Tag: representative

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Features Live Action Movies

Rumours
(2024)

Director – Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson – 2024 – Germany, Canada – Cert. 15 – 109m

****1/2

The G7 leaders meet at a summit only to find themselves trapped in the woods following an apocalyptic event – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 6th

Every so often, the leaders of the world’s leading liberal democracies – the G7 – gather for summits to deal with the impending global crisis. On this occasion, it’s a bright, sunshiny day. Prior to getting down to business, they are toured through some local woods and shown the remains of one of the Bog People in a deep pit, their corpses perfectly preserved, apart from their bones which have disappeared, thanks to the properties of the bog land environment in which they were buried thousands of years ago. One corpse which they are shown has had his penis cut off and hung ornamentally round his neck. British PM Cardosa Dewindt (Nicky Amuka-Bird) is understandably somewhat taken aback by this.

The seven have their picture taken by the side of the pit, posing with spades. Then it’s on to the gazebo in a large clearing to sit down and discuss the matter in hand.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Evil Does Not Exist
(Aku wa Sonzai Shinai,
悪は存在しない)

Director – Ryosuke Hamaguchi – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 106m

**

A small, unspoiled village community is visited by two representatives of a company planning to set up a glamping facility – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 5th

This starts and ends with a journey on foot through a forest with a viewpoint looking up at the branches of trees as quiet, meditative and arresting music by Eiko Ishibashi plays on the soundtrack.

A young girl of about eight (was it her viewpoint?) wanders through the woods.

A man chainsaws chopped tree trunks into small logs, then takes them near to his house to chop them for firewood. He puts several big, plastic cans in his car boot and drives out to a stream to fill them with water. Kazuo drops by to help the man load the filled bottles into his car. They hear gunshots, which the first man remarks he heard they were hunting in Kunihara.

At this point the first man Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) realises he’s forgotten to pick up his daughter from daycare, and drives over there to discover she’s given up waiting and walked home along. He finds her in the forest and gives Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), for that is her name, a piggyback home.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Concrete Utopia
(Konkeuriteu Yutopia,
콘크리트 유토피아)

Director – Eom Tae-hwa – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 130m

****1/2

A massive earthquake makes the residents of the sole Seoul apartment block still standing close their doors to survivors outside – out on UK digital platforms on Monday, April 1st

Concrete: a structural material made of aggregate, cement, and water. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) Harsh. Unyielding. Impenetrable. Opaque. Not alive. Commonly used in today’s world in the manufacture of buildings, and associated with Brutalist architecture.

Utopia: an ideal community whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) The English word derives from two Greek words, the compound meaning of which is nowhere. Hence, “seemingly”. Utopias tend to have some fatal flaw. If they didn’t, any story about them would lack dramatic conflict. Thus, the word carries within it a degree of irony.

The eponymous montage of these two words pits them against each other: an unyielding, dead physicality confronts the optimism of a better world. The title evokes JG Ballard’s novels Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975), the former about a stranded motorist struggling to survive on a spaghetti junction after a car accident, the latter about a newly built block of flats in which the residents descend through social breakdown towards a new order.… Read the rest