setareh Maleki, sisters, social climber, social divide, Soheila Golestani, state functionary, status quo, strangulation, strict Islamic dress codes, teenage angst, Tehran, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, totalitarian, tower, tree, Women Life Freedom, workload, wound

Features Live Action Movies

The Lavender Hill Mob

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 26 March 2024
No Comments on The Lavender Hill Mob
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Director – Charles Crichton – 1951 – UK – Cert. U – 78m

*****

A Bank of England employee stumbles upon the perfect means to rob his employer of the gold bullion he transports there on a daily basis– classic Ealing comedy is back out in a new 4k restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, March 29th

Holland (Alec Guinness) has a lowly job at the Bank of England supervising the transfer of recently minted bars of gold bullion to the bank’s secure vault by security van., He rides in the back and is forever asking the harried driver to check round the corner for suspected cars lying in wait to ambush the van. He is considered an honest nobody, an appearance he has cultivated for the best part of two decades. He has a mind to rob the van, if only he could work out how to smuggle the bullion out of the country.

Fate intervenes in the form of a newly arrived tenant at the downmarket Balmoral Guest House in Lavender Hill, where he lodges. Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) runs a business selling tourist tat, including lead models of the Eiffel Tour for selling at that Parisian monument. He melts the lead down on his London premises to cast it into the models.… Read the rest

Tags 1950s, Alec Guinness, Alfie Bass, alibi, ambush, Audrey Hepburn, back projection, Balmoral, bank clerk, Bank of England employee and employer, bank vault, breathlessness incompetent police, bureaucracy, burglar, car chase, casting metal, Charles Crichton, collision, comedy, cops and robbers, crime, criminals, crooks, downtrodden, Ealing comedy, Eiffel Tower, England, English schoolgirls, evidence, factory, falling into the river, faux respectability, fugitives, gang, gangster novels, giddy, gold bars, gold bullion, Guest House, heist, honest nobody, humour, industrial process, kaleidoscopic, landlady, Lavender Hill, lead and gold, lodgings, London, melt down, mistaken for a thief; bound and gagged, mob, national newspaper stories, nursery rhyme, Old Macdonald Had a Farm, Paris, plucky little hero, police and thieves, police cars, policemen on the beat, post-war, promotion, pronunciation, pursuit, radio, rebel against the system, rescued, Rio de Janeiro, robbery, safe cracker, salacious, schoolgirls, security van, self-advancement, Sidney James, smelt, smuggle, snatch and grab, spiral staircase, Stanley Holloway, T.E.B. Clarke, the missing piece, the perfect crime, tourist tat, UK, whimsy