Tag: research

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Features Live Action Movies

Perfect Sense

Director – David Mackenzie – 2011 – UK – Cert. 15 – 92m

*****

Love story set in a pandemic captures something of the emotions felt during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, when this review was written (one of the first to appear on this then fledgeling site) – streaming on the Arrow Channel from Friday, March 24th to Sunday, April 30th 2023

Glasgow, Scotland. Michael (Ewan McGregor) is a chef. He likes to sleep alone, so if he takes a woman to bed, he’ll turf her out afterwards to get back his space. That changes when he meets Susan (Eva Green), who then does the same thing to him. And yet, there’s something between them. They’re drawn to one another. A relationship ensues.

Which might sound like just another boy meets girl movie, but Perfect Sense is different. Behind the foreground of walking along river banks and sleeping together lies a very different backdrop. Susan is an epidemiologist at a local hospital. A man has lost his sense of smell and is kept in isolation. There are other cases all over the country. Suddenly, people are being overwhelmed with grief and losing their sense of smell. Some time later, they eat ravenously then lose their sense of taste.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Saint Omer
(Saint-Omer)

Director – Alice Diop – 2022 – France – Cert. 12a – 122m

*****

Researching a proposed book, an academic visits Saint Omer to attend the trial of a woman who murdered her own 15-month old baby – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 3rd

Holding her baby, a woman walks into the sea.

University lecturer Rama (Kayije Kagame) plans to write a book based around a court case at the Saint Omer criminal court. Her head is full of memories of her mother, with whom her relationship could, at times, be tense. She takes the train to the town, which is in the Northernmost part of France, near the border with Belgium. The Senegalese defendant Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) – the woman seen at the start of the film – is accused of the murder of her 15-month old child Elise.

In her defence, Coly, who has confessed to the murders, claims to have been cursed, that she herself therefore isn’t the party responsible for the killing. Her courtroom testimony unpacks her relationship with her separated parents: she lived with her mother but never really got on with her since they had little in common, while her father paid for her school tuition as he wanted her to study law.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Northman

Director – Robert Eggers – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 136m

*****

A 10th Century Viking prince vows revenge on his father king’s killer and sees it through to death – out in cinemas on Friday, April 15th

Young Viking Prince Amleth (Oscar Novak from The Batman) is thrilled when his warrior father King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) returns with a line of prisoners in two to his fortified stronghold and Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). Father and son are devoted to each other, participating in a private ritual involving bodily sounds and consumption of an hallucinogenic liquid that causes the boy to experience a vision of his family line: a tree of life where the trunk is a spine and branches are umbilical cords attached to grown kings as the viewpoint pans up reveal the boy attached to the highest cord. He is now prepared to take over the rule of the kingdom when his father dies.

He doesn’t seem to get on quite so well with his mother, who warns him never to enter her room unannounced. At a banquet in honour of Aurvandil, his dour brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang from The Square, Ruben Östlund, 2017) takes exception to court jester Heimir the Fool (Willem Dafoe).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

This Island Earth

Director – Joseph Newman – 1955 – US – Cert. PG – 83m

*****

UK PAL laserdisc review, 1997.

Originally published on London Calling Internet.

Pioneer continue to plunder the Universal vaults for SF gems. I’d never heard of This Island Earth when a print turned up for a revival run at London’s late lamented Scala repertory cinema in the early eighties, but having seen it several times since it’s a film which stands the test of time admirably. Moreover, being an Academy ratio film, it doesn’t suffer either the necessary indignity of widescreening black bars top and bottom or the thoroughly infuriating cropping of picture sides that accompanies too many video releases. The digital remaster on this Pioneer disc looks superb too – This Island Earth may be a good deal more than merely the sum of its special effects, but it IS an effects movie and those effects are impressive by the standards of the day (even if they creak a little now). What’s more, most of them are on side 2 of this disc in glorious CAV.

Warning: (plot) spoilers.

Eschewing obvious alien invasion plot lines, the narrative has nuclear research scientist Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) slowly lured into an alien conspiracy alongside rival in his field of research Ruth Adams (Faith Domergue).… Read the rest