Tag: prosperity

Oh, Canada

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 January 2026
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Director – Paul Schrader – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

From the novel by Russell Banks

***

A documentary filmmaker dying of cancer consents to a filmed interview about his life and work to air his dirty laundry – on UK and Ireland digital platforms on Monday, January 12th

“Remind me why I agreed to do this,” says the ageing Leonard Fife, aka Leo (Richard Gere, from Schrader’s earlier American Gigolo, 1980) setting up for a filmed interview, about his life and work as a documentary filmmaker, at which he has insisted his wife Emma (Uma Thurman), a former student of his, be present. His interviewer Malcolm (Michael Imperioli from Song Sung Blue, Craig Brewer, 2025; The White Lotus, TV series, Mike White, 2021; The Sopranos, TV series, 1999–2007) is another former student, as is Malcolm’s producer Diana (Victoria Hill from First Reformed, 2017; Master Gardener, 2022, both Paul Schrader), another former student conquest of Leo’s; Malcolm’s production assistant is 24-year old Sloan (Penelope Mitchell from Sting, Kiah Roache-Turner, 2024; Hellboy, Neil Marshall, 2019; The Vampire Diaries, TV series, 2014-15; Hemlock Grove, TV series, 2013).

What lies behind Leonard’s acceptance of the gig swiftly becomes clear when he hijacks the first question, framing it with a date in 1968 of great significance in his personal life.… Read the rest

Tags 1968, 24-year old, abandoning relationships, adaptation, adultery, ageing, artist, bad decisions, Calvinist upbringing, Canada, Caroline Dhavernas, CEO, Christian, Christianity, close to death, confession, conservative values, death, dirty laundry, disloyal, documentary, documentary films, draft dodger, dream sequence, dreams and reality, dying of cancer, exposing, extra-marital affair, family business, family home, family priest, father-in-law, fathers and sons, filmed interview, first novel, first wife, flashback, former student, frame device, frame story, good offer, high places, humanist, husbands and wives, imagined memory, in-laws, infidelities, investigative, Jacob Elordi, Jake Weary, Kristine Froseth, life and work, life decisions, loyalty, male heir, marital infidelities, Megan MacKenzie, memory, Michael Imperioli, miscarriage, morality, mortality, mother-in-law, novel, novelist, nurse, Paul Schrader, Penelope Mitchell, producer, production assistant, property, prosperity, relationships, religion, retrospective, Richard Gere, rite of Confession, Russell Banks, sex, sexism, Southern US, student conquest, talk things through, Uma Thurman, US, Vermont, Victoria Hill, Vietnam War, voice-over, wives, writer, wrongdoing, younger self, Zach Shaffer

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Hundreds
of Beavers

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 6 July 2024
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of Beavers
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Director – Mike Cheslik – 2022 – US – Cert. 12 – 108m

***1/2

A ruined drinks purveyor reduced to hunting beavers (played by actors in onesies) attempts to kill the amount required to buy a trader’s daughter’s hand in marriage – visually astonishing slapstick comedy is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Tuesday, July 9th and on Blu-ray from Monday, August 5th

Opening with what is essentially a music video extolling the bibulous virtues of the booming, farm home of Jean Kayak’s Acme Applejack, this shows a simplistic caricature of a prosperous nineteenth century business when the wooden supports of one of Kayak’s gigantic barrels of beverage is nibbled by a beaver causing it to roll down a hill on which it’s situated into his house at the bottom of the hill, causing it to burn down his hillside apple orchard.

Leaving aside such questions as, why store the huge barrel on top of a hill above your house? – the answer, so it can roll down a hill, catch fire and burn down your orchard to get the plot going, proving less than satisfactory – this leaves the ruined Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) homeless in midwinter and forced to survive by hunting animals.… Read the rest

Tags animals, animation, apple orchard, applejack, barrels, beavers, black and white, business, Buster Keaton, caricature, CG, CG animation, daughter, daughter’s hand in marriage, Doug Mancheski, drink, gag, hill, homeless, hunting, isometric grid, Luis Rico, Midwinter, Mike Cheslik, music video, naturalism, naturalistic realism, nibble, nineteenth century, North American Indian, Olivia Graves, onesie, onesies, Peter Jackson, prosperity, purchase, question mark, rabbits, raccoons, romance, ruined, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, selling, sex, silent movies, slapstick comedy, song and dance routine, Super Mario Bros, survive, trader, trapper, trick film, video effects, video games, visual gag, Wes Tank, winds, wooden supports

Features Live Action Movies

The Land
Where Winds
Stood Still
(Zhel Toqtaghan Zher)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 16 November 2023
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Where Winds
Stood Still
(Zhel Toqtaghan Zher)
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Director – Ardak Amirkulov – 2023 – Kazakhstan – Cert. none – 108m

*****

A Kazakh mother made homeless by Soviet policy must protect her two sons in the harsh environment of the Steppes – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

An historical, period, survival movie. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, Soviet forced collectivisation polices, intended to have a levelling effect, instead forced Kazakh peasants off the land and led to the famine of the early 1930s. People were reduced to eating livestock essential for agricultural production, not to mention each other.

In a barren Steppes landscape loosely reminiscent of the Spaghetti Western, mother Jupar and her two pre-teenage sons Jolan and Boshay must survive mounted gunmen, starvation, extreme weather, wolves, and hungry fellow human beings. Jupar carries a concealed knife within her clothing and will stop at nothing to protect her kids in one of the most powerful expressions of motherhood ever to grace the screen.

Their seeming nomadic existence is however not without purpose; she has to get them to the eponymous Land, the village where she was born, and safety. Yet the dangers they face on the way are legion.… Read the rest

Tags 1930s, 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Critics' Picks Competition, agricultural production, Ardak Amirkulov, barren, cannibalism, cavalry, climate, collectivisation, Critics' Picks Competition, danger, disenfranchised, eating livestock, Ersin Kalybaeva, extreme weather, family breakdown, famine, force, gruel, gunmen, home, homeless, hope, hunger, hungry, ill, illness, Kazakh, Kazakhstan, knife, land, landscape, levelling, Meirzhan Musakozha, mistrust, mother, motherhood, mothers and children, nomad, nomadic, peasants, PÖFF, PÖFF 2023, PÖFF 2023: Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF 27, PÖFF 27: Critics' Picks Competition, PÖFF: Critics' Picks Competition, poison, policy, poverty, pre-teenage sons, prosperity, protect, Russian Revolution, Sagizbai Karabalin, Salikh Beisenbai, small children, social collapse, Soviet, spaghetti Western, starvation, Steppes, survival, Tallinn, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2023, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2023: Critics' Picks Competition, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival: Critics' Picks Competition, village, well, wolves, Zhanar Shokpanova